Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
'Transience' Fallacy - Diminishment by Claim of Nonretainability
Contents
Transient experience of enlightenment
vs. full retaining of enlightenment
Meditation provides glimpse &
foretaste of entheogen technique
What kind of "lasting altered
state" makes meditation supposedly better than entheogens?
You can retain higher knowledge in
ordinary state
>>>Jonah
represents how enlightenment is disappointing to real people, who when they
attain it at last, wish it were more.
Clark
wrote:
>>Enlightenment
is so far beyond words and concepts--especially "disappointment"--that
I find such an asserted association between enlightenment and disappointment
almost unintentionally humorous.
Enlightenment
has two components: intellectual and experiential. All experiences are in some sense "far beyond words and
concepts". Enlightenment can be
fully intellectually grasped and explained, in a rational, summarizable
way. Divinity, which is the sensed and
logically intuited transcendent hidden uncontrollable controller -- the ground
of being as ground of control -- remains forever beyond perception and in some
respects "beyond comprehension".
>>What
I experienced under the influence of fly agaric was wonderful beyond imagining.
The only "disappointment" I have ever felt regarding it was that I
had to leave it. It is the peace that
passes all understanding, as the Hebrew Bible phrases it, but that description
too is wholly inadequate.
Enlightenment
is not the mystic altered state, but is the perennial principles experientially
revealed and intellectually comprehended in the mystic altered state. The intermediate stages of initiation in a
series of fairly potent altered-state initiations produces a strong and vivid
sense of enlightenment, but that is not yet full enlightenment. Practically all current critiques and
criticisms of entheogens are given from a mere intermediate stage of
investigation.
Gnosis
issue #26: Psychedelics & the Path
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents26.html
1993
Zig Zag
Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics
Allan
Badiner (editor), Alex Grey (editor)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811832864
2002
Enlightenment
is present more in Heavy Rock lyrics than in New Age writing because Heavy Rock
practitioners have pushed past the intermediate stages of initiation and
investigation, in the spirit of Dionysian extremism.
Many
people report and claim, like the Gnosis editors, that the enlightenment
provided by psychedelics is forever jumbled with delusions, leading to nothing
but a massive sorting problem, and does not remain in any definite, significant
sense. They ought to return to
psychedelics and consider additional moderately strong research, pushing
Furthur until they find the kind of enlightenment that remains standing.
The
creators of the most classic myth-religion stories such as Job, Jonah, and
Jesus lived and breathed in the entheogenic altered state much more heavily
than psychedelics explorers in the modern era, who are relative lightweights
and newbies. A major weakness in
20th-century research on psychedelics is that too much attention is given to
people who are newbies or are merely at the intermediate stages of
initiation.
The
classic myth-religion stories were not written from a basis of mere
intermediate stages of initiation, but from full perfected initiation that
reached completion, not only experiencing the feeling of divinity, but fully
grappling with the problem of personal control agency until it blossoms into
understanding the subservient nature of personal control agency, and thus
complete extinction of the ego delusion: the complete cessation of mistaking
freewill agency as a coherent logical possibility.
If one has
not fully disproved freewill agency through complete experiential insight and
playing with the dynamics of egoic controllership during the peak window of the
intense mystic altered state, one's mind is not yet familiar with the ultimate
divine problems and their resolution.
The most classic scripture is not centered on reflecting the general
feeling of divinity, but rather, this ultimate problem of personal freewill
controllership, and its transcendent resolution.
>>I
was taken up into the heart of what I can only call God, for want of a better
term. It was, to quote another inadequate description from the Hindus, pure
Existence, pure Consciousness, and pure Bliss: Sat-Chit-Ananda, as their sages
put it. And above all, LOVE. Deep, abiding, soul-satisfying LOVE--again, far
beyond human conceptions of the term.
Theories
of mystic experiencing need to put a strong emphasis on divine compassion,
benevolence, and gratuitous beneficence.
This divine compassion is conceived and given birth in the higher mind
of the mystic.
>>The
experience cannot be gainsaid. It remains my touchstone of reality and sanity
in an unreal and insane world, still accessible (in modulated form) through
memory and deep meditation. The door to the eternal and infinite opened and
can't be fully closed ever again. Hallelujah.
