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footpath
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: openmind]
#26385221 - 12/16/19 02:06 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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If you could recall the moment you realized that could manipulate objects in space, Would you say that something of you died? I'm sure not. But I'm sure the awesomeness of it was nothing short of that of a dissociative hallucinogenic experience. I'm sure it changed the parameters of your mind.
So, yes, of course this is an issue of semantics, because leaving words unrefined would obscure their meaning. And, quite frankly, the words used to describe this meaning could use refinement.
edit: I suppose you could then say that 'ego death' is the narcissistic translation of 'change of perspective.' Because, sure, I suppose that's what you would say if you truly feel that having new ideas means that part of you has died. That sounds to me like terminology associated with a disorder. Again, not having anything to do with psychedelics.
Edited by footpath (12/16/19 02:17 PM)
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WhoManBeing
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: LosTresOjos]
#26385388 - 12/16/19 03:34 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
LosTresOjos said: Are we arguing semantics? Do people actually associate ego death as a literal thing? As in you'll have no ego after? All it is, is the quieting of the irrational brain
Irrational brain. Well said.
-------------------- Hip, hip... WhoRAy!!! Eye was thinking the other day... ahh, thinking never done me no good.
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mushboy
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: WhoManBeing] 2
#26385421 - 12/16/19 03:59 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Some people are all irrational brain
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Loaded Shaman
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: mushboy] 1
#26386312 - 12/17/19 01:42 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Most people are incredibly irrational regarding their foundational axioms, of which, they're mostly unconscious.
"Ego Death" is like the "keto diet" for trippers; everyone THINKS they know what it means, and they think they've got it down, and their method is the best.
It's not that straightforward.
Neither is the mind.
--------------------
  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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Aldebaran
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: coAsTal] 3
#26386701 - 12/17/19 09:23 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
It's a similar thing to the "Entities" discussion.
Compare the opening posts to that thread and this one:
Quote:
coAsTal wrote: "Entity Contact". Nobody in history has ever made a legit case that it is not your brain talking to itself. Prove me wrong. Respectfully yours, Reason and common sense

Quote:
bodhisatta wrote: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with "ego death" is profoundly stupid. Not a single person in the history of humanity has had ego death because of any psychedelic drug. They may have temporarily felt that way while high. In many ways the people who talk about ego death are really just showing how their psychedelic lessons strengthened their ego. That's all.
One is inviting a discussion. The other asserts that anyone who disagrees with the OP is "profoundly stupid" and signs off with the lordly and arrogant "That's all" as if the poster is some kind of ultimate divine authority, whose majestic splendor renders him far too superior to respond to the lowly pond-scum who may have a different opinion. 
That said, it is good to inject a bit of skepticism into discussions about ego death and question whether it really refers to anything specific or "real" in a psychedelic context, or whether it is a "blanket term that has no meaning" as Bill_Oreilly says in his characteristically surly post.
How much common ground is there between different peoples' experiences to speak of 'ego death' as if it were a concrete 'thing' you can call up at will with the right dose? Are descriptions of the experience realistic or fanciful embellishments of a confused state of mind? How much can you really bring back from a state of "no self"? Is there even a coherent description of such a state? And so on...

When Leary based The Psychedelic Experience on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it posed some interesting comparisons with the psychedelic realm. There are undoubted parallels between certain psychedelic states and descriptions of "inner radiance" and so on, but you have to question how much actual correspondence there can be between states experienced during sober meditation by experienced monks in the Buddhist tradition, and states experienced during a heavy trip by the average user. And how realistic it is to expect any long-term personality shift away from the "ego" just by using psychedelics? Leary certainly doesn't come across as someone humbled by his experiences.
In addition to this, what Leary writes is fairly impenetrable to anyone coming to psychedelics for the first time, so if someone asks about ego death / ego loss you can't just point them to Leary's book and expect them to do anything except read some of it and say "what the fuck?"
In my own own posts I'm trying to give some kind of definition of ego death (in relation to psychedelics) based on my own experiences and what has been written on the subject before, and to give a sense of what the experience is like for me. It can only ever be a personal view and an expression of personal beliefs; I don't really expect anyone to just uncritically "swallow" what I am saying or agree with my specific interpretation.
I think a broad conception of psychedelic 'ego death' which includes various states of ego dissolution is probably a good thing, it avoids trying to pin a nebulous term down into anything which is unrealistically specific, gives room for the wide divergence of personal experience, and avoids the "my ego death was bigger/better/harder/purer than yours" arguments that Primal mentions. If you dig back into really old threads about ego death, they always seemed to descend into arguments like that.
