(Expanded and edited version of the earlier posting)
How nonduality is related to the pre-set future and block universe
Emphasizing the new idea of the pre-set future rather than the old
idea of nonduality
The frozen-future block universe denies freedom for self and for Self.
Western religion affirms determinism (Heimarmene/Fatum) only to then
postulate and proceed to the trans-rational, spiritual realm beyond
it; the elect are brought into “true freedom” as a “slave of the
transcendent God”). Similarly, in Eastern religious philosophy, after
we declare that the Ground of Being and the Self are not free, and
that the future is single, fixed, pre-set, pre-existent, and closed,
we may go on to postulate a trans-rational, spiritual, highly
transcendent status – after ego has died – for the Ground of Being and
the Self.
The ego may die “because of” nonduality, but the Egodeath theory is
based on a more phenomenologically comprehensive sense of “because”.
What is the most efficient and ergonomic mental model that causes the
most intense and “catastrophic” ego-death experiential insight? We
need a fuller phenomenology, a fuller account, than just the idea of
“nonduality” can provide, to address and pull up into awareness some
of the most fascinating dynamic potential constructs the mind can
produce: that is, the dynamics of control-battling and
control-usurpation, or control-coercion, which fit together with, and
co-amplify with, the block-universe model.
Nonduality, spacetime merging, near-future thoughts unavoidably forced
upon the mind, and frozen-time block-universe determinism fit together
in a powerful mutually reinforcing way, serving as the fastest and
most straightforward path to mental transformation. The resulting
explanation and system of transformative religion is incomparably more
effective and readily accessible, and more comprehensive, than the
popular American Buddhist use of the concept of nonduality.
Oneness or nonduality is an overemphasized cliche, done to death,
providing limited insight and limited practical usefulness. The
Egodeath theory focuses instead on what’s still left out by such a
perspective, including the personal sensation of merging with
spacetime – it’s this sensation which causes ego death and
comprehending the ramifications of nonduality. If we halt at
nonduality as the “reason for” ego death, that doesn’t pack a punch;
it doesn’t help grasp and comprehend the ramifications of nonduality.
The “personal control over time” dimension is needed, to cause ego
death. This includes a mental model of the entire time axis, as well
as special attention to the unavoidability of one’s particular pre-set
thoughts lying ahead on the worldline a couple minutes into the
future.
For similar reasons, levels of control and the puppet experience of
being controlled by a hidden overpowering controller fill a role that
the concept of nonduality can’t possibly fill. Even if we grant that
nonduality is the real reason why ego doesn’t exist but is just an
illusion, the question remains of how we can effectively and vividly
grasp and comprehend the ramifications of nonduality – how we can most
effectively visualize nonduality and its implications.
The frozen-future block universe idea is the most efficient tool
toward homing-in on an ego-death sensation. It is simple, tangible,
definite, and specific. It fits with ancient Western religious
mythology.
Fully experiencing nonduality entails an idea and feeling of a kind of
powerlessness of self, or a powerless dependence of self on something
that transcends the self, where the self is considered as a
time-voyaging continuant control-agent. Oneness hasn’t emphasized
that insight and feeling of powerlessness effectively enough. The
frozen future and block universe model drives home the idea of
powerlessness and nonduality more effectively than meditating
exclusively on the isolated principle of nonduality possibly can. The
most straightforward means of having a powerful ego death experiential
insight is to consider the idea of frozen future and block universe.
Oneness has been tried, has been overplayed, is overfamiliar, and is
narrowly limited. A different angle is needed, to describe sensations
and explain common reports from schizophrenic and psychedelic
experience. We could declare these reports of puppethood and loss of
control-power to be failures of rightly understanding nonduality – but
so dismissing them does no one a favor, and fails to leverage the
tremendous power of these experiential insights. We must work through
the phenomenology, the dynamics of coming to grips with nonduality and
all of its implications, not just try to leap over those
intermediate-stage dynamics and skip far ahead to a half-articulated
right relationship with nonduality.
We have to explain how the battle is worked-out, not just define the
naive and enlightened endpoints of the dramatic storyline. There are
reports not only of oneness, but of powerlessness, frozenness, and
lack of control — experiential elements which are not effectively
covered by the now-overfamiliar cliche notion of oneness. The oneness
idea in isolation is incomplete; it’s not the whole range of peak
sensations/insights. There’s much more than oneness, in the
experience reports.