Enlightenment
remains present in the mind in a modulated form, rather than vivid and
immediately present experiential form, upon return to the ordinary state of
consciousness. It remains fully present
as a system of intellectual perennial principles, or a mental worldmodel of
no-free-will/no-separate-self, but does not remain present as a vivid
experiential state.
However,
visionary plants can be used at least twice a week with full effect, weakening
the criticism of the entheogen diminishers that entheogens only provide an
occasional access to the mystic state.
Their "occasional" turns out to be at least twice a week --
quite a contrast with the official view that mystic experiences are necessarily
rare and fleeting.
Today's
theories of myth, mystic experiencing, and psychedelics are weak and can only
address an intermediate level of understanding and familiarity with the
phenomena and experiential insights of the mystic state.
I'm
relatively closed-minded to the efficacy and legitimacy of meditation. That emperor has few clothes, and it's time
for entheogenists to stop playing along and pretending he is so richly attired.
Why is it
considered "reasonable" to glorify meditation and denigrate
entheogens, while it is considered unthinkable and extreme to do the
reverse? The bad assumption now is that
at most, entheogens might be *as* legitimate and effective as meditation. That is, that meditation is automatically
taken to be the true standard against which the "alternative"
technique of entheogens must be judged.
In
contrast, when I read religious myth, it oozes entheogens all throughout -- not
meditation or contemplation. Which is
the true, warranted, justifiable standard: meditation, or entheogens? Or "both" -- but that
pseudo-position in practice serves as a reversion to glorifying meditation over
entheogens. Given the entheogenic
notion of the goals and nature of religious practice, clearly meditation is
*not* anywhere near as effective as entheogens.
Aren't
meditation and entheogens both legitimate?
That depends on the goals one assumes, and assumption is a problem: by
now, today's meditationists per the Buddhism and popular spirituality magazines
have a clear view established of what the methods and goals of religious
practice are all about, while entheogenists in ancient and modern eras have
established a different view of what the methods and goals of religious
practice are all about.
Meditationists
generally grant legitimacy to meditation and strive to diminish and withhold it
from entheogens -- even saying that "entheogens can approach the legitimacy
of meditation" is a way of setting up a 2-tier system with entheogens
demoted to the lower tier: this move even occurs among many entheogenists,
often inadvertently. Entheogenists too
often feebly grant legitimacy to meditation and entheogens, conceding the use
of meditation as the standard by which entheogens are to be judged.
Far more
discussion of the goals of religious practice is needed. Legitimacy and efficacy of methods totally
depends on what target goals are assumed.
It's fairly clear that entheogens tend to be associated with one
conception of the goals, while meditation is associated with a different
conception of goals -- but the detailed, *fair* comparison of these two sets of
methods and goals hasn't been done yet.
All we
have so far is biased propaganda, especially on the part of the meditationists,
who are eager to portray entheogens in the dimmest light, while putting forth
an idealistic, fantastic conception of meditation.
To define
a maximal theory of entheogens in religion, I'm extremely inverting today's
dominant view that entheogens are only about 10% as effective and traditionally
legitimate as meditation. I propose
that the truth is the opposite and more: meditation is only 1% as effective and
traditionally legitimate.
The debate
then moves to the definition of "effective", and the concomitant
issue of what the goals of religious practice are, and the definition of
"tradition" and "legitimate". The esteemed position of meditation over entheogens is maintained
by an integrated set of definitions -- a reality tunnel or worldview -- of the
terms "effective", "goals", "religious practice",
"tradition", and "legitimate".
The
entheogen theory of religion holds a different set of definitions of the terms
"effective", "goals", "religious practice",
"tradition", and "legitimate", compared to the
meditationists.
I'm sick
of compromise and distortion that concedes too much to the claims of the
meditationists -- their claims need to be pushed *way* back, and the claims of
entheogenists regarding the entheogenic nature of religion need to be greatly
elevated. Far too many entheogenists
harm the cause by conceding too much efficacy and traditional legitimacy to the
claims of the meditationists.
I want to
be one of the first of the entheogenists to reject that compromise and
unequivocally elevate the entheogens very high and intensely demote meditation
-- otherwise, the status quo will remain, with damning faint praise of
entheogens as merely "providing a glimpse" and leading to the
"real method", supposedly meditation.
soulfly
wrote:
>I
joined this list yesterday. I would like to thank the moderator for creating
this list and being open to different methods of ego transcendence. I have been
practicing Zen meditation for about seven years now and have only recently
taken a big interest in entheogens. I find trytamines such as DMT and
psilocybin of particular interest. It's refreshing to find a list that isn't
myopic concerning different ways to ego transcendence. I'm seldom active on
yahoo lists but I look forward to reading the posts here.
