Egodeath Yahoo Group – Digest 124: 2013-01-15

>B. Drewery, in his book on Origen and the Doctrine of Grace, concludes: “Origen’s doctrine of grace is a cardinal flaw of his theology, being infected with the disease of merit theology. Origen makes grace and merit so complementary as to cast an iron curtain of human capacity, human desert, and human achievement around the free grace of the Almighty, opening the way of the later heresy of Pelagius’.” (205-206).

>I’m amazed at the excellent quality of this summary by a student. This “report”, a graduate thesis, is about Christianity and the Mystery Religions.
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion/files/Mystianity.zip

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “hahaonlysirius” wrote:
>
> I’ve had some involvement in a reformed church founded on Calvinist
principles recently, and the discussion of the Holy Spirit in relation
to the will of man came up. The position asserted was that the Holy
Spirit descends on the elect, through the concept of Grace — these
elect few are pre-destined for Salvation. Then, the degree to which the
elect is filled with the Holy Spirit is dependent on how one submits to
the Holy Spirit. By becoming an empty vessel — total submission, one
can become completely full of the Holy Spirit. However, if one clings to
the flesh — continues to rebel — there will be no fertile ground for
the Sprit to take root.
>
> This oddly sounded very much like the theory of egodeath, minus the
entheogens of course, but it left me slightly bewildered. First, the
elect have no choice whether they are chosen or not. However, being
chosen, they are provided a choice: submit or rebel. Yet, is it not
God’s Providence that determines whether we will submit or rebel? This
seemed like waffling to me, and contradictory to the “compatibilist”
position the church has professed in the past: i.e. man can do what he
wills, but not will what he wills. Then how can man will to be
submissive?
>
> Surely, one can experience the cancellation of the will in the altered
mystic state. However, can one cancel one’s will in the ordinary state
of consciousness? Can I will myself to be an empty vessel, in
anticipation of being filled with the Holy Spirit? How does this relate
to ego transcendence as state in the egodeath theory?
>
> Thanks for any insight.
>

>
> Enlightenment as many of you may know means ego death, but what is Enlightenment and what is ego?
>
> Enlightenment means coming to a state of perfect goodness and this means that ego is anything and everything that is bad in a person, in you…
>
> Ego includes all sickness, though not everything the modern person calls sickness is sickness. THings like schizophrenia and alhzimers are NOT sickness but glipses outside of ego.
>

> So a thorough understanding of ego is important for ego death proper. Remember ego is all negativity, while enlightenment and everything outside of ego is positive and life enhancing.
>

>
> wow! this is a really dualistic mentalized model. Gadzooks. “perfect goodness,” “bad…???”
>
> this seems to me to be another expression of the “run away” sickness that infects “spirituality.” Gotta get from here (“illusion”) to there (“enlightenment”). This model itself is the “illusion.”
>
> These values of “good” and “bad” arise in the dual state which is NOT enlightenment. When the mind truly stops, these models will stop. What One is left with is what IS, and THAT includes all models of illusion and “enlightenment.” It IS what IT IS.
>
> Even your illusion is perfect goodness!
>
> Look up Churning the Milky Sea. Note that the forces of Darkness, Asuras, are evenly matched against the forces of Light, Nagas.. Names are not important. But the vision is that the game we call Cosmos with its supposed “evolution to higher states” is actually a balance of cross-cancelling forces, meaning that there is actually no movement at all. The only movement is an artifact of Mind scanning Itself. Every time one touches on Mind, we realize there is no place to go but here! This ends Seeking, trying to map a way out of “illusion” which is an equal part of Reality.
>
> Capiche?
>

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, “Simon” <buddhaneo@…> wrote:
>
>
> Even YOUR ideas are illuisions…
>
> The ego is everything that DOESN’T KNOW its unity with God.
>
> E dge
> G od
> O ut
>
>
> **************************
> >
> > wow! this is a really dualistic mentalized model. Gadzooks. “perfect goodness,” “bad…???”
> >
> > this seems to me to be another expression of the “run away” sickness that infects “spirituality.” Gotta get from here (“illusion”) to there (“enlightenment”). This model itself is the “illusion.”
> >
> > These values of “good” and “bad” arise in the dual state which is NOT enlightenment. When the mind truly stops, these models will stop. What One is left with is what IS, and THAT includes all models of illusion and “enlightenment.” It IS what IT IS.
> >
> > Even your illusion is perfect goodness!
> >
> > Look up Churning the Milky Sea. Note that the forces of Darkness, Asuras, are evenly matched against the forces of Light, Nagas.. Names are not important. But the vision is that the game we call Cosmos with its supposed “evolution to higher states” is actually a balance of cross-cancelling forces, meaning that there is actually no movement at all. The only movement is an artifact of Mind scanning Itself. Every time one touches on Mind, we realize there is no place to go but here! This ends Seeking, trying to map a way out of “illusion” which is an equal part of Reality.
> >
> > Capiche?
> >
>

