what's happened to Michael Hoffman from egodeath?

[BrainEater]

yeah mate i agree. my definition of ego death rather more supports the strength of the notion of non-attachment a.k.a. non-identification with the mind and it's countless forms of thoughts it cultivates, too, in order to see clearly the metaphorical clouds we probably had been creating in front of our mind's eye(s), and of course then advance to seeing what it really is that these clouds had been holding concealed from the light of our consciousness shining thru the blackness of the intricate instruments we seem to have there for measurement and tracing purposes of some fucked up SUPPOSEDLY intedeterministic energy manifestation-form, with which we supposedly interact for our whole lives.

so how could we know how michael hoffman feels about this?? i suppose we could ask him??

well i think the thing that differs is the experience itself from person to person, that's why it may seem to make sense to create a unifying model, to display experiences better to others, but exactly this fact might make it a difficult task to acomplish, really. however i think the positive approach towards the subject deserves it's respect, regarding the almost obsessive nature of the brain's motivations to wanting to explain everything.

 

[maxfreakout]

If i were the one to judge, i'd say it seems to me that this conclusion to the subject is sort of inappropriate in the preclusion of mutually exclusive assumptions, appearing to be based on opinion rather than knowledge.

it isnt based on either opinion or knowledge, it is based on explanatory cohesion, the concept of timeless determinism comprehensively explains why time seems to stop flowing in the ego death experience

so you know for sure that NO HUMAN BRAIN ON THIS PLANET does not religiously mentally transform ordinary states of consciousness into mystical/religous states of consciousness simply by meditating?

I know for sure that this ^ is NOT the case, some people (who have abnormal brain-chemistry relative to the general population) genuinely do manage to attain altered states (and sometimes also the resulting religious transformation) of consciousness without using drugs (such as by meditating, or by being schizophrenic), it is very rare, but it certainly does happen sometimes. However it is in some sense a fallacy to call this 'drug-free', since the brain creates its own endogenous drugs without having to ingest them from outside

the point that Hoffman makes is that taking drugs is the ONLY ergonomic means to reliably, repeatably, safely trigger these states of consciousness. It is really a point about statistical efficacy, entheogens are the only statistically efficaceous means to repeatedly trigger intense altered states, for (statistically) normal people with normal brain chemistry. Entheogens are the only means by which intense mystical/religious experiences are accessible 'on-tap' for everybody

Entheogens are 100% effective at triggering intense altered states, whereas meditation is more like 1% effective

but you REALLY think you have borrowed the meanings of language codes exclusively??

I dont know what you mean by this question, i havent 'borrowed' anything :?

Hoffman's theory is the first and only explicit systematisation of transcendent knowledge

 

[maxfreakout]

Good explanation, but I do not agree with your/Michael Hoffman's assertion that the mind is a computer. I am aware that it is common in these post modern times to use the metaphor, but not to confuse that with "is"!

it isnt mine or Hoffman's assertion, it is rather the prevailing modern psychological understanding of the mind (computationalism), it is almost universally assented to within academic psychology and philosophy (and other fields that deal with the mind)

but i agree with what you are saying, essentially that ego death theory might turn out to be another metaphor and not as 'literal' as it claims to be, maybe words can never be truly literal

Hoffman's theory is totally 'up to date', it is a theory of the modern era, it uses all the most modern terminology and concepts, and the computational theory of mind is an example of that, it is the modern, prevailing theory of how the mind works

Why dont you agree with it? I think it makes a lot of sense, the mind receives information as inputs (such as sensory information), it processes that information, then it generates outputs (such as thoughts, emotions, actions etc.), that is precisely what a computer does

 

[maxfreakout]

I don't agree that the mind is a computer.

why not? It does exactly the same thing that a computer does (it processes information)

And I do not agree that meditation isn't a valid mean for spiritual (and religious) mental transformation.

To put the point more directly, meditation doesnt allow you to access intense mystical/religious states of consciousness repetably and reliably, whereas entheogens do.

But psychedelics and meditation are two different things, why compare them. Why does it all have to be so black and white. It makes no sense to me.

It is very important to compare them, because modern popular spirituality and religion is entirely anti-drugs, therefore modern spiritualists who are taken in by the lies that are commnly spread about drugs, end up in a situation where they never get the chance to access the intense altered states for themselves. By comparing them you highlight the fact that enthoegens are vastly more ergonomic for experiecing altered states

It's like comparing a car with a bicycle. Both will get you from one point (state of mind) to another.

this comparison doesnt apply to meditation and entheogens, because meditation does NOT repeatably and reliably get you from the ordinary state of consciousness to the intense altered states of consciousness, whereas entheogens always do

And how can Micheal Hoffman say meditation does not deliver intense mystical experience.

