Egodeath Yahoo Group – Digest 100: 2007-11-18

Attachments :

C-Realm podcasts:
http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com


Episode 63: KMO and meditation instructor, Heidi Smith of the Center for
Soulful Living pick up the conversation started on Psychonautica examining
the friction between proponents of pharmacologically assisted spirituality
and zero-tolerance advocates of drug-free meditation.

Direct link:
http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2007-11-07T18_56_30-08_00.mp3


Episode 64:
KMO concludes his talk with meditation instructor Heidi Smith of the Center
for Soulful Living and then rounds out the discussion of the relative merits
of drug-free meditation vs. entheogen-assisted explorations of consciousness
with Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media and Daniel Siebert of The Salvia divinorum
Research and Information Center.

Direct link:
http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2007-11-14T17_52_11-08_00.mp3


63 — 42:30 — Andrew Weil affirms the spiritual utility of the general
category of visionary plants (for example, opium), as opposed to strictly
entheogens only.

Fasting is mentioned by Weil and KMO as an alternative to visionary plants,
but this is ironic, since the origin of fasting is to potentiate visionary
plants.


Weil points out that it is illogical and biased that fasting is considered
legit, yet visionary plants are dismissed as “artificial” and “effortful”,
and thus non-legitimate.


In episode 63, like The Seeker when interviewed by Max Freakout in
Psychonautica 15 and 16, Heidi Smith comes in supposedly as a spokesperson
for the view that drug-free meditation is superior to drug-based spiritual
practice, and yet starts by pointing out the proven efficacy of visionary
plants for herself. That’s the extent of the content in this episode: Smith
states that entheogens were efficacious and awakened her spirituality, and
provides no arguments yet for the superiority or even equivalence of
drug-free meditation.

I point out that we must remember the skewing and filtering effects of drug
prohibition, which began in 1966 — no debate can be legit without
discussing this censorship and filtering effect of which spokespeople we are
permitted to hear from. We are only permitted to hear certain people, and
certain positions and arguments; other people and positions/arguments are
filtered out, forming a distribution curve of views that is heavily warped
away from the distribution curve of views in actuality, actually held by
people in the world.

Compare the infrequency of anti-war views, politically progressive views, or
views for repealing drug prohibition, that are permitted to be expressed in
the corporate-owned news media. Drug-free meditation is over-represented in
the Establishment publishing industry, since 1966, and drug-employing
spirituality is extremely under-represented. Psychoactive drugs are not
only illegal (for the most part), they are culturally taboo, marginalized,
and suppressed — even at the same time as they are ubiquitous, popular, and
mainstream.

Given that psychoactive drugs are both illegal and taboo, it is guaranteed
that the Establishment media and publishing industry puts forth a heavily
biased and skewed presentation of views about the legitimacy of
drug-utilizing versus drug-free spirituality practices. I’m waiting, ever
in vain, for any other people to acknowledge this major, relevant
consideration.


63 — 47:40: From Parker Palmer’s book The Active Life: “Our tendency to
identify our selves with our acquired skills rather than our natural gifts
is one of the less desirable habits of the ego, because the ego’s identity
is so heavily invested in these acquired skills, it does not want to
acknowledge the natural, untrained, effortless gifts over which the ego has
no ownership or control.” I hold that “a free, natural, untrained,
effortless, salvific gift” is a description that fits entheogens better than
drug-free meditation, and this seems to be KMO’s point as well.

I consider meditation and fasting to have been historically derived as
activities associated with visionary plants, not an alternative that
competes against the use of visionary plants. The purpose of fasting,
historically, was to potentiate visionary plants. The purpose of
meditation, historically, was an activity to do during the plant-induced
visionary cognitive state.

Attachments :

I can’t see why for some of my posts, my computer (and maybe others’)
decides that the post, for no apparent reason, is junk mail. I might have
to resort to calling Support, or using a Test Yahoo group to experiment with
this.

Attachments :

In C-Realm episode 63, KMO and meditation instructor, Heidi Smith of the
Center for Soulful Living pick up the conversation started on Psychonautica
examining the friction between proponents of pharmacologically assisted
spirituality and zero-tolerance advocates of drug-free meditation.

In Episode 64, KMO concludes his talk with meditation instructor Heidi Smith
of the Center for Soulful Living and then rounds out the discussion of the
relative merits of drug-free meditation vs. entheogen-assisted explorations
of consciousness with Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media and Daniel Siebert of The
Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center.

In episode 63, at 42:30, Andrew Weil affirms the spiritual utility of the
general category of visionary plants (for example, opium), as opposed to
strictly entheogens only.

Fasting is mentioned by Weil and KMO as an alternative to visionary plants,
but this is ironic, since the origin of fasting is to potentiate visionary
plants.

Weil points out that it is illogical and biased that fasting is considered
legit, yet visionary plants are dismissed as “artificial” and “effortful”,
and thus non-legitimate.

In episode 63, like The Seeker when interviewed by Max Freakout in
Psychonautica 15 and 16, Heidi Smith comes in supposedly as a spokesperson
for the view that drug-free meditation is superior to drug-based spiritual
practice, and yet starts by pointing out the proven efficacy of visionary
plants for herself. That’s the extent of the content in this episode: Smith
states that entheogens were efficacious and awakened her spirituality, and
provides no arguments yet for the superiority or even equivalence of
drug-free meditation.

I point out that we must remember the skewing and filtering effects of drug
prohibition, which began in 1966 — no debate can be legit without
discussing this censorship and filtering effect of which spokespeople we are
permitted to hear from. We are only permitted to hear certain people, and
certain positions and arguments; other people and positions/arguments are
filtered out, forming a distribution curve of views that is heavily warped
away from the distribution curve of views in actuality, actually held by
people in the world.

Compare the infrequency of anti-war views, politically progressive views, or
views for repealing drug prohibition, that are permitted to be expressed in
the corporate-owned news media. Drug-free meditation is over-represented in
the Establishment publishing industry, since 1966, and drug-employing
spirituality is extremely under-represented. Psychoactive drugs are not
only illegal (for the most part), they are culturally taboo, marginalized,
and suppressed — even at the same time as they are ubiquitous, popular, and
mainstream.

Given that psychoactive drugs are both illegal and taboo, it is guaranteed
that the Establishment media and publishing industry puts forth a heavily
biased and skewed presentation of views about the legitimacy of
drug-utilizing versus drug-free spirituality practices. I’m waiting, ever
in vain, for any other people to acknowledge this major, relevant
consideration.

In episode 63, at 47:40, KMO reads from Parker Palmer’s book The Active
Life: “Our tendency to identify our selves with our acquired skills rather
than our natural gifts is one of the less desirable habits of the ego,
because the ego’s identity is so heavily invested in these acquired skills,
it does not want to acknowledge the natural, untrained, effortless gifts
over which the ego has no ownership or control.” I hold that “a free,
natural, untrained, effortless, salvific gift” is a description that fits
entheogens better than drug-free meditation, and this seems to be KMO’s
point as well.

I consider meditation and fasting to have been historically derived as
activities associated with visionary plants, not an alternative that
competes against the use of visionary plants. The purpose of fasting,
historically, was to potentiate visionary plants. The purpose of
meditation, historically, was an activity to do during the plant-induced
visionary cognitive state.

Attachments :

The link to the podcasts is <http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com>
http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com .

— Michael

Attachments :

The diminishment of the legitimacy and efficacy of entheogens by meditation
advocates is primarily a phenomenon existing in the realm of published
works, such as books and articles in spirituality magazines. The debate is
not primarily about what people actually think, or what they express in
open, (relatively) uncensored online forums. The debate cannot really occur
until we reference specific statements in published works, amounting to a
gallery of position statements and particular published arguments. It is
thus mainly a *scholarly* argument or debate, that must occur in the form of
scholarly citations and rebuttals — citing works that were permitted to be
published by the Establishment publishing industry, especially since the
prohibition and demonization of LSD in 1966.

The entheogen-diminishing view is often expressed in postings in online
forums, but is primarily spread and legitimated through published works.

Examples:

R. C. Zaehner’s 1957 book: Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into
Some Varieties of Preternatural Experience
http://csp.org/chrestomathy/mysticism_sacred.html


R. C. Zaehner’s 1972 book: Zen, Drugs and Mysticism
http://csp.org/chrestomathy/zen_drugs.html


Gnosis issue about Psychedelics & The Path
http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents26.html

Tricycle issue 21 Fall 1996 about Psychedelics and Buddhism, which became
the book Zig Zag Zen. “Tricycle’s controversial bestseller on Psychedelics
and Buddhism: Views from John Perry Barlow and Rick Fields; interviews with
Terrence McKenna and Jack Kornfield; a roundtable discussion with Robert
Aitken, Richard Baker, Ram Dass & Joan Halifax.”
http://www.tricycle.com/catalog/backissues/163-1.html

Attachments :

A paradigm inversion needs to occur now within Western and Eastern religion,
like the change from Eliade’s 1950 entheogen-disparaging view of shamanism,
to today’s entheogen-affirming view of shamanism.

In episode 63, at 43:25, Weil states: “There are many people who claim
to have found God and spiritual life through alcohol; that’s a very old
tradition going back to ancient cultures, and it persists to this day in
occasional people.”

That’s been proven to be a fallacy and an anachronism, labeling the
substance in question as “alcohol”. Ancients used “beer”, “wine”, and
“mixed wine”, which typically, and provably, meant “visionary plant
mixture”, including henbane, opium, cannabis, mushrooms, datura, and
mandrake — the effects were not due only to alcohol. For example, see
the “index” entries (page numbers) I have posted here in the book Road
to Eleusis.

The Emergent church is worried and harrassed about theological
correctness, but they cannot be coherent, while hanging onto the
demythologized historical Jesus, and while lacking visionary plants as
the Eucharastic flesh and blood of Christ, freely given by God.

Theological correctness is a piece of cake for the Egodeath dogmatic
denomination. Emergent liberal demythologized thinking cannot explain
how Jesus, a human being, gives his flesh and blood for our salvation
and regeneration, and how Jesus is God.

It is easy to define the 12 1/2 dogmatic doctrinal points that certified
members of the Egodeath church must sign their souls to:

Jesus is God; the allegorical Jesus figure is to be equated with the
mysterious hidden controller of all thoughts, events, and actions — the
master-controller aspect of the Ground of Being.

Members must trip on the entheogenic Eucharist, which is the flesh and
blood of Christ.

