PrimalSoup said:

It's all you, Bill.  That's why we are all your imaginary friends. 

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Quote:

PrimalSoup wrote: But there is no "superior force" to surrender to - the surrender in tripping is to cease fighting the internal process, not to bow to some outside entity. 

With the cessation of resistance towards dissolution of the "ego" (a resistance that arises in the ego's desire for self preservation) a far more comprehensive form of understanding attains full consciousness (if only briefly at first), so-called fundamental or original mind. This is significantly different from the idea that "ego death" is merely the temporary loss of sense of self.

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One of the most interesting / scary things that I found when I started to experiment with higher doses  was that as the intensity ramped up, it would often feel as though there was a definite external presence within the trip. This could be of a religious nature (a feeling of religious awe, awaiting the wrath of God e.t.c) or something more alien (the strong sense of encountering something not-of-this-world and being pulled further into the trip by it). This sensation would often be something that felt totally supernatural and quite sinister.

When that kind of trip peaks, you can either try and fight it or 'surrender' to these external forces (God, aliens, whatever) but sometimes it is only at this point of surrender that the understanding arrives that this vast, fearsome external entity is in fact your own mind, or some kind of vast unified consciousness that you are part of. 'Recognition and liberation will take place simultaneously' as it repeats frequently in the Tibetan Book of the Dead - what you feel is coming for you in your trip is not a threat to you, it's the gateway to a liberation of your consciousness by something more fundamental.

So.. I think I agree with what you say in that quote, but I can see where the feeling of 'surrendering to an external force' comes in.

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laughingdog wrote: Of the millions who have tripped, and out of the tens of thousands of those who had some sort of ego death experience, I wonder how many, had their lives changed in the ways, you two wish were true?

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One of the aspects of briefly attaining this kind of state is that in that moment you are freed from the whole merry-go-round of worrying about life, about yourself, the state of the planet and so on. Just briefly you are at peace with everything, you are everything, all aspects of reality are existing as they should, everything is fine, there is nothing that needs to be done, in fact the whole idea of life itself seems like a game based on an illusion. The ride has stopped, at least for a minute, and you can get off.

If you were to bring back instructions from that state it would be that all is well and there is nothing that needs to be done. I'm not sure how helpful this approach is in day-to-day life, but to remember this state does help cultivate a more peaceful mindset.

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Bill_OReilly wrote: Psychedelics are a massive mystery. I've been trying to crack it's code for years and I st Ill can't tell if it's just me on other end or if it's an intelligent entity. Perhaps it's ME..the intelligent entity

I remember the first time smoking dmt ever. I tried fighting the dmt spirit because I felt so threatened because It was like someone invaded my home. I gave it a death stare while saying "fuck you, fight me" and it backed down and said "no no no it's not like that, chill" and I immediately felt like an ass. I was ignorant. Luckily it understood the error of my ways. Was it me being afraid of me? I don't know man..

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The transcendental object at the end of time. The ruler of all. It can make it rain and bring tears too your eyes. It is holy. It is made of mind, syntax, and data. It is the alpha and omega...the philosophers stone. It is our end-state. Have you seen me?

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You seem pretty hostile to the concept of ego death but if someone asked 'what is actually being experienced during this so-called period of ego death' I think what you've written there is not a bad description. Although if you experience something like that then definitions become fairly redundant, you are not bothered if it 'counts' as ego death, it's just a completely revelatory experience.... but then you end up saying 'you'll know it if it happens' which is no help at all until it does.

We might never agree on a definition of 'ego death', but I don't think it really matters - that signature of yours by itself is a lot more informative and interesting than simply saying 'I experienced complete ego death'.

PrimalSoup said:

Well thank goddess I was totally kidding.

IME it's more interesting when the observer takes a leave of absence and what remains is pure consciousness.   

Uhm did you mean "weary" or "wary"?

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Aldebaran said:

Quote:

PrimalSoup wrote: But there is no "superior force" to surrender to - the surrender in tripping is to cease fighting the internal process, not to bow to some outside entity. 