The frozen-future block universe may or may not be the truth (and we
may or may not be able to transcend it if it’s true), but it is an
experience, a series of experiences to work-through. The
frozen-future block universe with control destabilization and puppet
control-levels is a mental model that quite effectively kills ego and
causes mental transformation of inner agency ideas. This Theory puts
forth something starkly different in scope and method than the
familiar fare.
All times are caused together as a system; vertical causality needs
attention. Causality is conventionally pictured as a forward chain;
it’s legitimate to talk of forward causality, as a conventional
description of relationships of events. But vertical causality is
more insightful and relevant for the mystic altered state.
The conventional conceptual categories within Eastern and pre-modern
Western thought can be neatly bridged. Is Neoplatonism incompatible
with Gnosticism? Is Jewish creator-worship mystic ascent, to perceive
the throne of God, incompatible with Gnosticism? Is Eastern
nonduality incompatible with Western transcendence of Heimarmene?
It’s axiomatic that these conceptions can be reconciled and
harmonized, and that an explicit, robust, modern, scientific
understanding of religious experiential insight involves successfully
harmonizing and reconciling these seemingly different systems.
There is somewhat of an East/West conceptual divide, and a
Neoplatonism/Gnosticism divide. The Egodeath theory is based in both
Eastern and Western thought, including Alan Watts’ book Way of Zen,
Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and Western thought including Watts’
books on Christianity. The Egodeath theory fits well with Western
pre-modern “mystics”, when rightly identifying these “mystics” as
Western mystery-religion initiates and Western esotericists. The
Egodeath theory solves many long-standing problems and puzzles in the
interpretation of Western myth-religion. This theory regarding
spacetime embeddedness and control-levels matches the view of some
mystics, raising the question of the disparity between Neoplatonists
and Gnostics.
The Eastern nonduality concept seems to map more closely to
Neoplatonist attitudes than to Gnostic attitudes, both which were
taken up into later Western, Catholic religious thought, where one
would both reverence the Creation and reverence the ultra-transcendent
aspect of God. Conventional, nonduality-focused views appear to be
set against the Egodeath theory’s use of the Gnostic conceptual
scheme, and its attitudes (or its metaphor-choices) of loathing
nondual embeddedness in spacetime and solving that problem by entirely
escaping into a radically separate, ultra-transcendent realm.
That attitude of outright escape from the world, leaving the world
behind, was anathema to the early proto-Catholic leaders — the
“Judaisers” — because it’s politically impotent. Even if “leaving
the world behind” is considered merely a mystic-state metaphor, it is
a poor choice of metaphors for an organization that is trying to set
up an alternative social-political network in the world.
The New Testament version of Christianity was crafted so as to
incorporate both A) the Gnostic theme of perceiving our spacetime
embeddedness and escaping from that imprisonment in Nature by
transcending spacetime; and B) the Jewish and the Roman imperial
religion emphasis on actions in the world so as to make the world
gloriously reconfigured so as to truly realize the Roman imperial
propaganda’s claim to bring peace and restoration of fecundity of
Nature. Neoplatonism was fit into this mix as well, including the
general idea of rising to a transcendent (changeless) perspective,
while still valuing the world and the temporal-change perspective.
The Eastern concept of nonduality, as it is conventionally presented,
has nothing to say about time or experiencing time as an illusion.
This is one key difference between West and East. How do Gnosticism
and Neoplatonism, and Eastern nonduality, treat space and time? The
Eastern nonduality emphasizes only spatial merging, while the Western
conceptualization has a distinct time emphasis as well. The Egodeath
theory emphasizes cross-time control, a crucial and predominant aspect
of the mystic altered state about which the nonduality concept usually
says nothing.
People vividly experience the loss of the sense of cross-time control
during the intense mystic altered state, yet the nonduality concept as
it is typically expressed fails to even acknowledge that people in the
altered state are commonly freaking out about the loss of control.
Loss of control is not only “because of nonduality”, loss of control
is effectively caused by considering one’s inability to steer away
from one’s coming future thoughts. Nonduality may be the cause of
one’s metaphysical powerlessness, but our powerlessness to change our
future thoughts is the most ergonomic cause of our fully realizing the
various ramifications of nonduality.