Because it doesnt reliably and repeatably deliver these altered states for the majority of people, so Hoffman is simply stating a fact that pop-spiritualists always hate to admit

There are enough people who claim to have had these experience trough meditation.

there are certainly *some* people who achieve altered states through meditation, and very rarely indeed *some* people are able to repeatedly and reliably trigger these states by meditation, and Hoffman acknowledges that

But the point is that *every* person is able to have these experiences by taking drugs, there is no other means except drug-taking that can make this claim (ie the claim of 100% efficacy, every time)

However this is not the same experience as a mystical experience on psychedelics.

the cognitive dynamics are essentially the same in any case, whether it is psychedelics, meditation, schizophrenic psychosis or whatever, the experience results from the loosening of cognitive associations, that is the phenomenological underpinning of the mystical/religious state of consciousness no matter how it occurs

Have you ever tried meditation in combination with psychedelics?

i never take drugs without meditating, for me, taking entheogens just IS meditating. i think a major conceptual problem here is the definition of 'meditation', many people seem to define this word absurdly narrowly, it does NOT just mean 'sitting crosslegged', the real meaning of 'meditation' concerns reflective thinking

With psychedelics it's easy to have mystical experience and it might feel as if the old ego is dying. However as you (as psychonauts) may have noticed the ego always comes back.

after the fullblown ego death experience, ego does not 'come back' except in a very limited sense, it is just a ghostly shell after ego death, no longer a taken-for-granted, substantial, literally real entity, that is the essence of the permanent psychological transformation

These experiences I think are useless if you don't do something with them.

The psychedelic experience alone is only half of what is required for metaphysical enlightenment to occur, the other half is the subsequent integration of the experience. This has traditionally been the role of mythology, religion and perennial philosophy, now it can be done by studying ego death theory

Psychedelics may lead the way, but they are no magic pill. There need to be work done on the self to change ego consciousness.

psychedelics are the magic pill that causes the magical experiences to occur, but the full psychological transformation requires a basic grasp of perennial philosophical concepts in order to integrate and make sense of the experience

I have experience my ego dying many times. And it are these experiences of dying during a psychedelic session that made me doubt this theory.

the theory explains precisely WHY and HOW the ego has this tendency to 'die' when it encounters the loosened cognitive state, in terms of the concept of frozen-future timeless determinism

 

[maxfreakout]

Michael Hoffman there is a part about religious freedom to psychedelic use. And the religious experience. My understanding of religion is that it has a believe systems. A set of rules to follow.

it is only the lower, non-transcendent version of religion that requires 'rules to follow', whereas from the point of entheogen-inspired higher/transcendent religion, the very notion of 'having to follow rules' is logically self-defeating (ie it contradicts the principle of timeless determinism which the religious experience reveals)

That's why only churches like the Santo Daime and the Native American church are allowed to use these medicines.

everybody is 'allowed' to use them, nature put them there for humanity to use. However the criminal liars who falsely claim to control the world will fuck your life up if they catch you, so try not to get caught

I don't believe religious freedom is enough.
I want Freedom of spirit. We should not settle for anything less.

i dont think there is any real difference, religious freedom is the highest form of freedom, because religious experiences are the highest level of experience

 

[magickmumu]

i don't agree. Sorry max i don't buy into all that.

 

[Guest]

IMHO, religion is the fast-food of spirituality.

 

[ochho]

Interesting topic...

the model of timeless determinism (which isnt 'his', he takes it from Rudy Rucker) is meant to explain the experience of psychedelic death and rebirth, you feel as if you 'die' (or go permanently crazy) when you trip too hard because consciousness is raised above the temporal stream of events so that you perceive time as if it were a static block instead of (the usual experience way time is perceived) as a flowing stream of events

‘Fatal snake-bite’ indicates ego death upon seeing all one’s thoughts as timelessly pre-set and given. To be cured of snake-bite and made immune to it is to continue life after ego death, purified of misattribution of the source of one’s thoughts and power of will.

Second quote is from egodeath.com

I feel like I've experienced this ego death the first time I took LSD. During the trip, I did feel like I went "permanently insane" and that time did stop. But afterwards, the way I interpreted the whole experience was that it gave me "another way of looking at things" by providing me an altered look at my world, and thus made me realize how beautiful our world, and all of living things are, which resulted in this "rebirth".