With the cessation of resistance towards dissolution of the "ego" (a resistance that arises in the ego's desire for self preservation) a far more comprehensive form of understanding attains full consciousness (if only briefly at first), so-called fundamental or original mind. This is significantly different from the idea that "ego death" is merely the temporary loss of sense of self.

---

One of the most interesting / scary things that I found when I started to experiment with higher doses  was that as the intensity ramped up, it would often feel as though there was a definite external presence within the trip. This could be of a religious nature (a feeling of religious awe, awaiting the wrath of God e.t.c) or something more alien (the strong sense of encountering something not-of-this-world and being pulled further into the trip by it). This sensation would often be something that felt totally supernatural and quite sinister.

When that kind of trip peaks, you can either try and fight it or 'surrender' to these external forces (God, aliens, whatever) but sometimes it is only at this point of surrender that the understanding arrives that this vast, fearsome external entity is in fact your own mind, or some kind of vast unified consciousness that you are part of. 'Recognition and liberation will take place simultaneously' as it repeats frequently in the Tibetan Book of the Dead - what you feel is coming for you in your trip is not a threat to you, it's the gateway to a liberation of your consciousness by something more fundamental.

So.. I think I agree with what you say in that quote, but I can see where the feeling of 'surrendering to an external force' comes in.

Quote:

laughingdog wrote: Of the millions who have tripped, and out of the tens of thousands of those who had some sort of ego death experience, I wonder how many, had their lives changed in the ways, you two wish were true?

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One of the aspects of briefly attaining this kind of state is that in that moment you are freed from the whole merry-go-round of worrying about life, about yourself, the state of the planet and so on. Just briefly you are at peace with everything, you are everything, all aspects of reality are existing as they should, everything is fine, there is nothing that needs to be done, in fact the whole idea of life itself seems like a game based on an illusion. The ride has stopped, at least for a minute, and you can get off.

If you were to bring back instructions from that state it would be that all is well and there is nothing that needs to be done. I'm not sure how helpful this approach is in day-to-day life, but to remember this state does help cultivate a more peaceful mindset.

Quote:

Bill_OReilly wrote: Psychedelics are a massive mystery. I've been trying to crack it's code for years and I st Ill can't tell if it's just me on other end or if it's an intelligent entity. Perhaps it's ME..the intelligent entity

I remember the first time smoking dmt ever. I tried fighting the dmt spirit because I felt so threatened because It was like someone invaded my home. I gave it a death stare while saying "fuck you, fight me" and it backed down and said "no no no it's not like that, chill" and I immediately felt like an ass. I was ignorant. Luckily it understood the error of my ways. Was it me being afraid of me? I don't know man..

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One of the things that makes psychedelics so surprising is that you might expect to have the experience as something internal to your mind, like watching a film, but then the drug seems to invade your entire reality.

I think some of this boils down to the fact that what you experience as being reality is actually something generated in your brain as the result of various non-conscious processes, so when you take psychedelics they come in at a much deeper level than you are expecting. You invite them to the cinema and they re-write the script and tell you that you are just a part of the movie.

I'm curious about your signature, the bit where it says:

Quote:

The transcendental object at the end of time. The ruler of all. It can make it rain and bring tears too your eyes. It is holy. It is made of mind, syntax, and data. It is the alpha and omega...the philosophers stone. It is our end-state. Have you seen me?

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You seem pretty hostile to the concept of ego death but if someone asked 'what is actually being experienced during this so-called period of ego death' I think what you've written there is not a bad description. Although if you experience something like that then definitions become fairly redundant, you are not bothered if it 'counts' as ego death, it's just a completely revelatory experience.... but then you end up saying 'you'll know it if it happens' which is no help at all until it does.

We might never agree on a definition of 'ego death', but I don't think it really matters - that signature of yours by itself is a lot more informative and interesting than simply saying 'I experienced complete ego death'.

