The Egodeath Theory:

Religious Mythology Describes Peak-State Control Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism


Religious Mythology Describes Altered-State Control Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism

Religious Mythology Describes Control-Cancellation in Altered-State Block-Universe Eternalism

Religious Mythology Describes Altered-State Experiencing of Control Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism

Altered-State Control Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism


The Egodeath theory is the most awesome achievement ever; it is mythic, not just epic. Engineering/STEM produced the Egodeath theory.

The Egodeath theory is a fundamental of, and a prerequisite for, Psychedelic Cognitive Science.


Cybernetic Eternalism

Mythology Describes Loose-Cognitive Experiencing of Cybernetic Block-Universe Eternalism

Mythology Describes Cybernetic Self-Control Cancellation in Loose-Cognitive Block-Universe Eternalism

Cybernetic Cancellation in Loose-Cognitive Block-Universe Eternalism

Cybernetic Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism

Cybernetic Cancellation in Psychedelic Block-Universe Eternalism

Entheogenists and psycholyticists say ‘psychedelic’ connotes goofy ’60s style.


Mythology as Block-Universe Eternalism

That title is impressive only if you tremble knowingly already at the words ‘iron block universe’ or ‘Eternalism’, but lacks mention of cybernetic noncontrol, which is the Core theory’s point:

Eternalism experiencing causes ego transcendence in the form of cybernetic noncontrol, cybernetic control-cancellation, which is of top interest and excitement.

Not “Let’s make Dionysus boring.”

What if you hate mythology, “myth and religion is irrational propaganda for Science to refute and overthrow” a la James Kent?

To the scorched-earth anti-religion atheist, providing a breakthrough decoding of religious mythology is seen as a negative, as condoning and excusing irrationalism; instead, the loose-cognitive discovery and explanatory mapping of no-free-will block-universe Eternalism, as an innate potential of the mind, is the positive and exciting contribution.


Mythology Describes Control Cancellation in Loose-Cognitive Experiencing of Block-Universe Eternalism

Mythology Describes Control Cancellation in Altered-State Experiencing of Block-Universe Eternalism

Experiencing Control Cancellation in Block-Universe Eternalism

Control-Cancellation in Loose-Cognitive Block-Universe Eternalism

Mythology as Control-Cancellation in Loose-Cognitive Block-Universe Eternalism


The Egodeath theory consists of core and myth:

Core:
The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
The Loose-Cognitive Cybernetic Eternalism Theory of Ego Transcendence
The Loose-Cognitive, Non-control Block-Universe Eternalism Theory of Ego Transcendence

Myth:
Decoding Religious Mythology as Description of Block-Universe Eternalism


The Egodeath theory is a great interesting theory of myth and a great interesting theory about control-cancellation in the experiencing of block-universe/worldline Eternalism, as the real nature of ego transcendence.

The Egodeath theory makes readily available the discovery of the potential of the mind to enter God-mode metaprogramming to demonstrate ways to transcend and disrupt and test and seize personal control power, like a coupling of powers that kills the previous mode and gives rise to a new self-conception as control agent or locus of control agency.

The Egodeath theory is by far the most interesting, exciting, Science-revolutionary, useful, and valuable.

The title, the elaborated content, the subtitle, and the summary of the Egodeath theory conveys how superlatively interesting, exciting, thrilling, numinous, and valuable, the Egodeath theory is.

Loose-cognitive cybernetic control seizure and transformation, as described by religious mythology, is explained and made fully known, mapped out, described and explained by this condensed, cogent summarized theory.

______________________________

The peak mystic altered state as ultimate value

Value-laden phrases: peak state, high culture, ultimate concerns, our highest values, the greatest mysteries, peak experiencing, the profoundly numinous and meaningful, self-transcendence, high art, the transcendent, the Most High, revelation of heaven, higher consciousness, higher education.
The Egodeath theory explains the highest, greatest values, the ultimate and most valuable mysteries, as the world’s most successful and most valuable and useful explanatory theory.

The value of the Core theory and of the Myth Decoding theory, mutually support each other, having the ultimate value both when considered independently and when combined together.

The Core theory (of 1988-1997) is the most interesting, and more so when myth-decoding is explained and discovered too.

The most interesting, highest ideas in the world

All kinds of questions, topics, issues, mysteries, are solved by this maximum explanatory power of the Egodeath theory,
making sense of Reformed theology,
mythology,
psychedelics phenomenology,
entheogenic cognitive phenomenology,
schizophrenia,
religious themes,
Western Esotericism,
models of time in Physics and Metaphysics,
a better version of “free will vs. determinism”, than causal-chain determinism
understanding the essential meaning of the Mystery Religions,
connecting with Western Civilization,
recognizing the meaning of dragons and monstrous serpents in world religion,
understanding the entheogenic access to world religions,
wondering about the New Testament’s spiritual Christ experience and the Holy Spirit from the Eucharist
— all mysteries, all that is veiled, shall be revealed, by the Egodeath theory.

The highest values are religion and Science, the mystic state, and Mystery Religions with mythology; high culture: all is explained by the Egodeath theory, which can justify and corroborate these values.

The ultimate, highest potential of the mind is the religious altered state, revealing the nature of personal control in the mind across time.

These cultural peak values can be justified by the Egodeath theory of innate cognitive development from Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism to Metaphorical Altered-state Eternalism.


Boring, overformal, roundabout, and limited: the Old Theory:

The Ken Wilber “nondrug meditation Nondual Unity Oneness” theory of what ego transcendence is about

The Martin Ball “entheogenic Nondual Unity Oneness” theory of what ego transcendence and mystic-state revelation is about.

— Michael Hoffman
September 10, 2018

Highest value: explaining loosecog Eternalism

The thing of greatest value is systematically explaining altered-state Eternalism and its qualification of Possibilism-thinking, as the Egodeath theory does.