>>To
give drug experiences their due, I do believe in the standard sort of Ram Dass
idea that hallucinogens can provide a very limited sort of assistance along the
spiritual path, by providing a glimpse into another world. But that's about it,
_assuming that what one is trying to do is to find a way to bring about a more
free, real, and aware state of being in which one may abide in everyday life.
We need to
dissect, debate, and discuss, unfold and unpack, what exactly this presumed
end-state of meditation or enlightenment amounts to: "a more free, real,
and aware state of being in which one may abide in everyday life".
The
meditationists typically advance the *claim* that entheogens are inferior to
meditation because entheogens are much less useful toward the goal of "a
more free, real, and aware state of being in which one may abide in everyday
life". Supposedly meditation is a
much more effective way toward the supposed goal of "a more free, real,
and aware state of being in which one may abide in everyday life".
But what
does or would this supposed goal of "a more free, real, and aware state of
being in which one may abide in everyday life" amount to, and on what
basis can anyone assert that meditation is much more effective toward that goal
than entheogens?
Note that
there are many different positions -- I suppose there is no avoiding discussing
all of them. Choices building up the
combinatorial positions include:
Are
meditation and entheogens equal in efficacy toward the goal, or is meditation
about many times more effective than entheogens, or are entheogens many times
more effective than meditation?
Given that
the goal includes a permanently changed mental worldmodel, does the goal also
include a permanent altered state?
Is the
nature of the presumed permanent altered state like the altered state of the
entheogens (such as psilocybin and salvia), or not?
These are
the key points of contention produced in writings such as the book Zig Zag
Zen. A similar analysis should be done
within Christian scholarship on mysticism.
Official Christian scholars claim that entheogens are inferior to
Christian contemplation, though everyone concedes that entheogens pack more of
a wallop, more easily and reliably, than Christian contemplation.
The same
attitude of "spiritual regeneration *must* be difficult, slow, and
rare" dominates in these Christian scholarly writings as in popular Buddhism-influenced
meditation, so we can expect the positions and arguments to break out
similarly.
The same
debate must be ecumenically expanded across all religious traditions -- all of
the middle-level religionists in all the traditions have no choice but to make
basically the same kinds of arguments about why entheogens are supposedly
inferior and pale next to meditation/contemplation.
>In
looking at the more recent remarks of Richard Alpert I suspect that he is again
revising himself to some degree.
Where can
one read these recent remarks of Richard Alpert?
Rewritten:
>Based
on the reports of westerners who spent many years dismissing and diminishing
the efficacy of entheogens, these westerners are now favorably reconsidering
the efficacy of entheogens and suspecting that the entheogen-diminishing
spiritual teachers they had followed for so long not only were untruthful in
their claim to provide transcendent experiencing that exceeds the value and
quality of entheogenic mystic altered-state experiences, the teachers were
actually lacking in even the presumably *basic* level of mystic altered-state
experiences that the former entheogen users had directly experienced firsthand
back in the 1960s era.
>It may
be inevitable that this suspicion and realization will become more clear and
certain in the future as these various entheogen-diminishing meditation-based
spirituality groups or schools continue with their endless schisms and internal
battles that have even spread overseas to multiple continents.
Why would
the fact of schisms and internal battles in meditation groups cause someone to
conclude that the entheogen-diminishing teachers were untruthful about their
method of meditation being able to replace entheogens with a more valuable,
effective, and high-quality spiritual state of consciousness?
That
connection appears to be a necessary connection and conclusion for those who
hold the common assumption that gaining a high-quality spiritual state of
consciousness automatically, necessarily, and inherently entails the lack of
schisms and intercontinental internal battles.
In this
postmodern age, authority in all fields is dead -- a recent death was
Protestant television evangelists; the most recent death includes the Catholic
priesthood; and at the head of the line at the postmodern
guillotine-of-authorities now is Buddhist-type entheogen-disparaging meditation
teachers, on the same logic as the Protestant tv evangelists and Catholic
priests.