The Jesus mystic poseable superhero figure must be held as having a
virgin birth, to compete against Caesar Augustus.

Only the predestined, chosen-by-God Elect are saved. Those chosen by
God for perdition are such. Double predestination.

Determinism is the case throughout the entire world.
Determinism-transcendence is the case outside the cosmos.

Eternal life (athanatos), the dogmas of the Gospel of John, all are the
case, as the Valentinian Gnostic Christians readily affirmed. Jesus is
the only name by which we are saved — not Caesar, “the savior of the
entire world”.

Christ came in the likeness of sinful, phallic flesh.

Entheogenic enlightenment casts out demons, by the power outside one’s
personal power.

The Jesus Christ figure and the power of the Holy Spirit is confessed as
my transpersonal savior.


The Emergent church clings to the mundane historical Jesus and is
therefore incapable of coherent theology and theological affirmation.
And without visionary plants, no real explanation is possible for how
exactly the Holy Spirit ever descends. The Emergent church is
half-baked, until historicity is abandoned and visionary plants are
added. Emergent writers attempt to grapple with Theology while
rejecting the modern-era literalist-supernaturalism and embracing
demythologized liberal mundane ways of thinking — it’s a hopeless and
pathetic project.

It would be profitable and efficient to upload to the Egodeath site an
Egodeath-theory based commentary on the following Emergent statement,
affirming it in a modified, specific way:

http://www.stevekmccoy.com/GospelCoalition.pdf


The principles of New Testament Christianity are timeless
(altered-state enlightenment leveraged for counter-imperial
social-political emancipation), but the form and figurations used in
the New Testament are too dated; the New Testament was optimized and
designed to go up against a specific foe, a particular scenario: the
Caesar-ruled Roman Empire. Away from that meaning-context, inevitably
the New Testament necessarily becomes *much* less meaningful and
clear; it becomes more confusing than helpful or encouraging.

Characterizing the head-to-head competing paradigms of Evangelical vs.
Emergent Christianity:

Evangelical vs. Emergent

Conservative vs. Liberal or Progressive

Exclusivism (who’s saved, who’s in, who’s out/lost) vs. inclusiveness
(McLaren’s “generous orthodoxy”, as an oxymoron)

Individual salvation vs. combining that with more emphasis on the social
gospel of manifesting the Kingdom of God

Modern vs. Postmodern or Post-Modern or “new/ancient” figurative mode of
thinking & metaphor-systems

Literalist-supernaturalist vs. metaphor & mystic alternative state of
consciousness

Epistemological obsession with “right belief” vs. experiential and a
social project and metaphor/allegory

Afterlife-focused vs. Kingdom of God social-political movement that
includes spiritual experiencing (doesn’t affirm or emphasize the
afterlife — going to heaven after you die)

Atonement theology (vicarious sacrifice, focus on sin and forgiveness)
vs. the cross as an ego-death model each person must follow, and as a
symbol of inverting the values of Empire (specifically of Caesar-ruled
Roman Imperial system, with its honor-shame hierarchy and
social-political configuration)


I reject Evangelical Christianity’s mode of thinking and I affirm
Emergent Christianity’s mode of thinking, except that I subtract the
Historical Jesus, add visionary plants as the Eucharist, and emphasize
experiencing helpless embeddedness in spacetime (heimarmene, fatedness)
and then feeling transcendent/miraculus release from that altered-state
entrapment-experience.


There is an opportunity to stand up against today’s Empire particularly
against drug prohibition and its death penalty (the ultimate solution to
“the drug problem”). Though drug use was not objectionable in the Roman
Empire; making social-political counter-claims against Caesar’s system
was objectionable.

The Emergent Church paradigm is post-Protestant, post-Evangelical, and post-post-Catholic.

The fatal error of Calvinism and Reformed Theology is that it is too oriented around fighting directly against the Catholic religion.  Once early Christianity succeeded in fighting against Caesar’s Roman Empire system, and became the religion *of* the state rather than the religion *counter to* the state, Christianity was de-politicized and turned into a religion of personal individual salvation and putting all emphasis on going to heaven after you die.  Going to heaven after you die is only one of many themes that the New Testament is actually concerned about and driven by.  The NT takes up that idea and theme, but is not driven by it as the central concern.

Protestantism was merely a mirror of Catholic religion, mirroring the error of re-casting the NT as being all about how to go to heaven after you die.

The NT is designed and shaped to be against Caesar’s Roman Empire.

Protestantism, including Reformed Theology, is designed and shaped to be against the Roman Catholic scheme of how to go to heaven after you die.  The Protestant paradigm fights against the straw man of “Jewish salvation through works”.  But the NT is barely, and not really, concerned with fighting against “Jewish salvation through works” — the NT is concerned more with how to justify including everyone into the Jewish covenant of justice against worldly empires.

The Emergent paradigm is against the Protestant error of repeating the Catholic error of re-casting the NT as centering on how to go to heaven after you die.  The Emergent paradigm is paying full adequate attention to how the NT was against Caesar’s system.  In a sense, Emergent is counter to Evangelicalism, but in a sense, Emergent has returned to the roots of NT meaning, becoming a counter to “Caesar’s domination-system of empire” in a general sense or general type of social-political system.

After the Catholic religion as a way for individuals to go to heaven after they die, was the Protestant (post-Catholic) religion as a way for individuals to go to heaven after they die.  Emergent is post-Protestant, and Protestantism is post-Catholic, thus Emergent is post-post-Catholic.

Emergent is post-Modern in that it does not repeat the modern-era Protestantism error of centering around epistemology — cognitive assent to belief in doctrine correctness.

 

Attachments :

Uploading my posts since Feb. 14, 2004 as webpages will double the
popularity of the Egodeath site.

The new website is now operational.
http://www.urbanshaman.net

Attachments :

Emerging church practices complain against dullness. There is a solution.
I will prepare a podcast discussing:

The tepid “Emerging church” vs. the radical “Emergent church”.

Psychotomimetic drugs (that is, hallucinatory drugs).

No historical Paul, and, less interestingly, no historical Jesus.

What kind of writings are the New Testament books? How to read the New
Testament.

References to LSD, psychedelia, and Tim Leary found in emerging church
podcasts and weblogs.

How Allegro was right, and how he was wrong, and why we must move through
him, and cannot move around him.

The primary origin and context of New Testament Christianity was the Roman
Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, not Jerusalem in the 1st century.

The evidence that proves that all religion was based on psychedelic drugs
throughout the Roman Empire, including the Christian Eucharist during the
first several centuries and beyond.

Integrating Emergent, the psychoactive entheogenic Eucharist, and the
ahistoricity of Jesus and all the apostles.

What it’s like to experience helpless frozenness in spacetime (often as
Fatedness or predestination) and perceiving the all-sovereignty of God over
all of one’s thoughts and actions. How this was expressed in the New
Testament as “crucifixion and resurrection through the Eucharist and Holy
Spirit”.

Explanation of mystery-religion, including Imperial Cult and Christian
house-church agape meals.

Why theology cannot make any sense until the entheogen-and-ahistoricity
reading of the New Testament.

Why entheogen religion must go through Christian theology and take over
Christianity to return it to the New Testament meaning.

Which is more profound and paradigm-shattering: exposing Eastern religion as
totally corrupt and bunk, or exposing Western religion as totally corrupt
and bunk.

Why Christianity, rightly understood per the original New Testament
Christianity, is fundamentally crippled outside its native Roman Empire
context.


I will probably blast-through these topics pointing out the top 3 points in
each topic, and I vow not to edit it — because recording a Podcast only
takes 1 hour, while editing it takes some 4 hours.

Dullness is not a problem in the Egodeath theory — because dullness is
never a problem in psychedelic drug experiencing, which is and was the only
authentic Eucharist. Christianity, or what passed for it during the modern
era, was dull only because the authentic, psychedelic Eucharist was omitted.

I am available for podcast interviews, having done 22 years of research and
development of the Egodeath altered-state explanatory framework. I will be
as outspoken as possible.

— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com
http://www.egodeath.com/
Weblog: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/

The Egodeath Yahoo group is a Weblog sent out by Michael Hoffman,
covering the cybernetic theory of ego death and ego transcendence,
including:

o Block-universe determinism/Fatedness, the closed
and preexisting future, tenseless time, free will as illusory, the
holographic universe, and predestination and Reformed theology.

o Cognitive science, mental construct processing, mental models,
ontological idealism, contemporary metaphysics of the continuant
self, cybernetic self-control, personal control agency, moral agency,
and self-government.

o Zen satori, short-path enlightenment, and Alan Watts;
transpersonal psychology, Ken Wilber, and integral theory.

o Entheogens and psychedelic drugs, mystery religions, mythic
metaphor and allegorical encoding, the mystic altered state, mystic
and religious experiencing, visionary states, religious rapture, and
Acid Rock mysticism.

o Loss of control, self-control seizure, cognitive instability, and
psychosis and schizophrenia.


— Michael Hoffman
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath
http://www.egodeath.com

Attachments :

What’s most missing in this comparative matrix is Mainline Liberal
denominations. McLaren strives to distance himself from that, but his
critics simply label him as “very liberal and left”, which would equate him
with the Liberal Mainline that he strives to criticize along with the
Evangelical Right. Emergent (McLaren) is only slightly different than the
Liberal Mainline, and it’s no surprise that critics simply equate and
conflate the two positions, which largely overlap.

Attachments :

http://dopecast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_category=Psychonautica

#21 —

Live from the Dolphins coffeeshop in Amsterdam

3-way conversation between Max Freakout, The Seeker and Ravi

LSD trip report from Dopey J

‘Crisis’ experiences

The new Blair Witch spinoff movie ‘Shroom’

LSD doses, psychedelic and psycholytic psychotherapy

Safety issues of tripping in public environments

The role of music as a tool in combination with psychedelics

Neurolinguistic programming, and other techniqes for overcoming addictions

The relevance of addiction to problems of self-control and egodeath theory

Isolation/floatation tanks and their potential for combination with
psychedelics, ketamine, dissociation, sensory deprivation and the
womb-regression experience

The idea of a paradigm shift

The authenticity of taking entheogens in contrast with other spiritual
practices

Evolutionary advantages to plants which contain psychoactive chemicals


http://www.c-realm.com/podcasts.php
C-Realm episode 65 and 66 features Martin Ball, author of books about
entheogen phenomenology

Attachments :

Someone wrote:

>>About visualizing highly structured data: philosophers of science are

behind the times when it comes to how evidence relates to theory. The Old
Way of viewing evidence was atomistic and unstructured. Once you start
thinking of evidence/data as inherently structured (at least in the context
in which it’s usable), then you can have more interesting things to say
about buzz-word concepts like innovation and creativity. This suggest a
more Kantian approach to evidence and theory.