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Blabble40
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: Aldebaran]
#26386798 - 12/17/19 10:18 AM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
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It isn’t a hard question to demonstrate proficiency in in any case
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PrimalSoup
hyperspatial illuminations



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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: Aldebaran]
#26387088 - 12/17/19 01:27 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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 Try Psilocybin™ today, for Ego Death so profound you'll keep coming back for more!
--------------------
if you stand too close to the machine it'll start to eat youPrimal's simple tested teks and projects: Wheat Prep 2.0 Acidic Tea Tek Potency Project!
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footpath
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: PrimalSoup] 1
#26387171 - 12/17/19 02:23 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Ego death : psychedelic perception distortion :: hysteria : premenstrual syndrome. It's archaic. It was a shot in the dark to begin with. And we should really have moved on by now.
As for it reducing the swinging of dicks, it doesn't. It's still something to gauge your experience vs someone else's, and people absolutely get high on themselves about how 'heroic' they are. It's more pitiful than it is stupid. Why should people take pride in needing to chemically induce a profound state of altered awareness?
Gauging perception distortion isn't so provoking as recounting how many times you died and heroically returned with stronger tethers. But it holds more truth. It's just jabberwocky that we take as holy script because of a few white dudes who 'pioneered' the use of psychedelics for modern Western civilizations.
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mushboy
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: footpath]
#26387218 - 12/17/19 02:47 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
footpath said: It's just jabberwocky that we take as holy script because of a few white dudes who 'pioneered' the use of psychedelics for modern Western civilizations.
word
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Cujllickduo



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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: mushboy]
#26387348 - 12/17/19 03:51 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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i deffintley dont believe in drugs being an answer to self-destruction that does harm your ego
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WhoManBeing
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: Aldebaran]
#26387826 - 12/17/19 09:01 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think you very well could point someone to Leary’s books and give a good basis for psychedelic experiences.
Ego death? Whatever man.
The Psychedelic Experience Book very far from the detail of Tibetan Book of the Dead. And really does hit some well points to a psychedelic trip.
As for ego death, I to kill a lot of own doings here to this site. Too much nonsensical wish wash portraying whatever try to.
Plus, I may not like the look in your eyes and wouldn’t be talking to you anyways.
-------------------- Hip, hip... WhoRAy!!! Eye was thinking the other day... ahh, thinking never done me no good.
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wolf8312
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: WhoManBeing]
#26387906 - 12/17/19 11:02 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well 'ego death' is surely not supposed to be taken literally right so...
LSD, LSA, Mushrooms and DMT, do not cause the ego to completely evaporate (or die), but I still understand what the term is getting at. It definitely breaks down (language time, sense of self etc) and diminishes in direct proportion to the amounts consumed.
And to be honest one of the striking things about DMT in comparison to LSD/LSA was always how intact my ego was while it was all happening.
But Salvia, that's another thing...
I didn't know where, when, what, or why I was. There had never been a before, and would never be an after, and I had been an inanimate 'thing' with no identity whatsoever, for all eternity...
My terror in itself might suggest some unconscious sliver of an ego or identity back there, but pretty much Salvia divinorum was a temporary ego death.
That is all!
-------------------- "I'm every nightmare you ever had. I am your worst dreams come true. I am everything you ever were afraid of." Pennywise the dancing clown
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Vibe_Enthusiast
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: wolf8312]
#26388073 - 12/18/19 03:58 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Being disengaged from body and people call it "ego death" is all. I guess in a lot of defense, there's really no words to describe the experience. And we get these chopped up half meaning terms that get thrown around.
But, then again.. trying to explain the unexplained so
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Aldebaran
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: WhoManBeing]
#26388385 - 12/18/19 09:25 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
I think you very well could point someone to Leary’s books and give a good basis for psychedelic experiences.
I think it The Psychedelic Experience would work as a guide for some people but alienate others - it depends on your background and how open you are to ideas that might seem a bit 'far out' at first glance. If somebody just wants a coherent explanation of 'ego death' there's a bit of a "Confused? You will be!" element to it.
It made a lot more sense when it read through it again recently.
Quote:
Plus, I may not like the look in your eyes and wouldn’t be talking to you anyways.
I'm not that scary! 