The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values
Thomas B. Roberts
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1594774595
January 2013

I wrote this review, below, and posted it to Amazon as soon as the book first shipped, Feb. 8, 2013.
My reviews: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1YFCQT60M4XAJ

4 stars out of 5
It’s a start, but perpetuates limiting, incoherent assumptions

This book is an assortment, a compilation of pieces, including a couple chapters by other authors. This too-short book somewhat achieves its goal; it’s appropriate for an entheogen library but uncritically perpetuates fatally self-defeating fallacies. The book really needs to be better, more consistently enlightened, with a thoroughgoing critique. This book is average, conventional groupthink in too many ways, and where it breaks away, it does so insufficiently. Regarding the cognitive potentials of entheogens, it’s a start, but could be more substantial (without being longer). It’s a useful brief survey of the field, of current attitudes; that’s a relatively strong point of the book.

The sections on entheogen history and on psychedelics in cognitive science need to be expanded, but without the tepid compromise that limits this book. It needs to be harder-hitting; it’s not good enough to accomplish its goals. It relies too much on Stan Grof’s quirky, narrow model, his fixation on the birth-trauma metaphor.

It needs to go deeper on the taboo, censored huge interest and role of entheogens throughout many fields. As suggested but not emphasized enough in this book, millions of people (researchers, professors, priests, and mystics) are highly interested though censored and silent, and we get glimpses of this interest in several points in the book. Roberts doesn’t step up to the plate and in a sustained and direct way tackle this key blocking impediment, of communication censorship; he only keeps noting it, too feebly. I would expect his survey of thousands of books to point out what’s really going on, to explain why I go into the New Age bookstore and am told they have no books about psychoactive drugs in religion, when in fact, as Roberts knows, those books and sections are strewn throughout the store, separated, scattered, diluted.

Roberts vaguely mentions that there is much entheogen activity at websites, but his book is too retrograde to cover them seriously. The limited and self-defeating thinking (or lack of thoroughgoing consistent critical thinking) seen in these books that cite each other, shows why the future of clear thinking is driven online, where there is less hidebound and conventional thinking than in old fashioned and old conventional-thinking printed books.

I disagree with Roberts’ assertion in this book that entheogens should be controlled and doled-out by authorities. The law should be the same as it always was from the beginning of time until a few years ago in 1966 and Nixon’s drug schedules, which is to say, no law, other than accurate labelling and quality control, since religious freedom means freedom of traditional mystic methods which were entheogenic, as the books Roberts cites show. He should know better, for this book and from his Entheogen Chrestomathy (a collection of passages about entheogens from many books).

Instead, we get more crypto-Prohibition, Roberts allowing himself to be coerced by mental censorship into contradicting his own position, effort, and evidence, and training his readers to similarly sustain their uncritical key assumptions about religion, and training them how to hold self-contradictory ideas in their mind like himself, Walsh, and most of the other authors. Clark Heinrich is relatively enlightened in his book, Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy (http://amazon.com/o/asin/0892819979), elegantly tracing Amanita throughout our Western religious history. For coherent clear thinking about rights and meaningful religious freedom, see Steve Kubby The Politics of Consciousness: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (http://amazon.com/o/asin/189362644X).

The books Roberts cites and surveys show that Greeks and Christians used mixed wine freely, and we claim to legally have religious freedom, so against this incoherent book, we must insist we be as free in our religious banqueting parties as we were during Antiquity; we cannot settle for any lesser pseudo-freedom while claiming we have religious freedom and claiming that America is religious. Follow the Supreme Court consistently: leave the entheogen churches alone; reject Roberts’ compromising authoritarian administration of entheogens.

