Michael Hoffman, started composing 6 am Feb. 16, 2025

Contents:

• Intro/Motive
• Why Psilocybin Is the Gold Standard Reference for Transcendent Knowledge (for myth & religion)
• See Also

Motivation for this Page

I keep touching on this, but need central place to point to.

i just realized same pattern w Amanita and non-drug meditation / the traditional methods of the mystics.

Ergot cannot be the standard, because unconfirmed and location-specific.

Psilocybin is ubiquitous around the world per 2005 debate Graham Hancock book Supernatural, 2nd Ed is 2022:
Visionary: The Mysterious Origins of Human Consciousness
(The Definitive Edition of Supernatural) Paperback – April 4, 2022
by Graham Hancock
https://www.amazon.com/Visionary-Mysterious-Consciousness-Definitive-Supernatural/dp/1637480067/

Letcher 2006 grants ok we were wrong, we admit Lib Caps existed in Eng-Europe — but we still maintain no one in Europe thought of Psil Mushrooms as spiritual until 1970 – but some ppl still deny Lib Caps were in Europe before 1970.

Letcher 2006 in extremely uninformed about evidence for mushroom imagery in Christian art , only discusses 1 instance and worst possible treatment of that wo the many other mushrooms imagery by Bernw eg list

Intro

Instead of 1 good post, here’s two bad/rough-draft placeholder posts tangled together. todo: break out new post for 2nd topic; clean up.

Distinct topics:

• My motivations in 1986, why I combined loose cognition, human potential movement​, The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, and had no interest in “only mind exists” while I modeled mental construct processing & representationalism.
• Dislike of the “Cognitive Neuroscience” field/ marketing nonsense, that promises to lean toward “mind is important; the explanation level is mental experiencing”, but IMMEDIATELY) falls back to “matter is important; the explanation level”. Immediately, like, by the time you leave the title on the front cover & move down to the subtitle.
• Dislike of treating non-drug meditation as if it’s simply a GIVEN that that’s the gold std Ref.
• My 1987/1988 dislike of interp of QM.

There are 3-5 topics interconnected here.

I have to build out this draft, to determine & plan that.

General strategy: my idea development pages 23 & 24 spawn posts that organize that draft content.

Ways That Are Not the Gold Reference Standard

• non-drug meditation
• non-drug entheogens
• Amanita
• Hatsis’ scopolamine
• cave meditation Ustanova book
• the Christian author/ entheogen denier that Irvin & I both indep. dislike – he “explains” early Christian mystical experience as the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics. Irvin & I: “bs!”

By April 1985 , my father gave me all the leading edge bs tech [! including the Way of Zen by Alan Watts]: it did not much, that technology did not fully/ directly address [other than Watts in 1987] my need for/ expectation of posi-control (non-dysfunctional self-control across time) so it was obvious no books or articles covered – why cant we have, how fix this?

1985 solution: use loose cognition to give a STEM solution & model of ndsc posi-control (non-dysfunctional self-control across time) . to analyze anything, the right approach is STEM.

i need right now immediately a clear grasp in 85 of what ego transcendence is.

what is egoic vs transcendent thinking?

Those are key points to then use to form the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence in Oct 26 1985-1986-1987-Jan 11 1988– i think of this period isea as “1986” era of 1St floor Soutgwest dorm spring 1986 & 3 senesters:

nov 83-mar 84: THE PROBLEM

Apr 84: the self help seminar – MILESTONE

Oct 1985-May 1986: first attempt

Jun 86 – mar 87

apr 87- jan 88

human potential movement

transpersonal psychology

hyperventilation “breathwork”

first, myth & me and enlightenment is from psychedelics not “the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics”

the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics

the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics tnmm

The Cubensis Question (vs. Liberty Cap/ Panaeolus)

not cubensis tho Great Canterbury Psalter shows preference Cub. allegedly no cub N of 30th parallel. what does “no” mean? — “too rare to be a thing”

I believe there IS cub far N of 30th parallel but no one made ANY attempt to look for it. Stamets puts Cub in SE US which is N of 30th.

