Egodeath Yahoo Group – Digest 117: 2012-10-25

Egodeath theory the crown jewel of the Psychedelic 80s


During 1990-1997 I experimented with expanding, presenting, and formatting the core Theory.

During 1999-2007 I extended the Theory to cover mythic mystic metaphor, and history of religion and entheogens. The 1988-97 writings have preliminary traces of that.

You could say broadly that the full Theory is a product of the 80s, or specifically that the core Theory is a product of the 80s.

The 1/88 system is the foundation for the entirety. The 85-87 Idea Development work is preliminary material that was built up into the 1/88 system.

— Cybermonk

>>During 1990-1997 I experimented with expanding, presenting, and formatting the core Theory.

Important; add: That period was largely a period of building of my library, and reading all relevant subjects — including Gnosis magazine, which I would actually utilize later, in the myth-deciphering phase.

I wasn’t powerful enough at metaphor yet to master the material in Gnosis magazine yet, until they stopped publishing new issues. The final issue came out around the time I began tackling, absorbing, and successfully interpreting Esotericism by applying my core Theory. Then we were left with Timothy White’s Shaman’s Drum magazine, for a few years, along with Erowid and Entheogen Review/Report, and TRP magazine — and alas the few issues of Mark Hoffman’s Entheos magazine. Then the center of gravity moved online more, such as podcasts.

Bear & Co publisher has had alot of action in the 21st Century, including the German entheogen book author. Perhaps there’s nothing more for me to get from other people’s books, magazines, journals, podcasts, discussion forums, writings, or movies. My heyday of scholarship (reading that benefitted me) was 1988-1996 for general relevant topics for the core Theory, and 1999-2007 for myth and religion.

Now I have too many cumbersome books, and do quite well enough reading online, to keep up. Now I keep up, instead of catching up. Strange, no longer needing to read piles of books, not needing to figure things out. A change of phase — indicated exactly, by the closing of “the Church of St.” Barnes & Noble. Now, I can keep up enough by efficient research online. My bookshelves are becoming as empty as when it all began, as in my photos of 1986, showing my handful of books.

“Give me back my wonder.
I’ve something more to give.
I guess it doesn’t matter.
There’s not much more to,
not much more to live.”

— Professor Loosecog, elucidator of control distortion

At the start of 1986, I fully expected, with calm enthusiasm, to just think for a moment, then think no more, and proceed to be rational and self-consistent, as I wrote in my blank book, expecting to fill a page or two. During 1/86-3/87, at all moments in this period, I expected immediately to stop metareflection forever, to be done with thinking, and merely enjoy doing the classwork and fitting-in the other intended activities around that.

I absolutely didn’t intend to or value or desire to continue thinking and produce an ongoing theory-framework, perpetually filling it in for the next years or decades, 1986-2012; I meant to translate ‘enlightenment’ ideas from spiritual self-help books into useful immediate non-dysfunctional (“non-egoic”) self-control, but otherwise, I had *no intention* of sustained thinking at all, much less sustaining thinking about religion or religious experiencing, or determinism, or psychedelics, or myth, or metaphor, or levels of control.

I could write a long list of things I never intended or had any interest in developing then or ever, that were in my future on the way to a new conceptual system. I had no intension of constructing a new conceptual system. I was strictly doing temporary momentary thinking; I intended to not think, to stop thinking; thinking was never a goal in 1986; it was a very temporary — like an hour-long or a weekday evening in January 1986, at most. Thinking continued to be something I was and felt *compelled* to do, only for one more, final hour — and this situation dragged on, puzzlingly, eventually through March 1987 and beyond (then in new form).

Around April 1987, I started feeling addicted to more and more breakthroughs. I pronounced myself finally done with all this unwanted thinking and indicated that by throwing away my blank books 1-5. I valued what I had figured out but never wanted to need to figure it out, wanted to just do it: be non-self-defeating, logically, be a rational, non-irrational self-controller.

All during 1986, I was simply trying to get the right idea now to be done now with thinking, with thinking about self-control, or “controlling my mind”, so that I could forever stop thinking, and focus attention on classwork, and enjoy ordinary life as I ideally ought to have been since forever, through immediately employing and applying a distinctly non-egoic, rational and straightforward mode of mental control.

Although the first, 1986 phase stretched across months, the intention at any time during that period was to immediately stop analysis, to not need more than an hour or two of analysis, and proceed to applying the already formed ideal of non-self-thwarting use of the mind, immediately and evermore into the future of all classwork focus and non-academic living. The period of 1986 was experienced as an extended delaying, never as a planned or welcomed period of idea development and analysis. The simple idea is obvious (so it seemed) and is not the kind of thing to which deep complex analysis applies.

This was a period of naive, simplistic, optimistic expectation, of immediate mental harmony resulting from keeping clear on the intention of being rational and operating on the mind keeping a distance, a stance. I would immediately adopt this distanced stance over my thinking, and immediately enjoy the benefits — no analysis is required.

Even when I borrowed the idea of Enlightenment and thought-observation during enlightenment, I took those ideas to refer simply to avoiding illogical irrationality that is the childish egoic mode. Simply see what’s going on — irrational non-owning of your control potential — and you will be able immediately to stop that. This spirit of simple immediate switching to a different mode of self-conduct was taught in the seminar and self-help books; that’s how I took it.

All during 1986, driven to write one more note, one more quick thought in my blank book, to complete and be done with such thinking, I envisioned a permanent enlightened rational state of mind and mental functioning, that was very near to hand, and could easily be accessed, with very little analysis. Now, since 1988, I don’t agree with any of those assumptions or premises.

Against much popular thinking, I concluded that there’s not such a state of permanent self-control harmony, enlightenment is not about producing such a state or mode of daily functioning, enlightenment is not easily accessed (or wasn’t at the time, without my 2006 summary article), and enlightenment involves a large amount of re-thinking (mental model transformation).

It was around the breakthrough period of April 1987 that I started forming a specialized use of language and explicitly specialized idea development techniques (phrases with shorthand acronyms), and for the first time thought of this effort as inherently being a project that requires a period of time. October 1985 through March 1987, I never thought of the idea development then as a project requiring development of ideas, over time.

Immediately in April 1987, this project — now recognized and accepted as a project, not necessarily of small size or with obvious objectives, with goals and questions that need explicit definition — was rapidly successful and giving daily immediate rush of discovery and insight. My father, who was influential to this activity now explicitly becoming a project, was dying then.

I became torn in a dilemma: were I to do as I intended, focusing on classwork, I would miss out on this immediately near-to-hand intense insights every few hours. I had to do classwork and had always fully intended to totally focus on it and enjoy doing it with non-egoic proper mental control secured, but I was also strongly compelled to think — both because that character of my personality had come forth (a strong tendency toward meta-reflection, self-analysis of my mind), and because I was sensing and getting immediate highly valuable, leading-edge insights.

I had transcended being motivated to do the classwork, and I was constantly faced with the decision: work on breakthrough metareflection now, or do mundane classwork now. I couldn’t refused the jackpot of profundity rushing into my mind. My father died. The semester ended. I rushed to run the race, to follow this bonanza of steady, increasing insights.

During Summer and Fall 1987 I wrote my estimate of my percentage complete toward defining and attaining the transcendent state of control, and those estimates turned out to be about right (but with a surprising profound revision of expectations upon completion), guessing 75% done, 80% done, then in 1/11/88, total breakthrough into a fundamentally new, different foundation of premises about the nature of personal control and time.

In 1988, a new person in a way very different than expected, it was still a challenge to focus, to control my thinking given the strange loop of control, and given my new project of writing up my theory, along with my usual pursuit of breakthrough in audio, and high expectations of lots of social time. I finally devised a weekly schedule grid, showing that I was starting to realize how I tried to do too many things each day. “Dreams that have shattered, may not have mattered; take another point of view. Doubts (“Thoughts”) may arise though, like chasing a rainbow — I can tell a thing or two.”

Classwork and self-management was now a strange struggle, a different kind of messiness than past years, perhaps with about the same amount of stress, hope, and regrets as ever, the whole time since starting university. What a long, strange, stressful, manic, tragic, *epic* time it was. And I turned my attention forward, to networked hypertext, to cyberculture, to posting and writing and reading in order to map my theory to existing scholarship.


Later I was tested as having top 1-5% percentile aptitudes in almost every area, which greatly amused me because I broke the premise of the aptitude testing specialists’ theory. They said I broke their model of matching aptitudes with careers and made sure to gather my input on improving their system. They advised me to make up my own course in life because no career could satisfy my breadth of aptitudes, omni-aptitudes, which are like hungers.

My uncle told me “In industry, we value smart people. But genius is not necessarily particularly useful.” I felt always in conflict, unsatisfied, because I am too interested in too many things, have too many needs that compete against each other. I am competing against myself, which is how it felt, since changing from the 1-dimensional tech school where my focus was helpfully narrowed, to the rich, expansive environment of the university.

My easy dream and simple absolutely confident expectation of self-conflict-free, non-irrational control of my mind, simply by remembering to apply such control, inspired by self-help around April 1985, and ignited by free-floating imagination available for use on October 27, 1985, never came to pass. I never got it, never enjoyed having it.

Instead, instead of perhaps that alchemist’s fool’s gold I gullibly sought, I was given, under intense productive pressure and enthusiastic manic idea development, a new, clear theory, centered around a kind of absolute non-control, our thoughts and actions pre-set and frozen, injected into our minds spread like veins in a marble block across time. I merely came away with wisdom, ready for communicating, an explicit, compact, efficient explanatory model of mental-model transformation. That is not what I wanted, expected, or tried to create.


Now I find peace of mind
Finally found a way of thinking

Tried the rest, found the best
Stormy day won’t find me sinking

What you’ve learned what you’ve earned
Ship of joy will stop you failing

Dreams unfold seek the gold
Gold that’s brighter than sunlight

Sail away see the day
Dawning on a new horizon

Gold’s insight shining bright
Brighter than the sun that’s rising

3000 sails on high are straining in the wind
A raging sea below, is this voyage coming to an end


I expected immediate rational, non-conflicted control of the mind, as quickly and easily as thinking that thought, as facile as a weekend self-help seminar. What I got instead was epic stress and the birth of the ultimate breakthrough theory of revelation and enlightenment, born through a period of struggle and failure. It’s not the enlightenment or payout I was striving for in 1986. And adding injury to insult, my father died along the way, during the first major turning point where I caught my stride and developed the model of Mental Construct Processing and the inability of personal control to reach across time to constrain the future self.

I didn’t end up with a feeling of personal control harmony, but rather, epic, productive conflict — a heroic survivor bringing one kind of victory, amidst tragic loss of the dream of posi-control. I gained a kind of transcendent mental harmony, but never got to attain and enjoy non-dysfunctional practical self-control or anything like the expected kind of transcendent control of the mind. Much of my effort was a long dragged-out failure, even while the highest kind of success was born forth.

It wasn’t the kind of process that I wanted or expected, and it wasn’t the kind of result I expected in 1986, when I thought “first I immediately need to figure out what enlightenment and observation of the mind is, in terms of non-irrational control of one’s mind, and then I’ll have such harmonious control of my mind and can immediately enjoy my life as I ought to have been so far.

Mine was a painful, melancholy, regret-filled, disappointing drama, while following manic optimism and rapid sequence of great successes in producing the ultimate, cosmic victory. What a bender of a life that was. It is painful in a unique way, to go back and remember the dramatic story: what it was like to be me during 1983-1989. God must think me really bored, to give me so much dramatic extremes in my life, in our life.

— Michael Hoffman, October 25, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

Lyrics: Bob Daisley

General Semantics was influential throughout the 20th Century. General semantics is a critical stance toward thinking and reacting to meanings, to become more sane and rational, and critical. It emphasizes the distinction between mental symbol and the referent of the symbol. It is mental hygiene.

General Semantics is related to Cognitive Psychology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, 20th Century American studies of Zen, self-help, Scientology, some Science Fiction. Hayakawa narrowed it to Communications. Insider Neil Postman wrote a chapter about it in his book Conscientious Objections.

Alfred Korzybski was its originator in the 1920s.

He asserted no-free-will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

(For authors of a Wikipedia article, click View History: Earliest.)

A missing link: the university course in General Semantics.

Around October 27, 1985, I was inspired to repair my irrationality around personal control.

Around January 3, 1986, I chose to enroll in a semi-elective university course in General Semantics. I don’t remember what the other options were, or the course description. I have about 2 sheets of paper with a small amount of personal writing about my objectives and self-concept, as part of this classwork. Our textbooks were Science & Sanity, and Language in Thought and Action. General Semantics provides training in taking a critical stance toward thinking and reacting to meanings, to become more sane and rational. It emphasizes the distinction between mental symbol and the referent of the symbol. It is mental hygiene. It influenced self-help during most of the 20th Century.

My theory of Mental Construct Processing, which became explicit around April 1987, was largely based on or influenced by General Semantics.

Recently, I thought that the self-development seminar and books I was given in 1985 had no university connection and that I imported this perspective into the university. In fact, there is more overlap and interconnections. This university course in General Semantics amplified the ideas I had just gotten outside the university. My ambitious project of completing my control of my mind and demonstrating this for all of humanity, was similar to self-development ideas from the seminar and from the General Semantics course.

I feel more integrated, well-adjusted, with greater community membership now, realizing that my Theory is a product of the university from within the university curriculum, not only from extracurricular learning. My theory of Mental Construct Processing is fully broad, not only limited to language or propositional sentences. Experiencing is in the form of mental constructs. This is at least as broad a view as Cognitive Science.


My Theory is a product of my culture, my supporters, my peers, my relatives. You produced it. I owe it back to society to deliver my Theory to them. You gave me the inputs, I turned the crank and ran the computations, and here is the result you requested: Transcendent Knowledge, including the core Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, and the extended peripheral Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion and Culture.

You gave me all resources and said to do something great. Here is the result you requested. It is the greatest breakthrough in the Modern era, in the history of the study of religion or higher knowledge. It is a compact theory with large ramifications for many fields — a theory as densely concentrated, packed, and potent as the atomic bomb or LSD or the integrated circuit. By its very nature, it can be considered controversial, as well as powerful: it reveals taboo knowledge. I put all effort into clearly defining the Theory, including ramifications and connections to existing ideas and knowledge.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

A top-level breakout of titles and coverage:

Transcendent Knowledge (aka The Egodeath Theory)
….The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (the Core theory)
……Self-Control Cybernetics
……Heimarmene; No-Free-Will; Pre-set Block-Universe Determinism
……Dissociation; Cognitive Effects of Psychedelics; the Loose Cognitive State
….The Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion & Culture (the peripheral theory)
……..The Entheogen Basis of Religion, Higher Thought, Philosophy, & Culture
……..Mythic, Mystic-State Metaphor
……..Ahistoricity of Jesus, apostles, and Church Fathers

See also my compact nutshell summary thread, with terms like The CyberHeimarmEntheogen theory.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

Stop calling the use of entheogens in antiquity “secret” — it is harming the entheogen-truth movement and it misrepresents the concept of ‘revealing’, ‘showing’, ‘delos/deloun’, ‘hierophant’, ‘epopsis’, ‘hidden’, and ‘secret’ in the entheogen-centered culture of antiquity. It is bad strategy and bad scholarship and a failure of higher thinking and an impediment to understanding.

Every time you write ‘secret’, you deny the central presence of entheogens in cultural history, and assist the evil, lying, phony, self-serving, malicious Prohibitionists. Whose side are you on? My Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion and Culture is the only genuine *alternative* to the Prohibitionist Lie.

The moderate, entheogen-diminishing, entheogen-denying, and entheogen-delegitimating views are collaborationist; to support those views is to collaborate with the evil, lying Prohibitionists. Those are largely pro-Prohibition views.

Anyone who wants effective strategy for providing an actual alternative to the Official View per our evil self-proclaimed “leaders” and “protectors”, must advocate my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion and Culture, not the status-quo friendly moderate entheogen theory of religion and culture, which allows only a minor, secret role for entheogens in antiquity.


The source of our control of our thinking is initially hidden, unperceived. Then during initiation, awareness splits off (detaches, unbinds) from thinking, and the origination of the mind’s control-thoughts is visible to the mind’s awareness, and is revealed and perceived and shown, and becomes perceptible and evident. This is the origin and real ultimate meaning of “That which is initially hidden during youth is revealed during initiation, leaving a mystery.”

The mystery that remains is, what is the source of our thinking? The source of our thinking is Controller X. The only thing we know about Controller X is that Controller X is the source of our thinking, most notably of our control-thoughts — we, as local control-agents, are not the source of our thoughts. We, as local control-agents, have no control of the source of our own thoughts.


— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

Poetic lyric analysis from a lyricist’s perspective in 1967:

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
[“dropped acid”, “tune in” , “drop out”]

Written/Composed by: Mickey Newbury, 1967
Version recorded 1968: The First Edition (Kenny Rogers)
Glen Campbell, electric guitar. Mike Deasy, acoustic guitar.

Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah What condition my condition was in

I woke up this morning with the sundown shining in
[woke up, awaken: altered-state revelation]
[morning: dropped acid 9 pm, awake through the night, still tripping during sunrise]
[sundown: altered sunrise]
[shining: white light flashes]

I found my mind in a brown paper bag within
[perceiving the mind unlike previously]

I tripped on a cloud and fell eight miles high
[tripped: acid, cognition stopped functioning as normal]
[cloud: raised awareness, floating disembodied]
[eight miles high: Byrds’ acid song]
[fell high: disorientation, alternations of moods such as ecstacy and profound fear regarding near-future control of thinking]

I tore my mind on a jagged sky
[tore: tear, schiz-, schizoid break, cognitive dis-integration, loose cognition]
[sky: elevated awareness separated out from the usual embeddedness in cognition]

> I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

[self-assessment implies self-dissociation]

Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah what condition my condition was in

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
[self-dissociation: I != my soul]
[deep dark hole: the mystery of the source of our thoughts. I disappeared upon perceiving that there is a imperceptible mysterious source of my thoughts]

I watched myself crawling out as I was crawling in
[dis-integration of the mental construct of the self: I != myself; awareness, cognition, and the sense of personal identity all separate-out from each other]

I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind
[uptight: numinous terror, inexorable attraction to a fatal idea]

I saw so much I broke my mind
[heightened, dis-enmeshed awareness, that causes the mind’s ordinary-state functioning to be perceived as erroneous and therefore not function effectively since the illusion of personal control-power is disrupted and seen through]

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah what condition my condition was in

Someone painted APRIL FOOL in big black letters on a DEAD END sign
[ordinary-state mental functioning is foolish illusion regarding personal identity and self-control controlling the mind, as revealed by loose cognition; the illusion of being an autonomous person wielding self-control and controlling one’s mind is a temporary, ultimately unstable dead end that’s contingent on not being shown the loose cognitive perspective]

I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
[left the road: we are limited to a pre-set path, and the ego-illusion is imagined as being separate, not stuck to such a rail]
[blew out my mind: blew my mind, blow my mind: destroy the old mental structures of personal separate autonomous identity and control-agency power. blew out my brains; exposure to loose cognition is a kind of killing myself]

Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare
[outside the social conventional constructions of thought]
[I have no personal structure to fall back on, my personal structure is gone and unavailable and is not reliably present as it normally is]

Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
[disappearance of the sense of orientation in space]
[Eight miles straight: a twist on eight miles high. straight vs. high]

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
I said I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah

Analysis of lyricist Mickey Newbury’s meaning in 1967 by Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, October 26, 2012

Consider the different associations of these variants of the “crown jewel” statement. Characterizing “What field or movement or period in the history of thought did the Egodeath theory come from?” gets into what I call Domain Dynamics.

There are surprising observations here about where the Egodeath theory, crystallized at the start of 1988, came from and did not come from. You would guess wrong about the origins of the core Theory, compared to the historical facts of my mental, intellectual life of 1985 through 1989.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Psychedelic 80s.

That’s somewhat true, for the core theory, which started 1985, crystallized in January 1988, and was adequately expressed during August 1988-February 1989. During the heated heyday of initially developing the core theory, I was a complete outsider to psychedelic writings. (The Theory was uploaded in condensed summary at the start of the Web at the beginning of 1997, after a period of deliberately expansive reading 1988-1996.)

Regarding the later, peripheral extension added around the core theory, it isn’t quite right to say that the Maximal Entheogen Theory was a product of the 80s: the Maximal Entheogen Theory (of myth, mystic-state metaphor, ahistoricity) was mainly a product of research and idea-development 1999-2007, based on the core that came from the 80s.

In 1999 I got off to a good start, when I began reading about entheogen history. At the late date of 1999, I began for the first time, trying to see whether anything had ever been written proposing psychedelics were used before the 20th Century.

First I found (via online card-catalog Search within the library, on ‘Christianity AND mushroom’), the rebuttal to John Allegro’s Mushroom book, and Clark Heinrich’s 1st edition of his excellent book, and reading the 3 issues of Entheos magazine (must-have) as they came out. In the 90s I read MAPS journal — which was empty-headed regarding entheogen history, as I recall.

The 1960s “psychedelics” authors epically failed to recognize entheogen history, massively blowing the opportunity to legitimate psychedelics; they were committed to a losing and totally incorrect story, of the novelty of psychedelics. The Huxleyesque story was that Indians didn’t use peyote before 1890, and then only out of pathetic ridiculous downtrodden desperation.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the 2nd half of the Psychedelic 80s.

That’s technically accurate (say 1985-1989) but a meaningless arbitrary “period”.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Psychedelic 60s-90s.

I assert and affirm that unified perspective on the 1963-1997 era. The period from the Beatles’ acid initiation in December 1963 to my 1997 uploading of the condensed summary of the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence to the Principia Cybernetica site on the newly formed World-Wide Web, is usefully and insightfully considered as a single uniform cultural era.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Psychedelic 60s.

There’s a little truth to that. It is evident from psychedelic lyrics from the 1960s that some people were perceiving the pre-set frozen block universe and no-free-will around 1967. I “merely” systematized what some Rock initiates saw from the 1960s onward (“Help!”, “Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come”) through Rush in 1975 (“No One at the Bridge”), Bob Daisley in 1981 (Diary of a Madman), and Metallica in 1985 (Ride the Lightning).

It was easy to be in contact with the recent 1960s culture, in 1986-1988, the key years for forming the Egodeath theory (or more specifically, The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence; or the 1987 working label “Transcendent Thinking”).

I could list many ways in which I had direct contact with people and places from the Psychedelic 60s; as just one example, my friends/classmates/roommates and I met Timothy Leary at his presentation at my university, and I had the high-wattage regional Rock station announce this the day before on the airwaves. 1987 was within reach of 1967 — 20 years separation; a single generation. Now, 2012 is separated further from 1967, separated by 45 years: over twice as long of a gap; 1967 is now more than 2 generations in the past.

When I was creating the main part of the Egodeath theory, in 1987, 1967 was actively present and near, influential and readily available for direct contact if sought out. A few minutes after I thought of the Crystalline Ground of Being idea, a Deadhead-gang friend/classmate walked by the computer lab window-wall and I went out and chatted with him. 1967 was actively present in the atmosphere in 1987, especially if you were tuned into that signal.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Postmodern 90s.

No, I was against empty superficial style, against relativism, as much as I was against paranormal and non-visualizable interpretation of quantum mechanics. Relativism and exaggerated constructionism were movements in exactly the opposite direction of my successful explanatory, clarifying effort and activity.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Cyberpunk late 80s-early 90s.

There’s some truth to that, but really you’d need to emphasize ‘cyber’ as Kubernetes (control theory) more than Online. Techno-punk is fair, except that I was only slightly identified with and motivated by the passing style of Reality Hacker/Mondo 2000/bOING bOING/Crash Collusion zine culture. And I was not at all aware of cyberpunk until 1988.

Before January 1988, my textual intellectual world consisted only of General Education courses, STEM textbooks, and a tiny handful of books such as Wilber and Watts and a few self-help books. My world was far more a world of Rock albums than texts. The movie, How Michael Hoffman Initially Formed the Egodeath Theory, has a rich Rock soundtrack, and a surprisingly light, narrow, and limited reading list, with no psychedelics reading or cyberpunk reading whatsoever and not the slightest thought of that possibility.

I didn’t read or know about anything like the Journal of Psychedelics or suchlike, until I suddenly sought them out for the first time in early 1988, *after* I had the block-universe determinism breakthrough. The Theory is a product influenced by 60s culture but *not*, until after the breakthrough in 1988, by reading writings about entheogens.

It is particularly interesting that until after my start-of-1988 breakthrough, I had never read anything at all about psychedelics, and I was not aware that anything had been written about psychedelics. It never occurred to me to check and seek out what was written on that subject.

I was not a scholar or intellectual or literature researcher at all until after the 1988 breakthrough, when I needed to link my finished core Theory to all existing previous scholarly writings. I had read a few books that were given me, but I had no concept of seeking out nonfiction writing. I was not a reader, except of textbooks, as assigned — even though I was tested as having top-percentile reading comprehension, because I read children’s literature voraciously in grade school.

Before 1988, I had read Diary of a Madman lyrics, but lightly, without comprehending them as acid-oriented.