This book claims to be forward-looking rather than a historical recounting, and yet it perpetuates major fallacious assumptions about history, in a self-defeating way, by implicitly asserting a history while lacking sufficient critical examination of our Western history of entheogens. Being forward looking shouldn’t be at the expense of telling a false and self-defeating story of the past. It would be better to be silent about the past than to tell a false story of our past lacking entheogens, so you could say this book is not exclusively forward looking enough. It’s a fairly good forward-looking story combined with a bad careless habitual historical story that defeats the forward effort.

Roberts needs to read the books excerpts he’s gathered and put together the pieces more, on an independent basis. Like all prominent authors of entheogen books, his thinking is far too compromised and unoriginal, coerced into unconsciously shooting himself in the foot and affirming the underpinning doctrines that support the Prohibition-friendly reality-tunnel. Schultes does the same, and Roger Walsh’s article that’s a chapter of this book does the same. They ask the Prohibition-saturated question “Do drugs have religious import?” These drug policy reform leaders are preventing success by declaring defeat before they’ve begun, by framing the self-evidently obvious as if it were something that’s in doubt. Walsh titles his article self-defeatingly as a question, “are entheogens false?”

This book — its authors — reify habitually the uncritically adopted unspoken Prohibitionist-compliant dogma, a hazy, incoherent dogma, that scholars understand how Christian mystics throughout history accessed the intense mystic altered state, and we know that they accessed it through meditation, and we know they didn’t access it through drugs. It is unthinkable and unwriteable by Walsh and Roberts — mis-leaders of reform — to consider the question I pose: to what extent were visionary plants used by Christians throughout history? Roberts contradicts the evidence he has collected: he cites the book The Psychology of Religion by Hood et al The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (http://amazon.com/o/asin/1606233033), which states that Dan Merkur has shown in his book The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience (http://amazon.com/o/asin/089281862X) that Jewish mystics used visionary plants.

Yet these writers continue, as firmly repeated in the present book, to put forward without any critical examination, the assertion — taken as if granted and established — that traditional Christian mysticism is distinct from the use of visionary plants. Per my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion, Ruck et al, cited by Roberts’ book, have demonstrated enough evidence that we must assume the opposite: every Christian mystic used visionary plants, unless proven otherwise. That’s the exact opposite of the strong tendency of all these authors. They contradict themselves. Roberts advises about the Entheogenic Reformation, and yet, he in unthinking convention, together with the other authors, robs visionary plants of their credit.

He gives Christianity and Christian religious experiencing, he gives credit to non-visionary plant vague ill-defined practices, contemplation practices that are assumed without any critical thinking, to be non-plant based — despite copious evidence that Merkur and Ruck and the entheogen historians have gathered, including mushrooms in art that I have routinely identified. Roberts cites books that contain that evidence, and yet he unthinkingly fails to connect, instead, he omits and shuts out visionary plants, robbing them of their due central credit throughout our religious history.

He contradicts himself; he compromises with the mental shackles of Prohibition unspoken dogma (the silent Reform-preventing dogma of repeating the harmfully misleading nonsensical phrase “entheogens vs. natural traditional mystic methods”), even while citing books that contradict that phrase and show it is a false dichotomy, a massive category error. Evidence citied in many of the hundreds of books Roberts surveys, indicate — when you engage your critical thinking, consistently — that the category “entheogens” is identically the same as the category “traditional mystic practice”.

This book purports to advocate entheogens, yet the author permits himself to be psyched-out by Prohibitionist mental shackles and the very kind of endemic, biased thought-censorship that he mildly comments on in this book. Roberts ends up advocating against entheogens in our religious history, despite the evidence (which Roberts gathers in his books and citations, pages 146-151 here, and his book An Entheogen Chrestomathy) that shows that Christian mysticism is the same thing as entheogens; that entheogens are the traditional method of accessing the intense mystic altered state. He cites Clark Heinrich, and Carl Ruck et al: The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist (http://amazon.com/o/asin/089089924X).

Uncritically parroting repeatedly the nonsense phrase “entheogens vs. natural methods” (going directly against Jonathan Ott’s title Pharmacophilia: or The Natural Paradises [1888755016]), Roberts robs and steals from visionary plants the central credit they are due, within our own Western history. Just like almost all the other prominent, Prohibition-friendly, collaborationist, compromisers (Schultes, cited on page 148: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers [http://amazon.com/o/asin/0892819790]). Roberts and all authors need to weed out their self-contradicting compromises from their thinking, purify their thinking of Prohibition-friendly unstated, uncritical dogma, and start telling the true, coherent, evidence-based history, abandoning care of what the mental shackles of censorship and Prohibition dictate.