Why this topic is key

Mere “A” Mystical Experience (eg Unity feeling), vs. the Ultimate, Definitive Mystical Experience: transformation from possibilism to eternalism

copied from portion of email feb 15 from idea development 24

“A” mystical experience from Griffiths’ Psychedelic Mysticism research?

The ultimate “mystical experience” is mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism to psychedelic eternalism.

The wording is nuanced and crucially important, in the debate! to define the positions usefully & relevantly:

Non-drug meditation cannot sufficiently reliably , it’s not sufficiently reliable or intense to accomplish mental model transformation, transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Insofar as the fake construct academics’ fake invented confabulation “the traditional methods of the mystics” “can” produce a Psil-like effects, the problem is, non-drug meditation is not reliable … same problem Amanita has!

Non-drug meditation, or Amanita, is not intense enough and is not reliable enough to deliver you through the guarded gate, transformation gate, to get the treasure & bring it back to the community.

Amanita “can” produce mystical experience – but it’s a deliriant, and cannot do anything but STEAL CREDIT from the only way that actually is strong enough to bring full mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Griffiths, or Amanita, or non-drug meditation, or Hanegraaff’s non-drug entheogens, “can/ could/ might/ may” produce “a” mystical experience, but that’s merely weakly true.

Walter Stace 1960 is correct: mystical experience includes UNITY.

But the Egodeath theory is AGAINST UNITY as definitive of transformation from possibilism to eternalism. Dittrich’s dimension name, “Dread of ego dissolution”, is INADEQUATE.

It’s not wrong, but it’s not helpful, it’s not sufficient, it’s not relevant enough.

Same w/ lexicon conceptual that’s alien to / external to the Egodeath theory’s conceptual vocab: “default mode network”, “cog neurosci”, “neuroplasticity” are “not wrong, but not helpful.”

That’s my catchphrase: “Not wrong, but not helpful.”

Non-drug meditation is not wrong, but it’s not sufficient to deliver the goods, deliver on the bragging Marketing claims, braggadocio that belittles Psil.

Psil is the actual standard gold reference – non-drug meditation is NOT the true genuine gold standard of reference, and I hate the assumption that non-drug meditation is the gold standard of reference.

The teacher of righteousness is Psil, NOT non-drug meditation, or Amanita, or Hane’s non-drug entheogens.

That is my massive fundamental refutation of Zig Zag Zen and the lousy poorly conducted, mis-founded Pop debate of “psychedelics vs. Buddhism”: their fund. premise is wrong and false and presupposition.

I hate that that debate takes it for granted that the gold standard of reference is non-drug meditation.

The true gold standard reference is Psil, because only Psil is sufficiently reliable and intense to cause transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Non-drug meditation “can” produce “a” mystical experience, but cannot produce the full transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Beginners’ mild experience of cosmic unity, falls short of full transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

/ end of copied from portion of email feb 15 from idea development 24

Zig Zag Zen – Tired in 1996 Tricycle mag, tired in 2015 2nd Ed.

Book Zig Zag Zen by Allan Badiner: Why I cannot read this book and recoil at every page.

1996 Tricycle mag/ Zig Zag Zen book

Houot’s new book Rise of the Psychonaut.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPSJGMFR

ZZZ
https://www.amazon.com/Zig-Zag-Zen-Buddhism-Psychedelics/dp/090779162X/

That book was bad/ tired/ worn out back in 1996 Tricycle mag, it was still bad/ tired / worn out in ZZZ 1st Edition, and it is still bad in ZZZ 2015 2nd Edition.

ZZZ is intensively based on the silent presupposition, very strongly taken for granted by everyone involved, that meditation didn’t come from Psilocybin mushrooms, and that psychedelics are a novel upstart innovation.  

I thought we learned our lesson that that was a huge missstep in 1960s; someone like Ralph Metzner wrote as much – after I wrote as much.  

But no, psychedelicists who are owned by the meditation hucksters have learned nothing.

Authentic meditation is possible by – at the very least – acknowledging the likely Psilo origin of meditation. 