1. Transformation of the mental worldmodel from ordinary-state Possibilism to the altered-state Eternalism model of time and control, is more developed than only having the mental worldmodel of Possibilism.

2. A distinct argument is that the highest value in human experience (or at least *a* highest value), is transformation to altered-state Eternalism.


Postulate 1. A mental state that is more developed than and more valuable than ordinary-state Possibilism, is altered-state Eternalism.

Eternalism-thinking (preserving Possibilism-thinking) is better than Possibilism-thinking without having Eternalism-thinking.

Having Eternalism-thinking as well as (now qualified) Possibilism-thinking is better and more valuable than having Possibilism-thinking but being ignorant of Eternalism-thinking.


Postulate 2. The (or a) most valuable thing in the world is transformation from Possibilism to Eternalism.

Having Eternalism-thinking and (qualified) Possibilism-thinking is better and more valuable than anything else in the world.

People report that psilocybin was *one of* their most important experiences (though they are far from understanding Eternalism and mythology) — not necessarily *the* most important experience.

The New Testament holds that equally important as the revelation of Eternalism, is societal structuring; the revelation of Eternalism is *an* ultimate value, not the *only* ultimate value.

Eternalism is *an* ultimate value, if not *the* ultimate value; nothing is more valuable than the loose-cognitive revelation of Eternalism fully explained by Science per the Egodeath theory.

___________

It is conventionally agreed by many people throughout history that religion, Mystery Religions, mystic state revelation, self-transcendence, is the highest value.

This value must be judged by late-modern Science, even if Science cannot assess value and only gives “is”, not “ought”.


The argument from “transcend and include” and the traditional, religious-mythology analogy of “non-initiate = child/animal”:

Why the sacred meal and its sacrifice and prayer and re-stabilization of control (the loosecog Eternalism revelation and resultant mental transformation) are better than, more developed than, higher than, superior to, and more valuable than ordinary-state Possibilism thinking:

Cognitive developmental psychology, in the Egodeath theory, finds and discovers that metaprogramming and analysis of how the mind works, uncovers and accesses potential dynamics of the mind that are outside and beyond the ordinary state of consciousness, preserving the familiar cognitive structures and worldmodel, while adding another, contrasting worldmodel, per Ken Wilber’s concept of “transcend and include”.

By Wilber’s definition of “transcend and include the lower structures”, loose cognitive Eternalism as a new, more stable model of time and control, transcends the ordinary-state Possibilism model of time and control.

Altered-state Eternalism including its “sacrifice and prayer” and restabilization dynamics, is more developed and refined than Ordinary-state Possibilism.

The intense mystic altered-state is not “non-rational”; the mind moves from the tight cognitive binding state which includes some rationalist based on that experiential state, to the loose cognitive binding state which includes rationality now informed by that experiential state.

Non-rationality is a useless, irrelevant concept.

What matters, an accurate characterization, is two experiential states.

Rationality is increased by further developing rationality within the loosecog experiential state, modifying the incorrect rationality, incoherence regarding control and time, from the initial, ordinary state.

Both the initial ordinary state and the later altered state are innate potentials of the mind, and the mind is structured so as to first produce half-baked rationality like that of animals and children, and then to produce corrected rationality and integrity like that of the initiated, rationally purified adult.

Adding the sacred meal-induced loosecog state repeatedly, caused mental developing in a religious and mythology-described, analogy-leveraging direction, while preserving previous quasi-rational thinking as relatively undeveloped, “childish thinking”.

Upon experiencing and understanding loosecog Eternalism, the mind puts away childish thinking, while preserving, cherishing, and retaining that more primitive, less rational, animal-like way of thinking about control and time.

— Michael Hoffman
September 11, 2018


The peak mystic altered state as ultimate value

Value-laden phrases: peak state, high culture, ultimate concerns, our highest values, the greatest mysteries, peak experiencing, the profoundly numinous and meaningful, self-transcendence, high art, the transcendent, the Most High, revelation of heaven, higher consciousness, higher education.

The Egodeath theory explains the highest, greatest values, the ultimate and most valuable mysteries, as the world’s most successful and most valuable and useful explanatory theory.

The value of the Core theory and of the Myth Decoding theory, mutually support each other, having the ultimate value both when considered independently and when combined together.

The Core theory (of 1988-1997) is the most interesting, and more so when myth-decoding is explained and discovered too.

The most interesting, highest ideas in the world

All kinds of questions, topics, issues, mysteries, are solved by this maximum explanatory power of the Egodeath theory,
making sense of Reformed theology,
mythology,
psychedelics phenomenology,
entheogenic cognitive phenomenology,
schizophrenia,
religious themes,
Western Esotericism,
models of time in Physics and Metaphysics,
a better version of “free will vs. determinism”, than causal-chain determinism
understanding the essential meaning of the Mystery Religions,
connecting with Western Civilization,
recognizing the meaning of dragons and monstrous serpents in world religion,
understanding the entheogenic access to world religions,
wondering about the New Testament’s spiritual Christ experience and the Holy Spirit from the Eucharist
— all mysteries, all that is veiled, shall be revealed, by the Egodeath theory.

The highest values are religion and Science, the mystic state, and Mystery Religions with mythology; high culture: all is explained by the Egodeath theory, which can justify and corroborate these values.

The ultimate, highest potential of the mind is the religious altered state, revealing the nature of personal control in the mind across time.

These cultural peak values can be justified by the Egodeath theory of innate cognitive development from Literalist Ordinary-state Possibilism to Metaphorical Altered-state Eternalism.


Boring, overformal, roundabout, and limited: the Old Theory:

The Ken Wilber “nondrug meditation Nondual Unity Oneness” theory of what ego transcendence is about

The Martin Ball “entheogenic Nondual Unity Oneness” theory of what ego transcendence and mystic-state revelation is about.