Walsh (chapter 5 of this book) needs to move forward and stop asking whether drugs have genuine religious import, and engage substance: how does religious experiencing come through visionary plants, as seen throughout religious history? This isn’t a matter of citing more evidence, so much as a matter of stating coherent connections, and being consistent in their thinking and handling of the evidence Roberts has gathered. The key false dichotomy of “drugs vs. traditional mystic methods” is totally entrenched in Walsh’s writing, and totally void of any thought of critical examination, despite the seemingly open-minded questioning implied in this chapter title (false advertising): “Psychedelics and Religious Experiences — What is the Relationship?”

Walsh’s chapter is based on a massive fallacious assumption never mentioned or examined for even a moment: that mystics didn’t use entheogens — despite the books cited by this book. Walsh’s name is given with M.D., Ph.D., and D.H.L., but he utterly fails to think about his underlying assumption, in this article supposedly about inquiring into this relationship. As Roberts writes about censorship and omission of psychedelics in Cognitive Science: “Whether this omission is due to a simple lack of information or scientists’ and scholars fear for their careers by touching a taboo topic is hard to say; it is probably some of both.”

Roberts and Walsh colossally fail to effectively counter and call for an end to this mental straightjacket and censorship. But at least Roberts mentions it; a glimmering of consciousness of the conditions of Prohibition begins to awaken, but we need a thousand times more, and this gentle, compliant, positive-thinking book is too mild to tackle these key blocking dynamics, resulting from Prohibition for Profit.

What use is Roberts’ advice on Reform when he despite his evidence persists in reifying a key Prohibitionist lie, that historical religion uses (vague, undefined) “traditional methods” that are not visionary plants? Roberts repeats that dogmatic assumption, and never stops to subjective it to critical examination. His section on entheogen history is not connected and integrated into his thinking through the rest of the book. Ralph Metzner (who is mentioned on page 70) wrote that he made a strategic mistake in the 1960s by portraying psychedelics as something new. Roberts hasn’t learned that lesson, despite decades of scholarship gathered in his Chrestomathy, such as Robert Graves’ discovery of mushrooms in Greek religion and myth in 1957.

That fatal mistake and persisting in robbing entheogens of their fully due credit as the source of the mystic state throughout history, continues to reign supreme even as Ruck et al pile up more and more evidence; Roberts continues omitting and shutting out entheogens from our religious history even while he dabbles incoherently in showing that the reality is the opposite. This book is futile because in the name of Reform, it falsely eliminates entheogens from our history, despite evidence the book cites. This book inadvertantly keeps telling the story of self-defeat, as the master narrative. The key to Reform involves quitting telling that 1960s Prohibition-supporting story; Roberts doesn’t have a compelling enough story without integrated that evidence throughout his thinking.

This book’s purpose is Reform, yet this book perpetuates a key fallacy that pushes entheogens away: Roberts tells the story, reifying and repeating it, that our religion’s history is not entheogenic. He falls short of providing complete coherent independent critical thinking. His error is deeply entrenched in this book: page 55, he mis-portrays antiquity as having merely rites and activities, as opposed to later word-based religion of 1500, and now, new, “primary religious experiencing”. This is the evolutionism fallacy: that we have entheogens now, and we are more evolved than antiquity, therefore, antiquity lacked entheogens, but had merely “rites” (presumed uncritically and inconsistently in this book as being non-entheogenic).

He ought to tell the more compelling true story, of returning to the non-placebo original Eucharist which inspired Christianity throughout its history, as the evidence and coherent thinking indicates. Roberts isn’t interested in looking at the copious evidence for entheogen Christianity because it contradicts his preconceived self-defeating and incoherent story of religious evolution — a false story that is encouraged by Prohibition’s censorship effect. Roberts several times in this book criticizes authors for omitting and hiding their pro-entheogen views; for example, page 122 points out that authors censor William James, like I have criticized Ken Wilber for starting with first book by omitting William James’ lead-in, “On nitrous oxide, …” (before “it occurred to me that perception is a veil; multiple states…”).