The purportedly sophisticated mystics haven’t effectively provided
this clear perspective, this clear, active model of these dynamic
features of common intense mystic altered-state experiences. People
don’t only experience a harmonious nonduality realization, jumping
instantly from a familiar separate-self configuration to a stable
nondualistic enlightened perspective; people often experience
spacetime embeddedness as a dire problem demanding a solution.
We should not just wave-aside all these trembling ecstatic episodes of
control-instability, puppethood, and frozen unalterable time as “not
the right relation to nonduality”. Doing so would fail to offer a
practical, helpful, relevant, useful, and ergonomic treatment of these
dynamics. These dynamics of grappling with control-over-time are
fascinating to understand, and are a crucial, probably unavoidable,
doorway to pass through, on the way to reconciling one’s mental model
with nonduality.
Buddha touches the ground, dispersing the army of demons and producing
enlightenment.
From my
http://www.egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm —
>>Solving the problem of true and justified mental order of personal
self-government instead of control-chaos comes through a transcendent
Zen jump. Depending on the egoic system of reasoning, which is
constructed around inherently self-frustrating premises, ultimately
leads to control lock-up and a catastrophically ineffective
self-cancellation of control. Buddha recognized that his destiny was
to touch the ground in an act of compassion and harmonious integration
with the unity of the Ground of Being, causing Mara and his army of
demons to instantly disperse – then he experienced enlightenment.
Simply praising and endorsing nonduality does nothing to address the
huge, urgent, life-threatening problem people often experience.
Everyone’s mind contains this most fascinating potential lying in wait
in the dissociative state: the potential to think of one’s near-future
thoughts as frozen in time, and think of one’s thoughts as given or
forced upon one’s mind by an unfathomable, hidden source outside one’s
domain of control. Any useful discussion of nonduality ought to
address the fact that people often, even typically, experience
nonduality as a terrible and terrifying problem – or that all minds
have this potential to discover such a structural potential, a pit
lying in wait to trap everyone.
Many people praise nonduality and imagine it to consist entirely of
peace and light because they haven’t experienced the problematic
aspects of it. They haven’t experienced Buddha’s being threatened by
Mara and his army of demons; that key moment of enlightenment, with
transformation of attitude, is left out. The result is an incomplete,
happy, and irrelevant version of enlightenment, all happiness and
light – enlightenment lite. Actual intense mystic altered-state
experience is a hardcore ecstatic revolution experience; we all have
that potential, which needs an adequately full exploring and
explaining.
A lightweight one-sided model of mystic-state experiencing is
inadequate for specifically and concretely addressing the terrifying
aspect of the nonduality realization. In practice, nonduality is
often experienced as a huge, terrifying, life-threatening problem; how
exactly can one switch to viewing nonduality as *not* a problem, but
as a resolution or as a better conceptualization?
A typical sequence is that the first few trips or initiation sessions
are experienced as heavenly and blissful; the ego enjoys its feeling
of spatial unity with the rest of the world. In later sessions, the
hell realms and wrathful deities are encountered, during more advanced
phases. The dire problem arises, of the loss of the sensation of
wielding control across time. Nonduality is perceived, and it is
perceived as a threat and a looming disaster; one finds oneself in
dire straits, up a creek without a paddle, tied to the mast and unable
to steer the ship.
How can one resolve the terrifying and wrathful aspects of the
nonduality realization? That’s effectively what the Egodeath theory
addresses. In this sense, nonduality, considered as spatial unity, is
the starting point for the Egodeath theory, not the conclusion of it.
The conclusion of any adequate theory of ego death must include not
only nonduality, but a highly developed explanatory model of the
crisis aspects of comprehending nonduality and its ramifications, and
how, in useful, actionable, practical terms, the mind can work-through
those problematic aspects of encountering nonduality.
The fastest way to grasp the concept of nonduality and its
ramifications is to start with idea of one’s near-future thoughts
being preset and already existing — the idea and feeling of being
forcefully pushed toward whatever one’s thoughts are preset to be a
couple minutes into the future. The preexisting future, ego death,
and nonduality readily fit together, in a mutually supporting,
systematic configuration. The closed and preset future is the
ultimate and final affront to egoic thinking. It’s impossible to
simultaneously hold in mind egoic thinking and the idea of a preset,
unchangeable future.