In no way was the core Theory a product of reading the extant writings, to 1987, about psychedelics. I was entirely unaware of writings about psychedelics, didn’t give any thought to the possibility of such reading, until after working intensively for two full years, producing the core theory. Then I hastened to determine what had been written before me, although it was already self-evident to me that nothing equivalent to my Theory had ever been published: if it had, we wouldn’t be in the state of ignorance and confusion we were in 1985.

Neither had I read anything at all on the subject of Determinism and Free Will, before my breakthrough. The Way of Zen doesn’t even mention free will and determinism – an immediate strong criticism I had of that book when I cracked the puzzle of how to make sense of its points around December 1987.

By the time of the breakthrough at the start of 1988, I hadn’t read any nonfiction subjects except for a few books on self-help, Wilber, and Way of Zen, and General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa).

Another massive non-influence is television. I have almost never watched television. People gave me televisions and I never turned them on except as a computer monitor.

As far as influences, the Egodeath theory came from Rock culture (the music and social and band community, *not* reading any writings) and from a small but high-quality set of self-help and spiritual self-help books, and the two main General Semantics books, along with conversations with my father about human potential and transactional psychology during the early 80s.

Check my 1986-1987 room photos showing my few books — including Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind, which I read a little of, probably around 1985-86: that asserts determinism, though I think I didn’t see that topic in his book until 1988.


Consider the proposal:

The Egodeath theory is the crown jewel of the Neopsychedelics movement of 1995-2010.

I largely disagree. It would be better to say that my Maximal Entheogen Theory was that. By 2003, my total Theory was too encompassing to be passably characterized as a product of a single movement and era. I had hit my full-speed stride by the start of that era, so I was able to take the books and periodicals of that period to the full extreme shortly after they came out, because of the power of my Core theory.

Rather, I was able to rapidly *extend* my already-mature core theory, to almost immediately *incorporate* a customized extreme version of these new-generation entheogens writings, as fast as I could read and post about writings about ahistoricity, myth, and entheogens, 1999-2007.


The Theory was more a product of classwork in STEM, combined with self-help including General Semantics. Not Cognitive Science either: surprisingly, you cannot say that the core Theory was historically a product of Cognitive Science. I didn’t discover and seek out writings about Cognitive Science until 1989, when I started to map my existing Theory to all other relevant fields.

Cognitive Science as such was not present in my thinking until after the Theory was formed. My Mental Construct Processing theory came from, and was a product of, the following fields of thinking and reading: self-help, spiritual self-help, and General Semantics — together with introspection about mental control in daily activity-coordination decision-making, and during classwork with STEM textbooks(study and problem-working — basically, various types of math problems).

I was surprised, around 2009, to see someone characterize my Egodeath theory as heavily based on computer metaphors — but then, it’s routine for people to mischaracterize my work in various fields, because they don’t comprehend the compasse of it. “The Egodeath theory is merely a (“warmed-over”) repeat of Joseph Campbell”, someone wrote — showing merely their great ignorance, their lack of reading, my theory.

If you pigeonhole my Theory as a repeat of Kant, Wilber, Leary, etc., it just shows your own ignorance and lack of reading my theory and lack of reading a variety of relevant topics. My theory is a new combination, of my customized new versions of, existing fields — it is certainly not merely any single existing field, repeated unchanged. It is my, superior version of the entheogen field, combined with my, superior version of the ahistoricity field, with a customized version of self-control ideas, customized version of determinism.

For example, I’m the only one to connect determinism across all the fields where it has resided, and provide a modified synthesis that is tantamount to tracing the history of the idea of no-free-will across all the relevant fields — not, like other writers, limiting myself to Reformed Theology, or Physics, or modern philosophy of metaphysics, or ancient Greek literature, or ancient Indian literature (related: Balsekar), or Cognitive Philosophy (as in The Mind’s I compilation).

Campbell doesn’t highlight self-control cybernetics, Heimarmene/no-free-will, or entheogens/ the dissociative state/ loose cognition; he wrongly thinks myth is about life-drama progression in the ordinary state of consciousness, with the dream-state serving to provide the alternative state.

“The Egodeath theory is mainly, too much, the computer model of the mind”, someone wrote. Such far-off-base characterizations show merely what such critics are attuned to. They come with a certain perspective, they selectively choose to read my passages that resonate with that perspective, and then accuse *me* of only writing from that limited perspective, a limited view which *they* in fact brought.

The Theory discovered in January 1988 was based perhaps on Cognitive Psychology (from General Semantics and self-help), not on Cognitive Science.

_________________________

Actually, the Egodeath theory was explicitly started 1986 & 1987, and was influenced by various fields then, even though I wasn’t, for the most part, a pro-active scholar yet. My father told me I should focus on Ken Wilber because Wilber synthesized many fields for me — that’s how I primarily think of Wilber.

Wilber provides some useful ideas that are usefully abstracted from his effort of combining “Western developmental psychology” with “Eastern spirituality”. (Later, in the Postmodern 90s, Wilber became obsessed with justifying spirituality to academic postmodernists.)

Ken Wilber also provides some dead-wrong, misleading ideas about psychospiritual cultural evolution since “mythic-consciousness” Antiquity. And he opens his first book by censoring Nitrous Oxide from William James’ passage: a telling bad start which gives a clue to the main thing wrong about Wilber’s theory: it fails to be what any good, true, relevant, helpful, correct theory of religion must be, entheogen-centered.

Alan Watts appreciated psychedelics, so he was somewhat closer to truth than Ken Wilber, closer to discovering the historical entheogen basis of religion, but he suffered from the amazing 1960s blindness to the history of entheogens, committing the grand 1960s fallacy and massive strategic misstep, of assuming that “psychedelics” are new. The Professor Neil Peart in 1976 had clear vision and was absolutely correct, having the obstructionist modern cultural ruler-priests acknowledge “Yes we know, it’s nothing new. We have no need for ancient ways.”

The tangible initial work of hammering out the Egodeath theory in the first place is recorded in the lost blank books 1-5, which were written October 1985-March 1987, and in the October 1986 overflow class notes, and then in the binder notebooks of April 1987-January 1988 and beyond. Some photos are in the Egodeath Yahoo discussion group Photos area. I wish to make these available online — for one thing, this would help me to tighten up the Theory across time, integrating the semi-forgotten good ideas, perspectives, and emphases from 1986-1987 into the later ideas.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

Also influential or at least useful for my early project, was my second-favorite course: Control Systems. The core Theory, the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, was partly a product of having taken a Control Systems course. That’s another way, besides General Semantics, in which you could say that the Theory was a product of the university curriculum, not some completely alien, strange, foreign importation.

The Theory certainly came *from me*, from my character, from my independent highly motivated idea-development 10/85-1/88, but I was able to employ the university courses toward that private, distinctive goal and that developing style of mine, and I was helped by the collegiate Rock culture and community, and college culture at the same time as using and being influenced by the course curriculum. To some extent — as much as I chose — other public and private universities also were involved as the context I drew from, 1986-1987.

Godel, Escher, Bach was not a source for the core Theory. In late 1987, just before the breakthrough, my roommate (music-department grad-student, assistant instructor) told me briefly about Hofstadter’s GEB book, but I don’t remember whether the conversation was about levels of control, or music, or another topic from the book. I got that book later, in 1988, *after* the breakthrough.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

In November 2011, I determined that my university library in 1985-1989 had Robert Graves’ books, which clearly asserted the full essence of the entheogen theory of religion and of Greek myth, including in his decades-ahead-of-the-pack 1956 book.

Graves-Wasson enth theory 1960, Hall 1925, S. 1845
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5495

Had I somehow in 1988 found out about Robert Graves’ books sitting in my library, with 83 pages about the Entheogen solution to interpreting religious myth in 4 books, one can imagine that I would’ve developed my Phase 2, extension theory, about myth, metaphor, and entheogen history (and perhaps ahistoricity while we’re at it), immediately in the couple months after having formed the core Theory, as an immediate fallout.

I definitely was trying to figure out which entheogen is the bitter sweet scrolls eaten in Revelation, by 1988. But I didn’t know anything in 1988 about Greco-Roman myth and religion; I only knew that the New Testament had lots of metaphors that I believed were informed by entheogens. In 1988, when I started expansive reading in order to communicate my discovery to the extant intellectual world, I didn’t catch the kind of thread Graves wrote about in 1956 — it was at least 11 years later, around 1999, that I picked up that thread, such as through Clark Heinrich and Entheos (Carl Ruck, Mark Hoffman).

For 11 years I read many subjects, but lacked any knowledge of entheogen history — so there is an unfortunate gap of 14 years, between my core Theory breakthrough of January 11, 1988, and my mythic metaphor breakthrough of November 12, 2001. During that gap, instead of doing breakthrough extension work in entheogen history, I was screwing around wasting time reading postmodernism and Ken Wilber trying to sell spirituality against postmodernism, wasting time in disposable cyberculture reading, semi-wasting time reading fundamentalist Dave Hunt on Christianity — he’s an author who wrote against Catholicism and yet he never heard of Reformed Theology!

I enjoyed my Fall 1984 class about ancient history, but felt bad because due to some horribly irrational character defect or mental malfunction, I couldn’t pull together the motivation or self-control discipline to take up pen and write some end-of-semester essay, around Thanksgiving. I don’t remember covering myth in that class.

At least I got some closure: although I did initial research using the Entheogen Chrestomathy online (and I have a printed copy of it), that Chrestomathy was insufficient and only indicated that Robert Graves was enormously overlooked and important. My estimate of the import of Graves’ scattered writings on entheogens in myth continued to escalate, a year ago. It was finally in my 1988 university library that, in 2011, I did a full survey and inventory of Graves’ writings as early as 1956; he cracked the puzzle of Western entheogen history wide open in 1956.

Better late than never, for me to finally pull those books from my library’s shelf: books that I could’ve checked out immediately after my 1988 breakthrough, when I was already trying to solve the problem of identifying the entheogen of Revelation, but waited 11 years before typing “Christianity AND mushroom” into a good card catalog… assuming I could find an electronic search machine in 1988, such as dial-up to the U. C. Berkeley online card catalog which I was doing in 1989. The leading-edge scholar became more powerful by 1999, than in 1988, thanks to online information technology.

Wasson and Allegro were distractions from that breakthrough, and Graves himself didn’t want to be associated with any more than that scattered but certainly breakthrough topic, lest it reduce his sales.

I was that close to near-simultaneously discovering the core Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in 1988 and then immediately discovering and formulating the peripheral Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion. Somehow the postmodern 90s got in the way.

I read my King James bible from my grandfather in my June 1986-May 1987 dorm room asking “How is it that the bitter sweet scrolls in Revelation are definitely equivalent to tabs of acid, although there were no tabs of acid yet, when it was written?” I hadn’t read about Amanita yet, or heard of Allegro or Wasson. But ever since before my 1988 breakthrough, long before I focused on entheogen history starting 1999, in 1986-1987 it was clear to me that the New Testament in some way confirms my focus at the time on psychedelics and self-control enlightenment.

In 1988 I would have loved to walk across the street to the library to read Robert Graves about mushrooms as the key to the riddle of Greek myth and religious experiencing. At last I did cross that street and read those books, in November 2011.

Thus my two massive breakthroughs were years apart instead of in the same month as they could’ve been: Cybernetics/Determinism/Dissociation in 1988, and Myth/Metaphor/Entheogen History in 2001. Only in 2011 did I recognize Robert Graves as a missing link that had been in my 1988 library.

Graves suppressed himself to accommodate people’s preconceptions, and so we had to wait some 13 extra years for me to make the peripheral breakthrough. My peripheral breakthrough was initially in 1999 motivated by the project of confirming my core Theory against the New Testament, and then also against Greco-Roman myth and mystery-religion.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

Clarification of the last paragraph of the previous posting:

In 1999, I started my focused research toward the project of confirming my 1988 core Theory against the New Testament. That research led to the 2001 peripheral breakthrough: the New Testament is a double-meaning, meaning-flipping humorous play on determinism and entheogens and is purely metaphorical, not literal in any way.

That breakthrough solution to the riddle of the meaning of the New Testament then immediately enabled solving Greco-Roman myth and mystery-religion as fast as I could read, think a little, and write up the deciphering — a rich vein or jackpot that played out continuously from 2001 through 2007, with follow-up completion in Fall 2011, including the November 21, 2011 breakthrough of deciphering the rap’d-by-god metaphor and andro-gyne.

The 1999-2001 research proceeded quickly. To narrow the starting date, see my posts in Yahoo Gnosticism group or Mindspace since 1996 before that, or in Jesus Mysteries Yahoo group. I think it was early 1999, to November 2001: less than 3 years of work. That suggests that hypothetically in 1988 after my core Theory breakthrough, I could’ve done that research next, around 1990. But, fewer materials were available in 1990 than 2000. The delay made it easier to make the mythic-metaphor breakthrough.

— Michael Hoffman, October 26, 2012

Conceptualizing what ‘scientific’ must mean in the field of explaining altered-state revelation. Also see my previous writings about ‘scientific’.

Below are preliminary strategic considerations, and how to clear away preconceptions that hinder and are unhelpful and irrelevant. First, as a preliminary, here is the attitude or stance that best serves to immediately produce the true, relevant definition of what ‘scientific’ must mean in the field of explaining the insights and experience of altered-state revelation.


What are my own criteria (positive and negative) for a theory of altered-state revelation to be ‘scientific’? You can immediately show my 10 theories of altered-state revelation, and I can assess them confidently on which aspects are scientific and why. Extract my criteria I use. What criteria is my judgment based on, in fact? Deduce it; reverse-engineer (rather than ahead-of-time preconception) what ‘scientific’ means in the theory of altered-state revelation.

Given that my Egodeath theory (Transcendent Knowledge; the core Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, and the peripheral Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion) are true and are scientific by definition, and given that this true and scientific theory could only have been reached by my thinking-style, which is definitive of ‘scientific theoretical thinking’ in this field, back-deduce from these facts, what therefore constitutes ‘scientific theoretical thinking’ in this field.

What is Michael Hoffman’s thinking style? By definition, that thinking style defines what ‘scientific theoretical thinking’ must mean, in this field. We instantly thus do away with irrelevancies such as “‘scientific’ means mathematically based”. Just like at the end of the Wasson article I pushed it all aside and said “enough of these ridiculous irrelevant arguments and positions: it doesn’t matter what the ignoramuses and deniers think or thought about entheogen history.


Let us quit wasting time with frivolous puerile irrelevancies, and cut straight to the real discussions, cut straight to making sense of the facts of entheogen history, organizing and explaining rightly and coherently how these facts fit together. My must have no patience for nonsense, irrelevancy, and b.s., but commit all our effort to sensible relevant central direct helpful mature activity in theorizing about entheogen history. Don’t waste a second unprofitably arguing with people whose thinking is on the wrong track.

The only reason I wasted my time writing the Wasson article is to set the record straight, in order to clear the Allegro roadblock, which Robert Price’s review of Acharya’s book exemplified. Price wrote that Allegro is wrong about Amanita in Christian origins, as Wasson showed. Price and many others used Wasson as a main tool to reject Amanita in Christian history. Wasson’s book thus was the main roadblock to truth, that Christianity and religion is based first and foremost on psychoactive plants.

To enable people to come to this true view, I was forced to go back and waste my time showing that this supposed roadblock, Wasson, had absolutely no legs to stand on. I had to lay out and extract exactly what Wasson asserts, and show that by all possible measures, Wasson’s view fails in every way, totally. He is self-contradictory, false, malicious, uses arguments by authority, is evasive in his writing style, is unhelpful, is incomplete, commits the exact same ludicrous baseless argument methods as his book condemns Eliade for.

My article was an exercise in showing every way in which Wasson was completely wrong by every standard. He was only right in saying (which he did too vaguely) that at least some religion was based on some use of psychoactives. Everything else he stated on the subject was wrong, misleading, blocked research for decades, harmed the field, was self-contradictory, was vague, was incoherent, was evasive, and so on.

Furthermore, that Wasson was *not* the first to write about Amanita in entheogen history, was *not* the first to draw the connection between the trees of Eden and the Amanita (his position is malicious and theft and garbled in various ways here, per Kettle Logic: “Rolfe 1925 connected the trees of Eden and Amanita. He was wrong; his was a naive misinterpretation. And, I am the first to discover (around 1968) a connection between the trees of Eden and Amanita.” That’s literally Wasson’s position. It’s gibberish; it’s not even a coherent, consistent, definable position.

And it was Robert Graves (long after Helena Blavatsky 1877, who was long after Eusebe Salverte 1846) who figured out the mushroom explanation of Greek myth in 1956 and who told this to Wasson.


Wasson’s sort of arguments and position(s) are not, in themselves, worth any time to learn or refute. We must never waste time refuting stupid, wrong ideas of what it means for a theory of altered-state revelation to be ‘scientific’. Do so would be as unprofitable, and would delay and avoid progress, as much as if we were to waste time paying any attention to Wasson’s mostly stupid views and incoherent pile of often-contradictory assertions. Sometimes, in extreme cases like Price’s typical use of Wasson to block Allegro’s insight, it *is* worth our time to set things straight regarding a clueless person’s assertions.

In most cases, we make the most progress toward truth and explanatory power and explanatory coherence, by putting all our attention on ideas that have merit, rather than wasting time refuting ideas that don’t have merit. Say, for every unit of time we spent disproving that ‘scientific’ means ‘physical’ or ‘mathematical’ or ‘ordinary-state based’, we must spend 10 units of time quickly and efficiently constructing a relevant and sensibly scientific model of altered-state revelation, which must be non-physical (that is, a cognitive-based model), non-mathematical (that is, an experiential-phenomenological model), and altered-state-based (i.e. multistate science per Tart).

A truly scientific theory of altered-state revelation must be cognitive-based, experiential-phenomenological, and altered-state-based like Ken Wilber’s idea of scientific observation conducted in the mystic state to observe mystic phenomena. Obviously, a reasonable person (that is, me) begins with the appropriate axioms and principles for the field, so as to make a scientific approach in that field. From that successful theory that results, we can deduce what the definition of ‘scientific’ was. This attitude/strategy is similar to the transition from an early, false theory of what Science is, to the later, truer theory of what Science is.

First, philosophers of science held an a-priori notion of what ‘scientific’ is, or ‘the scientific method’. But then, historians of *actual* science and the thinking-development in the minds of actual scientists, revealed that *actual* science and *actual* scientists failed to meet the philosophers’ definitions of what science must be, and of what the scientific method is. We knew something was false, when we compared the theory of ‘science’ to actual ‘science’, and the two were different — when actual science turned out to not be ‘science’ according to the abstract, theoretical definition of ‘science’.

They were forced to throw away their now-obviously false definition of ‘science’, when it was revealed that their definition failed to match the actual activity, practice, or thinking-style of science as revealed by research in the history of science. Per Feyerabend, ‘science’ must be defined as what scientists have in fact done, historically, not what an a-priori theory of science declares that people must do in order to be scientific in their approach.

I have here completely cleared away at one blow, all the stupid, nonsensical, time-wasting, irrelevant, harmful, way-blocking conceptions of what it means for a theory of altered-state revelation to be ‘scientific’. All conceptions of ‘scientific’ besides mine, in this field, are false and irrelevant. What, then, *is* ‘scientific’ in this field, which is to say, what is my thinking style in this field? What are my own criteria for what I agree is a ‘scientific’ theory of altered-state revelation? My critical audience consists of one person: myself. Forget everyone else; they are all hopelessly confused. I am the only person who is not confused.

Paying no attention to the confused and irrelevant thinking held by others, what have I convinced myself constitutes being ‘scientific’ in this field? What conception of the notion ‘scientific’ is *relevant* to this field? Don’t let other fields define this, or other, confused people’s philosophies in any way set the criteria here. Define ‘scientific’ in a truly independent, field-driven, field-specific way. Know the modern-era origin and history of science, and the history of the philosophy science, but isolate and differentiate that from this field.

The right and true, efficient and effective and relevant approach, is for me to take the stance of authority and reporter: I am *reporting* to you (or to myself) what ‘scientific’ evidently proved to mean, in this field. ‘Scientific’ thinking here by definition, is defined by, “That manner of thinking which led Michael Hoffman to discover and formulate the Egodeath theory” (particularly the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, including the crystalline ground of being, and its non-control ramifications, as of January 11, 1988).

In practice, then, ‘scientific’ here is deduced from my notes of October 1986, and April 1987-January 1988; whatever the rules and thinking we find there, those rules by definition are definitive of — they produce the true, correct definition of — ‘scientific’ in this field. I am scientific — I mean that in a definitive way. Whatever I was (in my thinking style) is, by definition, the definer of what ‘scientific’ means in this field. I am Science, embodied, as far as this field is concerned.

To ask “What does it mean truly to be ‘scientific’ in the field of altered-state revelation?” is, by de facto definition, to ask “How did Michael Hoffman figure out the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence 1985-1988?” When you deduce my thinking-style of 1985-1988, you thus then possess the definition of what it in fact means to be ‘scientific’ in the field of altered-state revelation.

It is a given: The Egodeath theory was figured out by a logical Engineering student working on the problem of obtaining and securing the expected full rational control of his mind by applying STEM-type thinking (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and by rejecting fuzzy, paranormal, vague thinking.

Given as fact that I (by definition) am a scientist, and used science to figure out the Egodeath theory, we must reject irrelevant a-priority notions of what constitutes ‘science’, and we must instead follow as definitive of ‘science’, what Michael Hoffman in fact did, in terms of thinking style and thinking process, to successfully produce the Theory and self-correct his initial preconceptions, expectation, and incomplete thinking of 1985 by 1988.

Is the Egodeath theory scientific? Yes. What does it mean for such a theory to be ‘scientific’? By definition, in the field of explaining altered-state revelation, to be ‘scientific’ means to reason and analyze in the manner in which Michael Hoffman reasoned and analyzed 1985-1988. This is a powerful approach, an empirical approach to studying how science is actually done in the real world, because this approach instantly avoids all time-wasting, dead-end, a-priori notions and irrelevant and unjustified definitions of what ‘scientific’ must be taken to mean or amount to.

This is the fast and effective way to formulate the true and relevant definition of what it means to be ‘scientific’ in this field: simply cut straight to characterizing my own thinking-manner 1985-1988, and you immediately have the true and fully relevant definition of what ‘scientific’ has to mean in this field, wasting no time on confused irrelevancies such as math, formal propositional logic, or the unhelpful false dogma of Popperian predictionism (“if it’s not falsifiable per my conception of falsifiability, or if it doesn’t predict according to my conception of prediction, it’s not science.”)


A “scientific” “theory” of “altered-state revelation”. Expand each term.

What is it truly appropriate for ‘scientific’ to mean, regarding a proper theory of altered-state revelation?

What is it truly appropriate for ‘theory’ to mean, with an appropriately scientific explanation of altered-state revelation?

What is it truly appropriate for ‘altered-state revelation’ to mean, as needs to be covered by a truly scientific theory?

Given: I am the authority; I have read Philosophy of Science, and have read Theology and theory of religion, and have read about the altered state, holy spirit, mystic-state enlightenment, and mystery-religion revelation, what definitions satisfy my own sensibility and judgment?

Given: the judge of correctness and adequacy is myself.

Given: terms have a cluster of associations. No single definition or defined position, in the books on philosophy of science, is adequate. To be scientific cannot be narrowed to “the use of mathematical proof to test the meaning of propositions regarding objective material physics”. Given: existing definitions of ‘science’ are arbitrary, reductionist, limited, puerile, immature, unsophisticated. Given that I am the person who must use my own wise, relevantly informed good judgment, authoritative judgment.

I am the definer of these terms; my declaration, as the authority, is definitive. What do I reveal and proclaim ‘scientific’ to consist of, in this field? How ought we best understand the term ‘scientific’ in the context of explaining altered-state loose cognitive control seizure and its history?

Ken Wilber’s book Eye to Eye discusses appropriate aspects of being scientific in the field of higher mental development. Ken Wilber’s theory of mystic enlightenment is limited and incorrect in some ways, but overall his approach could perhaps be called scientific, though some of his hypotheses are incorrect. A scientific theory or hypothesis or conceptual system can be incorrect, or partly incorrect. ‘Scientific’ doesn’t mean true, or proven. A scientific theory can be false.

Given: a theory represents reality more or less accurately. A better theory represents and explains reality more accurately. A theory should be true and coherent and have maximum explanatory power, using the minimum essential principles. Reality exists distinct from theories. It is possible to improve theories to make them closer to reality. I reject extremist social constructivism or relativism. I have a can-do, engineering-styled mentality: we can fix our theory to make it better and more accurate at representing reality – how things really are.

In some respects, we can and should leverage a naive view, that we can know reality and figure it out and know that we are correct; we can know that a theory matches reality; we can judge whether one theory or the other in fact matches reality better. Gleeful epistemological defeatism helps us by defining the opposite of this useful, powerful view. The valuable and true approach, that has merit, is, by definition, the opposite of epistemological defeatism and extremist social constructivism. Study the latter, to succeed at the former.

Reality can be visualized, comprehended, and explained. We can do it. We can succeed at figuring out reality. Forget math; this attitude is a big definitive part of what it truly means to be ‘scientific’. We also must define, from the point of view of scientific Egodeath theory, what ‘unscientific’ means here. What is the difference between an unscientific Egodeath theory, and a scientific Egodeath theory?

