Contents:
- Book Link
- My Book Review of The Way of Zen
Book Link
The Way of Zen
Alan Watts, 1957
http://amzn.com/0375705104
Around the same year as Graves’ article Centaurs’ Food, which identified mushrooms in Greek religion & mythology.
My Book Review of The Way of Zen
Satori Enlightenment as Reconception of Self-Control CyberneticsThe Way of Zen
Alan Watts, 1957
http://amzn.com/0375705104
Book review by Michael Hoffman (the Egodeath theory), December 1, 2020
5 stars out of 5
Todo: Check for v1 of this review at Amazon, then update it to match this revision.
Satori Enlightenment as Reconception of Self-Control Cybernetics
Alan Watts takes a mid-20th Century approach to Zen sudden enlightenment: a Self-Control Cybernetics approach.
Watts’ Self-Control Cybernetics approach aligns well with the seizure-and-reset, “initiation” approach that was used in Hellenistic Mystery Religions and in esoteric or gnostic Christianity.
Mystery Religions and esoteric or gnostic Christian practice used mixed-wine mushroom wine, and the mushroom “sacrament of apolytrosis”.
‘Apolytrosis’ means “release from captivity upon payment of a ransom price”; actually describing by analogy, the release of the personal control system from cybernetic seizure, which the sacrament causes, during mental model transformation.
A mushroom-powered initiation system leading to self-threatening and then re-stabilizing, is also clearly reflected in the Medieval Canterbury Psalter’s image with the mushroom tree and sword, implying a routinized, mainstream (though esoteric) mushroom initiation system within the very heart of mid-era Christianity.
The Egodeath theory began in 1985 as my attempt to obtain the expected, cross-time self-control that Self-Help implied, promised, and expected.
In 1986, I read early Ken Wilber books.
The roots of my second, Mytheme theory go back to my intensive 1987 reading of The Way of Zen, and my clarification of what Watts was trying to articulate.
In late 1987, I intensively read Alan Watts’ book The Way of Zen, because metaphysical enlightenment about ego and self would surely help obtain the expected cross-time self-control, and this book discusses self-control cybernetics.
I finally made sense of Watts’ not-completely-clear, somewhat indirect, less-than-completely articulate, poetic-type wording, by bringing-in the idea of no-free-will, combining it with a sort of non-control over thoughts, which he described.
I liked Watts’ idea — very much against Ken Wilber’s long, drawn out, strenuous, 12-level “psycho-spiritual development” scheme — of a single, sudden satori, a wholesale systemic mental worldmodel transformation.
Watts was influenced by mid-20th Century Cybernetics, about control and communication, which aligns with Greek religious mythology focus on testing the control-power of the king or steersman while in the altered state.
Satori, as Watts describes it, has something to do with a realization about confused thinking about personal control power and the source of control-thoughts.
The book The Way of Zen was essential for my creation of the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in 1988.
I sided with Alan Watts, forming a strictly 2-level, 2-tier scheme: the mind switches from egoic to transcendent thinking (or per my 2013 lexicon, the mental worldmodel of time and control changes from Possibilism to Eternalism, in Mystery Religion initiation; in esoteric or gnostic Christianity, and in Zen satori.
In early January 1988, I discovered and formulated the core, scientific, non-myth-oriented the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, by combining:
o The idea and expectation of a sudden switch from an egoic to a transcendent worldmodel.
o The block universe model of spacetime from Minkowski in Physics in 1908, with frozen embedded worldlines.
o No-free-will, and “determinism” (better, “eternalism”).
o The loose cognitive association, altered state.
o The experience of non-control; control-seizure and reset from outside the system.
Watts’ idea of a sharp sudden switch from one worldmodel of control and time to another, flew in the face of Ken Wilber’s less-focused, 12-stage “psycho-spiritual development” model.
The result and outcome of my intensive reading of Alan Watts’ book The Way of Zen, evenuated in ultimately producing the Egodeath theory, including the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (no myth involved; direct description like in Alan Watts’ book).
That core, scientific-styled theory was then corroborated by its ability to explain World Religious Mythology.
My core, Cybernetic theory of what ego transcendence is really all about, subsequently led (starting in 1998) to my Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of religious mythology, in 2006 & 2020.
I published the resulting Egodeath theory, resulting from my clarification built on The Way of Zen, at the Egodeath site and the EgodeathTheory WordPress site.
Thus the later, second half of my Egodeath theory also has roots going back to the book The Way of Zen: the Analogical Psychedelic Eternalism theory of religious mythology.
This Mytheme theory has been going gangbusters as a succesful New Theory, completely decoding mythemes in terms of self-control cybernetics seizure, transformation, and reset from outside the system, fitting well with Watts’ Self-Control Cybernetics approach in The Way of Zen.
The Egodeath theory 