— Michael Hoffman
September 10, 2018

_____________

People *talk about* “Western and Greek and European heritage” and “the spirit of bold adventure” — yet don’t see that the core of that Greek heritage is {mushroom wine revealing Eternalism}, as the highest value in the Western/Greek heritage — a value that is rediscovered and truly explained in a scientifically adequate way for the first time, by the Egodeath theory.


Highest victory, laurel wreath:
The hero-model Apollo gets laurel crown wreath for victory over the dragon. Laurel = mainly nonbranching. Dragon = snake = nonbranching, vs. the possibility-branching tree with the control-agent person as a king seeming to steer.

_____

Theorem about values, justifying culture’s valuation of psychedelics and the resulting experiential insight of Eternalism/non-control:

The mind is structured such that the highest desire and drive is Transcendent Knowledge, of loosecog Eternalism.


Valuing psychedelics insofar as culture values the “block-universe Eternalism/noncontrol” insight which is revealed by psychedelics, is distinct from the New Testament’s mundane valuing of a just society.

Revaluing values: justifying values.

The loosecog state (which comes from psychedelics) and its revelation of Eternalism are of highest value, as religion and Greco/Roman/Jewish/Christian culture asserts.

The New Testament is complex: *a* goal, a highest value in the New Testament, is psychedelic Eternalism. An ultimate value in the New Testament is loosecog Eternalism.

One kind of righteousness in the New Testament is righteousness per the Holy Spirit (metaphysical enlightenment about personal control in light of Eternalism).

Metaphysical enlightenment about loosecog Eternalism is one of the ultimate values in the New Testament.


Only care about the Core aspects of Psychedelics, or of the New Testament. One of the two ultimate values in the New Testament is loosecog Eternalism.

— Michael Hoffman
September 2, 2018

It is better to understand psychedelic block-universe Eternalism and its prayer and sacrifice, than to only have ordinary-state Possibilism-thinking.

Exploring Cognitive Science with higher dosage than in Psychedelic Neuroscience, requires the suitable stable foundation of control that the Egodeath theory identifies in religious mythology, a relationship of sacrifice and prayer when relating to or identifying with the uncontrollable transcendent source of control-thoughts.

The Psycholytic Cognitive Science explorer is like a helpless female thought-receiver; the uncontrollable source of personal control-thoughts is like a male overpowering and rapturing the female.

The Egodeath theory is required, for people to make good on the trendy promising psychedelic Cognitive Science, Psychedelic Neuroscience, which is inauthentic in that it deliberately avoided dosage levels that put the mind into the truly interesting, unstable, region of sacred danger.

Psychedelic Neuroscience held back in the threshold, not passing through the door.

To pass through this gate into the promised land, receiving a kind of transcendent control of thinking, requires the Egodeath theory: requires understanding block-universe Eternalism noncontrol experience, and “sacrifice and prayer” to gain stability and retain enlightenment, the revelation of profound dependence on the pre-existing rail of personal control-thoughts in the future — a pre-existing control-rail that the local control agent didn’t create and doesn’t control and cannot steer away from.

Greco-Roman culture — the roots of Western Civilization — was highly aware of the uncontrollable snake-shaped worldline control rail frozen in the rock of the unchangeable block universe.

Psychedelic Neuroscience is not yet informed of the monstrous dragon of worldline-given instability hiding in the rock in the wellspring of control-thoughts in the rock cave of the mind, in the altered state.

Would-be Cognitive Psychedelicists will flee like maidens washing clothes, in terror of abduction by the foreign male hero, kicked out of the gated garden by their own lack of compatibility with seeing and experiencing Eternalism, their own inability to put trust in the alien, uncontrollable source of their own control-thoughts.

The first order of discovery and research in Psychedelic Cognitive Science is the Egodeath theory: the dynamics of control stabilization in the altered state.

Both, in conjunction, are a prerequisite for general-purpose Psychedelic Cognitive Science, and are the first order of business to study:
o The study of cybernetic noncontrol in the Eternalism block universe with personal-control worldline.
o The study of religious mythology, which is a rich body of description of the dynamics of control in light of Eternalism.

Block universe, worldline, and Eternalism
Religious mythology

Psychedelic Cognitive Science brings loose cognitive association binding, from psychedelics, but first must confront “the shadow”, of uncontrollable pre-given control-thoughts, and not just expect the sensation of nondual unity oneness.

The shadow that bedevils the attempt for nontrivial-dosage Psychedelic Cognitive Science, is block-universe worldline Eternalism no-free-will, and religious mythology describing grappling with that cybernetic transformation of mental worldmodel, as explained by the Egodeath theory.

— Michael Hoffman
September 11, 2018

Revising the main article

Two versions of revising my main article:
1. Mandatory: minimal fixes
2. Nice todo: rewrite/ expansion/ filtering-out non-essentials


http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm


1. Simplest/quickest approach: what are the fewest revisions to fix the main article? Required spot-fixes, remaining “the same article”:

Critical required omissions:
o Huge oversight/omission: tree/snake (implies several pics)

Critical required terminology corrections:
o Just wrong: “block-universe Eternalism” instead of “Determinism”. Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s labelled diagrams of the Possibilism and Eternalism models of time (and control, experienced/seen, in loosecog state, the Eternalism state of consciousness).

Critical corrections:
o Substantially embarrassing: Moses’ healing snake on pole (debranched tree), not time-pole — after I published the main article 1986, this “time pole” phrase interpretive problem continued to bother me, leading to 2013 huge major decoding of {branching} mytheme.
o Moderately embarrassing: “animal” -> stag with branching antlers
o Minor embarrassing: 5 mushrooms, not 4, in final picture


2. Really nice to add — but not critical/mandatory: potentially becomes a “new article”:

Revise all phrasing, title, summary, detail.