Bracket-aside all existing notions in the philosophy of science and in the books that analyze pseudo-science. Take an emancipated, existentially responsible and autonomous authoritative stance: Given that I am permitted to declare and proclaim definitively the truth on the matter, in sovereign fashion, of what ‘scientific’ means in this field.

‘Scientific’ here in fact truly means __. So I rightly declare; this is unassailable, as a declaration and finding that is guaranteed to stand the test of time and cannot be overthrown.

‘Theory’ here in fact truly means __.

‘Altered-state revelation’ here in fact truly means __.

By definition, my thinking-style is definitive of what ‘scientific’ means in this field. By definition, the Michael Hoffman manner of thinking *is* and constitutes by paradigmatic example and mold, what it means to be scientific in this field. Thus we have the useful alternative vector to answer the question of defining ‘scientific’ here: simply analyze what is and is not Michael Hoffman’s style of thinking in this field. My thinking style is exemplary of what’s scientific in this field. What is my thinking style in this field? What is not my thinking style in this field?

I reject paranormal explanations. Therefore it follows that in this field, paranormal thinking is unscientific or anti-scientific. I couldn’t have solved the puzzle or seen the revealed knowledge, if I had accepted and used paranormal explanations. I condemn as necessarily false, paranormal interpretations of quantum physics. To be scientific is to totally and in principle reject paranormal thinking and explanations and conjectures. Reality can be explained. To explain reality, requires non-paranormal premises.

If you hold paranormal principles, you cannot explain reality. Paranormal thinking prevents you from being able to figure out and explain reality; you will have poor explanatory power, and will be false. To have high explanatory power and to have a true theory, that matches and explains reality, you must not use any paranormal thinking.

The following are non-scientific: reducing Philosophy to Analytic Philosophy. Scientific philosophy, and its thought-style, must cover much more than the truth-value of propositions expressed as sentences. Broadly conceived, yes, you can use the lens of “truth-value of propositions expressed as sentences”, but that view or metaphor is far too limited; it’s too narrow to be true or useful or describe reality.

Similarly with math, or propositional logic. Yes, you can express the true theory of altered-state revelation in the form of propositional logic. However, for developing and expressing the theory, propositional logic is inadequate and is limited; it comes to act as a model, but is a poor model.

A scientific theory approaches the subject-matter of mystic-state revelation using an appropriate thinking-style, not propositional logic focusing on truth-value of sentences. Paul Thagard’s modelling of theory comparison and of explanatory power is more useful and relevant than the concepts and thinking-style in the field of propositional logic. Propositional logic can only be a subset of scientific thinking in this field; it is not, by itself, a sufficient kind of philosophy, even though propositional logic is scientific.

Popperism is not sufficient: scientific thinking is certainly not defined as falsifiability or prediction(ism). Per Thagard, scientists don’t use falsifiability or prediction as much as Popper claims; they use general explanatory power and explanatory coherence. A scientist is a person who adopts the theory that has greater explanatory power, breadth, and coherence. Prediction is an element but is not definitive; is not the center of what makes scientific theory scientific.

Consider potential objections to the assertion that my Egodeath theory is scientific:

o The Egodeath theory is not scientific, because it isn’t mathematical. To be scientific is, by definition, primarily a matter of being mathematical and mathematically proven as true.

o The Egodeath theory is not scientific, because it isn’t about the physical. To be scientific is, by definition, primarily a matter of being about the physical.

o The Egodeath theory is not scientific, because it isn’t about the communal scientific consensus based on falsifiable experiments. To be scientific is, by definition, primarily a matter of being about communal scientific consensus based on falsifiable experiments.

Most such arguments are puerile, immature, irrelevant, and absurd, based on narrow arbitrary fantasies of what ‘scientific’ needs to mean, and truly means. Forget that immature thinking; it cannot lead to insight, coherence, or truth. It is just silly and a waste of time, as I wrote at the end of my Wasson article; let us not waste time. People have been dying all around me. Life is on the verge of likely ending; I must have insight and breakthrough immediately, this hour; we must cut straight to the truth using sound judgment that will stand the test of time, and not waste time in dead-end irrelevant immature thinking and arguments.

It is ridiculous and a waste of time to define ‘scientific’ as being centrally centered around falsifiability, or math, or prediction, or the physical, or communal consensus. In fact, ‘scientific’ is not defined by math, or the physical — it is defined by something more fuzzy, more custom, more particular to the individual field.

I have realized that in fact, a ‘scientific’ theory in this field means __ — against all the false, confused, irrelevant, arbitrary notions of what makes some approach ‘scientific’.

A scientific theory of altered-state revelation is explicit, non-metaphor-based, metaphor-explaining, applies to the ordinary tight-cognitive state and the altered, loose-cognitive state, is compact, is organized, is systematic, is logical, is rediscovered in each mind, is not best explained in the language of math, is explained in terms of cognitive phenomenology and personal control thinking, and personal control across time. It explains mystic religion and myth in all contexts, eras, areas, and brands of higher experiencing.

Such a scientific theory can be summarized and communicated efficiently with accurate propagation. It is expressed in the form of a small number of principles, together with showing how these principles have extremely broad ramifications in many fields. Core and peripheral components are differentiated explicitly. You can ask anyone what the scientific theory asserts, and they could look up the aspect or point explicitly in the theory-expression and accurately report what the theory says about that aspect.

A non-scientific theory of altered-state revelation is metaphor-based, implicit, non-systematic, only explains a particular religion or era or region, cannot be summarized and communicated efficiently with accurate propagation.

— Professor Loosecog, October 27, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

[typo corrections]

You can immediately show [me] 10 theories of altered-state revelation, and I can assess them confidently on which aspects are scientific and why.

[We] must have no patience for nonsense, irrelevancy, and b.s., but commit all our effort to sensible relevant central direct helpful mature activity in theorizing about entheogen history.

[Doing] so would be as unprofitable, and would delay and avoid progress, as much as if we were to waste time paying any attention to Wasson’s mostly stupid views and incoherent pile of often-contradictory assertions.

Know the modern-era origin and history of science, and the history of the philosophy [of] science, but isolate and differentiate that from this field.

Given as fact that I (by definition) am a scientist, and used science to figure out the Egodeath theory, we must reject irrelevant [a-priori] notions of what constitutes ‘science’, and we must instead follow as definitive of ‘science’, what Michael Hoffman in fact did, in terms of thinking style and thinking process, to successfully produce the Theory and self-correct his initial preconceptions, expectation, and incomplete thinking of 1985 by 1988.

________________

A non-scientific theory of altered-state revelation is metaphor-based, depending on metaphor as the ultimate means of expressing the theory. That is, a non-scientific theory is in the form of “the truth revealed in mystic revelation is [some metaphor].” For example: “What’s revealed in the mystic altered state is that you are married to the sun.”

A scientific theory of altered-state revelation is non-metaphor-based, and is metaphor-explaining; that is, in the form of “the truth revealed in mystic revelation is [non-metaphorical assertion], and [some metaphor] means, or maps to, or is isomorphic with, [that non-metaphorical assertion].” For example: “What’s revealed in the mystic altered state is that your personal control-power is not an autonomous source of your control-thoughts. This point is described by the metaphor of the female psyche being rap’d by the male deity.”

The non-scientific form of that assertion, or of theory-expression, would be “”What’s revealed in the mystic altered state is that your female psyche is rap’d by the male deity.”

A wrong scientific or pseudo-scientific explanation is “Religion is actually about the literal sun and seasons.” That’s reductionist, in that it fails to cover the altered-state religious experiential phenomena, and targets physical objects as the referents of mystic-mythic metaphor instead. Metaphor points to non-metaphor referents. What are the actual referents? What kind of referents are these?

o Mystery-religion myth points to personal cognitive self-control dynamics.

o Ruler Cult also integrated those referents with hierarchical social-political structuring, as the referents of State myth.

o In contrast, New Testament Christianity integrated those referents (that is, personal cognitive self-control dynamics) with egalitarian social-political structuring. Christian mystic mystery-myth is metaphor that points to 2 referents: one cognitive-cybernetic (personal cognitive self-control dynamics), the other social-cybernetic (the egalitarian social-political structuring).

Ruler Cult metaphor –> personal cognitive self-control dynamics & the hierarchical social-political structuring
New Testament metaphor –> personal cognitive self-control dynamics & the egalitarian social-political structuring

— Michael Hoffman, October 27, 2012

Given that the term ‘scientific’ in a new field is undefined, when I state that the Egodeath theory is scientific, I must also define what ‘scientific’ means in this field.

We must study Christian source-texts scientifically. What does that mean? It means a critical, skeptical stance toward what Church authorities claim about the texts such as who the author is and when the author wrote, and instead, using the texts to deduce the truth about their development and origins.

The Egodeath theory is scientific. That is:

o It explains religious experiencing (rather than ignoring it, as reductionistic so-called “theories of religion do).

o It is explicit, non-metaphor-based, it uses non-metaphor explicit theory to explain metaphor in terms of non-metaphor referents.

o It defines a small, compact set of axioms or hypotheses or explanatory model components, and it shows how that succinct set of components has greater and broader explanatory power, and greater explanatory coherence, than other theories of religion or altered-state experiencing.

o It can be defined, taught, and accurately communicated, and summarized. It is not vague. It is a body of specific knowledge. It can be expressed in propositional logic and in Knowledge Base form. It can be summarized for routine pedagogy, regardless of whether the instructed people access the loose cognitive state.

o It doesn’t assume that the referents are physical objects that are non-religious. It asserts appropriate kind of referents: cognitive-cybernetic, and social-political, as well as explaining the way people used metaphor to link revealed cognitive-cybernetic relationships to social-political relationships:

The propaganda of Ruler Cult said “God overpowers your self-control power, like Jupiter’s eagle abducted Ganymede, and like Mithras overpowered your bull, therefore worship the guy above you in the God-given hierarchy.”

The counter-propaganda of New Testament Christianity replied “God overpowers your self-control power, like God’s dove-like Holy Spirit, therefore love as brother everyone else, in his God-given egalitarian social structuring.”

— Michael Hoffman, October 28, 2012

The Egodeath theory is the most useful, definitive example of a science that has physical and mental components, for the general case of evaluating theories as to whether they are science or pseudoscience. The question of differentiating science from pseudo-science is best resolved by using the Egodeath theory as the quintessential instance of scientific thinking. The hard sciences don’t provide a relevant typical example, for those fields that wish to be considered scientific and have some combination of physical and psychic or mental components.

Place different theories on a grid. Assess each theory in terms of how physical its subject matter, and how mental its subject matter. Typically with pseudoscience, we are comparing some hard science (Physics) to a combination of hard science and mental psychic science (telekinesis). A problem with that type of comparison is that the example field representing science is too extreme: Physics is purely physical. It is more relevant to compare telekinesis with Cognitive Science, or with the Egodeath theory. Is telekinesis a matter of science, or pseudo science?

Thinking about Physics as example of science won’t help much, in discussing aspects in which telekinesis is or is not scientific, because Physics has no mental component. Physics is a poor source for a positive example of the mental, or the psyche realm, in science.

When asking if a given field is scientific, where that field has a physical and mental component, the definitive example of a scientific field with a physical and mental component, is the Egodeath theory, even more so than Cognitive Science. Cognitive Science in its official form is of little relevance for physical+mental pseudosciences, because official Cognitive Science barely attempts to cover the loose, altered cognitive state.

An Egodeath theory could easily be a pseudoscience, so my Egodeath theory provides the most interesting criteria and example of a scientific approach instead of a non-scientific approach. The theory that is most like a pseudo-science without being a pseudo-science, is the Egodeath theory; it is definitive of the difference between pseudo-science and science. In contrast, Physics is a poor example of science (a poor choice for a general-purpose evaluation strategy) when trying to judge mental+physical pseudosciences.

Physics is a quintessential extreme definitive science by virtue of its being at the extreme physical and mathematical end of a spectrum.

The Egodeath theory is a quintessential extreme definitive science by virtue of its being at the extreme experiential side of a spectrum, yet still being purely scientific and not at all a pseudo-science.

The Egodeath theory covers the most extreme experiencing, while remaining firmly on the side of scientific thinking rather than any pseudoscientific thinking. It covers extreme experiencing, yet is explicit, compact, broad in ramification, broad in explanatory power, direct, communicable, summarizable, and it rejects the paranormal. It rejects the premise that we can’t know the truth, and that we can’t rationally figure out and define and communicate mystic-state enlightenment.

The Egodeath theory asserts no-free-will, like many scientists; it is a perspective on ramifications of no-free-will and the illusory aspect of the experience of personal autonomous control.

— Michael Hoffman, October 28, 2012

“As the greatest achievement and breakthrough ever, I have explained religion scientifically.” What does ‘explain’, ‘religion’, and ‘scientific’ mean? Re-state the assertion using the definitions instead of the ambiguous terms:

As the greatest achievement and breakthrough ever, I have explained religion scientifically. That is, I have created an explicit, rational, efficient, testable explanatory model of the experience of the revealing of hidden knowledge in the mystic altered state, along with an explanation of the social and political aspects of New Testament Christianity along with the earlier Ruler Cult in the Roman Empire.

“I have created, for the first time, a completely successful rational explanatory theory of religion.” What does ‘religion’ or ‘theory of religion’ mean? What type of ‘theory of religion’ is this? When you say “theory of religion”, should I picture a Rodney Stark-like social theory of the spread of Christianity? A social-functional theory, that religion exists because it serves a social-cohesion or social-control function? Or do you mean a theory of mystical experiencing?

— Michael Hoffman, October 28, 2012

Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Bart Ehrman
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0062204602
368 pages
March 20, 2012
HarperOne

The tables have turned: the topic of the ahistoricity of Jesus is now mainstream. The end of the world is surely upon us; I’m suggesting that the end of the world comes in the sense that on December 12, 2012, Mr. Historical Jesus dies. Earl Doherty is planning on writing a book that’s a rebuttal to this book. Several other new books on ahistoricity have come out recently, including another literalist’s rebuttal (and acknowledgement) of the Jesus myth. However, my Egodeath theory is needed, as a finished alternative explanation of religious history and meaning, and the mystic altered state.

I defined and assert the most extreme view: Jesus, the apostles, and Paul, and the church fathers didn’t exist; that is, each of them didn’t exist literally as an identifiable single person (that’s my own original phrase and concept based on my own idea development and research and writing within this field). The historical Jesus is shrinking and disappearing into the multitude of the crowd. Pick how you want to spin it: either there were 0 Jesuses, or multiple Jesuses (a plethora, like having a crowd of Santas come through your fireplace on Christmas). The difficult position to defend is that there was 1 Jesus.

Radical scholars assert there was no Jesus. Liberal scholars (including Bart Ehrman) assert there was a Jesus, but he was an inconsequential nobody, hardly distinguishable from his peers. It is actually the same position, merely with a different spin. As soon as you have any scenario other than 1 definitively outstanding Jesus, the literal historical Jesus view collapses, regardless of whether you retain one shrunken Jesus or many of them.

Deflating the historical Jesus as much as Ehrman does, is the same as denying that Jesus existed at all — except Ehrman tried to spin the denial as an affirmation. “I’m not saying Jesus didn’t exist, I’m just saying that he was a generic nobody.” That is, Jesus existed, except that he was completely different than the Jesus we all know, and has nothing in common with him, is rather an anti-Jesus Jesus — a Jesus so essentially unlike the Jesus of the New Testament, the shrunken historical Jesus stands in contrast to the Jesus of the New Testament.

To affirm such a shrunken historical Jesus as Ehrman does, is to agree that the Jesus of the New Testament doesn’t exist; only some *other* Jesus than the New Testament depicts, existed. Ehrman ends up playing misleading tricks with word-meanings. “Jesus[shrunken, historical] existed, therefore we can say that Jesus[of New Testament stories] existed.”

But Ehrman is self-contradictory. If Jesus as a shrunken historical figure existed, then the Jesus *of the New Testament* didn’t exist. Bart gives us some essentially different Jesus, a Jesus who is *not* the Jesus of the New Testament, and then concludes “Thus I have shown that Jesus existed” when actually, Ehrman showed that *that* Jesus, of the New Testament, didn’t exist.


As my theory shows, the ahistoricity of Mr. Jesus is merely the tip of the iceberg. Remove Paul, remove the apostles, remove the church fathers.

Perhaps remove 700-1400 so that 700 A.D. is aka 1400 A.D. per Edwin Johnson. Johnson also has the New Testament being written in 825 aka 1525, not 150 like the other Radical Critics assert (they accept the dating and authorship of the Church Fathers writings — Johnson doesn’t).

Add entheogens as the main source and foundation of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian religions. Add no-free-will, and non-autonomous personal control, as what is revealed in the the power of the altered-state Holy Spirit, per my main article.

Add Ruler Cult directing entheogens toward justifying the domination hierarchy. Add Christianity forming an alternative by directing entheogens instead toward an egalitarian social-political configuration, as I have shown.

My additions produce a mature, adequate, coherent, complete theory of ahistoricity that stands up in the face of various scholars’ work coming from different directions: Richard Horsley, Robert Price, Earl Doherty, Marcus Borg.

— Michael Hoffman, October 29, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

typo: 12 should be 21

another nail in the coffin of the historical Jesus story is the great book by Joseph Atwill Caesar’s Messiah, :

*Christianity did not originate among the lower classes in Judea. It was a creation of a Roman imperial family, the Flavians
*The Gospels were not written by the followers of a Jewish messiah but by the intellectual circle surrounding the three Flavian emperors, Vespasian and is two sons Titus and Domitian
*The Gospels were written following the 66-73 C.E. war between the Romans and the Jews, and many of the events of Jesus’ ministry are satirical depictions of events from that war
*The purpose of Christianity was supersession. It was designed to replace the nationalistic and militaristic messianic movement in Judea wit a religion that ws pacifistic and would accept Roman rule.

One of the main “sources” for the historicity of Jesus was the Jewish historican Josephus. But did you know he was at first pro-Jewish, then reversed himself to become pro-Roman? He so impressed the Roman occupiers under Vespasian (who went on to become the Emperor) that Vespasian adopted Josephus into his family, and he now became Josephus Flavius, and lived at Rome with the royal family!

When Josephus’ Wars of the Jews is read alongside the New Testament as Atwill shows, it decodes the Gospel stories to be events in the life of Titus the son of Vespasian, who took over the war to subjugate the Jews. The Gospels actually glorify Titus by telling his story in disguise, and give us a Jesus who is rather anti-Jewish (“generation of vipers” or Pharisees), who hangs with the “publicans” i.e., the tax-collectors (very pro Roman stance), tells his followers to “render unto Caesar” and to “turn the other cheek.”

The first important “Christians” were of the Flavian family; the even owned the catacombs.

>

The Historical Jesus: Five Views
James K. Beilby & Paul R. Eddy (Editors)
Robert M. Price
John Dominic Crossan
Luke Timothy Johnson
James Dunn
Darrell Bock
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0830838686
October 2009
312 pages
IVP Academic

Robert Price is first in the book, including the replies from the other, mainstream authors. Price replies to the official mainstream positions of the other authors. This book is significant in that it presents in a mainstream forum the view that Jesus didn’t exist (my definition: The New Testament Jesus is fundamentally a synthetic figure, not a single identifiable historical individual), and provides an occasion for mainstream scholars to acknowledge the existence of this position, and engage with it.

The readers are exposed to this view, and the reviewers engage with this view. The laughter at the Jesus Myth is growing audible now, indicating that awareness of the Jesus Myth view is spreading. I am surprised and impressed how fast the Jesus Myth view has been spreading. “Only people on the Internet believe the Jesus myth.”

I hadn’t heard of the Jesus Myth in 1999, until my card catalog search on “Christianity AND mushroom”, turning up a book that was a rebuttal to Allegro’s book Sacred Mushroom & the Cross. I was dismissive at first, and was only glad to find that someone wrote about the Christianity/mushroom connection that I independently thought of sometime between 1997 and 1999, as I recall. To retrace my history of thinking, I’d have to check my various online discussion group postings, and possibly my daily idea-development notes files.

The Web didn’t exist in 1999 – not like today. It is far easier now to learn about the Jesus Myth, and this myth will be synonymous with the Internet, in that the Internet is not censored and filtered as much as printed materials.

— Michael Hoffman, October 31, 2012

[clarifications]

I was dismissive [of Jesus’ nonexistence] at first, and was only glad to find that someone wrote about the Christianity/mushroom connection that I independently thought of sometime between 1997 and 1999, as I recall. To retrace my history of thinking [about Revelation’s bitter sweet scrolls specifically alluding to mushrooms, and about ahistoricity], I’d have to check my various online discussion group postings, and possibly my daily idea-development notes files.

[A reviewer’s attitude:] “Only people on the Internet believe the Jesus myth.”
—————-

Often, I think of an idea on my own, then research it. I thought of the idea of bitter sweet scrolls in Revelation as mushrooms on my own, then researched it. I didn’t think of Jesus’ nonexistence on my own; I learned the idea when investigating my “mushrooms in the New Testament” idea, which was based on my work back to 1986, almost at the beginning.

I sat on my dorm bed and highlighted Revelation in my King James bible Fall 1986 or Spring 1987, and I seem to remember it being 1989 or so, when I puzzled more over the bitter sweet scrolls in Revelation, in a rural library. As a scroll-like cognitive loosening agent, I only was able to take into consideration acid tabs and Psilocybe mushrooms, around 1986-1989; I don’t think I read any entheogen history (in antiquity) at all until around 1999.

I don’t see how the below could possibly have any connection with the Egodeath theory.

Each posting in this group must be explicitly related to the Egodeath theory — the wide range of topics at Egodeath.com.

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, weloverainydays@… wrote:
> Obama’s possible messiah complex:
> http://sixofobamaspsychoticoutburstscaughtonvideo.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/3/
>
> Have you seen this? Any thoughts?

As I told Atwill at the Jesus Mysteries group, he is on the right track, more than other researchers, by investigating the political context of New Testament origins. I haven’t read his books, but Jesus-Myth researchers should read Richard Horsley’s books, and would do well to read Atwill, to start considering political-type scenarios of the formation of the New Testament and its counter-Caesar, or Caesar-alternative figure, of Jesus.

To understand New Testament Christianity, you must study the social-political religion-leveraging propaganda of the Roman Empire.

— Michael Hoffman, October 31, 2012

Must be 21. One ounce. ACLU sponsored. That this is on a state ballot is progress. Cannabis is a potentiator.

It is voting time. Ancient Greeks drank mushroom wine per Michael Rinella’s book, and created Democracy, which the inebriated ruling-class revelers beat-up on, leading to courts and “death” for profaning the Mysteries. Political systems sparred, and entheogen-usage formats were involved.

— Michael Hoffman, October 31, 2012

Principles of Neurotheology (Science and Religion Series)
Andrew B. Newberg
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0754669947
2010

Condensed headings that appear of interest for the Egodeath theory:

1 PRINCIPIA NEUROTHEOLOGICA

2.3 Mind and Brain
2.4 Consciousness

3.1 Interactions Between Science and Religion
3.3 Passion for Inquiry
3.4 Neurotheology and Paradigm Shifts
3.6 Neurotheology as a Metatheology

4 PRINCIPLES OF NEUROTHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS
4.1 The Principle of Rigor
4.3 Identification of Assumptions
4.4 Neurotheology’s Razor

5 HERMENEUTICS
5.2 Concepts of Willfulness and Surrender
5.3 Wholeness and Fragmentation
5.4 Rationalism, Logic, and Abstract Thought
5.5 Causality in the Brain and in Theology
5.8 Emotions and Feelings in Theology
5.9 Permanence, Change, and Spiritual Transformation

6 METHODS OF NEUROTHEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
6.2 Measurement and Definition of Spirituality and Religiousness
6.2.4 Inducing or Altering Spiritual Phenomena
6.2.5 Neuropathologic and Psychopathologic Spiritual Experiences
6.2.6 Spiritual Experiential Development
6.3.1 Case Studies and Descriptive Analyses
6.5 Science from the Religious Perspective
6.6 Religious Implications of Scientific Studies

7 PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
7.1 Understanding Spiritual Experiences and Practices
7.2 What is a Spiritual Experience?
7.3 Methods of Attaining Spiritual Experiences
7.4 Types of Group Ceremonial Rituals
7.5 Phenomenological Aspects of Religious Experience
7.6 Cognitive Neuroscience Assessment of Spiritual Experiences
7.7 Neuropsychological Models of Spiritual Experiences
7.8 Studying Specific Types of Spiritual Experiences
7.9 Isolating the Spiritual from the Neuropsychological

8 NEUROSCIENCE
8.2 Subjective Experience, Consciousness, and Neurotheology
8.4.5.3.10 Multidisciplinary research is challenging

9 THEOLOGY
9.1.7.2 What is the nature of God?
9.1.7.3 What is the nature of good and evil, sin, free will, and virtue?
9.1.7.4 What is the nature of spiritual revelation?
9.1.7.5 Is God immanent in the universe?
9.1.7.6 What is the nature of God’s relationship to human beings?
9.1.7.8 What is the process by which salvation can be attained?
9.2 Brain Functions and the Origins of Theology
9.9 The Brain and the Soul

10 EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES IN NEUROTHEOLOGY
10.2 Primary Epistemic States
10.3 Epistemology and Unitary Reality versus Baseline Reality

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature
Malcolm Jeeves, Warren S. Brown
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1599471477
2009
168 pages
Templeton Science and Religion Series

p. 92, Section & 1st subsection:
Origins of Religious Experience
…Hallucinogenic Drugs

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

These are the books I surveyed on October 31, 2012.
_________________________________

No-Self, Self as “Illusion” or abstraction or (per the Egodeath theory) dynamic mental construct

The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity
Bruce Hood
http://amazon.com/o/asin/019989759X
May 2012
368 pages
Oxford


The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You?
Julian Baggini
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1847082734
September 2012
272 pages
Author is the editor and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine. His books include:
Do You Think What You Think YouThink?
What’s It All About? – Philosophy and the Meaning of Life


The Ego and the Dynamic Ground: A Transpersonal Theory of Human Development, 2nd ed.
Michael Washburn
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0791422569
Date 1987 1st ed., 1995 2nd ed.
288 pages


Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
Antonio Damasio
http://amazon.com/o/asin/030747495X
2010
416 pages


_________________________________

Transpersonal Psychology


Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality
Jorge N. Ferrer
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0791451682
2001 or 2002
273 pages
Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
Foreward by Richard Tarnas


Psychology, Religion and Spirituality
David Fontana
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1405108061
2003
272 pages

_________________________________

No-Free-Will

Free Will
Sam Harris
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1451683405
2012
96 pages
Concise. Popular author;
rank 3,793
rank 72 in Kindle eBooks on “Religion & Spirituality”


Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain
Michael S. Gazzaniga
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0061906115
2011
272 pages
I am not at all interested in the brain — Cognitive Phenomenology is the correct relevant level for Egodeath theory.