I’ve written often about this. Early Christianity did not involve a single
historical Jesus, and did involve visionary plants, as did the entire Roman
Empire. People ask for “evidence” for this view, particularly for
“evidence” that early Christianity involved visionary plants.

But what happens is that people hold the predominant paradigmatic
interpretive assumption-framework in mind while they purport to look at the
“evidence”; they view the evidence, or what is potentially evidence, through
a default, unexamined assumption-framework, which of course is designed to
not perceive that evidence as significant evidence.

Therefore I’ve come to realize that what is required is
evidence-with-interpretation, including, as well, entire alternative
scenarios and explanations. So what actually enables a paradigm shift, or a
change of explanatory models, amounts to
evidence-with-explanation-with-framework-with-scenario — not isolated bits
of evidential data. All the time I see people pick up the bits of data but
then proceed to consider them within an explanatory framework that is not at
all the framework that is required to perceive that data as significant,
change-compelling data.

This approach also helps for examining data for determining whether Jesus
existed or not. The only way the case can be made for ahistoricity is to
define an entire scenario and fully unpack what specifically it means for
“that historical person to not have existed”, and do that in conjunction
with picking up and examining pieces of evidential data, as explicitly and
particularly *structured* data: does the evidential data fit better into the
currently predominant explanatory model, or into the new model, as a more
readily clarifying interpretive lens? Data is not something separate from
explanatory system-organization, in practice, for theory-construction and in
competition between theories.

All data is theory-bound; data is always theory-bound, either by the
predominant theory or by a competing, alternative, challenger theory. The
whole challenge for the alternative proponent is to prevent the defenders of
the predominant paradigm from pulling the old false move of covertly
filtering the data through the old predominant paradigm, and to force people
to actually look at the data through the new explanatory paradigm *rather
than* through the old explanatory assumption-framework. A classic bogus
move is to drawing all attention to isolated bits of data sheerly for the
purpose of drawing attention away from the sneaky, covert use of the old
paradigm-lens.

The same holistic data-within-framework view is required for explaining what
really happened, and didn’t happen, on 9/11 — challenging the official
explanation heavily involves truly alternative “why”, motives, and scenario
issues, which are data *structure* questions, *not* merely isolated,
unstructured bits of evidential data.

The best way to protect a false theory and bunk historical explanation is to
only permit examining isolated bits of evidential data, while always
evaluating those isolated bits of explanatory evidence through the currently
predominant official story, lens, or explanatory assumption-framework.

The language of “structured data” could be useful, as against the bad habit
of treating data as though it were inherently unstructured (while of course
applying a covert, unconscious, unacknowledged predominant default
structuring-system to view that data).

I give highest recommendations to this book:

Paul Thagard, Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University, 1992.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691024901/ — Conceptual Revolutions uses
easy-to-follow computer-based models to demonstrate the cognitive mechanisms
of the process of what seems most occult and irrational in Kuhn’s model of
paradigm conversion. Explains complex networks and hierarchies of concepts,
mental structures, and conceptual systems, and how conceptual systems
develop so that a new conceptual system eventually provides greater
explanatory coherence than the previous conceptual system. Covers conceptual
hierarchy transformation and how concepts are recombined, added into, and
deleted from large-scale conceptual systems. Brings Kuhn’s theory to
completion, resulting in a fully powerful way of thinking about conceptual
revolution in any domain, thus intellectual conversion in general.

Attachments :

There are 3 main positions, relevant for discussion with conventional
Christians: they want to know whether the Egodeath theory matches
Conservative Christianity, or whether it matches Liberal Christianity. The
Egodeath theory is a 3rd basic position, which combines High Christology
with altered-state metaphor.

o Conservative Christianity has a High Christology but one that is based in
the ordinary state, resulting in literalist-supernaturalism. Conservative
Christianity takes it for granted that “the gospel” is all about how to get
into heaven after you die.

o Liberal Mainline has a low Christology and reduces metaphor to the
ordinary state. The Liberal Mainline leans toward the Social Gospel instead
of how to get into heaven after you die.

o The Egodeath theory holds that New Testament Christianity was the use of
visionary plants to have a communal altered-state experience of personal
powerlessness and God’s transcendent power, leveraged in service of setting
up a social-political system that was *specifically* an alternative to the
Roman Imperial social-political system. Combines High Christology with
altered-state metaphor. The gospel is not about how to get into heaven
after you literally bodily die; it is about bringing Godly justice into the
world, and about leveraging the altered state experience of ego death and
transcendent experiencing (such as an experience of heaven) toward that
objective.


The Emergent movement is merely a variant of Liberal Mainline, or an
adjustment to Liberal Mainline — with emphasis on open communion,
non-denominationalism, church unity, and flexible belief
(non-foundationalism, non-doctrinalism, non-confessional; not “religion as
confession in doctrinal belief”). Emergent is merely a correction of some
of the bad church habits of the Liberal Mainline.

> ___________________________

Liberal Mainline denominations
General characterization summary of the position held by Liberal Mainline
denominations, which means older, established, brand-name, systematically
self-governed, doctrinal-defined, confessional, U.S. nationwide
denominations, such as Episcopal (or Baptist, or Presbyterian) (as opposed
to nondenominational, Evangelical, politically rightist, megachurches):
demythifying, but reductionist, reducing myth to things from the ordinary
state of consciousness.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: spiritual salvation/regeneration
through altered-state religious experiencing & metaphor: they inconsistently
consider it and give it lip service. They are accustomed to giving it lip
service and wordiness, while completely lacking altered-state experience
except for a tepid warm feeling and vague emotionalism.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: political counter-imperialism: they
pay some attention to it, but not enough, even though they largely advocate
the Social Gospel.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: ahistoricity of Jesus, Paul, and the
apostles: they ignore it, but are sometimes receptive when this view occurs
to them.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: visionary plants in early
Christianity: they completely ignore it.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: use of visionary plants throughout
Roman Empire culture:
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: literalist-supernaturalism: they
downplay it, presenting it half-heartedly. The Evangelical Right critics
claim that the Liberal Mainline is afraid to mention Jesus, because “Jesus
is the only way to salvation” is oppressive and offensive.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: metaphoricity: they reduce miracles
and supernatural into metaphor that is based in the ordinary state of
consciousness, when that metaphor was actually from the altered state and
from Roman Imperial propaganda.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: Gnosticism: they latch onto it as
unoppressively spiritual, but ignore its content in terms of a system of
themes.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: Platonism and Ptolemaic astral
ascent mysticism: they are oblivious to it.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: Catholic-type mysticism: they ignore
it, giving mere lip-service to the Holy Spirit and the regeneration or
transformation it brings. They marginalize Pentecostals as sub-Christian.
The Liberal Mainline denominations, re: theology: they use doctrinal
hair-splitting to break up denominations into ever-smaller groups, going
against the unity of the Church that is a dominant theme in the Pauline
writings and the Church Fathers. The Kingdom of God is broken up into
bickering subgroupings that each condemn and de-legitimate each other,
typified by closed communion across doctrinally and theologically
hair-splitting distinctions. Theology is more important to them than the
Gospels’ theme of the Kingdom of God arriving on Earth.

___________________________
Template
General characterization summary of the position held by ___:
___, re: spiritual salvation/regeneration through altered-state religious
experiencing & metaphor:
___, re: political counter-imperialism:
___, re: ahistoricity of Jesus, Paul, and the apostles:
___, re: visionary plants in early Christianity:
___, re: use of visionary plants throughout Roman Empire culture:
___, re: literalist-supernaturalism:
___, re: metaphoricity:
___, re: Gnosticism:
___, re: Platonism and Ptolemaic astral ascent mysticism:
___, re: Catholic-type mysticism:
___, re: theology:

Attachments :

Here’s a little bit of a start, of some detailed points, to get the podcast
going. Pressed for time, I’m feeling ready to jump in a discuss the
remaining topics verbally. I’ve written and spoken about these topics
previously, so I’m just refining and customizing some existing coverage of
these topics, to present the ideas specifically in the context of “the
Emergent conversation”.

I will probably duplicate (re-post) these paragraphs in more specialized
discussion threads.

I’m feeling like typing is slowing me down; my thinking is running ahead. I
just hope there won’t be too many silences, since I’m committed to not
spending the time to edit-out silences or other junk. Although there will
be that “noise” as opposed to signal, I’ve listened to many podcasts, and I
know that no one gets to the point more than I do. Too many podcasts have
half an hour of worthless junk before getting into the substance of the
interview.

______________________________________________________

> The tepid “Emerging church” vs. the radical “Emergent church”.
>

Brian McLaren claims that the Emergent movement or “conversation” is against
the religious right but is certainly not advocating the religious left.
However, as critics point out, it completely appears that McLaren is
identically the same as the Christian religious left, the mainline
denominations. A challenging exercise is to list the differences between
McLaren and mainline 20th Century denominations:

McLaren de-emphasizes denominationalism, and calls for unity and open
communion across all brands of Christianity including Catholic, Protestant,
Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Eastern Orthodox.

McLaren emphasizes the Social Gospel even more than mainline does.

Emergent disparages Joseph Shelby Spong as merely *modern*-era liberalism.
But there’s no clear difference between McLaren or Marcus Borg, and Spong:
they uncritically retain the historical Jesus assumption, and read all
miracles and High Christology as metaphor that was piled on top of the
mundane, non-miraculous historical Jesus. Actually, McLaren is nothing but
a fine-tuned version of liberal mainline modern-era Christianity.

McLaren downplays “belief” as the center and essence of Christianity,
perhaps more and more clearly and consistently than the Liberal Mainline
does.

The inferior podcasts I’ve heard are those of the merely “emerging church”,
including run-of-the-mill, long-winded, low-information-density “edifying
sermons” that play out a metaphorical theme. The better podcasts are fully
“emergent”, focus more on the Roman Empire as meaning-context for the New
Testament, and are more like scholarly summaries. McLaren and Borg almost
always get to the damn point immediately, which is the kind of ergonomic
efficiency that is needed more.