What I want to know, is how he comes up with this fact that our stream of thoughts is "frozen" and pre-set? And it seems, at least from his point of view, that greeks, romans, eastern religions..etc all knew about this.
(This is probably answered on his website, but I haven't had the time to go through all of it yet ;o or maybe I just didn't understand. Alot of it is hard to grasp, especially this universe block stuff!)

On another note. About computers and brains, I thought I should mention this TED Talk, because it tackles exactly this.
You say that computers and brains are similar because of the whole "input-output" analogy, but in this talk, Jeff Hawkins explains why he thinks otherwise, and his view on how our brain works. It is 20mins long, but very interesting, and I felt that what he had to say made quite some sense, so I suggest you give it a full viewing And let me know what you think about it of course!

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_o ... uting.html

 

[zezt]

Good explanation, but I do not agree with your/Michael Hoffman's assertion that the mind is a computer. I am aware that it is common in these post modern times to use the metaphor, but not to confuse that with "is"!

it isnt mine or Hoffman's assertion, it is rather the prevailing modern psychological understanding of the mind (computationalism), it is almost universally assented to within academic psychology and philosophy (and other fields that deal with the mind)

but i agree with what you are saying, essentially that ego death theory might turn out to be another metaphor and not as 'literal' as it claims to be, maybe words can never be truly literal

Hoffman's theory is totally 'up to date', it is a theory of the modern era, it uses all the most modern terminology and concepts, and the computational theory of mind is an example of that, it is the modern, prevailing theory of how the mind works

Why dont you agree with it? I think it makes a lot of sense, the mind receives information as inputs (such as sensory information), it processes that information, then it generates outputs (such as thoughts, emotions, actions etc.), that is precisely what a computer does

It is clear to me that mankind--and this is known throughout its history, tends to use its present state-of-the-art technology to try and use to explain the natural world and the body and mind.
Didn't Rene Descartes use menchaistic terms to desribe his theories, as has Freud, etc--so it is nothing new. NOW they use their computer model, and then confuse it with the reality of the mind. Computationalism is mechanistic, and the mechanistic explanation and action, from that premise, is one of the big reasons for the mess we are in!

I find it odd wrong that you would choose a set and setting with a psychedelic with the set that you are a machine/computer?
It is destined to be futile. It is better to know that you are not a machine but a biological organism and in essence you don't know who or what 'you' are--it is a mystery what we are. Currently science cannot explain (as if it ever could or will) consciousness, nor matter.

My understanding of the ego is that all of us have them. But some pretend they don't or can get rid of them through whatever means. many wish to escape from them, and use various drugs, including alcohol (which is a drug), and various habitual pursuits so as to attempt to escape, and/or divert attention away from through work, and other activities.

Psychedelic ritual is the going into what we are doing. Like you seem to say, it is real meditation--as in journying into what you are thinking and feeling. NOT negating thinking like much Eastern 'meditation' is about, in order to get a 'quiet mind', but really experiencing thoughts and feelings come alive in extraordinary deep way, and the feeling of reality interconnected. What is the ordinary ego to do with this...? If it 'dies' what does that mean?

 

[BrainEater]

i think it dies metaphorically, cuz it doesn't have it's OWN life anyways, and we might say that obviously it represents a mechanically acting and reacting device, to which YOU give life. so this description makes it appear like a machine in it's functions, however i agree that this is only to get a better understanding of it, disregarding the true nature of the innate bonds we have with our conscious, unconscious and subconscious elements that define our so called personalities.
the analogy with dying is all about rebirth, but i fathom that the relationship most of us have towards death is childish, primitve and fueled by fears, and that's why we obviously don't seem to be able to describing what we feel below these mind-layers, thru which it seems we might need to cut thru like thick steaks. also our attitudes towards rebirth look like pathetic shite-flies taking circular excursions over piles of excrement..

maxfreakout to me your view of meditation is narrow, and it feels like you want to resist it, whatever that's supposed to mean. to me meditation is not about reflective thinking, but about awareness and not the thinking itself. the thinking is just a byproduct and with meditation we try to purify the means by which we SYNTHESIZE OUR THOUGHTS?? to me meditation is thriving for oneness, oneness being the holiest, most naturally state one can be in.

also i like the analogy of the mind to a computer, but i think it's incomplete or a bit misleading and if elaborated further it could provide a good insight, however it should be clear that biological information processors have a fundamental difference to normal machines. we fail to see the importance in the difference, just like a computer fails to be a conscious being like we are.

therefore it might seem obvious that it is just plain stupid to dismiss the ego as a mind-agent or program which we need to hunt down, kill, or destroy, as it is a integrated part of what we call "ourself". i think it's better to see it like a flower that needs to be cared about in order to grow healthy and flourish!

i think the labels we seem to be quarrelling over clearly display our limited ability to use words to describe specific acquaintances we made with abstract ideas.