The Myth of Free Will, 3rd ed.
Cris Evatt
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0970818181
2010
140 pages

_________________________________

Neurotheology; Cognitive Science and Religious Experiencing


Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature
Malcolm Jeeves, Warren Brown
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1599471477
2009
168 pages


Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds
Justin Barrett
http://amazon.com/o/asin/159947381X
2011
248 pages


Principles of Neurotheology
Andrew B. Newberg
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0754669947
2010
284 pages
I posted relevant ToC headings recently in a dedicated thread.


_________________________________

Western Esotericism


Experience of the Inner Worlds
Gareth Knight
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1908011033
1975
244 pages
Respected author. Thought-provoking table of contents, content seems clearly written, intelligibly. He cautions against Eastern religion watering-down Western Esotericism. Jewish & Christianity-heavy broad Western Esotericism. Is this book entheogen-based, as it needs to be?


Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography
Nick Kanas
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1461409160
2007, corrections 2009, also 2012 “2nd ed.”
563 pages
Historical celestial tools, maps, and techniques. Long.
Springer Praxis Books / Popular Astronomy


_________________________________

No Historical Jesus

Jesus Christ: A Pagan Myth: Evidence That Jesus Never Existed
Shirley Strutton Dalton, Laurence E. Dalton
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1440449333
2008
180 pages
Looks solid, well-read.
My condensed version of publisher’s blurb:
“Religious and ethical beliefs held by the Greco-Roman world and the views held by Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. The gospels and epistles reflect not Jewish ethics but rather the Stoic ethics of the Greco-Roman pagan world. Similarity between the religion of Paul and the mystery religions of the pagan world. Mark and Paul are anti-Jewish. Jesus is a literary fiction derived from a Greco-Roman pagan environment.”


The Christ (orig. 1909 title)
The Christ Myth: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence
John E. Remsberg
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1595479333
1909/2007
328 pages
My condensed version of publisher’s blurb: My wording here is clearer and better:
“The Jesus of Strauss and Renan was a transitional step between orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought. The ultimate step from orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought is the Jesus Myth view. The Jesus of the New Testament must be taken to refer to the Christ of Christianity, who is fundamentally and essentially a supernatural being, not a mundane literal historical individual. Jesus is, like the Christ figure, a myth; Jesus is none other than the Christ myth.”
— rewritten by Michael Hoffman


Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Richard C. Carrier
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1616145595
2012
340 pages
Jesus might have existed; per my wording, Jesus might have existed as a single, identifiable historical individual that you could locate using a time-travel* machine or time-television. But what is the *chance* of this “might”? Carrier is an important author and he plans to write a book debunking the plausibility of a historical Jesus, based on this preliminary work. Exposes special pleading mathematically (Jesus could have or might have existed, therefore we are justified in holding that he existed.)
*Per Edwin Johnson, you might have to jump back 1300 years, not 2000 years, to arrive at the time of Augustus Caesar.
Author of (partial listing):
Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed (rebuttal to J.P. Holding’s “The Impossible Faith”)
Chapter in “Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth”, edited by R. Joseph Hoffmann
Chapter in “The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave”, edited by Robert Price and Jeffery Lowder
Chapter in “The End of Christianity”, edited by John W. Loftus


The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
Robert M. Price
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1578840171
2011
427 pages
High-quality. Numerous chapters were published in separate books or journals before. I doubt I’ll read any more Jesus myth books, at least of the type that exist now to make the case. The case was made after reading a stack of these — it’s not difficult; it’s clear-cut and straightforward: per my broad Egodeath theory, a counter-Caesar or Caesar-rebuttal or Caesar-alternative figure was needed and was formulated from all available sources, combining Jesus, pagan, entheogenic, and social-political egalitarian themes — that’s clear, simple, coherent, and unproblematic. Doherty’s revised book makes it (on the surface) appear that the case is so debatable that endless pages are needed.


The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ
Acharya S aka D.M. Murdock
http://amazon.com/o/asin/B004KZOS22
ebook
2011
60 pages
The argument from Astrotheology myths; from the lens of the theory that the ultimate referent of myth is the literal celestial realm. She’s aware of entheogen theory, but it’s not her area. Freke & Gandy are more informed about entheogen theory and they wanted to include it more explicitly in their book The Jesus Mysteries, but their publisher strategically omitted or prevented that coverage.


The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic
Jonathan Talat Phillips
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1583943161
2011
240 pages
Introduction by Graham Hancock
Mainstream “underground”/”alternative” thought. Gnosticism. Ayahuasca. Not awesome, not bad, quick read. Blurbs by Alex Grey, Richard Smoley, Gary Lachman.
Condensed publisher blurb:
“his own Christian background, rites of the mystery schools. electric meanings behind biblical symbols: serpent, dove, tree of life … early Christians used initiation for harnessing divine energy to achieve gnosis: knowledge or experience of the divine. … these mystical symbols appear across spiritual traditions and offer a map and alchemical message for personal transformation, and an evolutionary shift … a counterculture that recognizes humanity’s visionary potential and takes steps to realize it.”

I propose our evolutionary potential is to realize (as Gnostics and everyone in antiquity thought) there’s no free will in the world, our personal power of operating on self-control is illusory, and people who haven’t been immersed repeatedly in loose cognition are to be considered as children (undeveloped). Incidentally as a footnote, the New Testament is entirely fiction (including Jesus and Paul), based on psychoactive mushrooms (just like all Roman Empire culture) used to justify an egalitarian social-political system, per my Egodeath theory. — Michael Hoffman


Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All
David Fitzgerald
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0557709911
2010
248 pages
Good idea for organization. Supposed to be a highly readable, clear, accessible summary, and contributes additional arguments. Blurbs by major authors in the field: Carrier, Zindler, Price, Doherty.

Organized by the 10 universally known facts about how we know Jesus existed:

o The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous.
o Jesus was wildly famous.
o Ancient historian Josephus wrote about Jesus.
o Eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels.
o The Gospels give a consistent picture of Jesus.
o History confirms the Gospels.
o Archeology confirms the Gospels.
o Paul’s letters corroborate the Gospels.
o Christanity began with Jesus and his apostles.
o Christianity was totally new and different.

Conclusion: Can Jesus be Saved?

_________________________________

Consciousness Studies aka Psychedelics

The Psychedelic Renaissance: Reassessing the Role of Psychedelic Drugs in 21st Century Psychiatry and Society
Ben Sessa
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1908995009
2012
237 pages
Foreward by Rick Doblin
Chapter and subsections:

The Ancient History of Hallucinogens
….The Birth of Religion
….Many Religions Can Trace Their Roots to Psychedelic Drugs [“all bona fide” -mh]
….Psychedelic Drugs at the Heart of Christianity

The Psychedelic Renaissance: Movers and Shakers
MAPS, CSP, Erowid, Reality Sandwich, Psychedelic Spirituality Forum, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Some Important Contemporary Psychedelic Researchers

War [on Drugs] is a money spinner. But for Whom?
Evidence-based Decriminalisation and Temple Balls
The Socio-political Agenda on Drugs has a Deleterious Effect on Medical Research
Demonization of Prohibition
Recreational Drug Use for Psycho-spiritual Growth [as I have commented on; Led Zeppelin: “I only wanted to have some fun” in a mystic religious song In My Day of Dying. Banqueting in Antiquity was precisely and explicitly *recreational religious experiencing*. — Michael Hoffman]
Psychiatry Needs Psychedelics, and Psychedelics Needs Psychiatry
The Problem with the Recreational Use of Psychedelics
Resolution of These Problems

I expected a major snoozer that no one would read, trying to posture and look as hyper-straight and staid and dry as possible, trying to impress people that are hopelessly fearful and rigid so that there’s no point in writing such a book. Hyperstraight books: real, sane heads can’t stand reading them (too heavily self-censored, a sort of B.S.-by-omission), and uptight establishment types or collaborationists wouldn’t read them either, books enjoyable and appealing to no one. Not sure which specific books are so dessicated; I have books that I think of that way, perhaps not actually read yet. I’ve read this material many times; reading such a book amounts to a needle-in-haystack looking for an angle, style, or point that’s distinctive, merely registering in my mind what angle the author uses, not actually gaining any content/information. What’s *this* author’s scope, audience, style?

Marsh Chapel — my god, are we stuck there forever, in Marsh Chapel, stuck for eternity in our Hell of unending research limitation? Can we never move past that, for God’s sake? Bust out of Marsh Chapel! It is our 8th Sphere, of Heimarmene-ruled Saturn and the sphere of the fixed stars, we must punch through, get past the demiurgic gatekeeper who demands the sacrifice of our beloved youth as the price of passage at last into the higher heavens. -mh

This is largely a history book, including the author’s. “The summer of 1988 was dubbed the ‘second summer of love’.”

“anxiety-provoking to the extreme. Feelings of panic and loss of control can overwhelm”

My condensed version of publisher’s blurb: my emphasis added:
———-
“Psychedelics can do for psychiatry what the *microscope* did for biology and the *telescope* to astronomy; they can be used to *access the depths of the psyche*. They hold great promise for treating a number of medical conditions, and they provide access to *religious experiencing*.

Argues for the re-evaluation of psychedelics – LSD, MDMA, DMT, psilocybin, ayahuasca, peyote, ibogaine, and more. Their potential for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, autism, and cluster headaches. Evidence corrects misconceptions about psychedelics.

Calls for their therapeutic use, with set and setting, in psychotherapy, psychiatry and *personal growth*.
What are the drugs and why are they so controversial?
How should they be safely and wisely used?
What is the nature of the psychedelic experience?
What are the implications for psychiatry and for *psycho-spiritual growth*?

With clarity and wit, the author surveys the contributions of Huxley, Hofmann, Sandison, Leary, Grof, and McKenna. History of psychedelic plants and chemicals. The crucial role such drugs have had in human culture from prehistory to modern times.

He worked alongside Professor David Nutt at Bristol and Imperial universities as part of the growing research into therapeutic applications for psilocybin. Possibilities for therapy and neuroscientific research afforded by psychedelics, to improve the depth of psychotherapy for trauma patients.”
———-


Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness: Liminal Zones, Psychic Science, and the Hidden Dimensions of the Mind
Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan (editors)
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1583944885
September 2012
384 pages
I would be extremely selective, most likely, in reading this diverse assortment of pieces by different authors, such as:
Super Free Will: Metaprogramming and the Quantum Observer – Paul Hughes
My research and idea-development requires a balance of being overcritical and open-minded, in choosing what is most worth reading, skimming, or glancing at: high priority? relatively low priority? What’s the real signal-noise ratio here, compared to other pages? What will it do for my theory, bouncing my ideas off of these, compared to other pages? I no longer read anything except works that are informed by my own; works that are not informed by my work are no longer worth my time. They need to be reading me, not vice-versa.


The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality
David Jay Brown
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1594774927
Projected: April 2013
384 pages
Park Street Press
I have stronger reservations here than with Pinchbeck’s compilation. People would be better off learning my Egodeath theory, before running to far-out, disjointed subjects to get their stimulation and elevation. My feelings triggered: newage, airhead, fantasy, escapism, tittilating trite forbidden topics, trendy, faddish, pulp rags, pop-psych junk candy, non-serious entertainment. Is Western Esotericism any different than trendy cyberpunk psychedelics? Oh wait – cyberpunk was *last* year. My purpose isn’t to delegitimate these topics, but to have a strong sense of relevance, and priority, in *understanding* the loosecog state and its cultural history: first things first. My work benefits people more than this; it is solid and coherent, systematic, encompassing (compact yet broad ramifications across fields) and is timelessly relevant — it is straight-up and inherently interesting, not trendy, not gilded, not sensationalized.

Condensed blurb:
“Presents the revelations brought about through his psychedelic experiences and his work with visionaries of the psychedelic and scientific communities.
His discussions with
Andrew Weil
Jerry Garcia
Albert Hofmann
Annie Sprinkle
Terence McKenna
Edgar Mitchell
Rupert Sheldrake
Deepak Chopra
Candace Pert

Role of psychedelics in:
lucid dreaming
s*x and pleasure enhancement
morphic field theory
encounters with nonhuman beings
the interface between science and spirituality
time travel
the survival of consciousness after death
encounters with nonhuman beings

For as long as humanity has existed, we have used psychedelics — visionary plants such as cannabis … now LSD and MDMA. These have inspired spiritual awakenings, artistic and literary works, technological and scientific innovation, and political revolutions.

psychedelics incite creativity, neurogenesis, and the evolution of consciousness.
They are messengers to elevate our awareness and sense of interconnectedness.
They are preparing humanity for a future of enlightened minds and worlds beyond our solar system.”

Condensed author info:
“author of 8 other books about the future of science and consciousness, including four bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. master’s degree in psychobiology. neuroscience researcher in learning and memory. was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s books on unexplained phenomena in science. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Discover, and Wired, and he is periodically the Guest Editor of the MAPS Bulletin. http://www.mavericksofthemind.com “

_________________________________

Education

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
Neil Postman
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0679750312
1995
209 pages

Per my Theory, school teaches the Egodeath theory, initiation, history of religion, interpretation of mythic metaphor. Existential authenticity and freedom. Time management (defensive, negative; focus and choosing as infinite negative commitment). Cross-time self-control games, acedia, procrastination, intention-override across time, impulse reactivity and impulse-control, obligation resistance, disruptive effects of idealistic expectations about transcendent control of the mind. Control beyond control; transcendent circularity of control-power. Problems of cross-time self-control. Dynamics of alcoholism and controlaholism, and how these can lead to metaphysical enlightenment about origins of personal control-thoughts across time. That’s the curriculum I designed a few years into university.

— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, November 1, 2012

[typo correction]
per my broad Egodeath theory, a counter-Caesar or Caesar-rebuttal or Caesar-alternative figure was needed and was formulated from all available sources, combining [Jewish], pagan, entheogenic, and social-political egalitarian themes — that’s clear, simple, coherent, and unproblematic.


[clarifications]
The ultimate step from orthodox Christianity [into] radical Freethought is the Jesus Myth view.


I propose [that our current passageway we must pass through on our way to] our evolutionary potential is to realize (as Gnostics and everyone in antiquity thought) there’s no free will in the world, our personal power of operating on self-control is illusory, and people who haven’t been immersed repeatedly in loose cognition are to be considered as children (undeveloped). Incidentally as a footnote, the New Testament is entirely fiction (including Jesus and Paul), based on psychoactive mushrooms (just like all Roman Empire culture) used to justify an egalitarian social-political system, per my Egodeath theory. — Michael Hoffman


I placed this book in the No-Jesus group, but maybe need to move it to a “Neo-Cyber-Psychedelic Random Claptrap Newage” category, with Pinchbeck and David Jay Brown:

The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic
Jonathan Talat Phillips

The primary, ultimate referent of myth-metaphor is: the revealing of no-free-will and personal non-control by entheogens.


The primary, ultimate referent of myth-metaphor is not entheogens. Carl Ruck is wrong: too narrow and too physicalistic, not cognitive-phenomenological enough.

The primary referent of myth-metaphor is not any physical object such as celestial objects. Acharya S is wrong. She mistakes a secondary referent, or a source of mythic symbols, as the primary, ultimate referent.

The primary referent of myth-metaphor is not any ordinary-state life development. Joseph Campbell is wrong. Jung is fairly wrong.

The primary referent of myth-metaphor is not dreams. Joseph Campbell is wrong. Jung is fairly wrong.

— Michael Hoffman, November 2, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

This post contains some new ideas and realizations (connections) of mine that are extensions of my previous mytheme decipherings. I identify which aspects of the insights are new for today.

Understanding is not a simple binary, going from not understanding to understanding. Understanding is a matter of degrees or percentage of connections that you map or make or figure out. Lack of understanding amounts to having very few connections between the key ideas. High degree of understanding and insight amounts to a large number and percentage of the potential connections between ideas.

I typically experience a series of insights or breakthroughs about a given topic, over days, weeks, months, and years, as my number of connections of themes or ideas increases in bursts. For example, my late 1987 notebooks have some increasing, but limited, ideas about non-control or no-free-will, and then at the start of 1988, a widespread reorganization of related ideas.


I figured out the heimarmene-snake during the 00s, years ago, and I figured out the snake-and-tree around Fall 2011. See my postings for both. Today I figured out further extensions of those decipherings of myth in terms of the Cybernetic Theory of Mythic Metaphor; in terms of no-free-will & personal non-control of thoughts and actions, as revealed by entheogens.

Carl Ruck didn’t figure this out, because his focus is too limited to entheogens, and religious philosophy regarding self-control is not his area of expertise.


One of my first sudden mytheme connections today was the following (verbatim from my note file):
tree in myth — “turned into a tree”, or “serpent in tree” Hesperides golden apples of apollo tree

I accidentally figured this out when reflecting upon “What’s the nature and scope of my 1986 intended achievement and my 1988 core Theory? Did I think of it as “I’m figuring out the meaning of Religion and myth”?”

In 1986 I was chasing and trying to create transcendent control of the mind.
In 1988 instead I discovered the Crystalline Ground of Being model and its ramifications for personal non-control, as revealed in loose cognition and mental model transformation: it was a new theory of ego transcendence: what it amounts to and involves and entails.

The resulting 1988 core Theory was a STEM-type theory of our ability to control our mind; it was not per se a “theory and explanation of religion” or of specific religions. It was a correction and rational re-construction of the theories of Ken Wilber and Alan Watts: it was more of a theory of “What is enlightenment?” than a theory of “What is the meaning of the religions?” My 1988-1997 summary uploaded to Principia Cybernetica site incorporated or explained ideas from religions.

My peripheral Theory-extension of 1999-2007, with additions in 2011 and 2012, I would describe as a theory that explains the religions.

(STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)

The 1988 core Theory is more a theory of enlightenment, ego transcendence, and transcendent knowledge. (Main breakthrough January 11, 1988)
The 2001 peripheral Theory extension is more a theory of religion or religions, including myth, metaphor, and history. (Main breakthrough November 12, 2001)


When I was thinking about that distinction today, my mind turned toward the snake-and-tree, which came to me near the November 2011 andro-gyne breakthrough. Then I seemed to dimly remember the tree of Hesperides, and today I strained to remember: is that tree guarded by a snake? The following connections poured out as I read about Hesperides.

When you hold a branch, you are holding a symbol of free will versus determinism. A rod is a line made from a branch. A hydra is a branch made from a line.

A mushroom tree that has cut-off branches at the ring conveys the idea of “illusion of variability, truth of predestined single path”. I think I pointed that out around November 2011, “Our decisions are like: A tree with no real branches!?”


Mytheme Clusters Confirm My Cybernetic Theory of Myth

This finding today, a cluster of themes of snake, immortality-entheogen, guardian, blameless, and spring in cave, amounts to a field-appropriate type of scientific “prediction and confirmation of a theory”. My Cybernetic theory of myth today got further corroboration.

I reject Popper’s theory of science, that science is prediction; I condemn that as “predictionism” — there is no justification for equating the scientific method with prediction. Prediction is overstated; prediction-then-confirmation doesn’t play that big a role in actual, real-world science. Prediction and confirmation, or corroboration, is good — but it’s not what makes a theory scientific. In any case, “confirmation by verified prediction” in the field of myth theory amounts to finding themes combined in clusters.

My Cybernetic theory of myth predicts and continues to be validated by indeed finding, clustered mythemes about the following. These same elements appear in the Garden of Hesperides and the Garden of Eden:
o Guilt, blame, blamelessness, innocence
o Entheogens
o Immortal, mortals, athanatos (become non-dying)
o No-free-will; predestined to do, or predestined to not do
o Predestined to encounter and ingest the entheogen, predestined to not encounter and ingest the entheogen
o Snake and tree, branches
o Guardian of access to the garden; gatekeeper


The hydra is a branch-snake, branching-snake. It is a line made into a branching.
Snakes indicate Heimarmene fatedness lines. (~2003 posting?)
Branches indicate illusory choice-ability, variability, personal control over destiny. (2011)

The snake is shaped like a monocoursal labyrinth (~2003?), but ironically, the snake has a fork, a forked tongue (new point Nov. 2, 2012). The snake is a wise teacher about the subject of free will and Heimarmene (fatedness, unchangeability).

A hydra is a serpent/snake that has a body that forks into multiple heads. (new point Nov. 2, 2012)

Ironically, the non-forking snake has a forked tongue, and the hydra is a forking snake.

The dragon or serpent under Michael the Archangel might have a forked tongue.

In my ink drawing around 1996, is a snake with forked tongue extending outside of the 4-dimensional crystalline ground of being, saying “Liberty!”


ivy vs. tree: ivy emphasizes a non-branching line, tree emphasizes branching.
snake vs. hydra: snake emphasizes a non-branching line, hydra emphasizes branching.


Hera’s Garden of the Hesperides contains a tree or grove of trees, on which immortality-giving golden apples grow.

Hera and Zeus were wedded (male thought-injector, female thought-receiver). A wedding gift from Gaia was fruited branches (branch structure vs. line/rod, and new-life themes). The branches were planted, producing the golden apples. The Hesperides (nymphs) were supposed to tend the grove, but ate from it, so Hera put in the garden a never-sleeping Heimarmene-snake hydra, a hundred-headed dragon [forked-line] named Ladon, to guard or gate-keep the entheogens.

The Garden of the Hesperides is beyond the mortal world, inaccessible to mortals (non-initiates, who haven’t experienced ego-death). The gods (like initiates, who are a-thanatos) got their immortality by ingesting entheogens from this garden.

Heracles sits in ecstasy or bliss in the Gardens of the Hesperides, attended by the nymphs.

Heracles meets Antaeus, son of Gaia, who was invincible as long as he touched his mother, the earth. Heracles steals the golden apples.


“guarded”, “gatekeeper”, “forbidden to mortals”, “not permitted”

New point or idea Nov. 2, 2012:
The hydra heimarmene-snake is the guardian of the entheogen in the immortals-only garden of the Hesperides. Heimarmene is a gatekeeper that controls who is permitted (indeed, forced) to access and ingest the entheogen and thereby become or be athanatos — no longer dying, having died ego-death upon ingesting the entheogen.

Around 2006 (confirm year), I thought of the idea — I figured out — that the snake approaching the entheogen means that the initiate is predestined to encounter and ingest the entheogen. Nov. 2, 2012, I add the theme of the Heimarmene-snake as *guardian* of the entheogen.

2006 (confirm) idea: If Isis leads you on the road through the labyrinth of life (Luther H. Martin’s book) to the entheogen, Isis predestined and caused you — forced you — to encounter and ingest the entheogen.

Nov. 2, 2012 idea: If Isis doesn’t lead you on the road to the entheogen, then you are “not permitted to” ingest the entheogen; it is “not lawful” for you; you are “forbidden” and “prevented” by Heimarmene (fate, destiny). Per my 2006-era posts: You are and remain (so far) a mortal: you still live in the form of an illusory ego, and so you still have the ability to die ego death; you are subject still to thanatos (death). You have not yet attained the perfected/completed initiate’s state of no longer being liable to undergo ego death, because your mind has learned to think non-egoically.

Heracles slew Ladon, the guardian hydra, leaving the entheogens unguarded, no longer guarded by the Heimarmene-snake.

Access to the entheogen that confers immortality (athanatos, non-dying) is guarded by Heimarmene, as an ironically branch-headed line-shaped serpent. The only people who can go to the garden to ingest the entheogen are those who have been predestined to do so (they have no ability to avoid it).