But Roberts needs to gain self-awareness of how he is censoring and shackling his own thinking, and thus perpetuating the mental shackles of his readers, helping to keep Prohibition in place and prevent us from perceiving the central role of entheogens in our history. He should take a lesson from his coverage of the censorship D.C.A. Hillman’s dissertation was subjected to (The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization [http://amazon.com/o/asin/B00342VG0E] and ask: How is this present book also compromised and coerced into being self-censored?

Roberts should’ve gathered together the several points in his book, instances of censorship he points out, calling for breaking through these mental chains and start putting the pieces of evidence, the connections, together, coherently, to tell a story that makes compelling sense. I’m surprised that Roberts didn’t mention along with Hillman, Michael Rinella’s book Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens (http://amazon.com/o/asin/0739146874), which was also extremely censored. Censorship is the top topic, the main restriction now, for policy reform, which is why online has taken the lead away from the hidebound, conformist press: Prohibition Press, I have named it, after I spoke with the entheogen-friendly Park Street Press about this problem at a Western Esotericism conference.

Roberts mentions that people around 1970 were drawn to religion by LSD, and yet, he tells the Prohibition-friendly version of the story, a false tale artificially created by a censorship filtering effect, and fails to mention that people were forced to move away from entheogens and attempt to substitute meditation and a placebo make-believe Eucharist instead, and forced to tell the entheogen-diminishing story of how religion with its entheogen removed is better — a story now entrenched as dogma, mitigating against Roberts’ Entheogenic Reformation project. (Jonathan Ott advocated that term in his book The age of entheogens & the angel’s dictionary [http://amazon.com/o/asin/0961423471].)

Roberts calls for $1 billion for research including “education” toward Prohibition reform, but should more emphasize abandoning the phony drug schedules and fully re-legalizing entheogens like before October 1966. Just get rid of obstructionist Prohibition. We don’t have a budget problem, we have a Prohibition problem. We don’t need a billion dollars so much as we need bona fide actual religious freedom, which means nothing if not the freedom to access ecstatic fear and trembling and awesome power that has always been the source of religion, through the traditional mystic method: the sacred meal of the Lord’s flesh, which is real food and which transmits effective grace just as has always been claimed for this the traditional method of mystic experiencing.

— Michael Hoffman

Copyright (C) 2013 Michael S. Hoffman, Egodeath.com.  All Rights Reserved.

Diagram of Possibilism (the diagram fails to show the tree) vs. Eternalism (rigid snake worm worldline in rock/block universe): http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome

http://egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm

In the present, late-modern or post-modern era, we won’t have a myth (in Campbell’s sense), per Campbell. My response is that we will have correct non-mythic explicit explanation of ego-transcendent knowledge & no-free-will, and, we will have correct mapping to all past mythemes/tropes and the ability to created unlimited number of themes/tropes. Metaphor-only expressions of one’s correct understanding of TK proved (historically) to have problems, so it is urgent that everyone knows the non-metaphorical Core Theory, my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence per my 1988 first drafts and 1997 summary at Principia Cybernetica (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5870).

Correction (removed “no-“):

The mind is forcefully brought to a choice between {chaos and retaining the freewill power claim or stance} vs. {order, enlightened viable civilization, submitting, formally repudiating your childish/animalistic free-will thinking.

When you set out to get the golden fleece (sending the young upstart throne-claimant Jason) or send the seer Balaam to curse the Israelites, you are the evil godless deluded king.  King = egoic autonomy-claim: “I have the power to steer into this future possibility branch or this other possibility branch.  It’s up to me, that type of power is in my control.”  King Pentheus, King Ego; King Multi-Steerer in the possibility branching tree (the Possibilism model of time *and personal control*).

Balaam rides donkey.

Jesus rides donkey entering the city.

Paul rides horse on the road.

Man rides donkey toward broken-off-branches tree trunk, with snake on tree trunk (common art theme on a sarcophagus (a rock/stone coffin)).

I need to review all insights since the main article in 2007, and see if there are any other big breakthroughs besides the Eden tree/snake as Philosophy of Time in the Philosophy department, repudiating Possibilism for Eternalism (in the intense loose cognitive binding state, with fireworks).  However, those fireworks are mitigated or moderated — or amplified — by my core Theory (the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence), along with the CHEM model of religious myth (& pre-modern literature & arts). 