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Bill_Oreilly said:

PrimalSoup said:

Well thank goddess I was totally kidding.

IME it's more interesting when the observer takes a leave of absence and what remains is pure consciousness.   

Uhm did you mean "weary" or "wary"?

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I meant "wary"..my bad. And how can the observer take a leave of absence? If you can define what is going on as "pure consciousness" then you must be observing it, IMO. The observer taking a leave of absence, I feel, is more something experienced on dissociatives.

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Oh see, that's the hard part.  I mean, the REALLY hard part.  Because when the observer (in the sense of say, the Copenhagen interpretation in quantum mechanics - as well as a few other formulations that come to mind) disappears really strange things start to happen.  There is no observation at that point, but there is consciousness of some sort.  It's impossible to describe IME.  Me sitting here talking about it is not at all the same as it actually happening and experiencing it. 

What's interesting though is that human memory operates in that state, even though physical devices designed to record information generally fail in some way.  That's something I'm still working on and hope to get more traction on this summer.

Anyway, you can FEEL the observer coming and going, the superposition state arising and collapsing.  If you collapse it too quickly (see "screaming ghosts" in my journal entries) it's downright painful (as in I WILL NEVER EVER DO THAT AGAIN!).

It took many many trips before the bulk of these things started to happen.  So, perhaps, even though I seem fully functional and intact to everybody I know, there is the possibility that I've actually gone totally off the rails.  Which kind of circles back to your expression of solipsism.  How DO you know?  What is the test that you can run that will tell you whether it's all just in your head - or really out there?

I'm voting for "really out there" because I'm not paranoid like that - and otherwise it's all kind of useless in the long run.  But you do have to at least entertain the possibility.

there is no dark side of the moon, really / matter of fact, it's all dark

PrimalSoup said:

What is the test that you can run that will tell you whether it's all just in your head - or really out there?

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MadValley said:

PrimalSoup said:

What is the test that you can run that will tell you whether it's all just in your head - or really out there?

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It's like with the explorers of yesteryear. If it was really out there, they'd bring some back. If you can observe (particularly if you have a witness with you) some of what you've experienced out there, back here, then it was really out there. I see this in my day-to-day as statistically impossible conjunctions that occur over and over and over (all of which have been experienced with others). A couple of (for lack of a better word) abilities I have now that I didn't before. And experiences of the universe just fucking with my head from time to time.

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Well yes I've had that many times over, so it's not like I don't believe it. I'm just working at making better use of it.  And documenting it.

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Don't get caught up in my biased for ego death. I get it, but I just don't like to entertain it because I think giving it a name like ego death just commercializes and makes the psychedelic experience as something that can be defined, and I don't agree with it. The last thing I want is a bunch of 16 year olds tripping while aiming for "ego death"

What primalsoup said about stepping back and just being pure consciousness..i never experienced that and see that and ego death as more of a thing experienced on ketamine and such, not psychedelics. But if you want to define an experience as ego death then go for it, I just do not like to do it myself. I got as high as I possible could on dmt and mushrooms and i didn't just step back and observe pure consciousness...pure consciousness came to me in the form of a starship, as I say all the time.

But yeah, the last thing I want to do is cheapen psychedelics by falsely giving a goal to achieve and calling it ego death. Nothing makes me cringe more when I see threads called "will I achieve ego death with 10 grams of mushrooms"...that question doesn't make sense to me

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This is what happens when you die. When you take enough drugs to actually die this is what happens. They send a spacecraft to come and get you

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Aldebaran said:

I don't think ego death is some sort of 'end point' of psychedelic exploration

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Certainly not, it's more like just the beginning - evidence of a significant experience, but in the bigger scheme, very common.  I suspect it owes more to the condition of the subject (being able to let go completely) and less to the dose itself.  But with larger doses comes less ability to resist, although it can make for a rough ride.