Nonduality doesn’t conflict with the assertion that the future is
closed, preset, unchangeable, and predetermined. Nonduality isn’t
apathetic and unaffected by the issue. Nonduality necessarily implies
the fixity of the future. Nonduality means there’s no separate,
autonomous power of individual personal agency, thus no individual
personal power exists to have an opportunity to change the future;
therefore, the future is fixed.
There’s no self to be free; there’s no self to cause the future to
change from one outcome to another, or to cause the future to change
from not-yet-defined to a particular outcome. If the future is open
and subject to become one outcome or another, then separate-self (ego)
is real — where ego is considered to be that which controls, affects,
and influences the outcome of the future to be one thing or another.
If ego is not real (substantial), then nothing exists to change the
future from one outcome to a different outcome.
One could jump up a level to assert that the Self exists and wields
the power to change the future, but this is vague, and risks cosmic
ego-inflation (conflating self with Self and projecting dualistic
ego-power upward). Such an upward level-jump may amount to the same
thing as jumping transcendently from level 2 to 3 in the 3-level
Western system which is centered around discovering the convincing
idea (and sensation) of timeless determinism. To assert that there’s
no separate-self to change the future, but that Self or the Ground of
Being is that which has the power to change the future from one
outcome to another, is largely equivalent to asserting that God rules
over Fate.
In moving from the naive, pre-initiation mental model to the
fixed-future model, ego is killed, cancelled out, done away with; then
in moving from timeless determinism to the transcendent spiritual
realm, a kind of freedom returns, no longer with the ego delusion.
The latter jump is to transcend Necessity (Heimarmene, Fatum). Per
the early Catholic world-changing strategy, that should not be
considered as a jump completely away from the world, but rather, a way
of bringing the proper, harmonious, divine ordering of things into the
entire world.
Declaring that the Self has the power to change the future or to
resolve the open future, or declaring that one’s spiritual self has
transcended cosmic Heimarmene, is a rationality-transcending,
ultra-transcendent idea, thus elusive and undefinable — as is the
very idea of “the open future” or, by the same token, “the free person
who determines their own destiny”. In the competitive battle of the
Catholic taken-over Jewish God against Roman imperial theology, it was
inevitable that God would be declared the masterful controller of all
the world, even ruling over Heimarmene/Fatum. In contrast, myths
waffle on whether Zeus (Jupiter) was subject to Heimarmene or ruler
over Heimarmene.
A main practical advantage of the fixed-future model is that it is
extremely definite and concrete, providing a tangible framework to
bring about an egodeath climax. The shortest path to short-circuiting
ego-power is to envision the fixed-future block universe, and consider
the nullity which the fixed-future idea implies for personal
control-power. The fixed-future block universe is fully compatible
with various aspects of experience and reason. It’s not that we can
prove that the future is in fact fixed; rather, we discover that it is
fully possible and easy, even natural, to adopt the mental model of
the fixed-future block universe and, as an immediate result, or as a
co-arising sensation, experience personal control-power as null.
The reality is not that there’s a separate-self ego who is pushed
around by frozen-time determinism, but rather, nonduality governed by
frozen-time determinism — which *does* push around the entire
universe, including the individual person, even though the individual
person isn’t really a separate-self. Nonduality might solve the
separate-self problem by deleting that belief, but still, the person
— whatever their nature — remains pushed around by determinism with
a pre-set, pre-existing, frozen future (whether you consider the
person a separate self, or a component of the nondual ground of
being).
In some sense, we are autonomous separate selves, we *are* an
autonomous separate-self ego that finds itself pushed around by
frozen-time determinism.
Is the ego null because of nonduality, or because of the frozenness of
the future? The egodeath theory weds nonduality to the frozen future,
not in order to make the frozen future the basis on which nonduality
stands or falls, but rather, because the frozenness of the future is
experientially reported, and because that mental model ergonomically
closes off the main escape route that protectively props up egoic
thinking – an escape route that is effectively closed-off by building
upon the sensation of the closed and unavoidable, unchangeable future
lying ahead on one’s fixed path of control-related thoughts.