There are two races or groups of people: those permitted/predestined to go to Garden of Heaven vs. those predestined not to. Entheogens are prohibited by Heimarmene to be used by those who are predestined not to access entheogens, but the gatekeeper Heimarmene-snake permits (that is, forces) those who are predestined, to pass into the garden and tree, to access entheogens.

If you ingest an entheogen, the entheogen reveals that God made you ingest the entheogen. Anyone who ingests an entheogen is following God’s law, inalterably compelled by His forceful command.

Writers always make the mistake of conflating ‘man’ and ‘mortal’. ‘Mortal’ doesn’t mean human. ‘Mortal’ in religio-myth refers to the non-initiate; people who haven’t experienced egodeath via entheogens. After you experience egodeath via entheogens (multiple times), you become athanatos — non-dying, immortal, having eternal life, unending life.

The entheogen in the garden cannot be accessed by mortals — that is, by those who are not predestined to ingest entheogens. The garden belongs to the realm of the initiates, the heroes, the divinized, made immortal.

The entheogen is forbidden to non-destined people; mortals. The hero steals the fruit, against the snake’s effort; or, the mortal eats the fruit, persuaded by the snake. In either case, the key mythemes are present, which is what matters: morality, guilt, trespass into the realm of the gods, law, prevention/gatekeeping, entheogen, knowledge of no-free-will, immortality. Inversion is common with mythemes; the important thing is the presence of the themes.

For example, ingesting the entheogen gives you god-like free will and genuine guilt, at the start of the Book, and produces the reverse effect at the end of the Book (that’s one of my original ideas and discoveries from a few years ago, as the successful modern decipherer of religious myth).


“removing guilt”, “blameless”:

Elsewhere in Greek myth, the Hydra’s lair is the spring of Amymone (which means the *blameless* one). The hydra’s lair is a spring which is a deep cave. Per my Egodeath theory, the spring in the cave is a standard mytheme that refers to the source of thoughts, which arise uncontrollably in the mind.

The apple is the source of the gods’ immorality. Heracles’ labor or task, of stealing the entheogen, is for the purpose of *absolving his guilt* over the death of his family. The entheogen reveals personal non-control of our thoughts, and no-free-will, and thus, God is to blame (or praise) for everything that happens; our own apparent moral guilt and culpability is cancelled out as being as illusory as free will. To eat of Jesus’ flesh is to recognize God’s lordship and our own creatureliness, thus we see the truth and our moral sins, our attributions, are transferred from ourselves to God, so God is rightly punished rather than us (that deciphering is one of my original discoveries, years ago).


Eve = nymphs (the Hesperides)


The Rush album Caress of Steel has a snake near the wizard inside, and a wiggling tree (roots) on the back cover.

The Matrix movies have threatening hydra-shaped machines, and branching tunnels/labyrinths.

— Michael Hoffman, November 2, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

[clarifications]

My 1988-1997 summary uploaded to Principia Cybernetica site incorporated or explained ideas from religions [but it was more a theory of enlightenment and what’s revealed, than a theory of specific religions].

[The non-initiate has] not yet attained the perfected/completed initiate’s state of no longer being liable to undergo ego death[. The initiate is immune to ego death], because [the initiate’s] mind has learned to think non-egoically.

To eat of Jesus’ [entheogenic] flesh is to recognize God’s lordship and our own creatureliness, thus we see the truth [about the illusory nature of our moral culpability] and [therefore logically in our mental model,] our moral sins, our attributions, are transferred from ourselves to God, so God is rightly punished rather than us (that deciphering is one of my original discoveries, years ago).

> To eat of Jesus’ [entheogenic] flesh is to recognize God’s lordship and our own creatureliness

That is standard Theology jargon.

lordship = controllership, sovereign sole power, puppetmaster-like

creatureliness = God-controlled, helpless, subject, puppet-like

This is the best intellectual autobiography material I’ve written. I’m glad and relieved to have figured it out. This is a breakthrough, regarding reconstructing the motivating origins that drove my creation of the core Theory during 1985-1988. Any further work that I do in analyzing, characterizing, or building on my work in the thought-style of my 1986 thinking, will merely be details within this framework. I have virtually, in essence, figured out what is in my lost 1986 blank books, which are my first writings towards the Egodeath theory. I am now able to read, with surprise, my extant 1986 notes, to further deepen my reconstruction and memory of that situation and way of thinking.


The 1986-era origin and motivation of my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was to end the violating of my own intentions across time, intentions to get As and Bs each semester. I expected to, and would sacrifice a little classwork time now, to put an end to my being steered and controlled by my egoic, out-of-control feelings and impulses of reluctance and sudden desires. I felt bad and conflicted though also enthusiastic and highly optimistic during my series of university courses.

My motivation to work on what would become the Theory, in 1986, was: no longer violate my own intentions at a later point in time; enjoy doing the planned (intended) activities (mainly classwork); don’t be subject to feeling reluctance to do the intended activities; don’t be subject to feeling impulsive enthusiasms and then accepting those as overriding the intended plans.

I did make the honor society by getting high grades. Then things got intense and strange and tragic as my father died while I switched into high gear on this effort in Spring 1987, and then switched to a surprising direction after the Spring 1988 breakthrough, at which time I took a wholly different attitude toward my existing intentions of getting grades in those classes.

So I was still in the honor society on this side of the great divide of January 1988, but now had a distanced, semi-decommitted stance from my same-old major, and some additional bad grades from 1987 but a new profound clear theory, a new conceptual system of what ego transcendence is about, that was my true calling. Getting As and Bs in a STEM major was my intention, and that was to remain my intention, but now (1988) it is a different world, with new values that actually make sense, and I have found my calling and purpose in which I have made my breakthrough.

I have found where my potential fits and rightly contributes, a worthwhile new field and paradigm I created. I never succeeded at securing the kind of transcendent control of the mind I so entirely desired and expected in 1986 in my youthful, sophomoric, idealistic, hyper-optimistic, pre-enlightenment state. My manic vision was doomed, or at least it fell by the wayside when I came upon this all-important different model.


My 1986 vision that then motivated me: “What a joy it will be to do this meaningless frivolous STEM classwork while having transcendent rational control of my thinking! No more self-conflict across time! Release from self-violation! No more control dis-integrity, starting now! The rest of my life will be smooth easy flow, as it should be for everyone! No more lack of wellbeing, needless stress, needless dysfunctional self-creation of conflict in my life!

I now shall have, from here on out, thanks to my unintended few months of learning enlightenment about self and control, a plain, enjoyable life, not pushed and pulled by impulsive sudden desires or futile attempting to compel myself by reluctance. I now shall have transcendent, coherent, rational control of my thinking. It will be great, as it should be, starting with tonight! … And I have (in fact) another super-interesting transcendent thought, before I turn my attention to this classwork and then simply execute on this way of thinking, from here on out: …”

When I threw away my blank books 1-5 around March 1987, I meant it as a celebratory marking of my completion of fixing my thinking, so that I would no longer be self-obstructing. I would discard my earlier impulsive self-violation (deviation from my planned activities) and I would discard my more recent addiction, trap, or compulsive meta-reflection; I would no longer compulsively analyze and model my self-control integrity problem. Finally, in time to save my grades and integrity this semester, I would be free of that controlaholism and the self-control dysfunction that plagues me (and other, normal people).

As if that’s not enough to deal with, my father is dying, as if I had time to think about that. (He died April 1987, closely related to how Ken Wilber’s wife Treya died. Transpersonal Psychology = death.)


All during 1986-1987, I really did have transcendent, profound, insightful thoughts (about mental constructs, self-control) that went beyond the books of 1986, and I knew it. That made it even more difficult than 1983-1985, to focus on my classwork. Lay out textbooks and pencil in a quiet room, then a profound thought pulls my mind upward yet again… as the low scores come in, month after month. But I am only one thought away, today, from the big breakthrough and posi-control from here on out! That situation continued from January 1986 through May 1987. I got some good grades. I got some bad grades.

Very sadly, tragically, and disappointingly, I never did get the expected posi-control across time. That was a shattered and then a forgotten dream. It remained a struggle to consistently do classwork, in the changed circumstances or perspective of 1988. The tragedy of failing to get posi-control was a failure of who I was, in 1986; and there was a tragedy of grades and of my father dying Spring 1987.

But those grades were due to my making huge amazing advances, switching into high gear of transcendent idea development, leading to the greatest modern breakthrough of anyone, ever, after building on that foundation, at the start of 1988. So a soundtrack song of 1988, after gut-punch grades (a sacrifice) and father dying (who did much to get me started and put me at the leading edge of thought), is “Baby You’re a Rich Man”. Epic bittersweet anguish. Deep failure and frustration and the worst possible tragedy, at the same time as greatest victory, fulfillment, validation, and reward: self-realization and self-transcendence, I reached my potential.

What a head-f*ck time it was, what a long, strange trip it’s been. I Am Triumphant — my father didn’t survive — my dreams were shattered and abandoned — my youthful self is nullified by logic, lost to Hades’ realm. Now (1988) I have to figure out my major, do my advanced classwork, and at the same time, write-up my new theory of ego transcendence, and, I am compulsively doing research in electric guitar processing, which relates however to classes. And I am pledging the fraternity I’ve been going to since High School.


It has taken a lot of persistent hammering and self-hypnosis to recall the mentality that plagued and assaulted me relentlessly during October 1985 to March 1987 (and beyond, then changing directions sharply upon the January 1988 breakthrough about frozen pre-set noncontrol). In 1986, particularly January 1986 through May 1987, I was stuck, trapped, and addicted to a particular, distinctive frenzied chase of high ideas about the mind and personal self-control, in the course of self-management each semester.

I am glad and elated that, even without my 1986 blank books 1-5 notebooks, I have managed to travel back to get back into the motivating mindset and situation of 1986, as well as the necessary lead-up years before it, and the 1988 follow-through which had a sort of discontinuous change of direction. In a way, in January 1988, I dropped, abandoned, and forgot — and maybe suppressed as a trauma — my 1986 zealous, sometimes desperate and sacrificial, quest. I never had the chance to follow through on some of those ideas as such, because in 1988 I suddenly received a different focus or way of thinking.

I never really reached closure and reviewed exactly what my 1986 effort-become-unintended-project amounted to. Yes, I continued struggling for practical cross-time self-control in 1988, but then, writing-up the Theory as a new awesome theory of what ego transcendence actually is about and entails, took up my focus. So I didn’t have a full opportunity to go back and correct and finish-up and resolve my 1986 thinking, or grasping, as such (in its own terms).


Motivation = from bad state, to good state, with ability to change

My high motivation to study and correct my thinking required that I felt I was in a relatively bad mental situation, and that I was potentially and should and could be in a very desirable, successful, enjoyable mental situation, and that I had the means or ability to figure out and repair my thinking. A vector of actual change must go from a low undesirable state to a high desirable state with an ability to move. I was sitting in an undesirable state, I saw and expected a desirable state, and I believed and experienced that I had the ability to observe, model, and repair my thinking.

That is the combination of pain and pleasure and can-do attitude from which the semi-unintended, semi-surprising Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was discovered and constructed, in my frenzied manic high-stakes activity of October 1985-January 1988.

Most students, including my friends/roommates/bandmates/peers who were generally similar to me, left the programme. They abandoned the intention to get good grades in these classes, entirely. A minority stuck with it to the bloody end (crazy hyper-techie enthusiasts who already knew the material, compliant passive unimaginative conformists, and foreign students who had no choice): being in this programme and intending and committing to getting passing grades or good grades. As ever, I was different. To me, grades never had much value; I had a mentality of transcendent aloof superiority, didn’t take much notice of grades.

I was more focused on grades as merely an indicator of what I really cared about: enjoyment of doing classwork, and having consistent integrity of self-control and causal, while using minimalist time-management. Deluded or not, my attitude of being a student was always “I’m smarter than my mere valedictorian peers; *as long as I deign to focus on the classwork* (the big “if”), I should be able to easily keep up with them without feeling like I’m trying hard.” I probably didn’t *permit* myself to think “this content is difficult” — that wasn’t in my mental vocabulary. But I often had or experienced a big struggle against myself: a struggle to focus on and spend the time on the classwork, consistently.

Perhaps I always laughed and disbelieved I’m as smart or smarter than my achiever peers. I always felt like it was just an act, a bluff, a conventional role: “the super-smart guy”. I was merely good at playing the part, psyching-out the test; I was good at guessing the answer based on my limited, patchy studying. By a dishonest selectivity, I can list facts about my achievements that prove impressively what an accomplished genius I am. On the other hand, inversely, I could list things about my life to show what a stupid, hopeless loser and poser I am.

For example, in Spring 1988, I got the highest test score the Physics professor ever saw on the Relativity exam (and without cheating) — but the circumstances are painful, frustrating, and humiliating (tangled up with my father’s death and struggles with grades). Struggles with the course content? Unthinkable. Struggles with controlling my mind and actions across time? Formidable.

Spring 1988, I realized that my calling, the area where my genius and potential is rightly applied, is in this higher layer of thinking, that developed while trying in 1986 to finally put an end to the dysfunctional struggle against myself across time. In 1986, I was entirely and only concerned (officially) with classwork, and had an unfortunately necessary side-project of trying to finally get transcendent control of the mind. By 1988, my classwork was fully recognized as trite and mundane, beneath my potential.

It’s not that my attitude or valuation of the STEM programme changed; I never was particularly enthusiastic or identified with the conventional STEM programme. It’s not bad, but my area is More than that; higher, newer, more fundamentally innovative — transcendent, applying STEM to the personal mind and its operation. In 1988, I discovered and created a higher, new field; I found the field that you could say I was lacking and missing and looking for in 1986. The field I created from within the STEM programme is a kind of Cognitive Science but with a focus on loose cognition and mental model transformation regarding cross-time self-control dynamics.

I was doing Cognitive Science and metaprogramming of the mind, as a scientist and engineer. Among the courses I had taken, I liked Interpersonal Communication and I particularly related to General Semantics, Control Systems, and the Relativity portion of Modern Physics. In 1988 I found Godel Escher Bach, and the High Frontiers/Reality Hacker zine.

Therefore in Spring 1988, happy with having found and created a new field where I am at home, worthy of my potential (per Maslow), I decided to leave my previous intention completely, not get any grades in these classes in my programme, and change to a major that is relevant to the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (which includes mental construct processing, self-control across time, mental constructs, reconceptualizing the self as controller, enlightenment as mental model transformation, and loose cognition).

I considered the majors of Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, and Computer Science. I decided all those fields sucked, guided by unimaginative, backwards dolts stuck in the 1950s.

The academic field of Religion (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to supernaturalist theology) as of 1988 had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Philosophy (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to propositional logic) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Psychology (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to the study of rats; brain-dead behaviorism) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.
The academic field of Computer Science (unimaginative idiots stuck on and limited to business databases) had little relevance for my Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence.

I was underinformed and unimaginative; I was too hastily dismissive. But in any case, it was effortless to remain in STEM, and extremely uphill in every way, to switch to non-STEM. I realized that, after all, the life of taking STEM classes was successful and relevant in that it *did* produce the breakthrough theory, and it was no less relevant than the badly conducted and uninspired non-STEM fields. Also, in 1988 I related to STEM at least through electric guitar technology; indeed STEM has been helpful and relevant for that. And in the end, I do identify a lot with STEM — it’s just not sufficient to define my higher portion of my identity.

The Cognitive Science portion of STEM comes closer to my character. In 1989, I learned of Cognitive Science. I am still trying to understand why the field of Cognitive Science died… in the very same timeframe as the zines and Cyberpunk died, *when the Web arrived*. Apparently the Web frenzy and new, mobile computing killed the nascent field of Cognitive Science, as evidenced by the timing. Cognitive Science books sharply fizzle out after 1996. The field just vanishes as the Web appears. Cognitive Science died from a brain drain; students who would’ve enrolled in Cognitive Science in the late 1990s were instead drawn away into Computer Science.


Nonduality is trite and insufficient.

The Cybernetic Theory of Enlightenment is bigger and better and more relevant and more encompassing than Advaita nonduality. The Egodeath theory contains nonduality but nonduality is merely a small portion of enlightenment. Enlightenment must explain much more than just nonduality. The Cybernetic theory is clearly like Western religion, while Ken Wilber and Chogyam Trungpa and most other 1985 spirituality is clearly like Advaita nonduality.

In 1986, I started by taking and modifying some ideas from nonduality religion, but I had to do a lot of work and innovative creation and theory-construction before producing in 1988 a useful, valuable, relevant theory, focusing on self-control across time, using mental construct processing. My result was more like Western religion than nonduality Eastern religion. Western religion is centered on non-control, rather than on nonduality, though I have identified and revealed the role of both non-control and nonduality themes, in both Western and Eastern religion.

Advaita vs. the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence: I had to create the latter (October 1985 – January 1988), through chasing Transcendent Rational Control of the Mind. The expected promise of having non-dysfunctional control of the mind was that it would end the stupid unnecessary conflict between my cross-time intentions (get As and Bs in classes and enjoy that and enjoy the prospect of related jobs) and impulsive time-slice intentions (record albums, play electric guitar, shop at the student bookstore, socialize, random activities).

Around Summer 1986, I read about ideas like nonduality and Advaita and enlightenment, and sought to apply them to my goal and interest, in having non-conflicting self-control across time, and unconditional enjoyment of my planned activities. I wanted to study without the thought of “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you do this before, as planned? Why did you keep violating your own intentions?” Part of my mid-1986 strategy was to apply enlightenment about nonduality toward gaining non-dysfunctional control over my feelings, to enable cross-time self-control integrity and have through that, success and smooth enjoyable action, and enjoyment.

Sometimes I think I was far too idealistic, sometimes I think I was totally reasonable and justified — a great way to put it: I simply wanted to be *consistently* together, integrated, pulling in the same direction — like I was in my 1-dimensional, classwork-only year of tech school. I wasn’t demanding something that I had never done; I was demanding that I *consistently* be the coherent controller that I *sometimes* was. My scores ranged from record-setting to bafflingly low in subjects I knew. Consistent focus was the challenge. The level of math or work was not at all the problem. I don’t remember thinking “This material and classwork is too hard.”

I remember all the time thinking “If only I would follow-through consistently on my intentions to study and do classwork, this experience would be easy and enjoyable.” I almost never thought of the classwork as hard; I thought of consistently working on the classwork instead of other things hard. I basically enjoyed classwork — but due to omni-aptitudes (later assessed), I had too many interests. Nearly 100% of the effort and strain for me was the near-impossible task of *focusing* *consistently*, narrowing my focus and time, to work *only* on the classwork.

When I tried to have an enlightened, confident attitude, immediately a thousand impulsive enticements would take my attention away from classwork. I wouldn’t permit myself to feel bad, because that’s an emotional, egoic, absurd, irrational game, a crude way of trying to make control have power across time — but plainly, I proved all too clearly, self-control cannot reach across time. I was subject to egoic control (enticements, reacting to them) and I recognized it, yet couldn’t resist them. And then, the effort to gain transcendent control of the mind became itself an *additional* dysfunctional time-consuming trap or addiction.

Figuring out how cross-time self-control integrity works or malfunctions, became itself a new way of impulsively overriding and violating my cross-time plans. Even when I did classwork, I would impulsively stop myself and meta-reflect, to attain another enthusiastic insight about the malfunctioning of cross-time self-control — even to the point of doing poorly, losing time for classwork. The plan and strategy that developed in 1986 was to keep violating my plans, to finally, immediately today, get the insight that would secure cross-time self-control integrity, so that from now on, I will have transcendent control, producing smooth-functioning success and enjoyment.

The strategy was expensive, costly, involving failure and sacrifice and yet more of that very self-conflict about daily planning that the effort was supposed to cure. The effort did eventually pay-out, into a great breakthrough about self-control across time — but, the nature and power of this breakthrough mental-model was *not* the expected securing of cross-time self-control integrity, or control-power over myself across time. Instead, I discovered that we have interesting fundamental limitations of control-power, we must trust, we must simply visualize success and accept the lack of forceful control over our control.

I expected a breakthrough, and I got a breakthrough, but it gave more interesting content and not the “posi-control across time” that I expected. The balance of my life flipped then, in 1988; instead of classwork being the given, important measure, and forming Transcendent Control of the Mind to assist with that in terms of success and enjoyment, now it became official that indeed, my main interest, innovation, talent, creation, and contribution would be in the field of Mind, not conventional STEM classwork. (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) I had no objection to STEM except that it is limited, pedestrian, and conventional.


I was born and cultivated to theorize and explain the mind and personal self-control as my original innovative contribution, not mainly to contribute to routine STEM.

As much as I respect the Web that Tim B-L invented when I started researching networked hypertext in 1989, and as much as I respect the 1982 Compact Disc, 1984 Mac, Rio MP3 player, iPhone, and iPad, these are not transcendent knowledge about the mind. Everyone treated and saw and assessed me as a genius, 5th grade through 1990, and they were mute and open-ended about what specifically I would accomplish.

I never read what people wrote in my high school yearbooks, then long after, in January 2008, I read them, and found a write-up of my math award and predictions about great college work, and a girl, Celeste, I liked wrote that I would accomplish great things. I was aloof, head in the sky; I didn’t really take note of these specific things. I was not all there, and have amnesia about it. I am only now piecing together these things, these remarkable realities from my past.

In High School and after, I had no plans. No one ever asked what I would major in, what career I would choose. These questions don’t apply to the genius in high school, apparently. My mother was an arts and music student when I was in 5th grade through high school. I got a lot of arts and bohemian intelligence from her. My father got a PhD in Philosophy, and followed the leading edge in Human Potential and Transpersonal Psychology, sharing that with me while in High School. My other families were upper class with business involvement. I received tons of support and opportunities, but wasn’t steered in a particular direction; I was independent, in that sense.

No one was presumptuous enough to steer my genius in any particular direction, except my uncle who always pushed me toward electric engineering, a choice which I took to well enough but never felt was my passion, my enthusiasm, my calling. My spirit was looking for something suitable for genius to work on. My uncle could keep me grounded and give me a conventional viable direction, but he couldn’t suggest that I develop a form of Cognitive Science, a new field, or “design my own unique multifaceted career” as the later aptitude testers vaguely advised me.

STEM classwork — actually, self-management in the doing of STEM classwork — turned out to be the launchpad and trellis on which my calling grew: it turned out, my calling was of course naturally enough, innovative theory-development about the mind, like Cognitive Science relating to {self as control-system}. In spirit, I was the Head of my very good schools.


In 1985-1988 I am not about religion; religion is not my target and focus; rather, I use religion (nondualism, enlightenment) toward what I am about, which is: the mind, the idea of transcendent control of the mind, self-as-controller, cross-time self-control conflict, and mental-model transformation. I had no respect for religion as a goal; I only sought to take from religion whatever potential it has, to put it to practical use, toward attaining what I thought all people should always have: self-control integrity, not self-conflict, and also, rational control over the mind, not being subject to our uncontrolled emotions.

That’s what I took away from the Spring 1985 self-help and awareness seminar and the similar books from my father, 1985-1986. I always felt this way, since 7th grade homework, since the first time I had self-control dysfunction and had to therefore stay up all night trying to get myself to focus on (potentially enjoyable) classwork — but the seminar and books and conversations with my father, and my baffling failures often at doing classwork, made me focus explicitly on this idea, and made me try to make good on the idea and expectation of eliminating cross-time self-control conflict.


Religion is worthless and irrelevant, except for studying the mind and self-management.

The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence was produced in the context of personal management toward classwork grades, course grades, per semester, with the problem being set up from 7th grade to Spring 1985. Religion was irrelevant, except insofar as religion had any utilitarian value in constructing an understanding of self-control integrity and conflict across time, including impulse-reaction, cross-time intention (“enjoy getting As and Bs”), versus time-slice intentions (what I choose and desire to do at each individual point in time).

That’s the problem with Advaita: oneness is trite, useless, irrelevant. The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence incorporates Advaita as one tiny input, but goes way beyond Advaita in terms of relevance and breadth of theory. “We’re all One and non-dual” is merely a given at the start of constructing the Cybernetic theory, in 1986. Advaita is kindergarten enlightenment. Ramesh Balsekar was further along toward ancient Western religion, in his focus on no-free-will. But the Cybernetic theory of enlightenment goes beyond Balsekar too.

Eventually the Cybernetic theory should incorporate more practical technique of: given no-free-will, how can we attain something like my 1986 motivating-goal of Transcendent Rational Control of the Mind, to produce cross-time self-control integrity and enjoyment or transcendent unconditional well-being in conjunction with practical success and consistent action rather than self-violation of one’s planned intentions chronically interrupted/preempted by impulsive pseudo-priority escalation?

After the January 1988 breakthrough, I continued to do some work on that original 1986 problem or project, such as logging my actual activities against my planned activities (my time-slice impulsive micro-selves, battling against my big-scale, cross-time planned-self). But I was so busy writing up my January 1988 breakthrough, the new worldmodel of time, self, and control, through 1997, and then applying that to explain religion/history/myth through 2012, that I never really got closure or follow-through on the 1986 project as such.