CHEM:

Cyb/Heim/Enth/Mtph

Cybernetics/Heimarmene/Entheogens/Metaphor

Must-read posts; or, important powerful useful touchstone ideas I’ve kept appreciating:

Idea/post 1.

My description of a 4-quadrant diagram, ~Feb. 2013 posting:

We change from a mental model of

[upper left:] Autonomy (King) steering in a

[lower left:] possibility-branching tree (Tree; bush; reinforced by motif of Antlers behind & plant-branch in front of Eve’s branching legs — a phallus in contrast is non-branching, snake-shaped; worldline-isomorphic.)

to a mental model of

[upper right] puppet/slave

caught motionlessly in

[lower right] a worldline-tube (of subjective experiences including control-intention thoughts) frozen into the changeless rock universe (Eternalism; Rock motif, snake/serpent/worm)

2. Idea/post (~Feb 2013): listing of all objects and their mapping to CHEM (cybernetics, heimarmene, entheogens):

rock

tree

snake

king

cup

well, spring, fountainhead

A hugely important post, the most useful.  The concrete bottom-line key to all reading of non-modern cultural products.

3. idea/post ~Feb 2013:

tree vs snake means the Possibilism vs. the Eternalism models of time (Stanford Philosophy page) — ***HUGE*** breakthrough.  10 on a 10 scale.  A *beautiful* capstone.  A post-Article discovery/breakthrough.  This week, confirmed in art.  *Widespread* ramifications.

According to the end of the New Testament, Cognitive Scientists *will* be able to use loosecog safely, able to enter and leave at will without being killed by God.  These are the cognitive scientists who know the youthful folly of trying to battle against your own thought-source.

Cognitive Scientists who don’t understand Cybernetics and Heimarmene, enter a furnace of instruction / futile battle.  Entheogens are dangerous for them, in that way.  Entheogens are not dangerous for those who understand the folly of not trusting your thought-source.  Are you inclined to test and probe whether you are vulnerable?  Then to that extent, your testing will put you in danger.  After you have done the testing, you can  dabble in relative safety.  Are entheogens dangerous?  Yes, but if you understand praying and understand the self-control battle, The Battle, entheogens become as safe as the garden in the end of the Bible; the Bible says so.  Authentic Jewish mystics emphasize fear, trembling, danger (of self-control instability), rightly.  But to the man who is humble *on this point*, not proud, having no hubris *on this point*, is safe because such man is not, when in danger, going to say “throw more egoic-control power at the Heimarmene-monster!”  He is too wise to provoke danger by brandishing his freewill weapon against the Heimarmene monster. 

I am a wise man; by definition, I already possess the fruit of the possibility branching tree; I already have Transcendent Knowledge, paid for by sacrificing my freewill child-thinking.  I have already fastened my child-self to the Tree to pay the Gods; I am hardly able to challenge and threaten the dominion of the Gods or Fate.  I am their no-free-will puppet, as far as this particular point, about the nature of personal control power in relation to my role as steersman (now I am a divinely approved steersman) steering among future possibility-branches, all but one of which are illusory, virtual-only possibilities.

Copyright (C) 2013, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

I am on a week-long Art High because a stag at the Tree of Knowledge confirmed my recognition from a year ago:

tree vs. snake means Possibilism vs. Eternalism (2 models of time and personal control).

This is the biggest breakthrough, because it is the most fundamental.

___________

Regarding my history, my first superpower, manifesting in 1988 at the peak of the Psychedelic 80s, didn’t involve religious myth..  It was the ability to freshly define ego transcendence in terms of personal control power operating within 4D spacetime, in contrast to Transpersonal Psychology & Integral Theory, which are missing this key piece at their core.  Ken Wilber’s writing about “myth” and “mythic” and western antiquity and Christianity is almost completely wrong.  Changes to Wilber’s history theory are forced by my revelations.  Per book Shame & Necessity (http://amazon.com/o/asin/0520256433), ancients were post-egoic, not pre-egoic — the most disastrous mistake Wilber could make.

My 2006 superpower is deciphering religious myth in terms of analogies to Cybernetics/Heimarmene/Entheogens.

Silenuus old tripper of Dionysus had to be helped — rather, placed — onto horse (passive awareness is carried by animalish egoic freewill steering thinking as time passes) after mushroom-wine symposium; Silenus has more than drunk or tripping, he has a temporary nervous system shutdown or weakening, paralysis.  One would feel like Silenus after a large quantity of mushrooms especially if re-dose.  Silenus before the mushroom-wine symposium already understands egodeath and the spectacular personal-control dynamics that occur in switching from freewill to no-free-will thinking.