If you
define spiritual authority as being necessarily indicated by mundane social
harmony and ethical behavior, which I reject but the common view holds as a
necessary truth, then yes, easily and certainly, the Protestant TV evangelists
and the Catholic priests and the Western Buddhist meditation teachers have all,
practically at the same time, proven themselves to have only a false spiritual
authority.
Entheogen
religion proponents strategically need to play up this collapse of authority in
the official traditions as wherever possible.
By magnifying the illegitimacy and collapse of spiritual authority
wherever possible in the official Christian and Buddhist traditions, entheogen
proponents clear the way for a more sure basis for religion.
The
entheogen is the true teacher with authority; it is the source of the teacher's
authority, and without the entheogen, the teacher has only limited authority,
and can hardly be called a spiritual authority. I only make a slight exception for those few, rare, genetically
privileged individuals who happen to be freaks that can internally produce
significant amounts of DMT or other internal entheogens through the method of
meditation.
All
evidence indicates that only a minority of people have that capability to
accomplish that internal release of entheogens, so a reasonable, justifiable
definition of the main method of enlightenment must be based on external
consumption of entheogens, rather than the internal release through
meditation-based sensory deprivation.
It may be true that most people respond to full sensory deprivation by a
release of internal entheogens, but that's not a method at issue.
The
question is, is it possible for the average person to meditate for a couple
years and learn to release internal entheogens at will? Obviously not. Many have tried, and how many have succeeded? I grant no more than a tenth of a percent -
statistically insignificant and practically irrelevant. We have far stronger grounds to define the
main method as (ingested) entheogen-based, leading to a changed mental
worldmodel but not to a permanent DMT-like altered state.
To best
define enlightenment and its main method, we need a *relevant* method for a
*sure* goal. Entheogens provide a
relevant method for a sure goal, a goal of transforming the mind's worldmodel
but not producing a permanent altered state.
Meditation
provides a practically irrelevant and inefficient method, for producing a goal
that either isn't really transcendent (pop meditation produces merely social,
interpersonal, emotional improvement) or is unattainable for nearly every
actual mind, because almost no one responds to the ultimate degree in using
meditation to produce a permanent altered state.
There is
also little basis for believing that meditation reliably delivers, for the
typical mind, *any* of the 3 potential goals claimed for it: a series of
temporary intense altered state sessions; a lasting transformed mental
worldmodel; or a permanent altered state.
There *is*
some basis for believing that entheogens are potentially reliable, for the
typical mind, for producing two of those goals that are claimed for the method
of meditation: everyone concedes that entheogens are by far the most reliable
and effective method at producing a series of intense mystic altered state
sessions, but what is currently at issue is whether entheogens produce what
meditationists hazily call "lasting spiritual awareness", or "a
more free, real, and aware state of being in which one may abide in everyday
life".
Break that
second claim into components: "lasting spiritual awareness" either means:
o No clear, definite meaning at all, in which
case meditationists don't even have a position to defend and have no basis for
defending their inchoate "view" and foggy "position"
o A combination of a permanently transformed
mental worldmodel and a permanent altered state such as DMT, ingested or
internally triggered, produces
o A permanently transformed mental worldmodel
*without* a permanent altered state.
The
entheogen-diminishing meditation proponent claims that entheogens are
inefficient for producing "lasting spiritual awareness" while
meditation is efficient for producing "lasting spiritual awareness".
The
average meditationist position, tending to evade responsibility for the
position they put forth, waffles: the supposed "permanent altered state"
that is the key thing that makes entheogens inferior to meditation, both is and
is not like internal release of DMT; it is and isn't an "altered
state" in the usual sense -- the safe and "secure" position --
running evasively into the Louisiana swampy woods -- a position of unclarity --
is that the "altered state" provided so handsomely by meditation but
not entheogens is "only somewhat like" internal DMT release.
The
altered state that meditation supposedly lastingly produces is "similar to
internal DMT release, but different".
That is surely the only possible position for typical meditation
proponents to advocate. The *entire*
issue then, when they declare entheogens inferior to meditation, is what is the
nature and character of this permanent "altered state" that
supposedly meditation efficiently produces, but entheogens don't produce.
This claim
about being able to uniquely produce that lasting "altered state" is
the main basis meditationists use to put down entheogens. So everything hinges on what sort of
"altered state" is claimed.