At least mention that possibility!  Has to be taken into account! 

Else, we have a compendium of confused bias, zzz.  Meditation, then, = confused bias (ideal for scam & never delivering on the grand promises).  Great.

I could check 2nd Ed. of ZZZ to confirm that it doesn’t even occur to anyone involved, to even ask the looming, huge, key question: 

Is Psilocybin mushrooms new for Buddhist meditation – or actually the very source and inspiration historically?

If everyone is wrong about this fundamental presupposition, then the entire book is kind of worthless and not worth reading — unless you think a study of folly is a sensible use of time.  

ZZZ is not worth reading [ie, not best use of time], if it’s nothing but a study of folly.

That’s similar to the Genre question, about the nature of the New Testament: 

If a book is written (in 1980-2025) that assumes the New Testament is historical reportage, but (let us suppose) the New Testament was actually written as Hellenistic mythic literature, then what value could such a book about New Testament possibly have?

(I admit many can get a kind of value from such misreading.)

The book is bound to be 90% error & confusion, mis-founded; and only 10% potential value — but even to cash in on that 10% value requires thoroughgoing transformation of that 10%.  

Not worth dealing with; ie, there’s way better use of time.

The Web Changes Everything to Enable Research and Correcting Past Lies or Errors

the Journal of Psychedelic Studies​, is online, so: Can we consider the publishing of Erwin Panofsky letters or brown 2019 to be a product of the internet era? ie made available to us bc of the internet? To some extent.

Journal of Psychedelic Studies​ in online-only; 2017. https://egodeaththeory.org/2023/04/09/journal-of-psychedelic-studies/

The strange standards for being up to date, by leading edge scholars

Interesting later perspective in 2025 looking back on my engagement in 2019: I took FOREVER to find Browns’ 2019 article, glance at it, and then really read it.

If I am not reviewing the draft of a book or article, that means I’m so out of the loop, so disengaged, that I’m only 1 week ahead of their publishing, which is like being 20 years later.

I completely missed Browns’ 2019 article, and didn’t read it until ETERNITY LATER, like a few weeks after it was published I skimmed it, and then FAILED to actually READ it until 2020!

Eons later! Way too late.

Why do I have that skewed perspective? bc/ I preordered Brown 2016 book long before it shipped.

First, I read about Brown planned 2016 book; then I read Hatsis’ artices about mushroom imagery in Christian art and saw the train collision coming.

BUT ONLY NOW IT STRIKES ME that … this revises what I wrote in early 2016!

When I said Hatsis’ articles are ignorant of Browns’ forthcoming 2016 book and there would be a train collision, I had no idea that Brown and Hatsis worked together “debating”, in [year] already.

When did Hatsis become aware of Brown & Browns’ forthcoming 2016 book?

Browns’ field research at Harvard published Erwin Panofsky letters within article in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies​ in 2019 which I was so sluggish I ()

Doherty at 1:14:00 exclaims that the internet enables us to debunk Self Help myth eg think and grow rich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t-ZGDUg8Bo&t=436s

The Web gives us in 2025 advantages to debunk shysters in the past, like Napoleon Hill.

Compare: As of Nov. 2020, there was a too-dark version of Great Canterbury Psalter provided by a French library.

I could not have had so much breakthorugh in interpreting folio f134, Eadwine’s leg-hanging mushroom tree image in the Great Canterbury Psalter, back in 2000 when I spoke with author James Arthur whose book cover had the folio f11 Day 3 image from Paul Lindgren.

By 2022 the library fixed the dark colors. I greedily take credit for that (they saw my miscolored crops and fixed the pallette), just like “Napoleon” Hill inflates his tales: Received a Beatles fan club reply? That becomes: “The Beatles asked for my consultation on writing their next batch of songs.”

🤥👖🔥

I wish in 2001 I had asked James Arthur about Paul Lindgren and what other Egodeath theory proof was in was in Great Canterbury Psalter.

James Arthur agreed with the Egodeath theory.

See Also

Search this site for: “gold standard reference”
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=%22gold+standard+reference%22