 

[magickmumu]

Michael Hoffman there is a part about religious freedom to psychedelic use. And the religious experience. My understanding of religion is that it has a believe systems. A set of rules to follow.

it is only the lower, non-transcendent version of religion that requires 'rules to follow', whereas from the point of entheogen-inspired higher/transcendent religion, the very notion of 'having to follow rules' is logically self-defeating (ie it contradicts the principle of timeless determinism which the religious experience reveals)

That's why only churches like the Santo Daime and the Native American church are allowed to use these medicines.

everybody is 'allowed' to use them, nature put them there for humanity to use. However the criminal liars who falsely claim to control the world will fuck your life up if they catch you, so try not to get caught

I don't believe religious freedom is enough.
I want Freedom of spirit. We should not settle for anything less.

i dont think there is any real difference, religious freedom is the highest form of freedom, because religious experiences are the highest level of experience

I am not religious.
So how about the freedom of the people that are not religious.
Do you need to join a church to be allowed to take psychedelics.

I want freedom not freedom of religion, because to me freedom of religion is the freedom to a a believe system. Not the freedom of the individual.

 

[magickmumu]

Psychedelics are psychedelics and meditation is meditation. No one said you could get a psychedelic experience without taking a psychedelic.
This whole meditation vs medication debate is stupid and pointless if you ask me. Why compare two things that are totally different. It doesn't make sense to me.


Meditation is a way of clearing the mind and silencing the ego. It is useful to me But I would never compare psychedelics to meditation.

That meditation is non ergonomic is non sense. When I meditate I sit on a chair or I take a walk.
I can also meditate while washing the dishes.

 

[BrainEater]

absolutely mate. yet i wonder why you fail to recognize why it makes sense to compare meditation and psychadelics.

it's obvious that both have effects on consciousness, the subject of inspection. however i agree that in teh way we are perpetuatin the discussion bears little fruits, if it's so hard to get beyondthe meanings of SOME words, as words are what seem to express the information our minds appear to pull their ploughs thru.


but it might be that some people have got it all wrong or think others' got it all wrong,... so that would make it expectable that discussions go in circles, if no one is willing to respect other perspectives or to take presented obvious possiblities for granted. i am not asking yall to be stupid, but to be a bit more open and respectful, in order to ourselves achieving to be more succesful promoters of peace, love and understanding. lol that sounds so cheesy, but hey you really think the way you and others' third eye a.k.a. mind (???@maxfreakout) perceive yourself, themselves and everything else, is the only really accurate one, to be applied on all humans or beings who ARE able to have experiences to which the supposedly applicable description of the term of ego-death applies??? or is it more that you'd like to condemn the use of language altogether??? :butthead: :finga:

i just react a bit aggressive cuz i need to pull the WORD "meditation" out of the dirty minds that propagate the forgetting of the true meaning of the word, which is golden and not blue.

 

[maxfreakout]

I feel like I've experienced this ego death the first time I took LSD. During the trip, I did feel like I went "permanently insane" and that time did stop. But afterwards, the way I interpreted the whole experience was that it gave me "another way of looking at things" by providing me an altered look at my world, and thus made me realize how beautiful our world, and all of living things are, which resulted in this "rebirth".

This ^ is the classic model of ego death and rebirth/transcendence, the basic experience is something like "i took drugs, and what i saw forever changed the way i think about life/the world"

What I want to know, is how he comes up with this fact that our stream of thoughts is "frozen" and pre-set? And it seems, at least from his point of view, that greeks, romans, eastern religions..etc all knew about this.
(This is probably answered on his website, but I haven't had the time to go through all of it yet ;o or maybe I just didn't understand. Alot of it is hard to grasp, especially this universe block stuff!)

It is important to realise that he isnt stating the timeless determinism idea as a 'fact' about metaphysics, but rather as a conceptual model to explain the experience of time-stopping in the intense religious experience, i think that is the most common misunderstanding of the whole theory.

It isnt controversial to suggest that our stream of thoughts in the PAST is fixed/frozen, your past history, up to this present moment, is eternally fixed, nothing can ever change it (unless someone invents a time machine), what has happened has happened. But it is highly controversial to apply this same idea to the FUTURE.