What’s most missing in my comparative matrix is Mainline Liberal
denominations, such as Episcopal. (See my thread titled “Views on NT Xy:
Redactors, Evangelicals, Emergent, Freke, Horsley, Wright, Pilch,
Groenewald, Allegro”.) McLaren strives to distance himself from the Liberal
Mainline, but his critics simply label him as “very liberal and left”, which
would equate him with the Liberal Mainline that he strives to criticize
along with the Evangelical Right. Emergent (McLaren) is only slightly
different than the Liberal Mainline, and it’s no surprise that critics
simply equate and conflate the two positions, which largely overlap.

I’m tired of hearing Emergent presentations that barely touch on the Roman
Empire meaning-context. The only way to have any grasp and explanation of
New Testament Christianity is to put more than 50% of the focus on the Roman
Empire meaning-context. There’s still way too much discussion, in podcasts
by Borg and McLaren, of the New Testament themes and applying them in
today’s world, with often no discussion at all of the Roman Empire
pre-existing meaning-context which New Testament themes were specifically
designed to push against.

The Emergent movement is more environmentally conscious, by its inherent
nature, than other variants of Christianity.

______________________________________________________

> Psychotomimetic drugs (that is, hallucinatory drugs).
>

Correction: “hallucinogens”.

It is forked-tongue evasiveness when Christians talk on and on about how
much they want to better know the Holy Spirit, while they censor themselves
from any mention of psychedelic drugs, which everyone now knows causes
religious experiences. This is a willful, deliberate, conscious cover-up
everyone is participating in. It’s a loudly taboo topic that everyone knows
they are supposed to avoid.

I am considering attending McLaren’s 2008 tour to point out how he is not
really post-modern, because he continues to adhere to the assumption of a
historical Jesus and he continues to not consider the Eucharist as
psychotomimetic plants. Thus Emergent claims to be post-modern, but
actually, is merely a continuation of the modern-era predominant
paradigmatic assumptions, including the Social Gospel, which was, in a
sense, predominant during the 20th Century, given that the Liberal Mainline
had an affinity for at least some version of the Social Gospel, just like
Emergent.

If Emergent actually wants to get back to New Testament Christianity and
away from the modern-era paradigm, they must subtract the historical Jesus
and add visionary plants as the Eucharist — only then would the early
Christians in the Roman Empire recognize Emergent as being the same as them.

Dullness is not a problem in the Egodeath theory — because dullness is
never a problem in psychedelic drug experiencing, which is and was the only
authentic Eucharist. Christianity, or what passed for it during the modern
era, was dull only because the authentic, psychedelic Eucharist was omitted.

______________________________________________________

> No historical Paul, and, less interestingly, no historical Jesus.
>

______________________________________________________

> What kind of writings are the New Testament books? How to read the New
> Testament.
>

______________________________________________________

> References to LSD, psychedelia, and Tim Leary found in emerging church
> podcasts and weblogs.
>

The Jesus People movement of the early 1970s

There’s an active, taboo common knowledge and interest in psychedelics,
among Christians, that has been censored and self-censored since LSD was
illegalized in 1966.

______________________________________________________

> How Allegro was right, and how he was wrong, and why we must move through
> him, and cannot move around him.
>

Discuss Allegro’s right and wrong aspects for an Emergent audience. How
Allegro fits into Emergent.

______________________________________________________

> The primary origin and context of New Testament Christianity was the Roman
> Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, not Jerusalem in the 1st century.
>

Emergent needs to always emphasize this, and not leave it out of any
discussion. Don’t discuss abstracted “kingdom of god” anti-empire
principles in today’s world, without discussing them in some depth in the
Roman Empire meaning-context. Ground the discussion, or else it becomes
meaningless and we revert to the modern-era mental framework, and lose the
meaning of the New Testament.

______________________________________________________

> The evidence that proves that all religion was based on psychedelic drugs
> throughout the Roman Empire, including the Christian Eucharist during the
> first several centuries and beyond.
>

Emergent strives to be “alternative”, but won’t be significantly an
alternative without psychedelic drugs.

______________________________________________________

> Integrating Emergent, the psychoactive entheogenic Eucharist, and the
> ahistoricity of Jesus and all the apostles.
>

In discussing what’s so good about Emergent but what’s so limited about
Emergent, a good approach is to compare and contrast Conservative
Christianity, Liberal Mainline Christianity, the Emergent movement (as
merely a corrective variant of Liberal Mainline), and the Egodeath theory.

There are 3 main positions, relevant for discussion with conventional
Christians: they want to know whether the Egodeath theory matches
Conservative Christianity, or whether it matches Liberal Christianity. The
Egodeath theory is a 3rd basic position, which combines High Christology
with altered-state metaphor.

o Conservative Christianity has a High Christology but one that is based in
the ordinary state, resulting in literalist-supernaturalism. Conservative
Christianity takes it for granted that “the gospel” is all about how to get
into heaven after you die.

o Liberal Mainline has a low Christology and reduces metaphor to the
ordinary state. The Liberal Mainline leans toward the Social Gospel instead
of how to get into heaven after you die.

o The Egodeath theory holds that New Testament Christianity was the use of
visionary plants to have a communal altered-state experience of personal
powerlessness and God’s transcendent power, leveraged in service of setting
up a social-political system that was *specifically* an alternative to the
Roman Imperial social-political system. Combines High Christology with
altered-state metaphor. The gospel is not about how to get into heaven
after you literally bodily die; it is about bringing Godly justice into the
world, and about leveraging the altered state experience of ego death and
transcendent experiencing (such as an experience of heaven) toward that
objective.

The Emergent movement is merely a variant of Liberal Mainline, or an
adjustment to Liberal Mainline — with emphasis on open communion,
non-denominationalism, church unity, and flexible belief
(non-foundationalism, non-doctrinalism, non-confessional; not “religion as
confession in doctrinal belief”). Emergent is merely a correction of some
of the bad church habits of the Liberal Mainline.

Emergent is a corrective on Liberal Mainline (the Social Gospel), which
requires further correction. Which type of Christianity is closer to the
truth, closer to New Testament Christianity in its original Roman Empire
meaning-context, and closer to the Egodeath theory: Conservative
Christianity, Liberal Mainline Christianity, or the Emergent movement? All
3 are hopelessly confused, because they commit the ordinary-state fallacy,
producing different results:

o Conservative Christianity commits the ordinary-state fallacy, resulting
in literalist-supernaturalism. And it so happens that Conservative
Christianity puts *all* emphasis on going to heaven after you die, so that
they wholly condemn and avoid the Social Gospel (even Environmentalism,
crucially), and ignore the theme of “good news: the kingdom of god has now
arrived in the world”, which is the main content and theme of Jesus’
teaching.

o Liberal Mainline and Emergent Christianity commit the ordinary-state
fallacy, losing a high Christology, reducing the anti-Caesar Jesus figure to
an ordinary man, and failing to connect at all with the Holy Spirit and its
intense altered state which is required in order to perceive the all-power
of God over human power. What is the purpose of Christianity: to get into
heaven (per Conservative Christianity), to bring justice and ethics to the
world (per the Emergent extreme of the social gospel in the Liberal
Mainline), or to have a collective intense altered-state experience of
heaven and God’s overwhelming power, through ingesting the Eucharist, in
service of a counter-imperial social-political configuration (per the
Egodeath theory and per the New Testament)? The Holy Spirit, through the
Eucharist, applied toward the alternative Kingdom of God: does Conservative
Christianity provide that, or does the Liberal Mainline, with Emergent
corrections, provide that?


Does Conservative Christianity provide a collective intense altered-state
experience of heaven and God’s overwhelming power, through ingesting the
Eucharist, in service of a counter-imperial social-political configuration?
Does Conservative Christianity provide the Holy Spirit, through the
Eucharist, applied toward the alternative Kingdom of God?

Conservative Christianity does not provide a collective intense
altered-state experience of heaven and God’s overwhelming power, through
ingesting the Eucharist. It does not provide the Holy Spirit, through the
Eucharist.

Conservative Christianity does not strive to manifest a counter-imperial
social-political configuration. Conservative Christianity does not strive
for the alternative Kingdom of God in the world, but strives to do away with
the world and wholly replace it, as a project jumbled together with
literal-supernaturalist escape from the world into heaven after we die.


Does Liberal Mainline Christianity (with Emergent corrections) provide a
collective intense altered-state experience of heaven and God’s overwhelming
power, through ingesting the Eucharist, in service of a counter-imperial
social-political configuration? Does Liberal Mainline Christianity (with
Emergent corrections) provide the Holy Spirit, through the Eucharist,
applied toward the alternative Kingdom of God?

Liberal Mainline Christianity (with Emergent corrections) does not provide a
collective intense altered-state experience of heaven and God’s overwhelming
power, through ingesting the Eucharist. It does not provide the Holy
Spirit, through the Eucharist.

Liberal Mainline Christianity strives to be the vehicle through which
arrives a counter-imperial social-political configuration. It strives for
alternative Kingdom of God, as an ethical and just configuration. This
end-goal matches the end-goal of the New Testament, but not the means of the
New Testament, and not the along-the-way goal of the New Testament, which
was the intermediate objective of spiritual regeneration — a general kind
of objective that was held in common by the mystery-cults of antiquity, and
by the general religious use of visionary plants throughout antiquity.


In conclusion, by the measure of the NT, held as an intermediate objective
in service of a subsequent objective, Conservative Christianity is further
from the NT than the Liberal Mainline is.

Conservative Christianity matches or achieves neither the altered-state
transformation objective of the NT, nor the “just kingdom of God arrived in
the world” objective. Conservative Christianity squanders and dissipates
itself on a confused literalist-supernaturalist misfiring and gross
distortion of both objectives; Conservative Christianity has something
*like* each of the two objectives of the NT, but ends up with merely a
degenerate version of both these objectives. Conservative Christianity has
a degenerate rough equivalient of altered-state transformation through the
Holy Spirit. Conservative Christianity has a degenerate rough equivalient
of striving to manifest the arrived, just Kingdom of God.

Liberal Mainline Christianity (with Emergent corrections) sometimes gives
lip service to the Holy Spirit and “contemplative practices”, but doesn’t
actually deliver the intense communal altered-state experience of the Holy
Spirit, showing personal powerlessness and God’s all-power, or a vision of
God’s throne and kingship in heaven. Liberal Mainline Christianity *is*
faithful to the NT’s subsequent objective of striving to be the vehicle
through which the just Kingdom of God, as a social-political configuration
that’s an alternative to Empire, arrives in the world. That objective is
met fairly accurately in Liberal Mainline Christianity, but even the
Emergent explanation needs to more consistently emphasize the original Roman
Empire meaning-context for which the New Testament was specifically designed
and optimized to go up against.