Altered-state (ASC)-based lyrics include:
The future pre-decided, opinions are provided
I couldn’t change a doggone thing, not what I’d do or say
There are changes
Lying ahead in every road
And there are new thoughts
Ready and waiting to explode
When tomorrow is today
The bells may toll for some
But nothing can change the shape of things to come
The future’s coming in, now
Sweet and strong
Ain’t no-one gonna hold it back for long
If the separate self is not free, but is nonexistent due to
nonduality, then the future is utterly unchangeable by separate
selves. Time is experienced as unreal or illusory in the dissociative
cognitive state. If time is illusory and people have no power to
change the future, then the future is fixed, preset, unchangeable,
predetermined, and timelessly already exists. The sense of each of
these terms, such as “illusory” and “already exists”, is subject to
proper suitable definition, to hold this theory framework together.
Why do people assume that the block universe is entirely different
than nonduality? Nonduality and the block universe are the same
thing, except that the block-universe model explicitly holds the
future pre-set, while nonduality is silent on that point, idea, or
sensation. The modern Eastern nonduality system is a 2-level system,
which basically maps to the lower levels of the 3-level Western scheme
and path to Gnosis and celestial redemption. Folk shamanic Buddhism
(Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism) is probably more potent and
relevant than modern American, predominantly ordinary-state-based
(OSC-based) Eastern religion.
The conceptual construct of the block universe is justifiably
prominent in the Egodeath theory, serving to elicit and explain some
of the most powerful, overpowering potential dynamics to be discovered
in the bona fide intense dissociative cognitive state. Block-universe
theory, which fits with the nonduality model, is required for a truly
hardcore, Heavy Metal, street-level, military-grade, seaworthy, and
road-tested Initiation Theory. An emphasis on frozen-future
block-universe determinism should not alienate those who are familiar
with models of enlightenment centered on nonduality.
The block universe idea amounts to having a theory of time; the
nonduality idea amounts to not having a theory of time, or of personal
control over time. Nonduality is essentially the space component of
block-universe determinism, without a time component. Much of the
interesting area of the egodeath theory is along the time axis —
control along the time axis, and control agency power along the time
axis. The control-over-time factor is interesting in terms of the
control-related content of intense experiencing, and in terms of novel
Theory of mystic-state enlightenment and experiential revelation
(novel, and yet strangely familiar in deep Western religious
consciousness).
If Alan Watts says “it’s not a matter of determinism pushing puppet
around, but rather, nonduality”, he’s just waving-aside the
control-over-time problem, and the problematic aspect of realizing
nonduality. The block-universe idea is the most tangible way of
expressing nonduality, or key ramifications of nonduality which help
comprehend nonduality in its full ramifications. The block universe
is nonduality, or fits deeply into it; it’s the same essential idea,
but the block universe idea emphasizes unchanging timeless spacetime
frozenness, while nonduality emphasizes spatial merging including that
of the agent considered as a spatial entity.
Nonduality omits the time axis considerations entirely; it is
comparable to how the determinism-glorifying mystic Ramesh Balsekar
focuses entirely on time, control, and determinism and omits spatial
merging and transcendence of determinism. Balsekar’s determinism
alone, or the idea of nonduality in isolation, are highly incomplete,
because they don’t address or acknowledge as relevant the severely
problematic, spiritual emergency crisis aspects of experiencing
nonduality or determinism.
Nonduality is a simpler, fewer-level view than block-universe
determinism; it’s merely 2-dimensional instead of fully fleshed-out.
Religious theory which is narrowed and reduced to the isolated
nonduality idea is less mature, less experienced, and less seaworthy
than the more multidimensional, block-universe model; especially the
nonduality created by entheogen-diminishers, or thinking in which the
OSC is predominant. Nonduality is the beginning of wisdom, and
perhaps the end and final destination, but the middle part of the
journey is where the crucial action happens and where an adequate,
full-fledged, fully fleshed-out model of transformative grappling with
personhood-ideas is urgently needed as the make-or-break factor.
The middle, peak part of the transformation saga has to be addressed;
it’s where the problems and exciting action are. The initiate goes
from naive assumption of duality (the complacent separate-self
delusion), to unproblematic nonduality (the first, pleasant intuitions
and glimpses and experiential sensations of nonduality), to severely
problematic nonduality (the hell realms, nonduality as a death-threat
and psychotic insanity or trans-sanity risk), to finally, a resolved,
harmonious, peaceful reconciliation with nonduality.