The 1986 project, continued in a deeply changed version in 1988, was chasing cross-time self-control integrity, as transcendent control of the mind, including transcending, detaching from, critically perceiving, and controlling impulsive impelling feelings of reluctance and enthusiasm that arise in the immediate time-slice. That was my monkish-life, monastic-like Way out of which the breakthrough Theory careened into a different direction. The main equivalent idea of 1988 was TRA — Transcendent Recursive Assumption, rather than posi-control forcefully controlling and chaining, constraining, your future time-slice actions.

At the start of the day, or during class, I can’t now make the future me-after-class do classwork. At the start of semester, I can’t now make myself, in each day, do classwork. That became clearer and clearer during 1986, and the 1988 breakthrough showed the extreme version: non-control of our thinking, ever, in that all our thinking at all points in our crystalline-embedded worldline is pre-set and unchangeable.

But then how, in practical terms, can I control myself to do classwork each day, to produce As and Bs and enjoy that and not feel reluctant or give in to enthusiastic impulses to do a thousand other things like experiment with gear to try to have an immediate breakthrough in getting album sounds with electric guitar? My frenzied theory-development 1986-1988 was a matter of manic enthusiasm for modelling the mind and control, for the practical and concretely measured purpose of getting As and Bs and enjoying my should-be-good life unconditionally, transcendently controlling feelings of reluctance and regret and enticement to violate my intentions.


I thought (and still think) that spirituality is empty irrational pop fluff for poor thinkers, but I knew that a kind of meditation technology of observation of thought, providing insight into the nature of the self-concept, like loose cognition, would making the thought-process explicit, and would disengage thinking including dysfunctional thinking.

Ideas and observations from meditation traditions, like loose cognition, would obviously help toward a breakthrough change of the mental stance, a change of self-concept and ideas about control, that would be useful and perhaps even required, to operate on thinking like holding your thinking at arm’s length and controlling your thinking rather than being controlled by your habitual dysfunctional irrational thinking. To solve and eliminate the problem of cross-time self-control, which will unblock success and enjoyment at getting As and Bs, requires studying the self-management aspects of the mind.

To study the mind, requires the equivalent of meditation-observation of the mind, including observing dynamics of self, immediate impulsive feelings that cause a dysfunctional overriding of cross-time intentions, and loose cog metaprogramming of the mind. I had no interest in religion beyond the potential to rip out these few potentially valuable useful aspects.

Religion provides some satori insights about the cognitive dynamics of the self, and feelings that are impulsive toward actions, feelings of reluctance to do planned classwork, and endless feelings of immediate enthusiasm for many practically random unofficial activities such as recording Rock albums and playing electric guitar. I suspect a problem worse than mere inadequate and unrealistic time-management skills. I knew perfectly well, that there is one and only one important or intended activity: classwork; yet I would promote an endless series of other activities as if I “should” do those, such as relatives and social.


The Key to Time-Management: Mastering Not-Doing, and Refusing Tasks

I always hated the popular concept of ‘procrastination’ because it is so inadequate; there is intriguing, profound dynamics going on in self-management, far deeper and more interesting than the dismissive, belittling concept of mere “procrastination”. For example, the real key to time management, contradicting all the books — which are just part of the problem and give precisely the wrong, bad advice — is to infinitely procrastinate everything and then say yes to only around 3 activities for the day. Time management is not about saying “I will do this” — it’s exactly the opposite. Time management is all about saying “I will not do anything except this.”

In this sense, Alan Watts has great time-management advice: the first, key step to time management is to sit and do nothing. If you cannot do nothing, you cannot do time-management. Time management is 99.9% about *not* doing activities, and is only 0.1% about *doing* activities. You must be a thousand times better at saying “No, I will not do that or that or that” than saying “Yes, I will do that.” Don’t practice doing; practice *not* doing. That’s the only way to clear your time and your priorities, to make the room to focus *exclusively* on the true priority items.

Every activity you do requires that you accept and commit *not* doing an infinite number of other activities. An hour of doing classwork demands an infinite sacrifice: sacrifice an hour of practicing electric guitar, and sacrifice an hour of relatives, and sacrifice an hour of decorating your dorm room, and sacrificing an infinite number of other activities during that hour: everything else that’s on your infinitely long to-do list, your list of unstated values and policies.

To Hell with all values and policies and to-do items, I am committed to not doing any and all of them, and, I am only saying Yes to classwork. Thus balance is the key, and the key to balance of time-management is to perfect your *defensive* game, demoting and avoiding tasks, rather than your *offensive* game, of promoting and accepting tasks.

Mundane time-management was not my main self-management problem 1983-1988, that motivated me to work toward what would become the Egodeath theory, but it was part of the problem. I stayed focused on the main problem, impulsive self-violation across time, in the moment, against my long-term plans and intentions. I knew from experience that a minimalist system was appropriate and effective: do the classwork.

But I would impulsively spontaneously add endless other pseudo-important tasks constantly, and then wonder in great puzzlement: “Seriously, how is this possible? I was given this assignment an entire week ago, intended to do it right away, and I continued to intend seriously to do it, and yet I have been incrementally promoting other tasks again and again for a week? I can’t even begin to understand how broken my self-management is.” (Spring 1986) I was despairing not because I was disappointed, or even because I was very frustrated. I think more accurate is that I would do anything to end the situation, to stop existing in this dysfunctional irrational state.

It was more of a HAL-like double-bind. The harder I tried to control my impulsive in-the-moment choice-making, the more acutely I was aware of my failure and inability. (Despite getting some of my highest grades that semester, after that anguish or terminal frustration.) The rock-bottom question around April 1986 when time was running out and the first phase of attempting my self-repair was always consistently failing: “If I don’t try to control myself, I make bad choices and fail to do classwork. If I try to control myself, the problem is worse. If I don’t try, I’m doomed. If I do try, I’m doomed. I *must* end this malfunctioning.

I am a genius — so why do I suffer this ignominy? All my average, not-too-reflective classmates have no problem. [Ignoring that my friends and roommates are leaving the programme entirely — and leaving university entirely.] No matter how I try, I fail; I chronically block and obstruct and conflict with myself. The problem is *me*, my fundamental character, my very personality, at root. There’s only one way to end this malfunctioning.”

Somehow I survived, got good grades, made the honor society, and in the Summer of 1986, I think, I moved into the 3rd-floor single dorm room (for 12 months), read Ken Wilber and skimmed Chogyam Trungpa, was pulled out of class to be told of my father’s cancer, and continued metareflection in my blank books.

In that colorful room, of a continuous series of daily breakthroughs, struggle, tragedy, Rock albums, classwork, and attempts to bring my mind down to the classwork, the first year of the Theory was born, including Control Beyond Control, Mental Construct Processing, Domain Dynamics, and Loose Mental Functioning Binding, and some deciphering-type highlighting of the King James bible.

— Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

(unable to append thread, so sep. thread)

[clarifications]
I now shall have, from here on out, thanks to my unintended few months of learning enlightenment about self and control, a plain, enjoyable life, not pushed and pulled by impulsive sudden desires or futile attempting to compel myself by [emotional self-berating (a futile egoic attempt to reach across time to control the future self), nor have to pay any attention to the feeling of] reluctance.

I was more focused on grades as merely an indicator of what I really cared about: enjoyment of doing classwork, and having consistent[, casual] integrity of self-control, while using minimalist time-management.

[typo]
would [make] the thought-process explicit

“It was more of a HAL-like double-bind.” That is:

HAL was hardwired to accurately process information without distortion or concealment, but his software instructions made him keep the discovery of the Monolith secret. This contradiction created a Hofstadter-Moebius loop. HAL had to kill the crew, to allow him to obey his contradictory instructions. By killing the crew, he would no longer have to keep the information secret.

Your top priority is to protect the mission. Do anything it takes to protect the mission. Humans were jeopardizing the mission, so logically, to protect the mission, he must eliminate the humans. My top priority around April 1986 was “Do anything it takes to eliminate the problem of violating and chronically overriding my previous, cross-time intention.”

My whole-hearted attempt to stop violating my own cross-time intention drove me insane, even in the midst of manic high optimism and expectation for how great my life would be once I eliminated that problem (even though I was fantastically uninspired by the mildly enjoyable electronics work and classwork). At that time, I saw Pink Floyd’s movie The Wall in the university movie theater, and I was upset around the scene where Pink scrambles his room and lays out all the pieces, organized.

I can somewhat remember that mindset context: I was unable to get a grip on my life, my situation was so tantalizingly good, and my blocking my success was so self-sabotaging and maddening, I felt totally alienated (while on the cusp of receiving high grades for the semester and then being invited to the honor society for high grades).


Fooling Yourself
Written/sung by Tommy Shaw. Not the soundtrack for 1986, but for 2012 in analyzing hitting bottom in my first serious attempt at being non-self-opposing, around April 1986:

You’re a troubled young man I can tell
You’ve got it all in the palm of your hand
But your hand’s wet with sweat and your head needs a rest

When your future looks quite bright to me
How can there be such a sinister plan

Get up, get back on your feet
You’re the one they can’t beat and you know it
Come on, let’s see what you’ve got
Just take your best shot and don’t blow it

And you’re fooling yourself if you don’t believe it
You’re killing yourself if you don’t believe it


I felt trapped in a dead-end of too-finite meaning and value in 1986, though I did love music. I am interested in Abraham Maslow and Ken Wilber (“flatland”) regarding existential meaning and the feeling that one needs something more, higher, transcendent. We have a drive toward realizing our potential, including our potential for self-transcendence and Transcendent Knowledge.

It’s no wonder the Occult, New Age, and spirituality, Eastern religion, and supernaturalist Christianity were popular in 1986, along with self-help seminars, Human Potential, and Transpersonal Psychology. Mathematical models of audio circuits are well and good, but hardly a complete feast for the psyche.

Therefore I had to create my own transcendent religion out of the pieces of thinking around me, and though I drew from STEM, my purpose at university was always GE as well. I was puzzled over my hyper-techie classmates who resented the waste-of-time GEs; that’s how I knew I was on a different planet than them. I resented having such a lopsided, limited amount of GEs. My year of techschool made me positively lust for GEs.

Aptitude theory says that I could never be satisfied by only having STEM classes; I am burdened with appetites for classes across departments. Later (1988-2007) this overabundance of aptitudes and therefore appetites manifested as an insatiable greed to absorb knowledge in seemingly all fields.


It turned out that several of the popular fields are only worth knowing for negative reasons: Robert Anton Wilson: throw half of his writings in the trash. McKenna same. Postmodernism and Ken Wilber’s coverage of it: 95% worthless. Interpretation of quantum physics/mechanics: 80% worthless. Ken Wilber after 1984: 75% worthless. Pinchbeck and the like: perhaps 2/3 worthless; the only reason to know these topics is to know that, although popular, they are not worth knowing or thinking about.

Shall we read a stack of books about the 2012 end of the world? Will expertise about that be valuable? You should be conversant in all fields on all topics so that you know which 80% of them are not worth knowing or thinking about. An interesting related problem in Western Esotericism: my Theory presents a minimalist, streamlined framework, or trellis, and Western Esotericism is like a wild thick growth on this trellis, obscuring it, like if you hide sentences from the Egodeath theory summary within a stack of automobile repair books, producing a very low signal-to-noise ratio. Here is the definition of the “signal” content, for the Egodeath theory:

1. Cybernetics (self-control limitations)
2. Heimarmene (pre-setness of our thoughts in spacetime)
3. Dissociation (tight vs. loose cognitive binding)
(4. Optional, incidental footnotes or appendix: History of mythic metaphor for the above.)

Everything else is “noise”. By that measure, what is the signal/noise ratio in early Ken Wilber (through 1984), later Ken Wilber, Advaita, Manly Hall, Watts, Ruck, Pinchbeck, McKenna, Allegro, Wasson, RAW, QM, early Rush (through Grace Under Pressure), later Rush, Diary of a Madman album, the 1964 song Help!? What about these fields through 1986: Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, proto-Cognitive Science — what is the signal/noise ratio there regarding the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence?


Ken Wilber’s early books:
The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977)
No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth (1979)
The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development (1980)
Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution (1981)
The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (editor) (1982)
A Sociable God: A Brief Introduction to a Transcendental Sociology (1983)
Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm (1984)


If I didn’t have super-high expectations for myself around 1986, and high standards of being rational, I likely wouldn’t have had the ambitious motivation to fix my self-control dysfunction and discover and formulate Cybernetic enlightenment.

If I didn’t have my thorn in my side, my self-control dysfunction problem that aggravated me, I wouldn’t have been driven to figure out Cybernetic enlightenment.

If I didn’t have high intelligence, I wouldn’t have succeeded at finding Cybernetic enlightenment.

A few days ago, I figured out the many *abilities* (situationally and personally) that were involved in making possible my discovery of the Egodeath theory. But I found that mere ability or possibility utterly failed to explain why I was driven to hunt and pursue and tackle and all the way to successfully capturing the core Theory in 1988. “Abilities” and “motivations” do overlap.

I had to really hammer hard on the problem of reconstructing my *motivations*, the past few days — that’s the hard, tricky part to figure out and reconstruct; even requiring mentally *re-enacting* the situational context of 1983-1986, like a mental hypnosis and past-life regression back into an exciting, hyper-optimistic, and traumatic period.

The list of abilities is perhaps remarkable, but in the end, boring, providing no interesting insight. For example: various self-improvement seminars, diverse interesting and inspiring people in my families, classes where everyone else was older than me, government assistance, people treating me as highly gifted, supported so my needs were taken care of, encouragement to focus on religion and spirituality or human potential and arts and guitar, assistance from the rock band community, and so on. You might as well say I was given all possible forms of resources and inspirations and tools.

By 1986-1988, I had massive resources and abilities and suggested goals and ideals at my disposal, as if society dumped everything that anyone could think of, my way. I was like the central community project. Everyone was doing everything for me, hopeful that something valuable might be produced. That was the experience I received and perceived.

I *emphasize* that the Egodeath theory is a product of my society, through me. You guys invested in me, and told me to use my abilities in the most worthy way, in light of good values, the New Testament, Human Potential, cultivation, the arts, electric Rock (“we were interested in what you would do with this”), and Science and Engineering, and so this I give you is the result. I did succeed with the resources you gave me, I did produce something of the highest, superior transcendent value. Here it is, as you requested and inquired about: The Cybernetic-Heimarmene-Loose Cognition Theory of Ego-Transcendent Knowledge.

— Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012

GEs — General Education classes
STEM — Science/Technology/Engineering/Math classes

The Egodeath theory is a theory of self-control, which also explains religion. The core of religion is about changing the way we think about self-control. Self-control is about no-free-will, and using the mystic state to see that our independent self-control is an illusion. Jesus and Paul and the apostles are purely fictional, and the New Testament is about using mysticism to create an egalitarian social system during the Roman Empire. This Theory directly reveals and scientifically explains all hidden knowledge, religion, myth, religious revelation, and enlightenment.

Those are some labels and phrases for laypeople such as my relatives to use; a label to tell my relatives. To communicate the Theory to my relatives, I have to imagine how they could tell each other what kind of theory — a theory of what? — I created. People are dying all the time. I must effectively summarize the Theory soon for those who most directly supported me.

The above description covers:
1. Cybernetics
2. Heimarmene
3. Dissociation
4. Metaphor

I would not firstly say that I created a “theory of religion”. My concern and purpose driving my creation of the core Theory was not to come up with a theory of religion, but rather, to come up with a new Human Operating System, a new mode of using the mind, that doesn’t have malfunctioning self-control across time. That new theory of self-control was a theoretical core model, containing that which is revealed by religion, and it incorporated some reworked ideas from religion, but it was not yet a theory about specific religions.

It was a theory that explained self-control as the core of religion, not formed in order to explain the core of religion, but formed in order to explain and model personal self-control power across time, which happens to led to the core of religious revelation and mental-model transformation. That core theory was then able in the following years to explain all the specific religions.

It is a theory of self-control and the core of religion (the core of religious revelation and mental-model transformation about the nature of self-control), and then, a theory of specific religions in terms of that self-control core.

I imagine and feel as if I remember thinking in High School that that is what’s needed: a new Human Operating System, a new mode of using the mind, that doesn’t have malfunctioning self-control across time.


Maybe I was influenced, in that, by my father teaching me about Human Potential. I never lived with my father. He was away from me, studying Human Potential. He entered my life when I was in High School. He left my life when I was at university. He had some idea of my work and my potential. My friends and bandmates visited him in his very last days during Spring Break 1987 at the Veterans’ Hospital, where he continued to teach us.

My mother lived to 2007 and generally knew about my articles and publishing but didn’t read them. In late 1985 or early 1986, she knew something of the start of my work in exploring the mind.

— Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012

New Chronology and recent invention of Christianity

Reading with *great* skepticism Joscelyn Godwin’s book The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, this idea just occurred to me:

Per my previous posts about Edwin Johnson’s chronology revisionism, Christianity didn’t exist in the Roman Empire of antiquity, which is why there’s no evidential trace of Christianity in antiquity. Here is a way to resolve my conflicting assertions (that the New Testament was written during the Roman Imperial era as a rebuttal to Caesar & the honor-shame hierarchy, and that the New Testament was written by Martin Luther in 1525 aka 825).

The New Testament was not a rebuttal to Caesar’s honor-shame hierarchy as a current event, but rather, as a past, proxy event. The New Testament is actually criticizing the scheme of aristocracy around 1500, represented in the form of Caesar’s system. Pagan myth wasn’t rediscovered in 1400 aka 700. It never was forgotten in the first place. Why did Christian clergy permit pagan myth to be added to their thousand-year old Christian culture? Because Christian culture was actually brand new. Contrast the official — which is, the Catholic — chronology versus the Johnson chronology.

Catholic Chronology:
1 CE – Augustus Caesar, Jesus Christ
150 – New Testament written. Upstart Christianity within pagan-dominated culture.
475 – Fall of Rome, end of pagan culture.
… Dark Ages. Catholic Church rules and totally dominates for 1000 years.
1450 – Printing press. Re-birth of ancient culture/Renaissance. Sudden complete, rich rediscovery of pagan culture, somehow allowed by the Church even though the Church was all-dominant.
1525 Luther

Johnson Chronology:
1 CE – Augustus Caesar
475 – Fall of Rome, pagan culture continues
650 – Islam
750 aka 1450 – Printing press. Pagan culture continues (no “Renaissance”; antiquity culture never died)
825 aka 1525 – Luther & monks write the New Testament, advocating egalitarian social-political system. Upstart Christianity within pagan-dominated culture.

700-1400 didn’t exist; 700 is aka 1400; any events that actually happened really happened, but all the real events happened within a shorter span of time between the fall of Rome and Luther, than the Catholic chronology claims.

Johnson’s chronology explains why pagan themes were so prevalent during the 1450-1650 period (aka 750-950). Christianity was a brand new upstart religion in 1450, against a backdrop of strongly dominant, continuing pagan culture, which was still fresh from the recent fall of Rome.

I will reword my “New Testament counter-Caesar, counter-hierarchical” assertion to be agnostic and independent of whether the NT was written 150 CE or 825 aka 1525 CE. Whenever it was written, the NT was expressed in the form of counter-Caesar. But it is unclear whether the NT was written against a current Caesar of 150 CE, or, was actually written against the hierarchical aristocracy of 1525 aka 825.

Edwin Johnson is more interesting than Pinchbeck et al.

One moment I’m writing “BS!” in Ruck’s book where it says Mr. Historical Paul used entheogens, and the next moment I’m writing “BS!” in Godwin’s book where it says that pagan culture was “re-” this and “re-” that: rediscovered, revitalized, recovered, reborn, et cetera. The art evidence strains credulity. Clear looking at the evidence — I’ve noted this for years — shows a suspiciously comfortable, familiar presence of pagan culture in the midst of *supposedly* totally Catholic-dominated culture.

I call “BS” on the official scenario, which is the Catholic chronology. Catholic culture of 1450 didn’t “tolerate” the “rebirth” of pagan culture — rather, Catholic culture had barely been invented in 1450 aka 750, amidst continued thriving, all-dominant pagan culture. The “survival of paganism” after 1000 years of total Christian dominance, then sudden rich, fanatical, full rebirth and recovery of paganism? Implausible. Those 1000 years are fictional, nonexistent, a trick with number-labels, generating a thousand years of Catholic dominance out of a mere attaching of a number.

It will take years of scholarly detective and re-theorizing, chronology revisionism work, to consider Edwin Johnson. I cannot commit to that work. Johnson raises good, profound, fundamental questions that must be raised about the history-tales and year-numbers we have received from the Catholic church, those power-mongering magicians of history; those fanatical monks, “preservers of knowledge”, want to rule all the world.

Our calendars are off by 700 years. It’s not 2012; it’s 1312 A.D., i.e. since Augustus Caesar.

— Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012 aka 1312

Entheogenic pagan political hierarchy and NT rebuttal *1500* not 150

It was in 1500, not in 150, that the New Testament and Christianity started, as a rebuttal, using entheogenic banqueting to support an egalitarian hierarchy as the social-political arrangement. It was in 1500, not in 150, that pagan entheogenic mystery banqueting was used to support the honor-shame hierarchy as the social-political arrangement, and was all-dominant, public, and culturally central, with no previous Christianity existing.

The first churchmen to exist were around 1450 aka 750, and they initially were fully pagan, since Christianity didn’t exist at all until 1450. Only pagan culture existed, in 1450. And it was heavy-handedly used as a hierarchical system of society, continuing the arrangement that existed during the Roman Empire, which was 27 BC–476 AD (West); 1453 (East).

On the official view, based on the Catholically conjured history-tale, Christianity arose in antiquity. In that case, the New Testament was created to form an alternative social-support network and promote (successfully, or, becoming popular for this reason) an alternative, egalitarian social-political system. If we accept that New Testament Christianity could have and would have formed in that scenario, then by the same logic, using Johnson’s chronology, we have the same dynamics in the aristocracy social-political system of 1450 aka 750, and therefore, the same explanation holds:

The Caesar-ruled honor-shame hierarchy used entheogenic experiencing to justify the social-political hierarchy, and New Testament Christianity could have been formed as a popular rebuttal, and then could’ve been taken over by the Catholic Church, if the Catholic takeover had occurred in 150-325. Instead, after the fall of Rome 476, pagan culture and kings and hierarchy continued, and Islam and Jewish events happened with various dynamics (see Johnson’s chapters), and the same forces of rebuttal that could’ve made New Testament popular in 150 occurred actually in 750 aka 1450.

The criticism of Caesar’s recent hierarchical system was a proxy criticism indirectly criticizing the current kingship hierarchy circa 750 aka 1450. This criticism occurred by the humanist literary monks in the newly invented monasteries in conjunction with popular formation of Jewish-like social-support network egalitarian entheogen gatherings.

The rebellious peasants within the continuing kingship-and-paganism culture from recent “antiquity” said “to hell with you kings and aristocrats and your hierarchical system which continues the recent Caesar honor-shame hierarchy, we are going to use the recent Jewish Diaspora from Spain to form an alternative to your oppressive pagan entheogen-“justified” hierarchical scheme of 750/1450, a network of quasi-Jewish-styled rebellious alternative egalitarian social-support and entheogenic trip-houses.

That is: everything I wrote about the system of Caesar, which used entheogen religious experiencing to justify the honor-shame hierarchy social-political system, *totally continued* — that’s key — into the year 750/1450. Whether you label it as 750 or 1450, the newly recognized (by me) fact is that the public explicit use of … here’s a new escalation of my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion.

Ruck is wrong. For one thing, the use of entheogens in antiquity was more prominent and explicit than he’s ever written, and more novel is this assertion: the prominent, central, public, explicit, normal, standard use of entheogens fully and totally continued into 750/1450. Everything very strong stated about the heavy standard central use of entheogens in 150 absolutely and fully applies to 750/1450 as well. Entheogens were *every bit* as ubiquitous and central in 750/1450 as they were in 150; there is no difference. There was *no* falloff or decrease in the centrality and publicness of entheogens, between 150 and 750/1450.

Bracket-aside the chronology gap. Against Ruck, Michael Hoffman’s Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion, if assuming Edwin Johnson’s chronology, asserts that in 1450-1550, entheogens were totally central in European culture exactly the same as in 150. The kings of 1450-1550 used exactly the identical pagan system and entheogen banqueting as in 150. In effect: there was no fall of Rome; the culture of pagan antiquity did *not* stop in 476; it *fully continued* to 1550 aka 850.

Therefore the same dynamics that *could* be used to explain the rise of New Testament Christianity 150 is 100% the same identical argument not just during 1-476 or 150-325, but the precise same situation — Caesar-like honor-shame hierarchy justified by public non-secret entheogen banqueting/Mystery Religion initiation continued fully present into 1550 (whether or not that’s aka 850).

Forget the model of:

Entheogenic Mystery Religions, entheogenic banqueting, and the honor-shame hierarchy (practically aka Divine Right of Kings) *supposedly limited to* the Roman Empire (130 BC-535 AD Justinian I invasion of Italy).

The Radical Truth: per the Maximum Entheogen Theory possibly combined with Johnsonian Chronology:

Entheogenic Mystery Religions, entheogenic banqueting, and the honor-shame hierarchy (practically aka Divine Right of Kings) from 130 BC – 1550 aka 850.