______________________________________________________

> What it’s like to experience helpless frozenness in spacetime (often as
> Fatedness or predestination) and perceiving the all-sovereignty of God
> over all of one’s thoughts and actions. How this was expressed in the New
> Testament as “crucifixion and resurrection through the Eucharist and Holy
> Spirit”.
>

______________________________________________________

> Explanation of mystery-religion, including Imperial Cult and Christian
> house-church agape meals.
>

Emergent claims to be grounded in anti-imperial Roman Empire
meaning-context, but they put quite little attention on the experience of
the Holy Spirit and agape meals, treating those merely as indications of how
Jesus welcomed everyone and outcasts to purportedly “social events”,
socializing at a regular, ordinary-state meal of regular, non-visionary
food.
______________________________________________________

> Why theology cannot make any sense until the entheogen-and-ahistoricity
> reading of the New Testament.
>

______________________________________________________

> Why entheogen religion must go through Christian theology and take over
> Christianity to return it to the New Testament meaning.
>

______________________________________________________

> Which is more profound and paradigm-shattering: exposing Eastern religion
> as totally corrupt and bunk, or exposing Western religion as totally
> corrupt and bunk.
>

Perhaps the worst, most vulgar and distorting misreading of the New
Testament is to read “Jesus is the only name by which you must be saved” as
a statement against the religion of Buddhism — against Buddha — rather
than as against Caesar.

The book God Is Not Great has a chapter against Buddhism, politically
criticizing how Buddhism supports the emperor and his empire. But there’s
also the untapped potential debunking of the purely religious aspect of what
goes by the name of “Buddhism” today. Meditation is snake oil, bunk, a way
of delaying and avoiding intense religious experiencing rather than bringing
it about — some shamanistic Vajrayana Buddhism excepted. Although today’s
junk Buddhism might be less harmful than today’s junk Christianity, it
amounts to false promises and a fake product — phony, substitute religion,
snake oil. It sells short what religious revelation or transformation can
and should be: the ergonomic entheogen approach, which is the historical
origin of religion including Eastern religion.

______________________________________________________

> Why Christianity, rightly understood per the original New Testament
> Christianity, is fundamentally crippled outside its native Roman Empire
> context.
>
>

Attachments :

The mind is innately designed to harbor two distinct world-models: that of
the ordinary state of consciousness and that of the altered
(loose-association) state — along the lines of Charles Tart’s call for
“multi-state sciences”. Philosophy of Mind must include multi-state
Philosophy, taking into account not only the ordinary cognitive state.
Religious conversion, revelation, or spiritual transformation is a matter of
the mind switching from the one innate, predetermined mental worldmodel of
self and world, to the other innate, predetermined mental worldmodel of self
and world.

Attachments :

I wrote:

>>the along-the-way goal of the New Testament, which was the intermediate

objective of spiritual regeneration — a general kind of objective that was
held in common by the mystery-cults of antiquity, and by the general
religious use of visionary plants throughout antiquity.


The New Testament says “here’s how the altered state ought to be
experienced: as that which leads toward the just kingdom of God, not the
empire of Caesar.” The New Testament not only utilizes the ASC (intense
altered state) as a fixed-shaped experiencing or perception in service of
the “kingdom of God”; also, the New Testament works the other direction,
starting with the principle of the just kingdom of a loving God, using that
as a way of shaping and interpreting the ASC experience.

The New Testament confronts the Roman Empire, which says “here’s the ASC and
here’s how it props up the Roman Empire”. The New Testament says “Instead
of your religious-experience ASC and your violent and oppressive empire of
Caesar, here’s a better view and version of the religious-experience ASC, in
conjunction with a better vision of a just kingdom.”

The New Testament provides a better vision of the phenomenology of the
altered state, and a better vision of the social-political configuration
that the ASC can be utilized to prop up — compared, specifically, to the
Roman Empire’s “divinely authorized” social-political configuration and its
use of religious experiencing to justify itself.

Thus the New Testament isn’t just a preliminary objective (experience the
ASC) in service of a subsequence objective (the kingdom of god); the New
Testament presents a coupled alternative pairing of a certain, particular,
strategically described vision of what the altered state should be about, in
conjunction with a certain vision of the social-political configuration.

The New Testament explains how we *ought* to experience psychedelic drugs —
in terms of a loving God and leading toward a better social-political
configuration. And the New Testament explains how we *ought* to set up a
social-political configuration. These two visions are not contrasted
against today’s system of empire, in the New Testament, but against
pre-modern empire, and particularly and especially against the specific
Roman Empire. The New Testament says “Instead of experiencing entheogens in
the way that’s part of the official Roman Empire, experience entheogens in
this other way, within this other experiential-interpretive framework,
instead.”

The Bible does not advocate or prohibit psychoactive drugs; rather, the
Bible says “Interpret and conduct psychoactive drug experience in this godly
and just way, instead of in a way that props up a harmful society.” The
Bible is concerned with *how* we use entheogens, more than *whether* we use
drugs. The New Testament tells us to ingest the Eucharist to experience the
Holy Spirit and be spiritually regenerated in accord with the loving and
just kingdom of God. The New Testament, in effect, tells us that the use of
drugs in a way that goes against the loving and just kingdom of God amounts
to sorcery and demon-worship, while the use of drugs in a way that builds up
the loving and just kingdom of God amounts to the Holy Spirit, salvation,
and worship of God.

Attachments :

I’m prepping a preliminary podcast for uploading. I only did minor editing
— removing major silences, and normalizing volume. The unexpected problem
with not editing is that I’m coughing and having trouble talking at all.

This podcast compares Conservative Christianity, Liberal Mainline
Christianity, Emergent movement, and the Egodeath theory. The information
is subset of what I’ve posted. The next will actually go into the points in
the present thread.

The URL will be:
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast01.mp3

Attachments :

I’m getting better at recording vocally clean sessions that don’t have to be
edited. I’ve learned to weed out most of the junk vocalizations while I am
speaking: “um”, “you know”, “so”, and “I mean” — and to breathe quietly,
and to manage other vocal junk noise. I would benefit from setting up an
easy-to-use Pause and Mute.

Attachments :

The practice of creating a warm-up, practice Podcast, to practice verbally
discussing and vocalizing a set of topics, has been proven to work for the
Egodeath material.

In my latest vocal recording, the coughing isn’t as bad as I thought — only
a few spots. After getting rid of long, 15-second silences, I’m surprised
at how clean this recording is. I do admit that the sometimes long
sentences and compound statements in this recording would be easier for the
listener to follow if I cleaned them up. But there’s nothing distinctly bad
about this recording, other than a few coughs — this is really good news
for me. Doing penance, of spending hours cleaning up my vocal bad habits,
has prompted me to clean up my speaking while I am speaking.

Attachments :

One way to download the file:

At
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5091
right-click the URL
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast01.mp3
and Save As.

I’ll update the page http://www.egodeath.com/ to contain the link, which
you’ll be able to right-click. I should break out a separate Podcasts
navigation page.


This preliminary Podcast is relatively dull; it’s not the vision I had for
this thread. It’s merely preliminary. It is practice and warm-up for the
main Podcast I planned in this thread. I may need to sweep evenly across
the topics giving 5 minutes each, and then optionally add further expansion
of certain points. This fast pacing, skipping across topics, should help
against dullness. I add a certain dullness in that I routinely discuss
these “edgy” topics at a highly developed level, yet casually. I discuss
them as if a boring routine classroom lecture, not injecting or forcing any
hype and tone of excitement like marketing blurbs for some book hyped such
as “Controversial secrets of Jesus followers, revealed!” Let the substance
carry the excitement (the non-dullness).

Attachments :

I felt that I could not leap into the radical leading-edge interesting
topics in light of Emergent, without first laying down some foundation
discussion about the Emergent movement in relation to Conservative
Evangelicalism and Liberal Mainline denominations. This latest, preliminary
podcast serves as a relatively dull bridge to the non-dull topics which I am
actually interested in demonstrating an interesting treatment of.

Followers of the Emergent movement, or trends in Christianity, will find my
preliminary comments interesting, and not particularly dependent on the
“controversial” topics of entheogens and ahistoricity. The “controversial”
topics of entheogens and ahistoricity play only a minor role in this
introductory or prolegomenon podcast.

Attachments :

The following discussion (a re-post about “the New Testament as guide to how
entheogens ought to be experienced”) fulfills several existing topics for
this podcast such as:

Psychotomimetic drugs (that is, hallucinatory drugs).

What kind of writings are the New Testament books? How to read the New
Testament.

References to LSD, psychedelia, and Tim Leary found in emerging church
podcasts and weblogs.

How Allegro was right, and how he was wrong, and why we must move through
him, and cannot move around him.

The evidence that proves that all religion was based on psychedelic drugs
throughout the Roman Empire, including the Christian Eucharist during the
first several centuries and beyond.

Integrating Emergent, the psychoactive entheogenic Eucharist, and the
ahistoricity of Jesus and all the apostles.

What it’s like to experience helpless frozenness in spacetime (often as
Fatedness or predestination) and perceiving the all-sovereignty of God over
all of one’s thoughts and actions. How this was expressed in the New
Testament as “crucifixion and resurrection through the Eucharist and Holy
Spirit”.

Explanation of mystery-religion, including Imperial Cult and Christian
house-church agape meals.

Why theology cannot make any sense until the entheogen-and-ahistoricity
reading of the New Testament.

Why entheogen religion must go through Christian theology and take over
Christianity to return it to the New Testament meaning.

________________________


The New Testament as guide to how entheogens ought to be experienced


The New Testament says “here’s how the altered state ought to be
experienced: as that which leads toward the just kingdom of God, not the
empire of Caesar.” The New Testament not only utilizes the ASC (intense
altered state) as a fixed-shaped experiencing or perception in service of
the “kingdom of God”; also, the New Testament works the other direction,
starting with the principle of the just kingdom of a loving God, using that
as a way of shaping and interpreting the ASC experience.

The New Testament confronts the Roman Empire, which says “here’s the ASC and
here’s how it props up the Roman Empire”. The New Testament says “Instead
of your religious-experience ASC and your violent and oppressive empire of
Caesar, here’s a better view and version of the religious-experience ASC, in
conjunction with a better vision of a just kingdom.”

The New Testament provides a better vision of the phenomenology of the
altered state, and a better vision of the social-political configuration
that the ASC can be utilized to prop up — compared, specifically, to the
Roman Empire’s “divinely authorized” social-political configuration and its
use of religious experiencing to justify itself.