Initially, everyone is disparagingly dismissive of this drama, and
overconfidently thinks we can just skip this drama and go straight to
right relationship with nonduality – “the problem is just an illusion
that one must make disappear by realizing nonduality”. Everyone
starts out so naive and inexperienced, but the beginning initiates are
not fit to be a captain and guide on the rough, unpredictable seas of
the intense dissociative cognitive state. Those beginners who
foolhardily overestimate their perspicuity and wisdom appreciate
neither the threat of wrath nor the precious value of transcendent,
divine compassion – they know only a shadow of wrath and a shadow of
what mystic compassion is really about.
Before the need for the compassionate is appreciated, the wrathful
must first be encountered, reconciled and appeased, must be fed its
sacrifice. This doesn’t mean that each person in the future must
fully experience firsthand the control-destabilization potential which
everyone’s mind contains as a fascinating dynamic – but that each
person must be ready to anticipate such a possibility, and must be
taught the precautionary measures, of readiness to sacrifice one’s
claim to autonomous self-government power, and readiness to rely fully
upon that which controls one’s thoughts, ready to assume – with no
rational reason or basis – that that which gives one their thoughts is
trustworthy.
The Egodeath theory takes seriously the intensely experienced problem
of nonduality’s destabilization of control. The Egodeath theory
effectively addresses this most profound crisis-potential and solves
it in a reconstructed classic fashion, but an upgraded systematic,
explicit, modern fashion. A relevant system of religion must not deny
such destabilization or mutely wave it aside as not the right attitude
toward nonduality, but rather, must explain its nature and solution.
Nonduality is in some sense the solution, and also the problem or
cause of the sensation of personal non-control. But to merely and
solely proffer nonduality as the cause of noncontrol and the solution
to noncontrol, and stop the discussion there, is too vague to be
relevant to actual mystic experiencing out in the wild, out in the
field, on the battlefield, on the streets, or on the rough ocean.
Buddhism without the threat of a battle against Mara is a modern-era
construct, which is to say an OSC-based construct, which merely
amounts to immature and inexperienced religion.
It’s not that the fixed-future block universe idea is present instead
of nonduality, as the center of the religious transformation; rather,
the most direct, fast, and repeatable system of religious
transformation makes the full block-universe model explicit, instead
of focusing only on the nonduality principle. Perhaps nonduality is
true and the fixed-future is an untrue postulate. Even that situation
would not permit us to say that nonduality is relevant while the block
universe (implying fixed future) is irrelevant.
As far as the rapid triggering and eliciting of ego death is
concerned, the fixed-future block universe is, true or not, more
relevant in more ways than nonduality. In effect, the fixed-future
block universe idea is *more functionally relevant* (even if a mere
postulate) and is a superset of the nonduality idea. Certainly, the
idea and sensation of nonduality is relevant to the intense
mystic-state transformation of one’s mental model of self. However,
the fixed-future block universe, whether considered an axiom or
postulate, is an idea and sensation that is a superset of nonduality,
and has broader, more comprehensive relevance experientially and
phenomenologically.
The establishment pop Buddhists might dislike how the theory doesn’t
use their exact conceptual categories, terminology, and value-scheme.
But their system isn’t necessarily authentic Buddhism; nondualist
modern pop Buddhism isn’t necessarily authentic satori-based Buddhism.
Similarly, Alan Watts is a valuable bridge between half-clear and
half-systematic religious theory and a full systematic development of
his cybernetics ideas, but his explanations are far from the last
word.
One might object that “the world is nondual, but don’t commit to it
being specifically a block universe” — but the block universe,
whether true or not, is the most tangible way to drive home and convey
idea of nonduality. The block universe idea contains the idea of
nonduality.
Nonduality tries to affirm freedom, even if it’s not freedom of the
separate-self individual, but freedom of the Ground of Being itself.
The egodeath theory doesn’t merely deny the ego’s freedom, it denies
the Self’s freedom — the ground of being’s freedom, at least as an
effective means, for a time. Per the Egodeath theory, the frozen
block universe is specifically the *crystalline* ground of being, not
just the Wilber and Watts “ground of being” conceptualization where
the openness of the future is left implicit. Pop Eastern religion
envisions a Ground of Being that’s assumed to have a free, open
future, while Western religion envisions a Ground of Being with an
unfree, closed future – unless one jumps up to the spiritual realm
that transcends cosmic Heimarmene.