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At the kind of 'high but not insanely high' doses I'm talking about, at the peak of the trip your normal conscious mind can shut down (similar to what happens when you sleep) but your brain is still awake in what is basically a meditative state, experiencing a different type of consciousness which retrospectively seems very similar to buddhist ideas of nirvana e.t.c

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Interesting.  I don't get it that way at all - it's much more a supraconscious state, heightened and expanded almost, or exactly, without limit.  This is like deep meditation where flow is everywhere you look, original mind extant.  Deliberate thought is still possible, but at the same time, the ramifications of such thought are also visible as a kind of contextual map.  Sorry this likely makes no sense to sober consideration.

Quote:

I don't get it that way at all - it's much more a supraconscious state, heightened and expanded almost, or exactly, without limit.  This is like deep meditation where flow is everywhere you look, original mind extant.  Deliberate thought is still possible, but at the same time, the ramifications of such thought are also visible as a kind of contextual map.  Sorry this likely makes no sense to sober consideration

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To describe my own personal experiences in a bit more detail:

Just before the trip peaks, the intensity has reached a point where my inner thoughts, my self, feels like it's being crushed out of existence. The trip feels like an external entity which has almost completely taken over my mind, it's like a seething cauldron, a hurricane, the 'writhing inferno of fluorescent death' where the CEV are taking over. It can feel like imminent death, but if it's happened before it's more like I know I need to surrender to the trip, an unavoidable process like falling asleep or waking up.

Once I've succumbed to oblivion, I'm in a sort of brief catatonic trance without any sense of self or ability to form linguistic thoughts, but it's as if the trip is continuing without me and the visual scene remains the same. It's as if 'the lights are on but nobody's home', almost like sleeping while awake.



There is nothing especially interesting happening so far, but while my brain is rebooting itself, this is where another form of consciousness seems to rise up or make itself known, a feeling of vastness, of being part of an enormous conscious entity which encompasses the universe itself, of being plugged in to a fundamental reality which is consciousness itself. A serene calmness and deep feeling of wellbeing replaces the chaos of the trip so far.

At this point I seem to pop back into existence, with a continuing awareness of the things that have been happening while I wasn't there, as if my consciousness was able to continue without me. The feeling of peace and serenity becomes an overwhelming feeling of rapture and euphoria, the awareness of a vast universal consciousness is still present, it feels like an incredible revelation but also one which is incredibly obvious. A feeling of waking up for the first time, of coming home, of finally understanding everything....

From this point onwards I usually start to go a bit crazy because the only way I can conceive of what's happening is that I've died or I'm God, or both. In this state I do feel as though reality, as a form of consciousness, is infinitely malleable and that anything would be achievable through the willpower of this universal consciousness. My reality up to this point feels like a game I must have created to keep myself amused.

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you mean by a 'supraconscious state' but I think I vaguely understand you - the point in a trip where it seems absolutely anything is possible.



I'm conscious and lucid for the majority of the time in these trips, and to some extent the project of trying to describe or define what's happening during the state of 'no self' at the peak is a bit pointless - the glib answer is 'not much'. It's more like I go into a brief oblivion and bring back an awareness of this vast consciousness underlying reality, a feeling of complete peace and transcendence that develops into pure euphoria, a sense of incredible revelation and the discovery of incredible secrets. I assume this kind of state is what people are really after when they talk about 'ego death' as a goal, although in my experience the trips that get you there can be fairly horrific during the build up to the peak.

It's hard to really get a grip on what happens during the actual peak of these trips, but these are a few memories from my trips which might help give a more concrete depiction of what's happening.

1) I remember the viewpoint of staring at the wall, the room is slowly rotating, the trip is still surging through my head, and then I get the feeling of returning to myself, that I've been conscious but mentally absent, I've just woken up but I wasn't previously asleep. I think this is basically ego dissolution and it's not that different from things that can happen during the dissocative stages of a regular trip. There is a lot of drifting in and out of different states of consciousness during a trip, the only difference is that this is more of a total reboot via oblivion. There's a huge change from how you go in, to how you come out.

