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Egodeath weblog (Yahoo-group based) -- Most of my research and theory development between Feb. 14 2004 to Apr. 2007 and beyond is only at this Weblog, not at the present website. This is where I write the latest material on a daily basis since 2001, through April 2007 and beyond. If you only read the present website, you're living back in Feb. 14, 2004, a couple years behind the leading edge of research, which is at the Egodeath weblog.
Egodeath Weblog archive file -- new, Dec. 3, 2005. 23 MB zipped Outlook 97 .pst file containing all Egodeath group postings to date (June 10, 2001 - Dec 3, 2005). There are also a handful of Dec. 3, 2005 postings not in this file, worth reading at the Yahoo groups web interface. I recommend this email archive file over the Yahoo group web-based interface, which is slow and ineffective compared to an email reader application. The content is valuable and you can rapidly skim subject headings, sort by them, and search either in the subject lines or in the body text. If you want to read the Egodeath research after Feb. 14 2004, much of it is not at the present website, and the Yahoo groups interface is too slow and lacks effective Search; use this instead. Also, if you have been receiving emails from the weblog/group, but are missing earlier emails, get them into your mail reader application this way.
The following are the approximate steps:
1. Right-click the link above, then click Save, then in Windows Explorer or equivalent, unzip EgodeathWeblogArchive.zip, resulting in PersonalFolders97.pst (Outlook 97 .pst format).
2. In your mail reader application such as Outlook 2000 or Outlook 97, click the File menu, and then click Open: Personal folders file: locate and select the PersonalFolders97.pst file (unless you selected a specific folder in windows when you were creating that .pst file, it might be in C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook). You might need to click to select the Include subfolders check box or select the [egodeath] folder.
3. Click Finish. In the mail reader, a new top-level folder "Egodeath Weblog Archive" appears.
4. Click the new top-level folder PersonalFolders97. The mail reader initially reads-in the archive file.
5. Expand PersonalFolders97: Inbox: [egodeath]. The emails appear.
6. To make the new folder a top-level folder, create a new .pst file called egodeath.pst and named [egodeath] (File: New: Personal folder file). Delete the unused Inbox folder. Copy all the messages from the [egodeath] folder from the .pst file into the top-level of my new [egodeath] folder. Then select all the messages, right-click, and marked them as 'unread'.
Competing Views about Entheogens in Religious History – new, April 11, 2007. Defines and compares the main contending views, including Letcher's rebuttal to the Wasson/Allegro/McKenna maximal mushroom theory of religious origins in his recent book Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom.
The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death -- new summary article for forthcoming print publication, September 2006; expected in print in mid-2007. A polished summary of the theory. Thanks to James and Gene for helping prepare this article for publication.
Ken Wilber's book Integral Spirituality -- Detailed Table of Contents – new, Oct. 1, 2006
Wasson on Eden Trees and Mushroom Trees -- new article for forthcoming print publication, Mar. 8, 2006
http://www.egodeath.com/egodeathdummiesbks.htm -- Created around 12/2002, link added here 12/2005. (needs update)
Hermann Detering: The Falsified Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight -- new, Oct. 24, 2005
Arthur Drews: The Legend of Saint Peter: A Contribution to the Mythology of Christianity -- new, Oct. 10, 2005
Jean Magne: Logic of the Sacraments -- new, September 30, 2005
Jean Magne: Logique des Dogmes -- new, August 17, 2005
Matrix of Scholars' Views on Historical Jesus and Pauline Authenticity -- new, July 13, 2005
La Sagesse: Jesus Christ Never Existed -- new, May 15, 2005
Eysinga: The Christ Mystery -- new, May 15, 2005
Bolland: Gnosis and Gospel -- new, May 7, 2005
Jesus figure as rebuttal to Caesar cult -- book list, new, April 17, 2005
Gnosticism Interview/Debate with Freke, Goodacre, Green -- New, March 12, 2005
Examining the Authenticity of the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians -- Eysinga. New, Jan. 30, 2005
Radical Critics -- new, a navigation page, Nov. 30, 2004
Ptolemaic Religious-Ascent Cosmology -- new, Nov. 23, 2004
van Eysinga: The Formation of the Catholic Church -- new, Nov. 16, 2004
Mapping Myth-Religion to Determinism and Its Transcendence -- new, Oct. 29, 2004 (present at this website, not present in Egodeath weblog)
Detering's Summary of G.J.P.J. Bolland -- new, Oct. 29, 2004
G.J.P.J. Bolland: The Gospel Jesus -- new, Oct. 29, 2004
G.J.P.J. Bolland: Philosophy of Religion -- new, Oct. 29, 2004
Epilogue of Eysinga's Exegesis on the Gospel according to Matthew -- new, Oct. 20, 2004
Christian Mushroom Trees -- new, July 18, 2004
Mushroom Hats in Religious Art -- new, June 22, 2004
Jesus and the Goddess by Freke & Gandy -- detailed table of contents/outline -- new, May 1, 2004
The Eucharist Was Visionary Plants -- new - April 27, 2004
Feb. 13, 2004 -- Added 150 articles to this site, comprising my online postings 6/2001-2/2004.
Download a backup copy of my past 3 years of substantial postings, as a .doc file arranged topically. http://www.egodeath.com/HoffEgodeathGroupPosts.zip 2.8 MB.
May 3, 2004 - this is a zip of a doc containing my Egodeath discussion group postings Feb.