Remove non-essential topics (clear room for additions, make it a pure Science theory).

{male/female}:
male/female mythemes, uncontrollable hidden control thought source, helpless receiver of control-thoughts

{branching/nonbranching; tree vs. snake/rock}:
o rebis holding up Y branch – decoding Western Esotericism
o ossuary: man horse path see snake on debranched tree
o snake carved in rock = worldline in block universe
o Minkowski = Parmenides’ block univ Eternalism
o monster dragon serpent = uncontrollable personal control-worldline rail = peak threat to personal control
o king steering in tree -> wine -> snake frozen in rock
o Jesus “hung on a tree” means Cross = tree: {king in tree is sacrificed}
o Jonah’s “whale” is actually sea-serpent (block-universe worldline); Jonah-headed snake
o pics: Eve/snake/tree in Campbell’s Power of Myth, + Jason/dragon/laurel/ram-fleece/Athena (Jason-headed snake), Eve-headed snake

make sure covered: sacrifice of Isaac: ram’s power caught helplessly in branching bush. Sustainability of person beyond the peak sacrifice, no harm = live on to worship as a devout people; “How to see God and live, unharmed, to worship God”.

{gate}

{purify/purgatory}

{bedevilled} – semi-covered, as “possessed”/”Jesus casts out the demon, man’s son returns to sanity”

__________

It is insane and irrational, conceptually inconsistent, to not understand religious mythology.

Atheists convert to religion in the last days, when they finally recognize religious mythology as description of no-free-will, cybernetic noncontrol given the loose cognitive ability to see and experience block-universe Eternalism, as explained by the Egodeath theory.

— Michael Hoffman
September 11, 2018

change

Posted 4 times, still waiting for Web UI to show post

Change

Argument from etymology and mythic metaphor:
The authentic, psychedelic Eucharist is the opposite of ‘degenerate’ (= eliminating fertility).

The traditional ancient Greek and Christian use of the psychoactive sacred meals is fertile, giving new life, adding to existing ideas without destroying them (only qualifying them).

Giving birth, creating mythic babies or children, reproduction, fertility.

Semele dies by Zeus’ power being revealed, and Dionysus is born.

The sacred meal causes new life, rebirth, the birth of the divine child, birth of divinity.

Psychedelics are divinely fertile, producing lasting life, non-dying, a-thanatos, rebirth in divine form, coupling of God and man (Mary, Semele) giving birth to Christ, the divine new child.

The Holy Spirit in the sacred meal gives a new mental model of time and control, preserving the old mental model for daily mundane use, qualifying and transcending the old model — preserve and transcend the lower structure, per Ken Wilber.

The mythic entheogenic family: the mystic marriage, bridal chamber, procreation, from which new, divine life is born.

Isaac through whom a population of righteous devout offspring sustains forever. The quasi-sacrifice of Isaac is fecund, leading to a people who live on to be righteous, multiplying.

The sacred meal bringing to completion of transcendent mental development is prolific, fertile, lasting, durable, strengthening, timelessly classic, perennial, never-ending.

— Michael Hoffman
September 13, 2018

Going for a record, like 8 times posting before post appears in web UI…

Waiting for significant revision (v2) of post “I found a 2011 hardcopy revision markup of the 2007 main article” to appear in Web UI.  

I found a 2011 hardcopy revision markup of the 2007 main article, around the date of my Nov. 2011 preliminary version of my Nov. 2013 branching breakthrough: in that 2011 markup draft, I was intent on differentiating the Core theory vs. mythic metaphor decoding.

After the 2013 “branching vs. nonbranching” breakthrough, that effort seems like misguided priorities, focusing on mere presentation while a major conceptual structure was missing: the specific parallel contrast between the two models of time and control, in terms of possibility branching vs. monopossibility.

I hadn’t decoded the mythemes {tree} or {rock} yet.


In 1988, I framed the Egodeath theory in terms of a new theory or explanatory paradigm of what *ego transcendence* is about (against the “nonduality” explanation).

Handwritten Minnesota draft, draft 1: August 11, 1988.

I wished to publish my loosecog/block-universe/cybernetics theory in December 1988 in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

Until ~2001, my “Theory of Ego Transcendence” lacked myth-decoding. My 2007 main article has *most* myth-decoding, but lacked systemic contrast between Possibilism vs. Eternalism; branching vs. nonbranching models of time and control; tree vs. snake. The Core theory lacked that structure, that elegant parity of contrast, and the 1998-2007 myth-decoding addendum of the theory lacked {tree vs. snake}.

Now (in 2013-2018), I’m more interested in contrasting the two innate, state-dependent mental models of time and control, rather than (in 1988) contrasting the (Ken Wilber/Martin Ball) nonduality vs. (Hoffman) loosecog/Eternalism/noncontrol theories of what ego trancendence is about.

One of my 1988 theory titles was “The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence” (CTET), but that overemphasizes the Cybernetics aspect, lacking the Loosecog and Eternalism aspects which lead up to the great, peak “cybernetic noncontrol” experience.

Since January 1988, the Egodeath theory was a theory (lacking myth-decoding at that time) that the nature of ego transcendence is Loosecog/Block-universe/Cybernetics.

A more balanced title would be like:

The Loosecog/Eternalism/Cybernetics Theory of Ego Transcendence

or equivalent words for ‘loosecog’, ‘eternalism’, and ‘cybernetics’; eg:

The Psycholytic/Fatedness/Noncontrol Theory of Ego Transcendence

That focus of the theory held from 1988 to 1997. Then I added myth (and art, and Rock lyrics) decoded as description of those 3 things: loosecog revealing fatedness & noncontrol.