———

My fingers barely work.

My magician abilities using freewill vs nofreewill double-meanings.  I raise the dead, heal the sick, and cast out demons, and cancel sins.  You too shall do these things, having no more sin or death, if you Believe in the snake rather than the tree.  Only clueless literalists believe in the tree, idol worshippers, enemies of God, destined for the eternal flames.  To understand the snake is also to understand meaning-shifting.  Snake is frozen worldline embedded in Rock universe.

We are all puppets of God, puppet kings put in place by God, therefore ignore the hierarchy of society (one puppet isn’t more honorable than the other), and have equality and justice instead.  Battle the heimarmene serpent monster, have victory not by your own power, switch from accursed freewill thinking (destined only for sacrifice), get victory wreath.

— Cybermonk

Muntzer is going round exuberantly preaching nofreewill.

To prevent children and undesirables from understanding nofreewill, we must be reverent and veil our language by double-meanings — one meaning implies childish freewill + literalist childish supernaturalism, the other meaning implies adult no-free-will + purely metaphor (for adults/initiates).  What is youngest age allowed in Eleusis initiation?

Do you want your child to know no-free-will and metaphor about it?

We now understand — with my Theory — *why* ancient Greece (Athens) not only explored the veiled mystery (of thought-source origination at the fountain behind our thinking in the cave of the mind), but also legislated that children are to be veiled/protected from knowledge of no-free-will.

I’m coming to grips with the magnitude of the ramifications of art that masters these metaphors — rather, this massive metaphor/analogy system.  I discovered the double-meaning principle like Mark 4:12, around November 11, 2001 (2 months after 9/11).

I have a better, complete feeling for what a closed system, with closure, metaphor about Cybernetics/Heimarmene/Entheogens was, throughout history.  I have a better feel for the ciphering fad of Alchemy, which took meaning-veiling and misdirection to the extreme, to the point of pointlessness. 

What will Sam Harris say?  I proved that his call for no-free-will and repudiating religion is (unrealized by Harris) a call for higher, esoteric religion and a call for doing away with exoteric religion, which I point out, the Bible *tries* to misdirect outsiders into literalism — that was fair and amusing back in the Roman empire when the entire culture was ingesting mushroom wine all the time, but that clever misleading turned deadly when the entheogen was removed (1500? 1675?) and everyone, practically, lost the key to meaning-flipping and so the culture at large got sucked into misleading, into literalist supernaturalism, into childish thinking and delusion. 

The intent of veiling is to unveil at age 13.  Failing to do that, the entire culture got sucked into the metaphor misleading trap, finally I figured out the systematic misleading (in 2001 and now, I now have a spectacular vantage point such as in art).  Veiling is opposite my philosophy, and the Bible seems to me to suggest that as Michael the Archangel, I am supposed to reveal no-free-will to everyone; all mysteries shall be revealed, even though that means I “kill” egoic children before their time (adolescence).  The Internet prevents — fitting ‘Revelation’ — any veiling from anyone.  I am the greatest hierophant of all time, in terms of the number of ego deaths I cause, because I efficiently explain egodeath to the entire world, in a way that cannot be veiled, cannot mislead people into freewill delusion and dangerous religious literalism that mystic-mode writing in the Bible tries to (only) temporarily imply.

— Michael Hoffman, December 2, 2013

Copyright (C) 2013 Michael S. Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved. Based on original research & idea development since 1985.

There are many freewill based systems that purport to provide transcendence.

My Theory is the no-free-will based system, that actually provides a specifiable, definite kind of transcendence: transcending (and retaining as a tool or vehicle (donkey)) freewill thinking and its concomitant autonomous kingship assumption.

False religion is anti-drug religion.

True religion is centered on Cybernetics, Heimarmene, and Entheogens.

— Michael Hoffman, December 2, 2013

Copyright (C) 2013 Michael S. Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved. Based on original research & idea development since 1985.

This is the biggest possible, most-fundamental breakthrough — the tree vs. snake ultra-condensed metaphor system.

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/photos/albums/1651450143

Photo might be upside-down when try to view.  You can download, view in Windows Photo Viewer, and spin right-side-up and zoom.