In the ego death experience, the initiate feels like he has reached the END of everything, so there is no more future, from this perspective there is ONLY the fixed/frozen past. Seeing life from the perspective of the end transforms the initiate's understanding of self, time, and change.

That is the highest religious insight, that there is this end-of-time, atemporal perspective on the world, once that perspective is burned into a person's mind by taking drugs and experiencing it strongly enough, the person becomes 'religiously transformed'

every religion and every myth, from every part of the world, and every part of history, is based around this core insight of frozen time and the death/rebirth of the saviour/godman

I think the best way to introduce yourself to the theory is to fist read this article:
http://www.egodeath.com/BubbleOfSimulation.htm

It is very clearly written and entertaining, and it isnt about ego death exclusively, it is about the psychedelic experience in general

On another note. About computers and brains, I thought I should mention this TED Talk, because it tackles exactly this.
You say that computers and brains are similar because of the whole "input-output" analogy, but in this talk, Jeff Hawkins explains why he thinks otherwise, and his view on how our brain works. It is 20mins long, but very interesting, and I felt that what he had to say made quite some sense, so I suggest you give it a full viewing And let me know what you think about it of course!

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_o ... uting.html

thanx for that! I will have a listen... 8)

 

[BrainEater]

you are ignorant, however i thank you for presenting what you think more clearly. i mean how can you know that the past can't be manipulated and is like frozen, that's just your superimposed deterministic idea of linear time on what you think to know to be true or know to be true. you don't understand timetravelling unless you understand the paradox, that SUPPOSEDLY it hasn't been invented yet in the future, or our past would've been changed??? so please get off your high horse of religious deception and delusion and swallow your pride! muppet!!! ok apologies in advance it's no offense. don't take it so personal, that you think you have to stone me alright!? :finga:

peace
:weedman:

 

[zezt]

I don't really dig that explanation of a 'frozen past'--it makes no sense to me. and is a conceptualization, and a conclusion.

The 'past'--what is 'it'?

For a start it is a term, an object, and conceptualization--just like we are 'educated' in ouyr modern culture to look at reality and divide it up into bits we them mistake are reality--as though they exist on their own unrelated.

For example with polarity it is very hard for many to understand deeply that there is no 'dark' or a 'light', nor an 'inside' or 'outside', nor 'life' or 'death', or a 'past' or 'future' etc, they are all conceptualizations abstracted out of a dynamic whole, and what that is is a mystery.

One can also say that this 'past present and future' are here now, and this becomes more than some empty description in psychedelic experience. As you know consciousness research shows how people can seem to return to the past, previous lives, merge with other forms of life, remember stuff they'd forgot, all kinds of nuances of feeling--all dynamic and in no way 'fixed'--which gives the image of stuck, dead, immoveable, held in suspension.
On the contrary it is living, and not fixed. It is 'fixed' as when the past is a blocked energy which is effecting your present sense of life. Hence some forgotten memory can dramatically heal you from a life-destroying addiction, or trauma from being raped, loss, etc.

See the drawback with very analytical 'explanations' like how Hoffman presents 'ego death' is that they can easily become dogma and effect your psychedelic experience like any 'story' can. Then the experience can become mechanical---expected-result

I feel ego is a word too:

"The terms "id," "ego," and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es," "das Ich," and "das Über-Ich"—respectively, "the It," "the I," and the "Over-I" (or "Upper-I"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory."

So 'the I' I like this---I love Jazz and hate trance music. I hate jazz and love trance music. I have a trip and someone puts trance music on and I have an ecstatic understanding of the music, and so 'I' then --when I 'come down' am a larger sense of 'I' than I was before. I am still I though. I bety Michael Hoffman--if HE has had 'ego death' hasn't stopped saying I want, dont like etc?

 

[maxfreakout]

I find it odd wrong that you would choose a set and setting with a psychedelic with the set that you are a machine/computer?

It isnt a 'set' that you can 'choose', it is a theory about the mind. the mind receives inputs, processes them and generates outputs, that is exactly what a computer does, therefore the mind is a computer

It is destined to be futile. It is better to know that you are not a machine but a biological organism

the mind is not a biological organism, dont confuse the human body with the human mind

and in essence you don't know who or what 'you' are--it is a mystery what we are. Currently science cannot explain (as if it ever could or will) consciousness, nor matter.

Since the mind does exactly what a computer does, it seems reasonable to suggest that the mind is a computer

My understanding of the ego is that all of us have them.

you dont 'have' an ego, you ARE an ego!