Thus the New Testament isn’t just a preliminary objective (experience the
ASC) in service of a subsequence objective (the kingdom of god); the New
Testament presents a coupled alternative pairing of a certain, particular,
strategically described vision of what the altered state should be about, in
conjunction with a certain vision of the social-political configuration.

The New Testament explains how we *ought* to experience psychedelic drugs —
in terms of a loving God and leading toward a better social-political
configuration. And the New Testament explains how we *ought* to set up a
social-political configuration. These two visions are not contrasted
against today’s system of empire, in the New Testament, but against
pre-modern empire, and particularly and especially against the specific
Roman Empire. The New Testament says “Instead of experiencing entheogens in
the way that’s part of the official Roman Empire, experience entheogens in
this other way, within this other experiential-interpretive framework,
instead.”

The Bible does not advocate or prohibit psychoactive drugs; rather, the
Bible says “Interpret and conduct psychoactive drug experience in this godly
and just way, instead of in a way that props up a harmful society.” The
Bible is concerned with *how* we use entheogens, more than *whether* we use
drugs. The New Testament tells us to ingest the Eucharist to experience the
Holy Spirit and be spiritually regenerated in accord with the loving and
just kingdom of God. The New Testament, in effect, tells us that the use of
drugs in a way that goes against the loving and just kingdom of God amounts
to sorcery and demon-worship, while the use of drugs in a way that builds up
the loving and just kingdom of God amounts to the Holy Spirit, salvation,
and worship of God.

Attachments :

I’m uploading the 2nd podcast for the present thread. This podcast lists
the planned topics, then discusses points about some of those topics, points
that I have already written about. This podcast amounts to reading-aloud
two major postings from the present thread. I plan to do a 3rd, main
podcast for this thread, which will evenly spend 4 minutes per each of the
15 topics.

I’m targeting 60 minutes / 60 MB for each podcast.

One way to download the file: at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5098
right-click the URL
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast02.mp3
and Save As.

I’ll update the page http://www.egodeath.com/ to contain the link, which
you’ll be able to right-click. I should break out a separate Podcasts
navigation page.

Attachments :

To pretty easily produce pretty clean recordings, I’m settling on a sweet
spot, of using Mute and using clean vocalization to produce as clean a
master session recording as I can, and then, doing some minimal amount of
editing — *not* deleting every hiccup, dog bark, or excess tenth of a
second of silence as I used to (*very* grueling and prohibitively
time-intensive), but rather, deleting all silences longer than perhaps 7
seconds. That technique is helped alot by the technique of using Mute and
using clean vocalization. I developed a useful Mute technique around
halfway into today’s latest recording (EmergentPodcast02.mp3).

I’ve had trouble getting the recordings to be loud enough, even with
normalization. So I’m trying selecting 10-minute blocks and normalizing
each block to 0dB level, to make the recording louder than all-at-once
normalizing produces. Using a compressor would help more, to make louder
recordings.

Attachments :

I’m uploading the 3rd podcast for the present thread. This podcast covers:

CHARACTERIZING DRUGS
Psychotomimetic drugs, or hallucinogenic drugs. Conceptual networks and
assumption frameworks. All translation across cultures is mis-translation.

DRUGS EXISTING IN EMERGENT
References to LSD, psychedelia, and Tim Leary found in emerging church
podcasts and weblogs.

EVIDENCE AND SCENARIO FOR ALL ANCIENT RELIGION HAVING DRUG BASIS
The evidence that proves that all religion was based on psychedelic drugs
throughout the Roman Empire, including the Christian Eucharist during the
first several centuries and beyond.


I plan to do a 4th podcast for this thread, spending about 5 minutes on each
of the remaining topics.

One way to download the file: at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5100
right-click the URL
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast03.mp3
and Save As.

I’ll update the page http://www.egodeath.com/ to contain the link, which
you’ll be able to right-click. I should break out a separate Podcasts
navigation page.

Attachments :

I think I can eliminate, in future recordings, the sporadic whine that might
be found in EmergentPodcast01.mp3, 02.mp3, and 03.mp3. It was largely or
partly due to having inactive channels that were not turned down on the
mixer. Turn down unused mixer channels!

Too bad about that slight flaw in recordings #1-3, but one must learn at
some time, and at least I am learning as fast as possible.

Attachments :

I’m uploading the 4th podcast for the present thread. This podcast covers:

MYSTERY CULTS, IMPERIAL CULT, AND CHRIST CULT (EUCHARIST, HOLY SPIRIT)
Explanation of mystery-religion, including Imperial Cult and Christian
house-church agape meals.

ADDING DRUGS TO EMERGENT
How Allegro was right, and how he was wrong, and why we must move through
him, and cannot move around him.

ADDING DRUGS AND AHISTORICITY TO EMERGENT
Integrating Emergent, the psychoactive entheogenic Eucharist, and the
ahistoricity of Jesus and all the apostles.

DRUGS IN NT METAPHOR
What it’s like to experience helpless frozenness in spacetime (often as
Fatedness or predestination) and perceiving the all-sovereignty of God over
all of one’s thoughts and actions. How this was expressed in the New
Testament as “crucifixion and resurrection through the Eucharist and Holy
Spirit”.

ENTHEOGENISTS MUST ENGAGE WITH CHRISTIANITY
Why entheogen religion must go through Christian theology and take over
Christianity to return it to the New Testament meaning.

AHISTORICITY
No historical Paul, and, less interestingly, no historical Jesus.

INHERENT LIMITS OF MODERN THEOLOGY
Why theology cannot make any sense until the entheogen-and-ahistoricity
reading of the New Testament.

EMERGENT; CHURCH TRENDS
The tepid “Emerging church” vs. the radical “Emergent church”.

BASIC CORRUPTNESS OF EXISTING CHRISTIANITY
Which is more profound and paradigm-shattering: exposing Eastern religion as
totally corrupt and bunk, or exposing Western religion as totally corrupt
and bunk.

CLEARLY UNDERSTANDING THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIANITY
Why Christianity, rightly understood per the original New Testament
Christianity, is fundamentally crippled outside its native Roman Empire
context.

NT MEANING AND GENRE
What kind of writings are the New Testament books? How to read the New
Testament.

ACTUAL MEANING-CONTEXT OF NEW TESTAMENT
The primary origin and context of New Testament Christianity was the Roman
Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, not Jerusalem in the 1st century.


I’m considering doing a 5th podcast for this thread, which would *actually*
do what I originally intended: spend 4 minutes *summarizing* each of the
stated topics. Only now is it possible to do this, because now I have both
written about these topics (at least partially), and have spoken about these
topics. The 4 podcasts so far in this thread all have to be considered as
preliminary warm-ups, practice runs, that go into some detail but largely
fail as efficient summaries. Before I could do a “perfect” podcast as
originally envisioned, I would need to repeatedly listen to these 4
preliminary, warm-up podcasts. And I would also, ideally, need to type-up
the summaries.


One way to download the file: at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5102
right-click the URL
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast04.mp3
and Save As.

I’ll update the page http://www.egodeath.com/ to contain the link, which
you’ll be able to right-click. I should break out a separate Podcasts
navigation page.

Attachments :

I’m re-uploading
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentPodcast03.mp3
It should be no shorter than 49 minutes, ~46 MB.

Attachments :

I added these 4 podcasts to the home page, where you can right-click them to
download.

http://www.egodeath.com/ — Podcasts section:

Why the Emergent movement in Christianity must add entheogens and subtract
the historical Jesus — December 8, 2007
Part 1: preliminary definitions of Emergent vs. Evangelical
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Attachments :

Today I watched the videotape from my 1988 college party which was to
announce my commencement of writing my Egodeath theory as books. I watched
it to determine whether my stated objectives of the Theory have been carried
forth consistently, matching my current conception of the Egodeath theory
and project of theorizing.

There were questions from the audience, all college students — friends, and
their friends. My responses, and my description of the Theory and Project,
were acceptably coherent with my current thinking, although of course then I
was only 3 years into the Project, now 22 years, so I now have some 7 times
the breadth of potential responses, and some of my terminology-usage has
improved. In evaluating this presentation in the video, I determined that
my conceptualization of the Project and Theory back then, 20 years ago, was
not essentially different than now — just less developed.

I am intently devoted to making good on the promises and plans that I told
to the audience, my friends, 20 years ago. Since then, the Web arrived,
with my Egodeath content, and Austin’s book Zen and the Brain has arrived —
but surprisingly little has changed in these 20 years; my basic complaints
about the state of knowledge still basically hold true and my criticisms
still hold up.

I’m more articulate now, though I had no shortage of ideas and responses 20
years ago.

Attachments :

I’m ready to relatively turn my attention back to my Phase 1 topic of
cognitive science/ cognitive phenomenology, rather than my more recent Phase
2 “historical” focus of history of religion and myth. However, the
revisionist historical focus (Christianity, Eastern meditation, entheogens
in the origins of those religions, and ahistoricity of Jesus) is valuable
for its sensationalism. My treatment of religions has value for
sensationalist attraction, that the pure cognitive phenomenology theory
can’t have. I asserted some surprising positions in my 1988 commencement
party presentation, about how alien and boring and not-immediately-relevant
my theory was (during my Phase 1).

I want to highlight the surprising ideas in the Egodeath theory both as
applied to our religious and cultural past, and to present mental
processing, and to the future of religious practice and our
self-understanding. Phase 1 (cog sci) and Phase 2 (religious historical
revision) both are sources for many surprising points, and it is crucial to
be surprising, for a new theory. For example, although espousing
“determinism” has problems because people object to “determinism” (as *they*
conceive of it – usually a misunderstanding), it does provide some
motivating, attractive controversy, some “bad PR” (given that “there’s no
such thing as bad publicity). To be notorious, to be controversial, to be
infamous — these things have their advantages.

Above all, don’t be a wallflower. To all the people who are so stupid or
cheap and superficial in their thinking that they equate ego transcendence
with mundane humility and mundane self-deprecation in regular social
relationships in the ordinary state of consciousness, what can one say but
“you are a small and insignificant person in light of my huge superiority of
person” — that is, pulling the strings that they have constructed, pressing
their buttons that they put forward. If you want to demonstrate to me that
you are not a serious thinker, all you have to do is equate “ego
transcendence” with mundane “humility”.