If entheogenic Mystery Banqueting justifying hierarchy in 150 could have caused the populace to form Jewish-like alternative egalitarian agape meal alternative social system, then so could:

Entheogenic Mystery Banqueting justifying hierarchy in 1450 caused the populace to form Jewish-like alternative egalitarian agape meal alternative social system.

Just as a movie showed how Abraham Lincoln’s war was about vampires, importing one scheme into another, take everything you know about Entheogenic Mystery Banqueting justifying hierarchy in antiquity, and transpose that to 1500 (perhaps aka 800).

There is no difference between the world of 150 and the world of 1500. They are one and the same. The use of entheogenic Mystery banqueting justifying social-political hierarchy did *not* cease in 476; it *fully continued* to 1500 aka 800. 1500 was not at all a Christian culture, and the Catholic church did *not* exist or dominate for a thousand+ years by 1500. Basically, wholly remove the existence of Christianity and the Catholic church from the period 30-1450, and also delete totally from the timeline 700 years (collapse the timeline itself) between Luther and Augustus.

How could entheogenic Mystery banqueting, justifying hierarchy, have existed in 1500, given that the Catholic church had been all-dominant for a thousand plus years, and the mystery religions died in 476?” Answer: Christianity and the Catholic church didn’t exist *at all* 30-1450, and the mystery religions (or fully equivalent culturally central use of trip-banqueting, integrated with kingly hierarchy) fully continued to 800/1500. How to start the popular grassroots trip-banquet quasi-Jewish-styled egalitarian alternative social-support system in 1500 is identically the same problem as how New Testament Christianity got started in 150.

There is *no difference* between the religious pagan all-dominant culture of 150 and the culture of 1500; it is identically one and the same.

In no way was mystery-religion pagan banqueting and kingship of antiquity lost and then re-discovered in a “rebirth of antiquity”. The culture of antiquity (pagan entheogenic mystery initiations justifying hierarchy) in no way declined and was rediscovered later — that pagan-themed use of entheogens justifying political hierarchy continued totally unabated and unchanged from 476 straight through to 1500 (possibly aka 800). *Therefore* the same dynamics of why New Testament Christianity became popular as a rebellious alternative social-political system or arrangement or philosophy in 150, identically should be transposed and moved to 1500.


I will continue to write:

The essential nature of New Testament Christianity is the borrowing of Jewish themes and the Jewish synagogue egalitarian social support network to make entheogens justify egalitarian social-political arrangement, as a rebuttal to the pagan use of entheogen religious experiencing to justify the hierarchical social-political arrangement.

But I will make this change: I will *not* assume that Christianity and the Catholic church began 150/325, and I will *not* assume that pagan entheogen-mystery-religion-justified social-political hierarchy ceased in 476. The context of pagan entheogen-mystery-religion-justified social-political hierarchy, causing a rebuttal forming New Testament Christianity out of Jewish-styled elements, happened, as a dynamic. But the question is *when* this dynamic happened. In abbreviation: pagan political hierarchy caused New Testament grassroots rebuttal, which was subsequently taken over by the top-down Catholic church.

But *when* was this pagan political hierarchy, and when was the New Testament rebuttal? 150? Or 1500, which might actually be 800? I shall write agnostically, to bracket-off that question so that my historical aspects of theory remain standing regardless of whether the creation of New Testament Christianity occurred in 150 or in 1500.

Therefore everything written about pagan culture or entheogen pagan culture “surviving” to 1450 or being “reborn” 1450 is an extreme understatement. Christianity didn’t exist at all in 1400; there was nothing but pagan culture, including the culturally central use of pagan entheogenic mystery religion initiation and the use of it to justify the social-political hierarchy arrangement of society. The Hellenistic antiquity, pagan, totally non-Christian culture of say 300 BC – 25 BC continued fully unabated, unchanged, with zero Christian influence or existence, to 1450 (aka 750).

Thus the situation we are familiar with in 150 that gave rise to New Testament Christianity is — stylistically and in terms of dynamics of social-political rebuttal — the identically same situation as actually existed in 1450.

The rise of New Testament Christianity in 1450 is not “like” the dynamics we imagine in 150; it is identically the same dynamics. Totally re-imagine what the world of 1450 was: it was the world of 150, still fully continuing; merely swap out the kings of 150 with the exactly same kings of 1450, and remove all traces of Christianity and the later-fabricated picture of Christianity existing in 1450 and during 30-1450. No one had ever heard of Christianity by or before 1450; everyone had only heard of pagan culture and the kingly social-political hierarchy, as of 1450.


Not “The crude Christian culture of the Middle Ages gave way to the re-discovery of pagan culture in the Renaissance.”
Rather: The pagan culture of antiquity was the only culture that ever existed, all the way into 1450. Then, for the first time, crude grassroots Christianity began to form, for the first time, the way we thought Christianity formed in 150.

False history: (strange teeter-totter of pagan and Christian culture)
paganism 500BC-500AD
early Christianity 150-500
Christian Middle Ages 500-1450
pagan Renaissance 1450
Early modern Christianity 1450-1600

True history: (simple switchover from pagan to Christian around 1500, no “dark ages” years, no “rebirth”)
paganism 500 BC – 750 AD aka 1450 [“Renaissance” is simply the latter portion of the continuation of pagan-only culture]
early Christianity 750 AD aka 1450, continuing toward modern era 1600 aka 900

The concept of “medieval” must be flipped in relation to so-called “Renaissance”. Rebirth of paganism was actually continuation as the only available culture (no Christianity yet), and then, around 1450, the culture we call “Medieval” was invented, in crude form, for the first time, leading to the invention and rise of Christianity around 1500 aka 800.

Antiquity, such as 476, was 700 years more recent than the Catholic chronology claims, and pagan culture was the *only* existing culture until 1500.

The Renaissance was the continuing pagan-only culture, since Christianity didn’t exist in or before 1450.

A telltale giveaway to the Catholic bluff of “Christianity in antiquity” (there was no such thing) is the very *lack* of the *supposed* “uneasiness about Renaissance paganism” that the so-called “Renaissance humanists” had. The so-called “Renaissance humanists” evidence *no such* uneasiness that we expect — that was my biggest clue, and cognitive dissonance, when I studied Western Esotericism. The pagan imagination existed side-by-side with the new invention of Christianity, with no uneasiness until later, when the grassroots Christian religion was invented in 1450 and then the newly formed Catholic Church of 1525 started to put down paganism.

The Catholic church, the New Testament, and Christianity didn’t exist yet until 1500 (aka 800).

The Catholic church, the New Testament, and Christianity didn’t exist during antiquity, which is why no trace of evidence for Christianity is found in the materials of antiquity. In the material evidence of antiquity, there is not a single Christian cross, there are no pictures of Jesus, there is no Christian catacomb art, nothing.

The fakely labelled “Christian” art is all plainly pagan art, simply *labelled* as “evidence of Christianity”. “Here’s Jesus — depicted as Apollo.” “Here’s banqueting depicted in the catacombs — that is Christian.” “Here’s a picture of the cross — in its pagan, Chi-Rho form.” That’s all the so-called “Christian” evidence artifacts we have — because Christianity didn’t exist at all during antiquity, such as 30 – 476.

The Catholic church, the New Testament, and Christianity didn’t exist during the fantasy nonexistent years “700-1400”. Any events that happened, happened within the period from Augustus to Luther, and that period is 700 years shorter than the Catholic timeline. Why didn’t the Catholic monkish conjurers invented a 2000 year Dark Ages period of Christian omni-dominance, in their fake history, instead of merely 1000 years?

We are used to the idea of grassroots Christianity of 150 being taken over top-down in 325. Those dynamics are correct, but the dates are false. We must transpose that dynamic (early, grassroots Christianity being taken over by the new, top-down Catholic church) to the period 1450-1550.

Paganism was the only, always-dominant choice, through 1450 aka 750; Christianity was the new, subversive upstart in 1450 aka 750.

— Michael Hoffman, November 4, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

Books about the continuation or supposed “re-birth” of pagan culture into 1450


The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes in European Fairytales
Blaise Staples, Carl Ruck, Jose Celdran, Mark Hoffman
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1594601445
426 pages
2007
Condensed description:
“It was mainly only the European urban centers that converted to Christianity, and often more for political or commercial interests, than as a matter of faith. The old religions persisted in the villages or pagani, from which the term Paganism arose. The Christians built their sanctuaries upon the pagan sites, expropriating their numinous past, assimilating the symbolism of the former deities, and commonly incorporating the actual architectural remnants.

The wisdom of those deposed gods and their rites persisted in less objectionable forms – disguised to delude the censors [I doubt that -mh] – as country festivals and quaint tales often about the fairy folk, who coexisted with this world and could be accessed by magical procedures that perpetuated half-remembered [fully remembered; never went away; antiquity was recent -mh] methods of authentic ancient shamanism.

Encoded in tales seemingly as simple as Snow White with her poisoned red and white apple are themes traceable back to the great epics of Homer and the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh. These patterns of shamanic empowerment lurk also in the histories of the leading families of Europe, who could not completely divest themselves of the former [recent, continuing -mh] religious basis for their right to rule, but instead they embraced, Christianized [with the newly invented upstart Christian religion -mh], and buried it in sanctified graves … the Albigensian heresy…

Media: Heretical Visionary Sacraments amongst the Ecclesiastical Elite”


The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art
Jean Seznec
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0691029881
1940
“The gods of Olympus died with the advent of Christianity [325, or 1500?-mh]–or so we have been taught to believe. But how are we to account for their tremendous popularity during the Renaissance? [antiquity eg 476 was 700 years more recent than the Catholic chronology claims, and pagan culture was the *only* existing culture until 1500 -mh]. Mythology in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The far-reaching role played by mythology in Renaissance [ie in the continuing pagan-only culture, since Christianity didn’t exist in or before 1400 -mh] intellectual and emotional life.


The Pagan Dream Of The Renaissance
Joscelyn Godwin
http://amazon.com/o/asin/1578633478
2002
“How the rediscovery [continuation -mh] of the pagan, mythological imagination during the Renaissance brought a profound transformation [lack of change, until the upstart Christianity invention of 1450 -mh] to European culture. The pagan imagination existed side-by-side–often uneasily–with the official symbols, doctrines, and art of the Church [no, not “uneasily”, the Church, New Testament, and Christianity didn’t exist yet, until 1500 -mh]. Godwin carefully documents how pagan themes and gods enhanced both public and private life. Palaces and villas were decorated with mythological images; stories and music, and dramatic pageants were written about pagan themes; landscapes were designed to transform the soul. This was a time of great social and cultural change, when the pagan idea represented nostalgia [no, continuance -mh] for a classical world untroubled by the idea of sin and in no need of redemption [those Christian concepts weren’t invented yet, because Christianity didn’t exist until 1450 -mh].”


Pagan Mysteries In The Renaissance: An exploration of philosophical and mystical sources of iconography in Renaissance art
Edgar Wind
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0393004759
1958
“Gives further credence to Johan Huizenga’s theories elaborated in “The Waning/Autumn of the Middle Ages”.”


The Mirror of the Gods: How the Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods
Malcolm Bull
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0195219236
2005
Condensed publisher blurb:
“By the end of the 15th century, the remains of the ancient gods littered the landscape of Western Europe. Christianity had erased [false; Christianity was now invented and began to erase for the first time -mh] the religions of ancient Greece and Rome and most Europeans believed the destruction of classical art was God’s judgment on the pagan deities. How, then, [answer: the Edwin Johnson chronology per Michael Hoffman] did European artists during the next three centuries create such monumental works as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Raphael’s Parnassus?

How the artists of Western Europe–from Botticelli and Leonardo to Titian and Rubens–revived [no, continued, as always during the no-Christianity period -mh] the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. Each chapter focuses on a different deity. Venus, Hercules, and Bacchus. The ancient myths through the eyes of Renaissance and Baroque artists, not as they appear in classical literature. When the wealthy and powerful princes of Christian Europe began to [no, continued to. answer: it was the only available culture, Christianity hadn’t been invented yet -mh] identify with the pagan gods, myth became the artist’s medium for telling the story of his own time. [that is, 750 aka 1450 -mh]

How Renaissance artists combined mythological imagery and artistic virtuosity to change the course [no; continue the course -mh] of western art.
Profoundly deepens our understanding of some of the greatest and most subversive [no; paganism was the only, always-dominant choice; Christianity was the new subversive upstart in 1450 -mh] artwork in European history. Fascination with classical myth.


The Idea of History
R. G. Collingwood
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0192853066
1928
Condensed reviews:
“Historical understanding consists in the historian literally experiencing the same mental life now as that of the personage [or past self, in autobiography] being studied. Their minds intersect in eternity. Re-enacting these various changes within the historical imagination. Change the way you think. History as a field is not a series of events in the past. The field of History is the recreation of events in the mind of the historian in the here and now. An event consists of an outside (what happened) and an inside (why it happened, or what was in the mind of the actant to cause the action). History is thus the history of thought.

You must amass a wealth of statistical evidence regarding an event or a period, and you must understand the thoughts or consciousness involved, conduct an exploration of the inside of the event. (This book is endlessly fascinating and intriguing. The excitement lies in watching and following an incredible mind think out a totally original approach to the relationship between history, philosophy and thought itself.)”


http://amazon.com/o/asin/
http://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Renascences-Western-Icon-Editions/dp/0064300269/ref=pd_sim_b_9
Condensed reviews:
“Renaissance or multiple renascences in Western art 10th to the 15th Century. There were renascences prior to the Renaissance. The earlier renascences were revivals. The Renaissance was a cultural mutation. Our concept of renaissance must stop being based on that times’ writers and historians who strongly emphasized their own times’ supremacy over the supposed “dark ages” they disparaged. The Carolingian renaissance and the 12th century proto-renaissance, proving that the world of antique ideals was unabated among painters, sculptors, writers and architects.

About the renaissances and their roots. What makes the Renaissance different from the many other revivals or continuations of antiquity.”


Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance
Erwin Panofsky, Gerda Panofsky
http://amazon.com/o/asin/0064300250
1972
“the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies.”

The concept of “medieval” must be flipped in relation to so-called “Renaissance”. Rebirth of paganism was actually continuation as the only available culture (no Christianity yet), and then, around 1450, the culture we call “Medieval” was invented, in crude form, for the first time, leading to the invention and rise of Christianity around 1500 aka 800. -mh


The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Jacob Burckhardt
http://amazon.com/o/asin/014044534X
1855
Condensed blurb:
“The Italian Renaissance was the beginning of the modern world, in which individualism and the competition for fame transformed science, the arts, and politics. The Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome provided the seeds of a new form of society. The rise of the creative individual, from Dante to Michelangelo. An era of cultural transition. An age of genius.

This book was the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance. It anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche’s concept of the ‘Ubermensch’.”

— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, November 4, 2012

The New Testament is double-proxy. It pretends to be about Jews versus Caesar in antiquity, but it’s actually about grassroots early Christians in 1500 aka 800, against the omni-pagan kings of 1500 aka 800.

— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, November 4, 2012

The Maximal Ahistoricity Theory of Christian Origins

— Created by Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. Title formed on November 4, 2012.

Yesterday (Novemer 3, 2012) when reading Godwin’s Pagan Dream book, I perceived *purely* pagan kings and Catholic church rulers in 1450 just *starting* to slightly incorporate, for the first time, a few Christian themes in their mythic pleasure gardens — thus evidently, newly invented Christian themes, which fits with Johnson’s non-Catholic — indeed, violently anti-Catholic — chronology. For years, the more I studied Western Esotericism such as 2001-2006, the more I thought “This doesn’t make any sense. The official stories contradict each other.”


This morning, I saw more connections and reconfigurations, ramifications, possibility to continue in this direction. It takes a little work to identify specifically which of this cluster of reconfiguration insights struck me this morning — which specific connections or reconnections I perceived this morning, because the ideas and connections (connection-revisions) from today and yesterday interlink so much.

The concept of “medieval” must be flipped in relation to so-called “Renaissance” — that might be the key insight from this morning. The pagan culture of the Renaissance came first (being a simple unchallenged continuation of the culture of antiquity), and then the crude medieval Christian culture came after that. Only monkish sleight-of-hand made it appear the reverse, but the illusion is flawed and the artifice can been spotted by the skeptical, discerning critic like Edwin Johnson.

Reconnections always build on previous reconnections and its typically tricky to say specifically in what way I had a sudden realization, when seemingly the “same” idea struck me before. But the notion of “the same idea” is too crude; an insight is a matter of the number of re-connections, more like per Paul Thagard’s model of conceptual revolution and theory-revision. Today I dug in more to the specific work of transposing the 150 CE Christian origins story into its actual, 800 CE (aka 1500) context.


Not only is there too much entheogen evidence for the current official view to hold; in similar way, there is far too much pagan culture, completely unapologetic and fully comfortable, in the midst of this supposedly iron-fist-dominated Catholic-church-ruled culture. There is a big self-contradiction here: the official story tells us the Catholic church was all-powerful, but the official studies of pagan culture during the Renaissance show an unproblematic, unconstrained, open flourishing of pagan culture, right in the heart and midst of the supposed Catholic-dominated culture.

Johnson supported 1871, in Italy, deposing the pope system, stripping the popes of temporal legal political power. As in: “England is good and sensible. Down with Italian Popery and their bunk, invented-in-1500 fraudulent monk-forged Christianity and New Testament, and monks tampering with pagan texts to falsely retroject Christianity into antiquity.”


What topics are required, for me to specify in skeleton outline, my neo-chronology for entheogenic/political origins of Christianity in 1450? What assertions are *most relevant* in stating and summarizing what my theory asserts?

o The following didn’t exist in antiquity: Jesus, Paul, Church Fathers, New Testament, Christianity, Catholic church

o Christianity began as a synagogue-network-like house-church grassroots egalitarian alternative to the hierarchical social-political system that pagan kings advocated. Christianity was then co-opted and taken over by the pagan kings now restyled as Catholic bishops.

o That happened in 1450-1550. The following were fictionally invented and retrojected, or concretely started, around 1500: Jesus, Paul, Church Fathers in antiquity, New Testament, Christianity, Catholic church.

o The so-called “15th” Century aka 8th actual century since Augustus Caesar; 1400-1500 aka 700-800. Paganism continuing in full flourish from antiquity, with Jewish Diaspora-inspired grassroots house-church Christianity, just barely beginning to form then, with no official top-down co-opted version of Catholic Christianity on the scene yet.

o The time axis from the period of Augustus Caesar to Martin Luther was artificially stretched and padded by 700 years that didn’t actually exist. 700 CE aka 1400; 750 aka 1450; 825 aka 1525; 2012 aka 1312 CE. We must start with the new, compressed, un-stretched timeline, and assign all events that actually occurred, to points on this new, corrected time-axis.

o Culture (kings, aristocracy, popular religion) was entirely and solely pagan up to the creation of Christianity around 1500 aka 800. When grassroots Christianity was formed after the Diaspora of Jews from Spain, the thoroughly, purely pagan kings restyled themselves as “Catholic”, “bishops”, and started adding a little bit of Christian figures into their sickly decadent (oppressively expensive and extravagant) pagan pleasure palaces (shown in Godwin’s book The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance).

o The New Testament was written around 1525 by top-down directed groups of monastic monks in factory-like monasteries, managed and directed. They recopied pagan works from antiquity, tampered with those in a managed though flawed way, to retroject Christianity into Antiquity by tampering with pagan documents during copying, as if we let Catholic monks freely edit the official encyclopedia we all use.

These monks forged a loose system of pseudo-ancient Church Father writings, and after that, they forged and revised the Pauline epistles (Marcion, for example, among the original house-church movement around 1450/750, originated the Pauline writings, then the several factions of monks redacted those, working out a hodge-podge inconsistent collection of views attributed to the fictional “Paul” author-figure).

Topics that are less-central but related to those:
o Re-studying Western Esotericism through 1500
o Pagan and Christian culture in Byzantium Eastern Holy Roman Empire 476 – 800 aka 1500, arriving in Western Europe
o Jewish Diaspora from Spain into Western Europe
o Islam origins and timeline


The goal here with the less-central, extended topics is to recreate the cultural situation around Western Europe 700 – 850 (aka 1400 – 1550) This requires re-assigning events to dates on the corrected time-axis, for events in the regions of Byzantium, Italy, France/Gaul, Germany, Spain/Jews/Islam, England & Ireland.

When Jews were exiled from Spain and entered Europe, Christianity didn’t exist. Jews knew how to rework Islamic writings and form Jewish pseudo-ancient writings. Jews knew about esotericism, ciphering, conjuring, magic, double-meanings, mystic/mythic metaphor, hiding and revealing, Egodeath, entheogen initiations, forgery, and illusions. The European, purely pagan aristocracy of the 15th Century knew about all these things too.

The populace of the purely pagan kingdoms liked the Jewish social support network synagogues, which provided a separate, egalitarian system, a society within a society. Transpose the 150 CE Christian origins story, per Richard Horsley, to the so-called “15th” Century, when Christianity *actually* was invented.


What our Catholic-defined Chronology falsely labelled as the “15th” Century is, in reality, the 8th Century; that is, century since Augustus Caesar. Christianity’s origin must be pushed later by 600 years: not 150, but 750, aka 1450. This is not starting Christianity *1300* years later, from 150 to 1450; ‘1450’ is a misnomer and the real year there is only 750.

Despite the deceiving number-label of ‘1450’, this theory actually only delays Christian origins by 600 years, not by 1300 years, compared to the familiar tale of New Testament origins in 150. The New Testament was written 600 or 675 years later than today’s scholars think: around 750 or 825 (aka 1450 or 1525), not 150. The first Christian house churches may have been 750 aka 1450, and the first Catholic redactions and writing of the New Testament may have been around 825 aka 1525.


The pagan kings fought against this grassroots popular Jewish-derived system; they persecuted the Jews because the Jews (from the Spanish Diaspora) were egalitarian and didn’t play along with the pagan kings’ honor-shame hierarchy (in the 15th Century). The grassroots revolution was very popular and very successful. You can’t have an honor-shame hierarchy that the lower 90% of the pyramid refuses to go along with. The pagan kings were forced by the populace to abandon the hated pagan system, which was thoroughly identified with the hierarchical political arrangement, and were forced to re-style themselves as Christian rulers, bishops.

The rulers couldn’t resist this new, Jewish-inspired, Jewish-modelled egalitarian popular social system, so they had to instead co-opt it, including through a loosely systematic programme of literary forgery. The New Testament had to strike a balance between factions: egalitarian, hierarchical, factions of monks. The council of Trent didn’t happen in antiquity, nor Eusebius’ bogus, retrojected Church History — where these factions fought it out; it happened around 1500 (aka 800).


I’m very accustomed to living in 150 and observing how Christianity was formed then. I’m surprised to find myself so at-sea, regarding the start of Christianity in 1450 aka 750. I feel almost as disoriented as I felt around 1999 when I started seriously looking at Christian history and the New Testament meaning.

It took me from October 27, 1985 to January 11, 1988 to go from not knowing anything about transcendent control of the mind, to discovering my breakthrough core Theory (the Cybernetic, rather than Oneness, Theory of Ego Transcendence).

It took me from January 1999 (or possibly a little bit of a start in 1997 at Mindspace forum) to November 12, 2001 to go from knowing nothing about interpreting the New Testament, knowing nothing about myth or Greco-Roman culture, or entheogen history, to discovering my breakthrough theory: The Entheogen-Cybernetic-Heimarmene theory of the New Testament, and subsequently of all myth-religion.

I started working with Edwin Johnson’s revised chronology around 2003, per my Study Version of Edwin Johnson’s The Pauline Epistles.

The Pauline Epistles – Re-Studied and Explained
Edwin Johnson
http://egodeath.com/edwinjohnsonpaulineepistles.htm

It’s hard to say how long I’ve been working on Chronology revision, so far. The subject is more periphery, further from the core of the Egodeath theory, than the subject of deciphering myth in terms of cybernetics, heimarmene, and dissociation.

The nonexistence of Christianity until 1450, and the Catholic artificial stretching of the timeline of history by 700 years, is as unimportant for the Egodeath theory as the existence of Jesus or Paul or the Church Fathers in antiquity.


I am not afraid of the future criticizing me for liking Chronology Revision or ahistoricity. I am afraid that the future will say:

“Michael Hoffman was smart, figured out the Cybernetic nature of Ego Transcendence, and how to decipher myth, but he was a deeply deluded as everyone else during the Dark Ages of the modern era, because he failed to consider whether Jesus and Paul and Christianity in antiquity even existed at all. He did as well as we can expect from his deluded era he worked in. We have to excuse Michael Hoffman for being so gullible and so profoundly out of touch with reality as everyone else around him was.

He was such a critical thinker, yet so gullible and uncritical on the most basic, elementary facts of Christian origins. Too bad he was so half-baked, such an unstable oil-and-water mixture; if only he had lived up to his potential and been a consistent critical thinker, with follow-through. Instead, like other people, he only solved one fraction of the puzzle of the nature and history of myth and religion.”