If it 'dies' what does that mean?

The ego 'dying' refers to the fact that in the deep psychedelic state, the 'inner voice' has a tendency to say extremely alarming things which imply that it has permanently entered into a new state, such as 'oh shit i must have died', or 'now ive gone insane i can never be normal again' etc etc etc

 

[maxfreakout]

i think it dies metaphorically

The point is you THINK you have died, the ego is the thinker, hence the term 'ego death'

maxfreakout to me your view of meditation is narrow, and it feels like you want to resist it, whatever that's supposed to mean. to me meditation is not about reflective thinking, but about awareness and not the thinking itself. the thinking is just a byproduct and with meditation we try to purify the means by which we SYNTHESIZE OUR THOUGHTS?? to me meditation is thriving for oneness, oneness being the holiest, most naturally state one can be in.

Everybody thinks meditation is something different, there is no consensus about what it is, or what it is supposed to deliver, so it is arbitrary and pointless to argue over definitions, I was using the dictionary definition,: "continued or extended thought; reflection; contemplation". I dont have 'my own view' about what it is, when in doubt about the meaning of a word, i use a dictionary.

Im not 'resisting' anything, im only pointing out that the received view of poular spirituality and religion is a massive lie, there is no substitute for taking drugs if the aim is to have deep transformative religious/mystical experiences

also i like the analogy of the mind to a computer, but i think it's incomplete or a bit misleading and if elaborated further it could provide a good insight, however it should be clear that biological information processors have a fundamental difference to normal machines. we fail to see the importance in the difference, just like a computer fails to be a conscious being like we are.

what is the difference?

therefore it might seem obvious that it is just plain stupid to dismiss the ego as a mind-agent or program which we need to hunt down, kill, or destroy, as it is a integrated part of what we call "ourself". i think it's better to see it like a flower that needs to be cared about in order to grow healthy and flourish!

the ego is based on fundamentally flawed, paradoxical logic, the ego death experience corrects that flaw, by introducing into the mind an awareness of the timeless transcendental level of being

 

[BrainEater]

hmm so your point is that our understanding of computers is too marginal in order to comprehend mechanisms of the MIND? and we can't transcend this MIND without drugs, and well your definition of drugs is blurry too, so it makes sense as endogenous drugs alter consciousness similarly like psychadelics trigger these alterations.
however in my view it's childish to assume that the technological device called HUMAN BRAIN that we were given, cannot create the power necessary to transcend a creation of it's own (=MIND) and therefore create similar or maybe identical alterations of consciousness, assumed that we can use TIME to train the MIND.

i think the mind IS a biological organism, yet it got to be written on another page, deciding whether MENTAL/SPIRITUAL ENERGY could be transferred thru this device and well i would agree on seeing MENTAL/SPIRITUAL ENERGY as NOT MATERIAL. and the fact that the mind can be programmed like a computer and "play these programs" does not interfere with the fact, that it IS a biological organism or at least it was CONSTRUCTED by one.


... and i don't think it's all too arbitrary and pointless arguing over definitions, cuz i need to know your definitions in order to understand what you say and vice versa, obviously.

hmm i think the difference between machines and living beings is LIFE and NO LIFE. why is that so hard to see?


and why do you think you have to substitute religious experience?? what makes you contradict yourself or not accept the reality of people acomplishing such a shift of consciousness, just by meditation???

 

[maxfreakout]

Psychedelics are psychedelics and meditation is meditation. No one said you could get a psychedelic experience without taking a psychedelic.

MANY people have said exactly that, or that if you meditate for long enough you can eventually achieve mystical enlightenment

This whole meditation vs medication debate is stupid and pointless if you ask me. Why compare two things that are totally different. It doesn't make sense to me.

Because modern popular spirituality and religion strictly forbids drugs and only advocates drug-free meditation/prayer/contemplation, so the modern 'official' world has lost its connection with the core, deep, intense, exciting aspect of religion/spirituality/mysticism, which is the ego death experience.

The important comparison is NOT meditation and drugs, rather it is drugs and no-drugs, ie taking drugs versus not taking drugs. It is a mis-characterisation of the whole argument to insist that it is about meditation, it is only about drug-free meditation, drug-free yoga, drug-free contemplation etc etc etc

That meditation is non ergonomic is non sense.

The point that pop-spiritualists hate to admit isnt that meditation is 'unergonomic', rather it is that meditation consistently FAILS to deliver intense mystical experience and profound, transformative metaphysical revelation/enlightenment