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Aldebaran
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: footpath]
#26388434 - 12/18/19 09:58 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
It's just jabberwocky that we take as holy script because of a few white dudes who 'pioneered' the use of psychedelics for modern Western civilizations.
I like that 
Some good points in your post, footpath
I think there is a middle ground between dismissing out of hand the ideas of Leary or whoever, and treating them as 'holy script'. You can engage with these ideas, and take them seriously, without literally 100% "believing" in them as such.
I think 'ego death' is really a conceptual framework for interpreting trips, but it does relate to actual things that happen in a trip. In other words, I think of 'ego death' as a way of trying to understand a trip you already had, not as empty theory searching for an experience to match it.
In the end I don't subscribe to religion or spirituality at all, so a question such as "is the supposed ego death from psychedelics as real as the ego death from Buddhism" is not really a meaningful question for me. But that's, just, like, my opinion man. I think one of the good things about psychedelics is that it can lead you to take more of an interest in other people's ideas even when they do not match your own.
I have more of a science / philosophy outlook but I've found it interesting to look at more esoteric ideas from Buddhism e.t.c and take them seriously in a way I wouldn't have before.
Quote:
It's archaic. It was a shot in the dark to begin with. And we should really have moved on by now.
But moved on to what? (Answers on a postcard...)
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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footpath
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: Aldebaran] 1
#26388510 - 12/18/19 10:45 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I do see their merit, those men I speak of. And I certainly don't dismiss everything they say. Leary, I'm a little weary of - he really amplified the fanaticism of it all in an almost prophetic manner that has me turn off, tune out, and... drop in?
I also see the merit in many of the spiritual/religious texts/traditions. All of them have something of worth to offer, else we wouldn't see them persist into the now. And all of them played their part in laying out the foundation to much of our understanding of science/philosophy/morality/etc.
But, we, as a culture of thinkers and explorers who have an unquenchable thirst for better explanations, have moved on from every bit of mysticism we could. So, too, have we from our Pavlovs and Freuds and Eriksons. In both fields, we don't actually leave them behind, but we carry on the necessary or unarguable bits while shedding away the superfluous.
I guess because psychedelics are a field of counter or sub culture, things move a whole lot slower. And, what with the nature of the effect of psychedelics, it's really very easy to fall into that stagnant fanaticism; to bathe in the superfluous.
So yeah, that is the question... what next? I think we may soon find something more suited, now that we're seeing growth in the general interest. In the meantime, I have no objection to more mundane terms like perception distortion or psychic disorientation. It puts a gauge on it without attaching grandiosity. Saying, 'my perception was heavily distorted,' or, 'my psyche was fully disoriented,' isn't really giving way to any of those weird psychedelic accolades.
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ackuric
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: footpath]
#26388545 - 12/18/19 11:08 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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The only profoundly stupid thing here is asserting something with such certainty. To imply one knows in its entirety not just their own experience, (which no brain can compute in entirety..) but also the experience of every human to have lived, and who will have lived throughout history.
This isn't just a statement or a claim, this is some kind of Godly prediction, judgement, and historical recollection beyond what any man is capable of. OP's ego is likely impregnable, so there is no sense forming discussion here. Words will fall on deaf ears before they reach that pedestal OP has climbed upon. The lack of any genuine responses and the fact his initial claim was baseless and not supported by anything other then personal opinion proves just that.
You'd think a grown individual in such a position would be able to compose a post on a discussion board to express his ideas or opinions more fluently and less offensively to those who may oppose... I personally haven't experienced ego death but I certainly won't toot my horn so loud as to drowned out all the voices who believe they have.
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individualist
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: ackuric]
#26388620 - 12/18/19 12:01 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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On my breakthrough trip I wouldn't say I experienced "ego death" but my consciousness very much merged with something...else. Something that was not me. Something that was higher, more Godlike. I could easily have convinced myself in those moments that I was, in fact, God.
-------------------- Question with boldness
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WhoManBeing
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: individualist]
#26388825 - 12/18/19 02:06 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Best example of ego-death, would that be when producer Quentin Tarantino kills himself off in his feature films?
-------------------- Hip, hip... WhoRAy!!! Eye was thinking the other day... ahh, thinking never done me no good.
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tyrannicalrex
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Re: Believing psychedelics have anything to do with [Re: nooneman]
#26388938 - 12/18/19 03:06 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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uncontrollable mindfuck-- is this a medical term? Did freud coin this phrase? Also, great band name!
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