The mere monochrome reproduction of half the painting, in _The Power of Myth_, focused my thinking to, for the first time, notice *as a contrast*, the Eden tree *versus* the Eden snake: tree and snake are the two contrasting architectural *shapes* of the models of time and control, possibility-branching control-tree experienced in the ordinary state (tight cognitive binding), frozen worldline-snake in block universe experienced in the altered state (loose cognitive binding).

Ruck et al failed to interpret snake, or vine, in terms of its *shape*; same with tree (eluded me longer than snake): snake and vine are not important because of venom or Ruck’s invented explanation “the Greeks had psychoactive ivy”, nor shedding skin (never depicted in art despite the snake/serpent/dragon being the #1 most common mytheme symbol in religious mythology).

The SHAPE of {snake/ivy}; the SHAPE of {tree}, the CONTRAST between the SHAPE of tree VERSUS snake, is the most-profound point. My mytheme research and postings around 2010-2013 built up to that greatest insight, about shape-contrast, on November 29, 2013. I think of this as figuring out “branching theory”.

When I had the “branching theory” breakthrough insight, I had been working toward a contrast-based quadrant-oriented diagram to represent the Egodeath theory, working toward increasing contrast between the before-and-after models — that’s how I prepared and invested in the R&D that led to this discovery of the most efficient (and thus most archaic) representation of the two fundamental mental models, corresponding with the two states of cognitive binding intensity.

____________________


Addendum September 16+, 2018 (content for bottom of main article)

*contrasting* the branching vs. nonbranching models of time-and-control.

Images for 11/29/2013 “branching theory” breakthrough:

o Photo of Campbell’s _Power of Myth_ book, Eve/snake/tree/branches/stag, including my 11/29/2013 notes.

o Photo of cover of mythology book, showing Jason image on a kylix/cup/wine-saucer.

o Diagrams: Stanford Encyclopedia article “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/#PresPossEter The Possibilism vs. Eternalism models of time (and, more intensely when experienced, of control).

from branching, open, non-extant future, to monopossibility, pre-existing future.

the branching illusion, the two basic *contrasted* fundamental experiential models of time and control.

It’s about the pointed, systematic *contrast*! tree *versus* snake. tree-like vs. snake-in-rock-like models of time-and-control.

Recognize the tree and snake in terms of contrasting master models of time and control agency.

Combined branching vs. nonbranching in art figures:
o Eden tree/snake
o Moses’ healing bronze serpent on pole
o staff of Aesclepius the healer
o Jason-from-dragon, in front of non-branching laurel tree with sacrificed golden ram fleece, with Athena present (that divine figure has snakes, doesn’t have tree).


decoding of Rock — The {rock} mytheme wasn’t covered in my main article! When did I post about decoding {rock} = block universe?

William James calls the Parmenides/Minkowski model of time the “iron block universe”, but ancients described it as a “rock block universe”.

{tree} wasn’t covered/decoded yet either. ‘branch’ doesn’t appear in the article.


*Art and* religious mythology describe mental model transformation from the fist innate model, Possibilism, to the second innate model, Eternalism, the latter awaits the entheogen (looosecog) trigger to manifest/develop. (my main article doesn’t just decode myth; it shows art)

Enlightenment about metaphor, loosecog, fatedness, and noncontrol, is more mentally developed than lacking this gnosis, more durable, exposed to greater breadth of experiential states.

tree vs. snake = Possibilism vs. Eternalism


correction: “time pole” -> rigid snake on debranched tree-pole (I knew this was off-base, an unsolved problem of decoding – indeed this was a major decoding, following from the 2013 “branching theory” breakthrough)
correction: “turned Actaeon into an animal” -> “into a stag with branching antlers”
correction: 5 mushrooms not 4, in Dionysus victory procession.


Art: human head on snake. Healing rigid brass snake on pole, staff of Aesclepius, Christ hung on a tree, rock = block universe, snake = worldline.

Art: snake carved of rock as the medium = control-worldline snake-rail embedded in frozen block universe.

Image: mystics in purifying fire tended by the purifying angels

Idea of needing a picture gallery of Eternalism/noncontrol (not a gallery merely of entheogen plants per Brown & Brown, & Ruck).

The Possibilism vs. Eternalism models of time and control, as contrasted models. More specific than my abstract terms ‘egoic’ vs. ‘transcendent’.


Two legs/feet/hips = control foundation assumptions; limping, Hephaestos, one-foot; the mushroom “dancing” image (one foot lifted) controverted by Tom Hatsis against Jan Irvin. One foot raised.


Female = helpless control-thought receiver; male = uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.

Image: Rebis herm/aphrodite andro/gyne, holding Y.


Dragon hides in well/spring in cave, demands sacrifice of king’s maiden daughter, lures with sweet smell. Guards treasure.

Dragon guards treasure, must appease dragon by sacrificing Possibilism-thinking as assumed basis/foundation for personal control power, instead, for mental coherence and stability, must consciously trust (“pray to”) whatever is the uncontrollable creator/controller of your personal snake-rail worldline.

Ironic branching snakes, ironic nonbranching laurel trees.

Apollo arrows shoots dragon, wins laurel (non-branching tree) crown of victory.


Painting: sphinx questioning a hero, king’s crown fallen into chasm.

Image (W. Esotericism): king in tree, like King Pentheus, and Jesus hung from “tree”.

gate guarded garden, fleeing from or able to endure/stay, death angel as guard, dragon as guard eg of apples in garden of hesperides, implies snake in garden of Eden as *guarding* the fruit of the tree.


Possibilism vs. Eternalism model of time and control, moving from a specific, branching model, to an innate specific nonbranching model.

mental model transformation from Possibilism to Eternalism (eventually permanent when purified, in temporary experiential altered state)

decoding of branching/nonbranching contrast


Religious myth as description of: plants (Carl Ruck recognizes), and distinctly, the loose cognitive mode that visionary plants experientially reveal.