To emphasize the difference, I am the world’s most humility attuned person
regarding personal power in the altered state (that’s the true meaning of
‘humility’ in a religious context or in transcendent knowledge), and I am
the world’s most proud person (best theorist) with the strongest sense of
superiority to others in the mundane world. That’s like Wilber’s call for
“an ego strong enough to die”. As a theorist, I am the best, and the most
superior to others, because as a control-agent, I’m most attuned to the
utter powerlessness of the personal locus of control in light of the
uncontrollable higher-level controller that is the source of all of our
thoughts and actions.

I’m fully proud, in the mundane state (as a competing theorist), and I’m
fully humble, with respect to that which is revealed in the altered state.
That demonstrates how distinct mundane pride is from religious-state
humility. Anyone who understands ego death ought to be very proud and
consider themselves superior to other people (while per the New Testament,
constructing a flat, fair, non-oppressive, just society). And anyone who
understands ego death is, by definition, truly humble, in the sense which is
religiously relevant. The Elect of God are proud (before others) to be
humbled (before God).

Little people with nothing to contribute are always the first to criticize
and put-down anyone who stands out and puts forth a substantial
contribution. American society has schizophrenic self-contradictory values:
we give lip-service to striving for excellence, and we enviously disapprove
of those who actually achieve excellence. That attitude voted for the
abrasively and aggressively imbecilic G. Bush. Australia is more
consistent: they are suspicious of even striving for excellence, because
they equate excellence with oppressiveness and oppressive social structures.
Anyone who contributes more than others is suspect of striving to oppress
others. Excellence is equated with oppression.

Ayn Rand criticized this tendency in the socialism of her day, and pointed
out the possibility of the superior people going on strike, against the
freeloaders who would keep down the superior people. However, her system
was helpless against the unethical people in influential positions that
really do want to just oppress other people.

These ideas are intellectually interesting, but all I’m really saying is
that our society holds loose sets of values that are mutually contradictory,
and that to make an impact, one must be proud and must stand out from the
crowd, in order to punch-through the noise. You must explicitly offer
something different, something distinctive, something that boldly stands
out; you must boldly *contradict* the existing norm. Anyone who is too
humble, too much a wallflower, never self-assertive, a pushover, who just
blends into the hive society, like the characterization of the Japanese
culture as “the peg that stands out will be hammered”, cannot succeed at
creating something innovative and making it available and visible in the
noise of post-modern culture.

It’s taboo to point out these realities, but as the theorist of ego
transcendence, discussing this taboo is relevant, and I did play with this
taboo even 20 years ago in my Theory commencement party presentation. You
have to — secretly or not — think in terms like being destined for
greatness; you have to go to “prep school” and “finishing school”, so to
speak; you have to be deliberately cultivated. The exceptions (people who
are actually thoroughly unassuming and self-effacing) are rare so as to
prove the rule. If Madonna is famous for being famous, Curt Cobain is the
one person who is famous for acting “not famous”.

To some extent, these are reflections that I am actively using, that affect
me; but to some extent these are merely idle reflections that I’ve had to
think about and that amount to nothing in practice, for me personally.
Anyone who writes a book, in some sense *has to* think of themselves as in
some way “destined for greatness”, even though coming to grips with that
practical fact of psychology may be tabooed in our democratic,
aristocracy-hating society (a society which nevertheless worships fame).

To declare all previous theories of transcendent knowledge to be grossly
inadequate, sloppy, and ineffective, as I have done since 1986, is to right
away, inherently, in some sense already be proud and to act as though one is
destined for greatness. That implication is unavoidable, and suitably
appropriate, even if the concept of “destined for greatness” is taboo in
democratic society that worships *striving for* excellence but jealously
hates and fears any actual *achieving* of greatness, equating greatness with
oppression and pushing down other people.

The person who has achieved may have a certain kind of comfort being around
others who have achieved, like pop stars hanging out together in their elite
circles, circles which play with being oppressive elite circles. I should
read books on the social psychology of fame and pop stardom — that would
help me address this topic that’s relevant for the general theory of ego
transcendence and for my particular personal needs as a breakthrough
theorist.

I’d connect it with ideas of “Jesus Christ superstar”, the apostle figures
as stars, the early popes, emperors in antiquity, the person of the King (“I
am the state”), and the New Testament project of using religious
experiencing to bring about a flat, non-oppressive way of organizing
society, against the “superstar” Caesar-based steep hierarchy system of
honor and shame, and client/patron pyramid. Compare Imperial Cult to the
cult of pop stardom — and postmodern analysis of “pop cult”.

When did I first start thinking about the idea of being “destined for
greatness”? Some time in between envisioning writing a book in 1986, and my
commencement party in Spring 1988. To declare all previous religion and
theories of transcendent knowledge as inadequate, to be replaced by one’s
own theory, is inherently tantamount to conceiving oneself as, and mentally
preparing oneself to be as, “destined for greatness” — regardless of how
one tries to spin and portray that inescapable fact.

Sometimes democratic society expects and demands that the person who is
actually in fact great, to strenuously make-believe and play-act humility.
Thus it is a flimsy cliche that we eulogize great Americans as infinitely
humble. The rule in our society is that when you talk about a great
American, you *must* declare them to have been infinitely humble,
*regardless* of the truth of the matter. It’s a matter of American pride
that we *must* declare the achievers who are role models to be paragons of
humility — lest we commit the unpatriotic and traitorous crime of
worshipping kings and aristocracy who rule (and oppress) by divine right.

To admit that one has to think of oneself as “destined for greatness” is
considered traitorous — it’s felt, in our blood, to be a crime against the
nation, even though picking up the pen to write a book *inherently* has that
component of pride, verge, and willingness to stick one’s head out and
declare “I have something of value to provide to society, that other people
cannot offer.” To set one’s mind to achieving anything that is outstanding
and culture-changing is, in some sense, inescapably to address all other
people as “peasants” or “proles”, no matter how you try to spin and evade
this fact.

To contribute something distinctive of value to society, one *has* to have
some sort of “high view of oneself”, to fail to — like British “commoners”
— “know your place” or “keep to your station”. Alexis de Tocqueville would
be relevant, in his comparison in his 1835 book Democracy in America, of the
different attitudes of Americans (“a society where every citizen is a
sovereign king”) compared to the British, French, and European aristocratic
monarchies. The real idea is that as an American, you are supposed to try
to achieve full human potential, but not in a way that denies achievement or
potential greatness to other “citizen-kings”. Thus it’s OK to think of
oneself as “destined for greatness” in a way that permits others to be so as
well.

Consider Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes battling it out for acclaim and fame
in Natural Philosophy, and how that was treated as rivalry between the
early-modern nations of Germany vs. England vs. France, where national egos
competed against each other for greatness and superiority. Or the German
cultural inferiority complex that is said to have given rise to Weimar
German culture. The American system has a certain innate egoic inferiority
complex since everyone is expected to strive for the greatness of achieving
their human potential, lifting themselves high by their own bootstraps as
each person a sovereign citizen-king.

This can lead to depression, frustration, and self-condemning that can
result from an overdose of Shirley MacLaine New Age self-help philosophy
that credits and blames the individual for all that happens to them and all
that they achieve. “You are fully responsible for all that happens to you
and all that you experience” (a rather convenient self-justification for
those who happen to be among the privileged, sheltered, fortunate, lucky
elite who grew up with an unconscious sense of entitlement and who, on the
whole, get all the breaks).

Being a paradigm-changing theorist of transcendent knowledge cannot be
compared to an average successful businessperson — a better comparison
would be to innovative engineers who are considered to be the creators of
new major influential technologies like the Web, Amazon.com, the Mac, or
Google. Or to influential, famous scientists. That is, the product or
achievement is intimately associated with the person who created it. Thus
“I *am* the Egodeath theory”, and for the Egodeath theory to be famous and
influential is inseparably synonymous with me as a person being famous and
influential. That’s why I’ve been forced to consider my person being thrust
into the role of “great and famous” simply by virtue of my Theory striving
to become “great, breakthrough, famous”.

It’s not actually possible to envision the Theory becoming “great,
breakthrough, famous” while I consider myself like the hogwash requisite
cliche of the eulogizing and hagiography of famous innovators as “he was
infinitely humble”. That would be nonsense in the case of this Theory of
transcendent knowledge; it is nonsense and an impossibility that the Theory
would be considered as “great, breakthrough, famous” while I go around
considering myself “just an ordinary Joe like G. Bush.” For my Theory to be
received as Great is *inherently*, by the nature of such theorizing, for me
personally to be seen as Great — any avoiding of that necessity is phony
pretense.

I don’t know if this reality and situation is a “problem” for me, but it is
certainly something I’ve been forced to consider: it comes with the
territory the moment I thought “all the existing, previous theories and
religions are bunk, ineffective, inefficient, they aren’t cutting it, not by
a long shot, and I have to step in and remedy this situation by formulating
and putting forth a new, vastly superior Theory — a great Theory, which
would be *my* Theory.” The result of putting for a great Theory is
*necessarily* that one becomes great oneself; this is inescapable (and not
necessarily undesirable, a bad thing).

That gives some background on why I’ve been grappling since 1988 with being
in a position of “destined for greatness” as a result of striving to put
forth a Theory of transcendent knowledge and religious that is “destined for
greatness”. This type of intellectual product is inseparable from one’s own
person. “Great Theory” necessarily immediately entails “Great Theorist”.

Attachments :

In terms of social groups, I also have a degree of feeling I’m a “Great
American”, “Great Californian”, “Great Engineer”, and “Great Alumni”. I’m
not only a proud Theorist, I’m a proud American, a proud Californian, a
proud engineer, and a proud alum. Perhaps a proud cybercult denizen (e.g. a
proud member and product of the Mondo 2000 & WELL community). A proud
Christian, and a product of Christianity. Also a proud Alan Wattsian, a
product of his treatment of Eastern and Western religion.

As a Theory creator, I’m a product of America, California, engineering,
cybercult, tech school and university, the WELL, and Christianity — I am a
representative of these groups. My pride and my achievement reflects back
onto these groups. I’m also a member and product of other groups, such as
the JesusMysteries online discussion group, my circle of friends, a member
of professional societies, a member of the group entheogen scholars.

Also now I had my Bar Mitzvah a week ago, so now I am a member of the Jews,
and I’m a product of a Jewish upbringing, as well as baptized into the
Church of Christ, thus my greatness (due to my Theory’s greatness) would
amount to pride and product of these groups. To some extent I’m a member of
my grade school long ago, but that’s not directly associated with my
theorizing, so my greatness or achievement in Theory hardly reflects back to
that social or societal group. My significant social groups relevant for
Theory development only has tangible roots going back to mid high school.
Before that, I was generic and you could not tell that I’d have any future
in Theory development about transcendent knowledge; such a future would have
been conjectural had you analyzed my life back in early high school.