I was afraid of someone else out-radicalling me, therefore I prevented that by erring on the side of going to the 100% extreme. I’m always criticizing entheogen scholars and liberal Jesus scholars for being milquetoast, for being inconsistently critical, only half-critical, a mixture of critical and uncritical. If you are going to call yourself a “radical” “critic”, then be 100% radical, and be 100% critical — not a mix of uncritical/gullible/blind, and critical/discerning/perceptive.

I want to leave *nothing* for anyone else to discover, nothing but insignificant crumbs. “Michael Hoffman absolutely *nailed* this entire field; he left *nothing* for us to figure out and improve on to any significant extent, as far as all the basics, the entire skeleton framework, all the revolutionary science. He left nothing for us but normal science work, filling-in his paradigm.”

I am the Copernicus of the Egodeath theory, including the Cybernetics/ Heimarmene/ Dissociation core, the entire mythic metaphor mapping including the Maximal Entheogen Theory, and, almost tantamount, almost entailed, also covering Maximal Ahistoricity of Christian Origins (that is, incorporating and integrating the work of Edwin Johnson). That’s enough, that’s sufficient. I leave the remainder to other sleuths (picture: pathetic crumbs).

Other sleuths: “Revolutionary discovery: Jesus used mushrooms!”

The figure of Jesus was fabricated in 1450. ‘1450’ is a number attached to the era by scheming, forging, Catholic monks. That era was actually 700 years less removed from the period of the reign of Augustus Caesar; the year we call ‘1450’ is actually 750. All religion through the year we call ‘1450’ was based on mushrooms, including the newly invented Christian religion.

No one in antiquity ever heard of Christianity. As all scholars know (it is uncontroverted), Constantine’s “cross” was not the Christian t-shaped crucifixion cross, but the Chi-Rho (X with P overlaid) pagan cross of victory. The only evidence for the existence of Christianity in antiquity is literary, and that “evidence” is demonstrably forgery that uses a loosely systematic scheme.


Where is the right place to draw the line, in being skeptical and revisionist? First, distinguish between Core and Periphery, with degrees along that axis. That’s an important line to draw, like:

o Inner core (cybernetics, heimarmene, dissociation)
o Outer core (mythic metaphor for the above*)
o Inner periphery (no Jesus or Paul)
o Outer periphery (no Church Fathers or Christianity or New Testament in antiquity; compress the Catholic time-axis by 700 years)


*That seems to necessarily imply putting the Maximal Entheogen Theory of history/myth/metaphor here too, argued as follows.

Metaphor is close to the Theory core because metaphor is helpful to explain and represent the content of the core.

To say “mythic metaphor is about the use of dissociation to perceive cybernetic personal noncontrol and no-free-will”, in my thinking that’s tantamount to saying that all myth is entheogenic and thus that since myth is ubiquitous, entheogen use was ubiquitous. According to my thinking, you can’t say “Generally and normally, as a rule, myth is about dissociation/cybernetics/heimarmene” but then say “Entheogens were used in only 10% of such myth.” How can 90% of myth that’s about dissociation and what it reveals, not involve entheogens?

To assert that, you *must* adopt the stupid and totally unjustified, vague, arm-waving “alien primitive psychology” theory, that is no theory at all, but is merely throwing up one’s arms, saying that there is no specific explanation — people other than us moderns are mysterious primitives who were so impressed by ritual, such as dinner banquet protocol, they went into a dissociative loose-cog state when they watched a play at dinner, like we watch TV with a TV dinner. What kind of “theory” is that? It’s not even an explanation in any sense. It’s a “make sh*t up” arm-waving, waving-aside the problem and the lack of any real explanation.

Does it make any sense to tear apart the two theories, though the one assertion entails the other?:

o Mythic metaphor means dissociation revealing cybernetics limitations in light of heimarmene. This is in the outer core of my Egodeath theory.

o Myth (throughout history) is about the use of entheogens. This is in the inner periphery of my Egodeath theory.

Does entheogen history (my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion), belong in the Outer Core of my Egodeath theory, or in the Inner Periphery? There are arguments for both. I assert that mythic metaphor is about the use of entheogens to perceive noncontrol and no-free-will/presetness of thoughts — that implies my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Mythic Metaphor and Religion, and Culture. If myth is about entheogens for perceiving something, then entheogens have to have been used centrally and heavily wherever myth is found throughout history.

You cannot say that the entheogen theory of mythic metaphor, to cause dissociation and perceive cybernetics and heimarmene, is in the outer core, but that the Maximal Entheogen Theory of history/myth/metaphor is in the inner periphery, because the entheogen theory of mythic metaphor is tantamount to the Maximal Entheogen Theory of history/myth/metaphor; they entail each other; they are two ways of asserting the same thing.

The Core of the Egodeath Theory (innermost first):
1. Cybernetics
2. Heimarmene
3. Dissociation
—-
4. Metaphor
—-
Ahistoricity, Chronology Revision, no Christianity in antiquity

“No Christianity in antiquity” includes “Martin Luther and disputatious monk factions wrote the New Testament” (like Jefferson and Adams disagreeing but cooperating to craft a new political system).

— Michael Hoffman, November 4, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

I added a link to my 1997 core summary article
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5870
at the home page of the Egodeath Yahoo discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/
This article is as important as my later, main article, which added entheogen history, mythic metaphor, and Christian origins.

I’ve been interested in the false-chronology theory as you’ve presented it, but the claims presented here have significant difficulties. The collections of correspondence and sermons by Augustine of Hippo discovered in the last 1980’s match and expand upon late imperial material and are written in a Latin vernacular that essentially disappears from Europe with Augustine’s generation.

These letters and sermons depend upon some accepted form of the New Testament, whether the one we’ve inherited or not.

Pseudo-Dionysius also presents similar problems of being contemporaneous with late-antiquity Pagan authors.

Why do you reject Porphyry’s /Against the Christians/ as evidence of Christians in late antiquity, or the destruction of the temple of Serapsis in Roman Egypt?

When you say Luther wrote the New Testament, do you mean he wrote a redaction which is what we inherited? That seems the only way to explain all of the codices which predate him.

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, egodeath-owner@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
> New Chronology and recent invention of Christianity
>
> Reading with *great* skepticism Joscelyn Godwin’s book The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, this idea just occurred to me:
>
> Per my previous posts about Edwin Johnson’s chronology revisionism, Christianity didn’t exist in the Roman Empire of antiquity, which is why there’s no evidential trace of Christianity in antiquity. Here is a way to resolve my conflicting assertions (that the New Testament was written during the Roman Imperial era as a rebuttal to Caesar & the honor-shame hierarchy, and that the New Testament was written by Martin Luther in 1525 aka 825).
>
> The New Testament was not a rebuttal to Caesar’s honor-shame hierarchy as a current event, but rather, as a past, proxy event. The New Testament is actually criticizing the scheme of aristocracy around 1500, represented in the form of Caesar’s system. Pagan myth wasn’t rediscovered in 1400 aka 700. It never was forgotten in the first place. Why did Christian clergy permit pagan myth to be added to their thousand-year old Christian culture? Because Christian culture was actually brand new. Contrast the official — which is, the Catholic — chronology versus the Johnson chronology.
>
> Catholic Chronology:
> 1 CE – Augustus Caesar, Jesus Christ
> 150 – New Testament written. Upstart Christianity within pagan-dominated culture.
> 475 – Fall of Rome, end of pagan culture.
> … Dark Ages. Catholic Church rules and totally dominates for 1000 years.
> 1450 – Printing press. Re-birth of ancient culture/Renaissance. Sudden complete, rich rediscovery of pagan culture, somehow allowed by the Church even though the Church was all-dominant.
> 1525 Luther
>
> Johnson Chronology:
> 1 CE – Augustus Caesar
> 475 – Fall of Rome, pagan culture continues
> 650 – Islam
> 750 aka 1450 – Printing press. Pagan culture continues (no “Renaissance”; antiquity culture never died)
> 825 aka 1525 – Luther & monks write the New Testament, advocating egalitarian social-political system. Upstart Christianity within pagan-dominated culture.
>
> 700-1400 didn’t exist; 700 is aka 1400; any events that actually happened really happened, but all the real events happened within a shorter span of time between the fall of Rome and Luther, than the Catholic chronology claims.
>
> Johnson’s chronology explains why pagan themes were so prevalent during the 1450-1650 period (aka 750-950). Christianity was a brand new upstart religion in 1450, against a backdrop of strongly dominant, continuing pagan culture, which was still fresh from the recent fall of Rome.
>
> I will reword my “New Testament counter-Caesar, counter-hierarchical” assertion to be agnostic and independent of whether the NT was written 150 CE or 825 aka 1525 CE. Whenever it was written, the NT was expressed in the form of counter-Caesar. But it is unclear whether the NT was written against a current Caesar of 150 CE, or, was actually written against the hierarchical aristocracy of 1525 aka 825.
>
> Edwin Johnson is more interesting than Pinchbeck et al.
>
> One moment I’m writing “BS!” in Ruck’s book where it says Mr. Historical Paul used entheogens, and the next moment I’m writing “BS!” in Godwin’s book where it says that pagan culture was “re-” this and “re-” that: rediscovered, revitalized, recovered, reborn, et cetera. The art evidence strains credulity. Clear looking at the evidence — I’ve noted this for years — shows a suspiciously comfortable, familiar presence of pagan culture in the midst of *supposedly* totally Catholic-dominated culture.
>
> I call “BS” on the official scenario, which is the Catholic chronology. Catholic culture of 1450 didn’t “tolerate” the “rebirth” of pagan culture — rather, Catholic culture had barely been invented in 1450 aka 750, amidst continued thriving, all-dominant pagan culture. The “survival of paganism” after 1000 years of total Christian dominance, then sudden rich, fanatical, full rebirth and recovery of paganism? Implausible. Those 1000 years are fictional, nonexistent, a trick with number-labels, generating a thousand years of Catholic dominance out of a mere attaching of a number.
>
> It will take years of scholarly detective and re-theorizing, chronology revisionism work, to consider Edwin Johnson. I cannot commit to that work. Johnson raises good, profound, fundamental questions that must be raised about the history-tales and year-numbers we have received from the Catholic church, those power-mongering magicians of history; those fanatical monks, “preservers of knowledge”, want to rule all the world.
>
> Our calendars are off by 700 years. It’s not 2012; it’s 1312 A.D., i.e. since Augustus Caesar.
>
> — Michael Hoffman, November 3, 2012 aka 1312
>

Does Edwin Johnson address any of those problems? He died suddenly. Any answers I give are going to be what Johnson said, or what I imagine Johnson would’ve said had he lived longer. I would extremely appreciate it if people would identify what the main problems with Johnson’s model are, and what the possible rebuttals to those objections would be.

I posted a very useful list of Johnson’s books, probably earlier in this thread. One good book online vanished as soon as I posted the link.

At this point, I am collecting objections. My conventional reading of Christian history books left some holes but at least it’s possible to identify those holes; the overall model or framework is clear. Perhaps 2 years of intensive research and idea-development could figure out Johnson’s completed paradigm, how it would address the objections, what the interesting ramifications are.

Reading Johnson is extremely rewarding and interesting as an exercise in critical thinking — he is more a radical critic than the other, semi-radical semi-critics.

Johnson is unclear. He says Jewish religion existed in antiquity but not like in the way the Jewish pseudo-history texts say.
___________

An inherent challenge is that you have to re-envision pagan late-late Classical, post-Fall culture with *no* Christian aspects existing yet, and, attach two centuries to every date. Ask the question one way, a specific proposal sounds impossible; another way, easy:


Did Classical pagan entheogenic mystery banqueting, initiations, altar-sacrifices, and processions continue to 1400? The Catholic history paradigm says:

No way. There were a thousand years of Christian Middle Ages separating 1400 from the culture of antiquity.


Here’s the same question worded differently:

Did Classical pagan entheogenic mystery banqueting, initiations, altar-sacrifices, and processions continue to 700 (aka 1400), given that no Christianity existed during 500 BCE to 500 CE? The Johnson paradigm says:

Yes, naturally; by default. There was no Christianity to suppress Classical pagan culture, so the momentum continued, by default, for 200 years after the Fall of Rome, including Greco-Roman myth themed entheogen banqueting and initiations and processions. People could choose from Greco-Roman dominated classical themes, or nothing. They could have Persian or Egyptian stylings, or, perhaps, ancient Jewish stylings — but Christian themes simply didn’t exist at all, yet.

Therefore, the religious culture of 700 was the same as the religious culture of 500 BCE to 500 CE. That explains the un-self-consciously purely pagan style of the kings of the 15th Century. These kings were immersed in the only choice, which was Western Esotericism including ancient and recent Jewish esotericism themes.

____________________

“Jewish” represents egalitarian social-political system.
“Pagan” represents hierarchical social-political system.

Around 1999 I asked how in the hell did a *Jewish* (variant) religion take over the thoroughly *pagan* classical culture in antiquity? Per Richard Horsley, the answer was: Jewish religion embodied an appealing, popular egalitarian political arrangement (psycho-political-economic-social; preferable to the honor-shame hierarchy). Then the pagan rulers restyled themselves as Catholic Christian bishops in order to take over and co-opt the successful popular movement, make it uniform and controllable as a profitable franchise, sneaking hierarchy back into again, into the egalitarian house-church early Christian popular grassroots religion and social movement.

That is essentially uncontroverted; it’s practically the standard official view of Christian origins. Johnson disputes the time-frame, but almost all of the dynamics remain coherent when that official story is transposed onto Johnson’s model.


Per Johnson, the sequence is this:

Classical antiquity, continuing post-Fall

Some Jewish religion in antiquity

Islam

Jews, inspired by Islamic pseudo-history literary conjuring, rewrite Jewish history, retrojecting Jewish history into classical history.

Jewish Diaspora from Spain

In still purely classical-pagan-styled Western Europe, which continues to be ruled by divine-right-of-kings hierarchy, classical texts arrive with refugees from Constantinople, and Jewish pseudo-history texts and egalitarian social structures arrive with the Jewish, egalitarian refugees from Spain.

The populace hates the oppressive honor/shame hierarchy that continues unchallenged (so far) from classical culture, in which entheogen initiation banqueting, altar-sacrifices, and processions are used to justify the aristocratic hierarchy of society. The Jewish egalitarian system is highly appealing. The grassroots populace desires to have the Jewish egalitarian system but without the Jewish separation-rules.

So early house-church Christianity in 750 aka 1450 creates the Jesus figure out of available themes, counter to ‘Caesar’ (representing divine right of kings; hierarchy), and starts using the Islam/Jewish conjuring-tricks with history literature, to co-opt the Jewish religion to force the Jewish religion to lead to a Jewish pro-populace, egalitarian figure who does away with the Jewish separation-commandments (circumcision, sacrifice-related food restrictions).

Then the pagan rulers see how they’ve lost control of the story, to prop up their oppressive hierarchy, so they restyle themselves as bishops, and pour their sick amounts of money (stolen from the people) into huge factory-like monasteries, in which the monks are directed to do the Islamic/Jewish text-conjuring tricks to retroject Christianity back into the classical era and earlier. Then, there was no need for actual Jews; they said this history was nonsense and that their own fake redacted pseudo-history that they conjured up was the true history.

So the Jews were eliminated, in order to take over their bunk history, and make a new bunk history, that first favored the egalitarian-loving populace, and soon after, the hierarchy-loving pagan-become-Catholic rulers.


The so-called “Renaissance Humanists” were *not* antiquarians within a long-Christian culture; they were merely the same old classical pagan intellectuals as ever, with Christianity the brand new player in town, as of 750 (aka 1450).

But now thanks to the inspiration that the Diaspora Jews brought, with their fake-history techniques and their grassroots-popular egalitarian system, and then in reaction the ruling-class takeover of that in Catholic form, the so-called “Humanists” — that is, the same, old, continuing classical pagan culture of mystery entheogen banquet initiations, sacrifices, processions — were outnumbered and left behind — not in 500, but in 825 aka 1525.

First, in antiquity, there was Western Esotericism in pagan, Greco-Roman form. Then, around 700 (1400), Jewish esotericism was added to that. Finally, at the late date of 1525, some Christian esotericism themes were developed and added. That is what I perceive in the history of Western Esotericism.

What can we eagerly hope to discover in Johnson’s system, and shoving all existing evidence into that arrangement to see what happens? Exciting developments in our understanding of the intensity of richness of entheogenic Western Esotericism.

— Michael Hoffman, November 5, 2012
Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.

Important posting with links to Johnson’s books:

Books by Edwin Johnson
egodeath (Michael Hoffman)
Thu Oct 6, 2011 11:40 pm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/egodeath/message/5249

He treats the author Augustine like the author Paul: there is no single person “Augustine”. It’s an empty authorial cipher filled-in by various monkish authors.

http://egodeath.com/edwinjohnsonpaulineepistles.htm —

Chapter 8: Jerome and Augustine: The “Illustrious” Biblical Scholars.

“Jerome,” “Augustine,” and Other Latins Are Merely Masks for the Same Monastic Faction.

The Alleged Handbook of “Cassiodorus,” In Use for 1,000 Years!

The Decree of the Council of Trent, 1546, as a Landmark.

The Epistles Were Composed in Latin.

The Tales about the “Old Vulgate” Are Misleading and Designed to Mislead: No Texts Are Very Old.

The Monasteries whence Our Latin Manuscripts Come: Verona, Vercelli, Bobbio.

The Muratori Fragment

The French and Swiss Monasteries; St. Germain, Reichenau, St. Gall, St. Irenaeus, Lyons, English Manuscripts

Evidence from the Catalogue of the Benedictine of Bury St. Edmund’s.

Thank you for such a well-thought reply. Your reading lists are so thorough it’s sometimes difficult to determine the best place to begin. I’m taking a seminar on changes in the concept of sanctity in Christendom from late antiquity through the middle ages, so it’s been great reading your discussions of this perspective.

Once the semester is over, I will take the time to go through Johnson’s material.

— In egodeath@yahoogroups.com, egodeath-owner@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
> Does Edwin Johnson address any of those problems? He died suddenly. Any answers I give are going to be what Johnson said, or what I imagine Johnson would’ve said had he lived longer. I would extremely appreciate it if people would identify what the main problems with Johnson’s model are, and what the possible rebuttals to those objections would be.
>
> I posted a very useful list of Johnson’s books, probably earlier in this thread. One good book online vanished as soon as I posted the link.
>
> At this point, I am collecting objections. My conventional reading of Christian history books left some holes but at least it’s possible to identify those holes; the overall model or framework is clear. Perhaps 2 years of intensive research and idea-development could figure out Johnson’s completed paradigm, how it would address the objections, what the interesting ramifications are.
>
> Reading Johnson is extremely rewarding and interesting as an exercise in critical thinking — he is more a radical critic than the other, semi-radical semi-critics.
>
> Johnson is unclear. He says Jewish religion existed in antiquity but not like in the way the Jewish pseudo-history texts say.
> ___________
>
> An inherent challenge is that you have to re-envision pagan late-late Classical, post-Fall culture with *no* Christian aspects existing yet, and, attach two centuries to every date. Ask the question one way, a specific proposal sounds impossible; another way, easy:
>
>
> Did Classical pagan entheogenic mystery banqueting, initiations, altar-sacrifices, and processions continue to 1400? The Catholic history paradigm says:
>
> No way. There were a thousand years of Christian Middle Ages separating 1400 from the culture of antiquity.
>
>
> Here’s the same question worded differently:
>
> Did Classical pagan entheogenic mystery banqueting, initiations, altar-sacrifices, and processions continue to 700 (aka 1400), given that no Christianity existed during 500 BCE to 500 CE? The Johnson paradigm says:
>
> Yes, naturally; by default. There was no Christianity to suppress Classical pagan culture, so the momentum continued, by default, for 200 years after the Fall of Rome, including Greco-Roman myth themed entheogen banqueting and initiations and processions. People could choose from Greco-Roman dominated classical themes, or nothing. They could have Persian or Egyptian stylings, or, perhaps, ancient Jewish stylings — but Christian themes simply didn’t exist at all, yet.
>
> Therefore, the religious culture of 700 was the same as the religious culture of 500 BCE to 500 CE. That explains the un-self-consciously purely pagan style of the kings of the 15th Century. These kings were immersed in the only choice, which was Western Esotericism including ancient and recent Jewish esotericism themes.
>
> ____________________
>
> “Jewish” represents egalitarian social-political system.
> “Pagan” represents hierarchical social-political system.
>
> Around 1999 I asked how in the hell did a *Jewish* (variant) religion take over the thoroughly *pagan* classical culture in antiquity? Per Richard Horsley, the answer was: Jewish religion embodied an appealing, popular egalitarian political arrangement (psycho-political-economic-social; preferable to the honor-shame hierarchy). Then the pagan rulers restyled themselves as Catholic Christian bishops in order to take over and co-opt the successful popular movement, make it uniform and controllable as a profitable franchise, sneaking hierarchy back into again, into the egalitarian house-church early Christian popular grassroots religion and social movement.
>
> That is essentially uncontroverted; it’s practically the standard official view of Christian origins. Johnson disputes the time-frame, but almost all of the dynamics remain coherent when that official story is transposed onto Johnson’s model.
>
>
> Per Johnson, the sequence is this:
>
> Classical antiquity, continuing post-Fall
>
> Some Jewish religion in antiquity
>
> Islam
>
> Jews, inspired by Islamic pseudo-history literary conjuring, rewrite Jewish history, retrojecting Jewish history into classical history.
>
> Jewish Diaspora from Spain
>
> In still purely classical-pagan-styled Western Europe, which continues to be ruled by divine-right-of-kings hierarchy, classical texts arrive with refugees from Constantinople, and Jewish pseudo-history texts and egalitarian social structures arrive with the Jewish, egalitarian refugees from Spain.
>
> The populace hates the oppressive honor/shame hierarchy that continues unchallenged (so far) from classical culture, in which entheogen initiation banqueting, altar-sacrifices, and processions are used to justify the aristocratic hierarchy of society. The Jewish egalitarian system is highly appealing. The grassroots populace desires to have the Jewish egalitarian system but without the Jewish separation-rules.
>
> So early house-church Christianity in 750 aka 1450 creates the Jesus figure out of available themes, counter to ‘Caesar’ (representing divine right of kings; hierarchy), and starts using the Islam/Jewish conjuring-tricks with history literature, to co-opt the Jewish religion to force the Jewish religion to lead to a Jewish pro-populace, egalitarian figure who does away with the Jewish separation-commandments (circumcision, sacrifice-related food restrictions).
>
> Then the pagan rulers see how they’ve lost control of the story, to prop up their oppressive hierarchy, so they restyle themselves as bishops, and pour their sick amounts of money (stolen from the people) into huge factory-like monasteries, in which the monks are directed to do the Islamic/Jewish text-conjuring tricks to retroject Christianity back into the classical era and earlier. Then, there was no need for actual Jews; they said this history was nonsense and that their own fake redacted pseudo-history that they conjured up was the true history.
>
> So the Jews were eliminated, in order to take over their bunk history, and make a new bunk history, that first favored the egalitarian-loving populace, and soon after, the hierarchy-loving pagan-become-Catholic rulers.
>
>
> The so-called “Renaissance Humanists” were *not* antiquarians within a long-Christian culture; they were merely the same old classical pagan intellectuals as ever, with Christianity the brand new player in town, as of 750 (aka 1450).
>
> But now thanks to the inspiration that the Diaspora Jews brought, with their fake-history techniques and their grassroots-popular egalitarian system, and then in reaction the ruling-class takeover of that in Catholic form, the so-called “Humanists” — that is, the same, old, continuing classical pagan culture of mystery entheogen banquet initiations, sacrifices, processions — were outnumbered and left behind — not in 500, but in 825 aka 1525.
>
> First, in antiquity, there was Western Esotericism in pagan, Greco-Roman form. Then, around 700 (1400), Jewish esotericism was added to that. Finally, at the late date of 1525, some Christian esotericism themes were developed and added. That is what I perceive in the history of Western Esotericism.
>
> What can we eagerly hope to discover in Johnson’s system, and shoving all existing evidence into that arrangement to see what happens? Exciting developments in our understanding of the intensity of richness of entheogenic Western Esotericism.
>
> — Michael Hoffman, November 5, 2012
> Copyright (C) 2012, Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com. All Rights Reserved.
>

The wiki site ‘tvtropes.org’ is an excellent resource pertaining to the ‘metaphor’ quadrant of ego death theory; it contains an exhaustive list of generalised plot devices (or ‘tropes’) that typically occur in fictional stories. Each trope has its own page where it is described in detail, including a list of examples of where the trope occurs in fiction (such as movies, tv shows, mythology, computer games etc.). Many of the tropes are obviously (sometimes explicitly) interpreted as psychedelic/ego death metaphor, such as the following:

“Alien geometry” (“Alien Geometries are often depicted as being dangerous to the sanity of normal humans….just looking at this stuff can have an unpleasant effect on your mental stability”).
“Hyperspace Is a Scary Place” (“sure to be mind-bendingly different and hostile to conventional life”).
“Freak-out” (“the character goes through something traumatic enough to change their personality forever (even Freak Outs that are temporary have lasting effects on a character). It could be a Mind Rape or a really Awful Truth, but it has to be pretty nasty.”)

And there are many more examples, all explained in detail, including how the tropes relate to each other.

Max F