Ruck doesn’t recognize the descriptions of the loose cognitive state itself, resulting from the plants he perceives, and he doesn’t recognize the mythic descriptions of what that loose cognitive, plant-induced state reveals.

What’s revealed by the state that results from the plants is twofold: the block universe containing frozen worldlines, and cybernetic noncontrol.

The cognitive effect of visionary plants, which reveals that pair of revelations (Eternalism + Cybernetic noncontrol)


Covered in main article? Abraham looked up and behind him, saw the ram caught helplessly in the branching bush to sacrifice, instead of proving his ability to override his control, which would destroy his own future.

The angel-idea stayed Abraham’s hand from cybernetically violating and disproving his “Isaac” child-thinking, granted Abraham the idea of sacrificing the bush-caught ram as a better way of communicating/establishing comprehension of non-control, that permits prosperity, future life with corrected understanding of control that is true, coherent, and durable across both experiential states (tight & loose cognitive binding).


One of my “myth scene as diagram” posts/analyses of 2010-2013, was the fresco of Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries. Includes decodings:
scourging/frenzy/god-maddened = altered-state correction and disproof of Possibilism-thinking. God with whip appears in image of The Madness of Heracles (show).

Turning to look back behind you to the right = experiencing the feeling of remembering the Eternalism model, of remembering fatedness to undergo ego death, cybernetic panic “frenzy” (god-possessed), and glorious doom and rescue/reset.

image: ossuary theme: riding without steering, along a path to see a snake on debranched tree trunk.


Maybe cite my announcement post of ~12/5/2013, and my ~11/23/2011 preliminary version of the “branching-theory” insight.

— Michael Hoffman
September 16, 2018

After reposting about 5 times, the revised post appeared: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/10679

Discovery date is a set of dates

Instead of a single date, I should specify 3 dates for each breakthrough: initial, peak, and follow-up.

For example, for the tree vs. snake breakthrough:
1. Initial idea, proposal, or groundwork: posted November 23, 2011.
2. Peak breakthrough — maximum number of connections added or revised per hour (per Paul Thagard’s model): November 29, 2013 (posted announcement December 1, 2013).
3. Follow-up, fleshing out the ramifications and corroborations adequately to express the whole scope: sometime by mid-2014.

When did I decode the most important, #1 mytheme, {snake} as worldline per Minkowski? I have looked up my posting dates before, but re-assess, in terms of:
1. When I first proposed that {snake} means worldline. (2003??)
2. When I first firmly asserted that {snake} means worldline.
3. When I adequately expressed and corroborated the entire principle that {snake} means worldline. This date is problematic, because I made substantial additional connections — to snake vs. tree — November 23, 2011, and then even more adequately, {snake vs. tree = Possibilism vs. Eternalism}, November 29, 2013, which itself, even then, was not a fully adequate elaboration with corroborations of that complex, complete idea.

A breakthrough is a matter of increasing connections over time. Artificially, we can pick 3 dates:
1. initial proposal
2. firm assertion
3. final proof

Snake means worldline, frozen in the rock block-universe, as opposed to a king steering in a possibilities branching tree. Even when I fully asserted and elaborated in the 2006 main article that snake means worldline, that falls short of the adequate full completely developed idea; Hellenistic initiates would see I still was lacking in the whole concept, of tree vs. snake, or {king steering in tree, drinks wine, then sees snake embedded in rock}.

R&D progress in theory-development is complex: increasing knowledge keeps increasing at an uneven pace of revising and adding connections.

Many elements of insight built up to the mid-2014 full development of the top principle {snake vs. tree = Possibilism vs. Eternalism}.


Decoding a mytheme is a matter of degree, of strength of connections increasing at an uneven rate over time. That makes it trickier to specify “the” date on which I decoded a mytheme, such as snake, king, wine, tree, or rock.

An initial correct idea still takes time to fully develop.

There’s the first few coins of a jackpot, and then after more time, the jackpot in its fullness.

It takes time from the initial identifying of a decoding, until full decoding of the mytheme.

When did I decode the mytheme {rock}?
On November 26, 2012, I casually mentioned rock = spacetime (frozen block universe containing embedded worldlines, implying a kind of cybernetic non-control):
Subject: Re: The Hammer of Interpretation
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6079
Later, I posted developing that decoding, adding more connections.


When did I decode the mytheme-contrast {tree vs. snake}?
On November 23, 2011, I announced decoding tree vs. snake:
Subject: tree, snake, mshr; tree-wrapped/-climbing serpent
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/5630

When did I decode the mytheme-contrast {tree vs. snake} in terms of the two experiential models of time and control, “Possibilism vs. Eternalism”?
I connected the {tree vs. snake} contrast with the emphatic/systemic contrast between the Possibilism vs. Eternalism models of time, on November 29, 2013, using the Stanford Encyclopedia article “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/#PresPossEter

Subject: Deciphered: tree vs. snake means Possibilism vs. Eternalism
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6340
December 1, 2013, reporting the discovery of November 29, 2013
This discovery was corroborated and expanded with more connections during the following months.


Similarly with decoding {snake}; postings (around 2003?) increasingly assert that {snake} = frozen pre-existing worldline.
It is hard and misrepresentative to pick a single date, except that that date is specifically the peak date in a set of breakthrough-series dates.

It’s probably wrong, misleading, to give a single date for a breakthrough. More like identifying the “peak breakthrough” in a set of breakthroughs.

I experienced “the week of” November 29, 2013 as peaking at November 29, a high peak surrounded by days of great height.

This is my “mountain range” model of breakthrough, depicting the rate of adding new connections, like in Paul Thagard’s clarification of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific discovery.