Prioritizing my influences *as* a Theorist might place me (and my
Achievement) as a member and product of certain groups more than others:
firstly,
* Engineering
* University (and, private university where all courses are actually
taught by professors)
* California
* Human Potential movement / transpersonal psychology
* Alan Watts
* Christianity
* Stanford / Palo Alto (I characterized my Phase 1 work as “the
Stanford view”: that is, exuding the vibe and mentality of Silicon Valley in
the 1990s).
* Entheogen scholars
* Ahistoricity scholars
* The WELL / cybercult, then the Web especially during my Phase 2
* The late 1980s through 1990s

Not much:
* Judaism as cultural practice & upbringing
* Grade schools
* Pomo studies
* Tech school
* Eastern religion in general
* America (I consciously feel more affinity, a product more of
California than of America, because America is = “the world at large”, with
“Europe having disappeared and ceased to exist” for me per Jean Baudrillard.
Thus I am *so* much a product of America that there’s nothing consciously
distinctive about this cultural context for me.)

I *have* felt an identification with these groupings as I have developed my
Theory of transcendent knowledge; for example, I pointed this out
prominently, 3 years into it, in my commencement party, pointing out that
it’s very distinctive that I’m developing a Theory of transcendent knowledge
*as* an engineer, with that mentality and character.

Even though I highlight my personal stature being concomitant with the
success of my Theory, I have also always felt a strong social sense of
identification with these groups, institutions, and societies. A Great
Theory, thus necessarily a proud theorist, and thus also a proud member (and
representative) of these social groups. Our society is packed full of
taboos, including the taboo solutions to the long-lasting puzzles about
religious origins and religious knowledge. I have had to be the one to
concertedly break all of these taboos together; it was inherently necessary
as part of creating the Theory.

Even as I break these taboos, and offend publicly all groups including the
groups that created me, these groups are at the same time forced to
acknowledge me as their representative, their product. I am a product of my
society and upbringing, of the many adults who inducted me, often
deliberately, into subcultures and entrenched taboo cultural practices that
are as normal and entrenched as they are officially tabooed. For example,
in 8th Grade graduation, we were initiated with an oil light show and the
David Bowie song Space Oddity.

I am a product of my church; I represent my church even as I propose
throwing Christianity into the garbage can as ill-suited and ill-fitting for
today’s modern world or any world after the Roman Empire. I represent my
university even while I condemn the universities for self-censoring
themselves about entheogens and the drug origins of the religions, providing
a false pseudo-education that lacks actual initiation and lacks real
Philosophy, which was multi-state, altered-state-based Philosophy. I am a
representative of Engineering and the many Engineers of cybercult (for
example) who straightforwardly affirm the value of entheogens or
psychedelics — even if official culture makes-believe that Engineering is
“too straight-laced for drugs”.

Against the official version of Engineering, I truly do represent Engineers
in their entheogen-positive views. Against the official modern version of
Christianity, I truly do represent many Christians across history in their
entheogen-positive Eucharistic views, like it or not. When I assert the
Egodeath theory, I do so as a proud Christian, a proud member and product of
my church congregation, a proud member of my troubled and taboo-haunted
society, a proud member of my engineering society, a proud alumni of my
university (even though I often felt depressed about that university at the
time and a few years afterward), a proud American and product of America,
and now most recently (in the future from here on out) a proud confirmed
Jew.

People worked hard to produce me as a Christian, as an American, as a
Californian, as a Jew, as an engineer, and what they have produced instead
is this taboo-trampling monster instead: I am a proud product of and
representative of Christianity, America, California, engineering school, and
my university, and the many adults who deliberately shaped me into the
fullness of our culture and its tabooed views and practices, as well as my
peers. What have you wrought? What is the product of your efforts, your
systems, our social forms? The Egodeath theory, me, my Theory.

This is what I give back to the society that formed me; this is its product,
through me, this is the best and most valuable thing I could possibly offer:
the Egodeath theory. Like it or not, pretend to like it or not, be shocked
or offended or not, or cheer and praise it or not — you get what you get,
you get what you sowed, you get your return on your investment. People gave
their lives and shed their blood in battle, and I gave my life energy, in
order to bring forth this ultimate, paradigm-shattering product, the
Egodeath theory: systematized explicit transcendent knowledge.

Attachments :

I often puzzle over what role or practice I could possibly do to be a
meaningful part of Christianity and Christian practice. I researched
“missional”, “emergent”, “house church” and “dying church”. My grandfather
wanted me to preach the gospel. In a sense the answer is in front of me:
studying, theorizing, and writing about religion and the New Testament
online is *already* “participating in emerging church” in the way that is
uniquely suited for me as Egodeath theorist. I’ve already been doing it (my
suitable appropriate equivalent for church participation), without realizing
it. I’ve always thought that the best contribution I could possibly have
for the bride of Christ (that is, the Christian church) is to set straight
the original meaning of the New Testament.

‘Missional’ means mentally doing away with church buildings and professional
pastors, and doing more like early house-church practice prior to
Constantine, and taking “the church” more out within the normal,
non-“church” world. The diversity inherent in Emergent or Emerging church
suggests that no one single uniform model of “being church” or “doing
church” is suited for everyone. We’re seeing a live-and-let-living
diversity of versions of Christianity that is more like prior to the forced
uniformity that occurred under Constantine and under the ruling-class bishop
takeover movement.

I have mixed feelings about the potential of Christianity. It can never
attain the relevance it had in the Roman Empire, yet it remains the most
important religion, and a theory of religion cannot possibly avoid
Christianity, be must take it on and take it over, going *through* rather
than around Christianity. This includes abandoning the idea of the
perfectibility of Christianity and the Christian societal project.
Christianity will remain always a broken tool. Yet we must perfect and
repair to the extent possible this broken tool, this solution that perfectly
fits a problem (the Roman Empire) that’s different than today’s problem. At
best, a repaired Christianity can only be half-successful, because it no
longer has the Roman Empire to push against and to serve as a more desirable
alternative to.

Many Christians are coming to feel “I can’t stand the church”. Many
Christians are concluding that “the church” must be killed to make way for
*the church*, meaning the expanding alternative network-community of
followers of Jesus against empire. This requires throwing away the
institutional church which has become merely an arm of empire, a tool to
prop up empire, and doing away with Christendom.

For “house church”, think “Ayahuasca Christian worship, with the Social
Gospel”. Christianity is thus strategic and fitting for the Egodeath theory
and the maximal entheogen theory of religion. If entheogenists just ignore
Christianity, then they cannot *leverage* its huge potential, given that New
Testament Christianity was the use of visionary plants within a
kingdom-of-God metaphor-framework, serving to construct a just
social-political configuration.

Many Christian group leaders have incorporated the true psychoactive
Eucharist into their group worship practices. These would be today’s
persecuted Christian groups, although I must reiterate that Christians were
not persecuted for drug use (which was the cultural norm), but, if anything,
for rejecting the social-political system of the Roman Empire (as well as
resisting the later ruling-class bishop takeover movement).

If you wish that there were an existing influential religion that was based
on psychedelics and was used for social justice, there is, and it is New
Testament Christianity in the Roman Empire. It is no coincidence that the
peyote and Ayahuasca Christian micro-churches so readily manage to integrate
psychoactives into their Eucharistic practice, because until the modern era,
ever since early proto-Christianity, the Eucharist was understood in
mainstream Christianity to be visionary plants. Where is the power to win
new converts? The power to win new converts to the Christian faith is in
the psychoactive flesh and blood of Christ our savior, who has come in the
likeness of sinful flesh.

Many Christians agree that we must destroy Christianity (or that which has
passed for such) in order to save it.

Given that the Roman Empire doesn’t exist for the gospel’s alternate savior
figure to push against, the best we can do is to explain the Roman Empire as
that which Christianity was a rebuttal to, and equate the Roman Empire with
today’s empire — something like “Jesus and his rejected sacramental body,
not Bush/Cheney and their Evangelical Right support-base, is my lord and
savior.” Now *this* is the true gospel, of spiritual salvation and the
kingdom of God, that’s worth proselytizing, worth inviting others into.

Entheogenic house churches have the sacrament-administering advantage over
mere home bible-study and prayer groups that are limited to the ordinary
state of consciousness decorated with emotionalism. The New Testament
serves as the guide to righteously and justly interpret and shape the
intense altered-state Holy Spirit experiencing that results from ingesting
the Eucharistic flesh of the savior.


Reference: books:

The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church
by Alan Hirsch
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1587431645/
Jan. 2007

Starting a House Church
by Larry Kreider, Floyd McClung
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0830743650/
April 2007

See the associated books and book lists, with an eye toward radical
replacement of “churches” and “Christian culture” with entirely new forms.
These are the leading edge of change and vitality within an otherwise
stagnant, dead, and inert topic.

Attachments :

Podcast of this posting:

7 minutes, 5 MB

One way to download the file: at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5111 (intended to be the
number of the present message)
right-click the URL
http://www.egodeath.com/mp3s/EmergentEntheogenChurch.mp3
and Save As.

Attachments :

On my latest spoken-word file, reading the posting “Emergent missional
post-church practice, entheogen house-church movement”, I spoke louder (at
presentation-level, risking a “shouting” impression), to get above the noise
floor, and amplified the result by 3dB to push it into momentary distortion,
to make the playback level louder. I completely disconnected all unneeded
cables to the mixer, to eliminate potential whine-feedback paths — for that
reason or by luck, I think the mic had zero nuisance noise during this
session — just the hiss floor, only.

I’m hoping that this recording achieves my best signal-noise ratio ever, and
achieves louder, standard levels. No compression or other processing; this
should achieve an intense immediacy of presence (even though this risks
too-punchy volume spikes and requires “manual” voice control while
speaking). With no compressor, the risk is that you’re always alternately
either shouting at the listener, or somnambulantly mumbling, as if you’ve
run out of energy — it’s hard, it takes skilled control, to speak and
project at the natural, just-right level, without the crutch of a
compressor.

I should deaden the room reverberation.

To create a pretty clean recording with pretty fast, minimal editing
required, I used the mixer master volume as a Mute, to create a quiet raw
track, and then did quick minimal editing-out silences longer than 2
seconds.