Is it a permanent mental worldmodel alone, or such a worldmodel combined
with a DMT-type altered state that is present all the time, or on-demand
at-will, or some non-DMT-type altered state that is ever-present or on-demand
at-will?
The
standard claim of the entheogen-diminishing meditation proponents amounts to
the claim that there is a certain type of "altered state" that
meditation produces and sustains much more efficiently than entheogens, and
that the nature of this "altered state" of "abiding nondual
awareness" is a combination of some optimal social interpersonal traits
with some DMT-type traits.
They also
claim that this "abiding altered state of nondual awareness", in
addition to a permanently altered mental worldmodel, is the proper definition
of 'enlightenment' or 'full enlightenment'.
The
standard position of entheogen-diminishing meditationists must be that
meditation is much more efficient for producing a permanently altered mental
worldmodel (with an emphasis on interpersonal relations), and that meditation
produces a significantly better mental worldmodel than entheogens, and that
meditation enables the mind to produce a somewhat DMT-like altered state more
or less on-demand, but this DMT-like altered state is only remotely comparable
to DMT.
This
altered state has more to do with a more free, real, and aware state of being
-- a state of being that abides even while in everyday life. Meditation is better than entheogens in that
it is effective and efficient for producing lasting spiritual awareness that is
only somewhat similar to DMT, and purer nondual awareness than DMT produces.
A main
strategy or method of entheogen-diminishing meditation proponents is to mix the
mind's development of social interpersonal relations together with developing
the meditative altered state. By
defining enlightenment as a *combination* of things, they can say that
entheogens "are not" used for that *combination* and thus cannot
produce enlightenment, because the entheogen method of enlightenment "does
not" integrate and include mental development in the area of social
interpersonal relations.
I venture
that *if* an entheogen practitioner *wanted* to, they could very effectively
use the entheogen method to accomplish both halves of the version of
enlightenment advocated by meditation proponents.
What
happens in practice is that entheogens are efficient for metaphysical
enlightenment, and could be used for social interpersonal relations, while
meditation is inefficient for metaphysical enlightenment, so falls back weakly
on settling for second-best, putting the accent and emphasis on merely its
ability to develop the mind's skill at social interpersonal relations.
The whole
meditation culture fails to efficiently produce metaphysical enlightenment, so
instead they cheat and cop out and distort and diminsh the definition of the
goal, putting a strong emphasis on social relations, waving aside metaphysical
enlightenment as an inferior goal with little relevance, or merely subservient
relevance.
Because
entheogens deliver on the religious/metaphysical marketing promise, entheogens
emphasize that over social relations; because meditation fails to deliver
efficiently on its religious/metaphysical marketing promise, it has to fall
back on social relations, and emotion and feeling and mood, elevating that type
of "enlightenment" over metaphysical enlightenment proper.
Meditation
is a religion that worships social relationships as ultimate, with metaphysical
enlightenment relegated to a minor supporting position -- because meditation
can't deliver efficiently on its promises of delivering a series of altered
states, or a permanent altered state.
Meditation takes the concept of altered state and permanent altered
state and redefines them to be centered around the only thing that meditation
is able to efficiently produce: mundane self-improvement.
Meditation
saves it reputation by inverting values, elevating mundane social consciousness
over the actual mystic altered state.
Optimally developed social consciousness is great, no doubt, but it is
false to reduce and shrink enlightenment and "abiding nondual
awareness" and "lasting spiritual awareness" to only the realm
of optimized social consciousness.
Entheogen-diminishing
meditationists claim that meditation is more efficient than entheogens for
producing both optimal social consciousness *and* abiding nondual awareness.
Is
meditation more efficient than entheogens for producing optimal social
consciousness?
No, but
because meditation fails to deliver much on its promise of nondual awareness,
it falls back (in its most despairing and defensive moments in the debate) on
claiming that enlightenment has nothing to do with a transient or abiding
altered state, and claims that enlightenment is solely a matter of producing
optimal social consciousness.
Is
meditation more efficient than entheogens for producing abiding nondual
awareness?
More than
the first question, this requires debating the definition of "abiding
nondual awareness", permuting several definitions, and breaking out the
question into each permutation of the definition. Is it a permanent mental worldmodel alone, or such a worldmodel
combined with a DMT-type altered state that is present all the time, or
on-demand at-will, or some non-DMT-type altered state that is ever-present or
on-demand at-will?