It’s not flat, with an impulse peak jumping up suddenly; it’s a mountain range with peak in middle, a series of peaks.

A discovery’s “date” is more like an index entry with several page numbers, and a middle page number is bold, meaning “especially here”.

— Michael Hoffman
September 18, 2018

Contents:

links to images to add to main article, in an addendum

date at which I first decoded snake = worldline in block universe (2002 fair, 2004 good)

{leg/foot/hip} = presumed foundation of personal control power

mytheme decoded: {snake-bodied child hidden then revealed}

{human-snake} examples

________________________________

links to images to add to main article, in an addendum

My posting with links to Yahoo Egodeath group photos library, including the tiny portion of the Eve/snake/stag paining in Campbell; Douris’ Jason kylix, etc.:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/7399
Subject: Photos of tree vs snake diagrams and paintings

________________________________

date at which I first decoded snake = worldline in block universe

When did I decode, when did I first definitively postulate or assert that snake = worldline? February 20, 2004? I posted rudimentary roots, early versions of the decoding, as early as April 26, 2002.

It’s a matter of degree, a judgment call, whether I decoded {snake = worldline} on April 26, 2002, or February 20, 2004.

I feel that as a decoding that’s firmly and clearly proposed, the date of proper discovery is February 20, 2004, with roots back to April 26, 2002, and even with roots definitively back into the mid-1990s where I was literally drawing the worldline as a snake and like a worm.

By a big stretch, you could say the philosophers of time “know all this”, in that they talk of “spacetime worms” and “worm theory”, where ‘worm’ means worldline in the block universe.

Philosophers of time uncomprehendingly utter disconnected fragments of wisdom when they talk of “the tree model of time, against the block universe containing worldline worms”.

They don’t know they are uttering profound religious mythology analogies to the altered=state experiential revelation of block-universe noncontrol of which the Metal poets sing.

Sam Harris thinks religion is something other than comprehending and experiencing worldline snakes embedded in the rock of the Minkowski block universe, even though Harris writes books against religion, advocating no-free-will, and advocating psychedelics-informed spirituality.


April 26, 2002, I posted a version of the mytheme decoding {snake = worldline}:
Subject: Labyrinth, Balaam’s donkey, Golden Ass, Damascus
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/753
April 26, 2002
“A person’s entire worldline of mental constructs is frozen in spacetime like a thread in a marble slab or like a snake frozen in ice — understanding this vividly amounts to the experience of control-death or cyberdeath. That’s the thought that kills the childself.”


April 27, 2002:
Subject: Planned topics/themes/puzzles
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/760
I wrote:
“Stiff wavy snake – frozen worldline”


On February 20, 2004, I suggested {snake} = worldline:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/3160
Subject: Snake referring to visual distortion, turning staff to snake
February 20, 2004
“A snake is shaped like a no-choice labyrinth path, like a person’s worldline frozen into the block universe.

To mentally perceive your frozenness of worldline is like seeing a snake, and may be metaphorized as prophetic viewing of the future or coming inevitable fall of king ego’s kingdom/ kingship.”

One the one hand, what I wrote is perfect; on the other, it’s the *last* of several interpretations I listed in that post.


On March 3, 2004, I wrote a version of the {snake = worldline} assertion:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/3206
Subject: Metaphor: Averted gaze. To look is to die.
March 3, 2004
“The snake wrapped around the lion-headed figure is the linear worldline of one’s life: the Fates’ thread.”


The next post in my February 20, 2004 thread is October 29, 2004, and I am still muddling inferior interpretations (toxin) into that key, primary referent (worldline).
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/3611
Subject: Snake referring to visual distortion, turning staff to snake
October 29, 2004
“Snake and no-choice labyrinth and meander all have similar spatial geometry.

The snake is wise because it has elixir of death, has rebirth, moves like visual waving distortion, and knows about the 1-D worldline frozen into the heimarmene-ruled block universe.

When you mentally perceive your experienced life as a 1-D worldline timelessly frozen into the block universe, your sense of open steersmanship dies, like seeing the attractive and deadly gorgon-face of the snake-haired Medusa and being thereby turned to stone.

Thus the snake is shown wrapped around the heimarmene-ruled celestial globe, or penetrating through it.

The snake is wise about determinism, but I see the snake as representing attaining the jump from ignorance to fatal awareness of determinism, *not* the second major leap, which is the truly divine leap from awareness of determinism to transcendence of cosmic determinism.”

____

More ideal and mature in terms of theory development to completion/closure, would be the formulation, possible later after I decoded {rock}:
{snake} = worldline, embedded in {rock} = block universe.

At later dates, I have more integration/connections among the decoded mythemes, which were previously decoded in isolation.

The early posts are “correct, so far as they go”, but back then, I didn’t quite say so clearly and emphatically as now, that in world religious mythology, {snake} (the #1 most common mytheme) is an analogy that describes the personal control-agent’s worldline rail frozen in the {rock} block universe, experientially perceived and unveiled in the loose cognitive state.

{dragon} as monster and treasure-guard, is the fearsome, terrifying aspect of control-loss implied by perceiving the pre-existing control-worldline embedded in the frozen block universe, the peak mystic-state threat, “the shadow”.

The {dragon-guarded treasure} is enlightenment and mental integrity and cleansing of impure, incoherent thinking that causes control-seizure, control-instability.

treasure = ability to endure and enter and stay in the loose cognitive state, with mental control stability.

In 2002, I was drawing connections, but I wasn’t churning out “decodings of mythemes” as such.

In general, I didn’t yet have such a clear idea of decoding mythemes as analogies describing the cognitive phenomenology of the loose cognitive state.

The roots of decoding a given mytheme, go way back.