13, 2004 - May 2, 2004. http://www.egodeath.com/HoffEgodeathGroupPostsBatch2.zip
-- these posts are not yet incorporated into the Egodeath website.
May 1, 2004 -- I need to migrate my posts from Feb. 14, 2004 onward, from the Egodeath group into this site. I am considering not posting at the Egodeath group, but instead, fully committing and concentrating on improving this Egodeath website. I am not posting again in discussion groups or primate email until May 14, 2004.
The unmoderated discussion group, now closed, was: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeathunmoderated.
Weblog using regular webpages (no longer in use) -- daily writings to merge into this website -- starting May 1, 2004 -- this might replace the Egodeath discussion group, keeping all my latest writings within this website, rather than having my latest, best, most up-to-date writings located over in the discussion group, apart from this website.
May 15, 2005 -- A few of my writings appear only at the JesusMysteries discussion group, around Jan-Apr. 4 2005 (my JesusMysteries posts from April 4 to Dec. 1 2005 have been forwarded to the Egodeath group/weblog). I plan to copy any remaining posts from JM to ED.
For daily updates, see my postings at the Ego Death discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath), which are several years more recent than most of this website. Generally, the website covers the Core Theory and was written in the late 1990s, while the discussion group covers explanation of Greco-Roman myth-religion metaphor and allegory in terms of the Core Theory, written 2001 and later. For example, much of the text at this website takes for granted that there was a historical Jesus, an assumption I abandoned around 2000.
June 2003 -
Cleaned up the links in the Main Theory section of this Web page.
My recent discussion group postings cover:
The sources for the Jesus figure
Ubiquity of entheogens in Greco-Roman culture
Entheogens as the master domain to which all Greco-Roman topics are intentionally connected
Strong relation between entheogens and the experience of and comprehension of no-free-will.
Self-control seizure and the experience of helpless dependence on the hidden but logically intuited uncontrollable transcendent controller.
Jan 2003 - Recorded Lectures from The Teaching Company. Polished, substantial university-level lectures on CD, especially covering liberal arts/humanities: history, philosophy, religion. This page is a guide to the lecture courses relevant to ego death.
August 18, 2002 - Created more book lists at Amazon,
read evangelist Dave Hunt's new book against Calvinism, What Love Is This? Surveying many books on subjects including
religious myth, determinism, and entheogen theory.
April 18, 2002 - Figured out that the Heavy Rock
album title "Caress of Steel" refers to the guillotine of ego-death
per the song Bastille Day. Discovered formally the full principle, The Primal
Polarity: in early Christian writings, any praised group is actually a clever
metaphor for those who have transcendent thinking, and any disparaged group is
actually a clever metaphor for those who only have egoic thinking.
April 12, 2002 - Created egodeath resources at Amazon.com.
September
15, 2001 -- Review
of
June 18, 2001 - New -- Ego Death discussion group via Yahoo groups, an excellent interface with many options for email and/or web-based participation.
May 18, 2001 - I wrote many new postings on the Christ-myth, entheogens, determinism or rather the frozen block-universe, and ego death. Need to upload here. I'm thinking more and more of making this site fully useful as a selective resource site, as well as having local content.
Even pointing you to books in my favorite topics would help a lot. Read these 15 books on the history of entheogens, these on the Christ-myth and mystery religions, these on the new tenseless time and timeless spacetime models, and these on determinism, nonexistence of the external world, time-slice solipsism... then read my material to bring it together into a dirt-simple theory of the ego death experience and the specific ideas, insights, and experiences it involves.
This material is essentially so easy, it's hard to write. Every one of my postings lately pretty well encapsulates and implies the whole theory. Most of my ideas are now supported by several books, so I can focus just on bringing it all together like telling a coherent story.
May 13, 2001 - I've been doing a lot of research in the entheogenic origins of Christianity, including the Gnostics, mystery religions, and Amanita. We can take it for granted that Christianity has entheogenic roots, and that Jesus was a mushroom and the Christ is the experiential knowledge brought by such entheogens. Various researchers are concentrating on making the first case (the entheogenic origin of Christianity) and other researchers are focusing on establishing Jesus as a mythic construct (the Christ-myth theory).
My emphasis is on explaining exactly how the Jesus story (like related myths) encodes entheogenic phenomena such as ego death and the destabilization of self-control. I'm explaining the *meaning* of the Jesus story in terms of the insights and cognitive phenomena provided by entheogens.
The cybernetic theory of ego death is complete as a philosophical theory, but I have lately been completely occupied with researching the era of the mystery religions and how these encode the knowledge and concerns that are covered by the cybernetic theory of ego death.
March 29, 2001 - The Gnostic Paul; heresy, secrecy, Christ myth, entheogens, fatedness
Feb. 15, 2001 - covers:
The transcendent will and the egoic will
How transcendence of ego retains ego
The "myth as instructive metaphor about entheogenic insight" theory
The most influential books for me recently
The Initiated and Uninitiated in Classic Greek Culture
Feb. 12, 2001 - covers various subjects. Recommended.
Feb. 9, 2001 -- The Catholic story vs. Protestant story vs. entheogenic/gnostic/mythic story - The essence of the Catholic form of Christianity, The essence of the Protestant form of Christianity, The essence of the entheogenic view and gnostic/mythic story. Comparison of Religious Experiencing, Mystic Experiencing, and Mythic Experiencing.
Feb. 3, 2001 -- Redemptive sacrifice can only occur in
the mythic realm
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