My
position is:
Entheogens
are more efficient than meditation for producing a permanently transformed
mental worldmodel.
Neither
entheogens nor meditation is efficient at producing a DMT-type altered state
that is ever-present or on-demand at-will.
Entheogens
are not efficient at producing some non-DMT-type altered state that is
ever-present or on-demand at-will.
This
leaves the #1 question:
Is
meditation efficient at producing some non-DMT-type altered state that is
ever-present or on-demand at-will? This
altered state is defined as including a permanently transformed mental
worldmodel but also including some debatable sort of "non-DMT-type altered
state".
I maintain
that meditation is only efficient at producing an abiding altered state in a
weak, insigificant sense that really just amounts to training the mind to have
an artificial nice mood -- emotional feeling intertwined with optimal social
interaction, labeled as a non-DMT-type "altered state", held to be of
greater value than a DMT-type altered state.
It's really an abuse and distortion of the term "altered
state"; it's just glorified mundane self-improvement disguised as spiritual
enlightenment.
I have
great respect for the potential of mundane self-improvement, but it doesn't
warrant the label of "altered state". The typical meditation advocate is not so foolishly brash as to
claim that meditation is efficient at producing a DMT-type altered state, but
instead, they escape here into complexity, striving to define the supposed
resulting altered state as some subtle combination of some social
self-improvement traits with some DMT traits.
That
really is the standard position of the entheogen-diminishing meditation
proponents. Their exact claim is that
there is a certain type of "altered state" that meditation produces
and sustains much more efficiently than entheogens, and that the nature of this
"altered state" of "abiding nondual awareness" is a combination
of some optimal social interpersonal traits with some DMT-type traits.
Is
meditation more efficient than entheogens for producing transient nondual
awareness?
No --
practically everyone concedes that entheogens are much more efficient than
meditation for producing transient nondual awareness.
The
standard claim of the entheogen-diminishing meditation proponents amounts to
the claim that there is a certain type of "altered state" that
meditation produces and sustains much more efficiently than entheogens, and
that the nature of this "altered state" of "abiding nondual
awareness" is a combination of some optimal social interpersonal traits
with some DMT-type traits.
They also
claim that this "abiding altered state of nondual awareness", in
addition to a permanently altered mental worldmodel, is the proper definition
of 'enlightenment' or 'full enlightenment'.
Is that
set of claims true? Is the best
definition of enlightenment "an abiding altered state of nondual
awareness" (in addition to a permanently altered mental worldmodel)? If we concede that definition of
enlightenment, does meditation produce that type of altered state better than
entheogens?
I maintain
that the best definition of full enlightenment is a permanently altered mental
worldmodel following upon a series of intense mystic altered state sessions in
conjunction with studying and conceptually grasping the philosophy of
transcendence, and that neither meditation nor entheogens is efficient at
producing an abiding altered state of any sort, whether conceived of as simply
the DMT altered state more or less on-demand, or some subtle combination of
some social self-improvement traits with some DMT traits.
In a few
rare cases, either approach -- entheogens or meditation -- can produce either
type of "lasting altered state" as defined above, but only very
inefficiently, and not relevantly to the general warranted definition of what
constitutes 'enlightenment'.
Neither
does such a rare goal altered state deserve to be considered a requirement for
'full enlightenment'. Such a lasting
altered state is a chimera, a rare freak state that is generally irrelevant to
enlightenment, or just an interesting footnote to enlightenment, at best.
I advocate
defining 'full enlightenment' and "basic enlightenment' the same way; a
series of 'partial enlightenments' during a series of intense mystic altered
state sessions leads eventually to what can be called equally well 'full
enlightenment' or 'basic enlightenment', in the same sense that a teenager at
some point passes fully through puberty and has a full basic command of
language.
The
teenager has full basic command of language, yet could continue improving their
facility. Similarly, the mind that
passed through a series of partial enlightenments so that the new mental
worldmodel comes soundly together and finally tends to stay together, has at
that point attained 'full basic enlightenment', although that mind can continue
refining its grasp and facility in that realm.
If that
mind is one of the rare freak minds that can attain a somewhat DMT-like lasting
altered state, more or less on-demand, that is an anomaly or a separate issue,
a separate attainment from 'full basic enlightenment' and is *not* warranted as
the main goal and definition of 'enlightenment'.