The question always returns, “Freedom in what sense?” and “Who or what
is free, in what way?” Nonduality is usually thought of as a
non-fixed Ground of Being with an open future – such a version of the
nonduality idea is a way of trying to sneak-in egoic thinking by
transferring it to the world at large. If the Ground of Being might
not have an open future, such an upward-vicarious freedom and
empowerment is at risk for the person. The popular nondual Ground of
Being conception omits the time and heimarmene factor, leaving it
implicit, thus leaving freedom implicitly affirmed, which the ego then
escapes upward into: “I don’t exist as a separate self; I’m the
universe and have complete control over the future of everything in
it,” just as the lunatic realizes.
Declaring the separate-self to be null and illusory, and then moving
one’s self-identification upward to the Self, and considering that
Self to wield control over the future, doesn’t solve the question of
time and power, but rather, ignores that question. That’s why the
idea of nonduality without a model of control-over-time is an
immature, oversimplified version of religious transformation. A
system of religion that is based solely around nonduality as the
reason for personal powerlessness, without addressing the question of
control-over-time, simply assumes that the future is open and there’s
no problem — it’s vague, undefined, complicated, and unresolved;
whereas the block-universe is simple, specific, directly addresses
these aspects.
Does Wilber & Watts’ conception of the “Ground of Being” assume an
open future? If so, egoic thinking uses that as a place to hide. The
ego is that which controls and incrementally closes the future. If
there’s no ego — if the world is nondual — there is no separate self
to help close incrementally the future. If no selves exist to control
the future, then the future is beyond controllability, and thus is
closed. It’s the OSC fallacy that leads to the assumption the future
is open in itself; it’s a short jump from there to the continued,
comfortable assumption of autonomous personal power.
Western pre-modern religion assumes that the future is closed, per
cosmic Heimarmene, whereas pop Eastern religion unthinkingly assumes
the future is open, without discussing the issue and ramifications for
personal power. The conventional version of the nonduality idea
explicitly declares spatial unity, but implicitly assumes
unproblematic temporal openness. The shadow-ego is still lurking in
the works, covertly imagined as that which has the power to close and
resolve whether the future is outcome A or B.
Nonduality is grossly incomplete and inadequate to maturation; it’s
too vague, and leaves out too many aspects. An oversimplified model
of mystic-state religious experiencing results; an inarticulate theory
that is irrelevant and useless when the chips come down and
crisis-questions threateningly loom. Nonduality is true but is
incomplete as a practical model and system of religious mental-model
transformation.
The universe might or might not be a frozen, “crystalline Ground of
Being” block-universe. But what urgently matters to actual initiates
in the heat of the ecstatic state is the experiential phenomenology
that occurs by mentally working or manipulating the *model* and
*sensation* of frozen-future “crystalline Ground of Being”
block-universe.
The Egodeath theory addresses that relevant phenomenology and urgent,
pressing dynamics; Western religion addresses it; Tibetan shamanism
addresses it; the Buddha appeasing the threat of Mara and his army of
demons addresses it; but modern pop Eastern “spirituality” – glossy
magazine Buddhism – is a lightweight poser which doesn’t address those
dynamics, and has nothing to say, and is useless for the heat of the
transformation battle.
Pop Eastern religion wants an open future so that the egoic thinking
and the egoic power-assumption can hide there. Egoic thinking is
simply moved onto the world at large; “I’m not free, I don’t exist,
but I am the world, the world is free” — this is what Ken Wilber
describes as narcissistic ego-inflation amplified to the cosmic scale;
“I am separate and egoically free and power-wielding” becomes “I am
the world, which is egoically free and power-wielding”.
Pop Eastern religion is speechless regarding the frozen-future
component of theory — they’ve no doctrines there, only unexamined
assumptions, which are shaken in the actual experience of a series of
intense initiations, which OSC-based pop Buddhism is utterly
unprepared to address, since it hasn’t incorporated the egodeath
theory nor ASC-based folk wisdom with its myth-using techniques of
honoring and thus placating the wrathful deities and humbly invoking
the compassionate deities for protection.