2) A vision of staring out at thousands of stars, all of them part of the same vast grid of consciousness that is more fundamental than matter, feeling the enormous power of a conscious universe flowing through my mind. I assume this is the same fundamental mind / inner radiance that buddhists talk about, and seems key to the meaningfulness of the experience as a whole.

3) Visions of vast starships roaming a dead universe and recreating simulations of long dead civilizations as a sort of archival project, our existence the playing out of a civilization long since dead and gone. Not really part of ego death, but an example of the sort of trip this experience can be taking place within

4) Visions that the CEV I'm seeing are the realm of the dead, and that I am actually dead, but death has no meaning because it is only a transformation of a consciousness that cannot be destroyed. Linked in to the 'death' aspect of ego death, I often feel as though I died, or interpret the whole trip as the realization that I'm already dead...



These days I usually dose at a level where I'm not going to get sucked into a "die and become God and solve the riddles of the  universe" type trip, because it can be very mentally exhausting and I feel like I've 'been here before' and wasted hours trying to get nonsensical delusional theories straight in my head. It is quite an exhilarating experience though, I must admit...

I'm sometimes able to get the same feelings of peace and serenity at lower doses and I feel like I'm able to recognize and reconnect with the same deep level of consciousness without having to go completely insane in the spirally depths of a death trip.

Aldebaran said:

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you mean by a 'supraconscious state' but I think I vaguely understand you - the point in a trip where it seems absolutely anything is possible.

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Once I've succumbed to oblivion, I'm in a sort of brief catatonic trance without any sense of self or ability to form linguistic thoughts, but it's as if the trip is continuing without me and the visual scene remains the same. It's as if 'the lights are on but nobody's home', almost like sleeping while awake.

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At this point I seem to pop back into existence, with a continuing awareness of the things that have been happening while I wasn't there, as if my consciousness was able to continue without me. ... From this point onwards I usually start to go a bit crazy because the only way I can conceive of what's happening is that I've died or I'm God, or both.

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From what you say there's a continuity that lies beneath the superficial constructed consciousness.  The latter can switch on and off, get changed, reboot, yet always existing only in it's small bit of the underlying mind, which never disappears at all.

The direct experience lying outside superficial constructed consciousness is what I'm talking about.  At first it seems very strange to have perfectly operational consciousness in the absence of the familiar and ordinary constructed self but you can get used to it easily.

tl;dr Your consciousness isn't you, it never was. 

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It's hard to really get a grip on what happens during the actual peak of these trips...

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Aldebaran said:

Just before the trip peaks, the intensity has reached a point where my inner thoughts, my self, feels like it's being crushed out of existence. The trip feels like an external entity which has almost completely taken over my mind, it's like a seething cauldron, a hurricane, the 'writhing inferno of fluorescent death' where the CEV are taking over. It can feel like imminent death, but if it's happened before it's more like I know I need to surrender to the trip, an unavoidable process like falling asleep or waking up.

Once I've succumbed to oblivion, I'm in a sort of brief catatonic trance without any sense of self or ability to form linguistic thoughts, but it's as if the trip is continuing without me and the visual scene remains the same. It's as if 'the lights are on but nobody's home', almost like sleeping while awake.


There is nothing especially interesting happening so far, but while my brain is rebooting itself, this is where another form of consciousness seems to rise up or make itself known, a feeling of vastness, of being part of an enormous conscious entity which encompasses the universe itself, of being plugged in to a fundamental reality which is consciousness itself. A serene calmness and deep feeling of wellbeing replaces the chaos of the trip so far.

At this point I seem to pop back into existence, with a continuing awareness of the things that have been happening while I wasn't there, as if my consciousness was able to continue without me. The feeling of peace and serenity becomes an overwhelming feeling of rapture and euphoria, the awareness of a vast universal consciousness is still present, it feels like an incredible revelation but also one which is incredibly obvious. A feeling of waking up for the first time, of coming home, of finally understanding everything....

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Well said, person.