It is
untrue that meditation is much more efficient than entheogens for
enlightenment: enlightenment is not justifiably defined as an abiding altered
state, and neither meditation nor entheogens are efficient at producing such a
type of abiding altered state, and for 'basic full enlightenment', entheogens
are much more efficient than meditation.
After the
visionary plant wears off, tight cognitive binding returns, though (despite
what all the anti-entheogen nonsense claims) you *can* take the discovered
higher knowledge with you after you die and are reincarnated into daily
make-believe life. You may need to use
shorthand notation and a series of sessions, numerous rebirths into egoic
incarnation (egoic worldmodel), but
Dan Joy
agrees we need to reassess common notions about entheogens:
http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=busting -
>>my
viewpoints on a set of prevalent but highly questionable truisms (what I’d call
just plain myths) about psychedelics that remain widespread, not among the
psychedelically misinformed population at large, but among the community of
long term psychedelics enthusiasts. ... debunking several cherished notions
about trips and tripping that for decades have been clutched tight to the heart
by perhaps the majority of those for whom tripping is an indispensable part of
life.
>>...
While the paucity of significant new published work on psychedelics in the ‘70s
and ‘80s may have left a vacuum of literary stimuli that contributed to the
ossification of the mythology I’ve been debunking, the ‘90s, by contrast, have
seen a flood of psychedelic literary activity featuring several books that may
be assisting a slight but visible loosening of this formerly almost concrete
understructure of presumptions.
>>...
Judging by the most recent psychedelics conferences and the other venues
through which I’ve met and talked to many of the seemingly huge international
new set of young, up-and-coming psychedelics aficionados, all of the myths I’ve
been talking about do seem to be at least somewhat less unquestioningly
accepted than they were even a decade ago. The new generation of devoted
psychedelic surfers is, to my eye, a little hipper, more sophisticated, and
less stodgily dogmatic than the last.
>>It’s
my hope that raising my voice in TRP will, at a time of highly visible—and
apparently expanding—psychedelic activity worldwide, assist in at least some
small way with the eventual complete disposal of the dubious ... ideas that so
many trippers have about tripping.
Dan Joy
comments on the important topic of retaining insight:
http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=busting -
>>Corollary
to the equation of tripping with “higher” consciousness, this is the assumption
of a necessary relationship between tripping and the eventual achievement of
some kind of “spiritual progress” or at least a greater degree of psychic
integration or mental health. Trips may give you new information and
experiences, but your “growth,” however you choose to define that term, will be
served only by doing the tough daily work of remembering this information and
experience, selecting out of it what’s relevant, and doing your damndest to
integrate it into your moment-by-moment existence and behavior.
>>Few
have the integrity and determination to follow through with this often
seemingly Sisyphyean task, and those who do may benefit greatly from
psychedelics. But these few will find their way whether they take psychedelics
or not.
No, that's
an overstatement; you need efficient tools *and* hard work, both.
>>Many
psychedelics enthusiasts, it seems to me, are still, consciously or
unconsciously, seeking the magic molecule that will make their desired growth
process automatic—in other words, the drug or drug combination that, if used
sufficiently and “correctly” will, a la the title of the classic Philip K. Dick
story, “Do It For You Wholesale.
I don't
know what he's talking about. Where are
these people he criticizes? I don't
know of anyone who is trying to use psychedelics for "automatic
enlightenment" -- sounds like he's set up a straw man. This myth of "instant effortless
enlightenment" has arisen regarding LSD in the late 1960s, and it's become
a point of confused contention. Most
likely, no one ever seriously claimed that LSD gave instant automatic
enlightenment; it was just *relatively* instant and automatic and effortless,
compared to methods that only work 100th as well.
I make a
more qualified statement: a *series* of mystic state sessions when combined
with a highly developed, optimized, condensed, and ergonomic conceptual model
of enlightenment, can give almost an instant automatic enlightenment, but that
model hasn't quite started shipping -- it's a proven core technology that's
still being productized and only prototypes are in circulation at this point.
What were
the Hellenistic mystery religions if not "instant automatic
enlightenment"? Yet people desired
a series of initiations; after the first few major transformations, each
additional initiation fills in more detail in the framework of the mind's
transcendent mental worldmodel.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)