The future is frozen and already exists; it is unchangeable. That
postulate can be considered overkill for the purpose of
working-through egodeath — even if so, overkill has perfect,
appropriate ergonomic utility, here. Does Buddhism say the future is
frozen and closed, or open? It’s silent. Watts doesn’t deny that
determinism is the case; he denies a combination, that “a separate ego
pushed around by determinism” is the case. Watts says “It’s not that
there’s a separate ego pushed around like puppet by determinism, but
instead, there’s nonduality.”
Watts merely denies or evades a certain reading of determinism
regarding the separate self. He re-reads determinism as nonduality,
as though nonduality replaces and excludes determinism. Watts thus
dances around rather than engages the issue in a sustained fashion.
This vague and ambiguous evasiveness of Watts is shocking — his
sloppy, careless, linguistically fumbling manner of theorizing in The
Way of Zen. He’s a fairly good mystic philosopher, but a bad
systematic linguistic analytic philosopher. The Egodeath theory
largely originated as a project of straightening-out the messy parts
of Watts’ explanations.
Watts’ move is “not determinism-and-ego, but rather, nonduality”. He
should instead say “It’s not that there is an ego separate from
determinism, pushed around by it, but rather, there is determinism and
nonduality”. There is no ego pushed around by determinism, a closed
future, frozen time, and the block universe — not because there’s no
determinism or the future is open and changeable, but rather, because
there’s no dualistic ego; there’s only determinism & the closed
future”. The choice is between ego and nonduality, not a choice
between determinism (or, closed future) and nonduality.
Watts lumps together ego and determinism, then dismisses ego,
pretending to at same time dismiss determinism and a closed future.
Actually, the closed future remains, along with nonduality, while ego
leaves (departing to Hades, the land of shadows). Watts says: Not ego
pushed around by determinism, but rather, nonduality is the reality.
Against Watts’ misleading formulation: actually, nonduality and
determinism is the reality, not ego and determinism.
It’s not the case that the ego exists and is pushed around by
frozen-time determinism; rather, there’s nonduality governed by
frozen-time determinism. Ego is essentially unreal, but that doesn’t
mean that determinism – which seems to push around the ego – is
unreal. ‘Determinism’ here means vertical timeless determinism, not
only in-time domino-chain determinism.
If there are no separate selves, the future is not affect by separate
selves — thus no agency exists that could change the future, thus the
future is preset and already always timelessly exists, unchangeably.
It’s reasonable to object to the Egodeath theory’s clear idea that the
future already exists. People concede that the fixed-future postulate
would kill ego power (even if nonduality already is sufficient, in
itself, to kill ego, in principle), but people rightly question
whether the highly specific fixed-future assumption makes
enlightenment and transcendent truth unnecessarily dependent on a
metaphysics-of-time assertion. Perhaps the sequence of reasoning and
causal reasoning is out-of-order: is ego unreal because the future is
fixed, or because of nonduality? (This objection is similar to how
the Egodeath theory rejects the current notion of how determinism
works, or about why the future is fixed — the currently predominant
view says the future is fixed *because* there’s a causal chain across
time.)
Ego is unreal “because of” nonduality, but the way to heighten the
problematic dynamics of ego is to consider the fixed-future model of
spacetime. We have to consider the fixed-future idea because the
control-dynamics resulting from that mental model act as a strange
attractor lurking as a potential discovery to deal with in everyone’s
mind. Ego becomes experienced as powerless and then dies “because of”
nonduality and – in a slightly different sense – “because of” the
control-seizure induced by envisioning a fixed future in one’s
near-future stream of control-thoughts.
Why should the person trust the ground of being? What should you do
if you find you don’t trust it, and hit a crisis? The pop idea of
nonduality doesn’t address this; the Egodeath theory does, in classic
form, reconstructed and updated in a systematic, explicit, efficient,
late-modern fashion.
Brian wrote (edited):
>>If you don’t like your fate, or if you’re apprehensive of what it
might be, or you find fatedness untrustworthy and untrustable, then in
order to retain some sort of mental stability, you have to postulate
something higher than fate, or postulate something that can change
your fate somehow and then somehow trust *that* — somehow trusting
that higher-than-fate thing that’s in a position to change your fate.
The Egodeath theory 