I literally drew worldlines as snakes, back around 1995 — correct, so far as it goes; but that doesn’t measure up to my later definitive decoding, {snake} = worldline.


I didn’t *nail* the idea, the decoding, in 1995, or 2002, barely even in 2004, compared to November 29, 2013, or by mid-2014 complete development, with the full manner of expression, of {king steering in tree, wine, then snake embedded in rock}.

On what date did I first fully grasp the decoding, in a definitive, authoritative way? A decoding *as* a decoding.

I posted the {snake = worldline} proto-idea several times, over the years, before it became a stark principle, a point-blank decoding as such, around 2004. Even then, it was 9 more years, 2013, before bringing together snake, tree, and rock.

I decoded {rock} around November 26, 2012 – a similar story of gradual development and clearer realization, as more connections were added throughout the broad explanatory framework.

________________________________________

date of decoding of {leg/foot/hip/sandal} = presumed foundation of personal control power

That March 3, 2004 paragraph continues with work on decoding a mytheme much more recent like 2016:

“One leg on ground, one leg up isn’t so much a mushroom allusion; it is first of all the idea that the transcendent psyche stands partly on ego, partly on divine magic air. Thus Jesus’ foot elevated, Mithras’ one foot on the ground, dancing Shiva with one foot on the air, and
so on. One leg up is readable as magical transcendence of Fate/ heimarmene/ cosmic determinism.”

That’s the roots of starting to decode; it’s not a proper decoding yet.

Well-formed decoding: 1st leg = Possibilism-thinking, 2nd leg = Eternalism-thinking.

My more recent, ~2017 posts on foot = leg = presumed foundation of control, are more well-formed, more on-target than that preliminary proposal of 2004.

“The” discovery/decoding date is more like 3 dates:
1. date of first proposal, but maybe not expressed optimally yet; still a little malformed/roughly formed. The historical roots of my eventual full decoding of the mytheme.
2. date of first clear, proper, correct, well-formed assertion, correct emphasis.
3. date of final elaboration with corroboration established, with fluent connections to related mythemes.

________________________________________

mytheme decoded: {snake-bodied child hidden then revealed}

{human-snake} examples

My February 20, 2004 post also has a passage I kept trying to find, about two sisters hurling themselves from the Acropolis:

http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/garrison_essay.shtml

That webpage, edited for clarity:

“The females who commit suicide in a state of madness are Agraulos and Herse, daughters of Cecrops, the half-serpent man.

When Athena gave to these girls for rearing, the offspring of Hephaestus’ aborted attempt to impregnate Athena, Athena instructed Agraulos and Herse to keep the child Erichthonius hidden in a chest. They failed to heed her warning, and upon seeing the snaky child within, went mad and hurled themselves from the Acropolis. Although the girls’ own father Cecrops was half-snake, the sight of such an infant drove them insane.”


More examples of human torso on snake body:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Cecrops&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=Erichthonius&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=Echidna+myth&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=Typhon&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=Eve+serpent&tbm=isch
snake has Eve’s head or torso, or a man’s head or torso

ketos sea-serpent is spewing out Jonah; two heads visible: serpent’s and Jonah’s
https://www.google.com/search?q=Jonah+sea+serpent&tbm=isch

Douris’ Jason/Athena kylix: guard dragon snake is spewing out dead Jason; two heads visible: serpent’s and Jason’s
https://www.google.com/search?q=Douris+Jason+Athena&tbm=isch


Human-Snake Hybrids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hybrid_creatures_in_folklore#Human-Snake_Hybrids
“A nure-onna as depicted in Sawaki Suushi’s Hyakkai-Zukan
Echidna – A half-woman and half-snake monster that lives inside a cave.
Fu Xi – A god said to have been made by Nu Wa.

Lamia – Like a mermaid but with the lower body like that of a snake and is usually female. wik: “Lamia (/ˈleɪmiə/; Greek: Λάμια), in ancient Greek mythology, was a woman who became a child-eating monster after her children were destroyed by Hera, who learned of her husband Zeus’s trysts with her. Hera also afflicted Lamia with sleeplessness so she would anguish constantly, but Zeus gave her the ability to remove her own eyes.”

{remove eyes} = return to tight cognition, the ordinary state of consciousness where our snake-shaped control-rail worldline is veiled, not experientially perceived. -mh

“Zeus provided relief by endowing her with removable eyes. He also gifted her with a shape-shifting ability in the process.”

{shape-shifting} = mental worldmodel transformation from Possibilism to Eternalism; from {king steering in tree}, to (after {visionary mixed wine/ magic potion}), {snake embedded in rock}. -mh.

Nü Wa – A woman with the lower body of a serpent in Chinese folklore.
Ketu – An Asura who has the lower parts of a snake and said to have four arms.
Nāga – A term referring to human/snake mixes of all kinds.
Nure-onna – A creature with the head of a woman and body of a snake.”


What is {that which is hidden and then revealed}?

Our cybernetic nature as frozen worldlines is hidden, veiled, until made visible by psychedelic mixed wine.

Our snake-rail nature as control agents bound to stay in our pre-existing rail across time, is normally veiled, hidden, in the tight cognitive binding mode, the ordinary state of consciousness.

Keep the *child* *hidden*.

While we think as a child, on the hidden underlying not-yet-perceived level, we are a snake-shaped worldline, unbeknown yet to us.

When we are initiated, in the psychotomimetic state, we perceive for the first time, that the whole time, we (as control agent) have been a snake-shaped rail embedded in the frozen block universe.

September 18, 2018
— Michael Hoffman

When did I fully decode {rock = block universe}?

{tree vs. snake} = {king-in-tree vs. snake-in-rock} = Possibilism vs. Eternalism


1a. I realized and posted the bare idea in 2004.
1b. I treat the idea more adequately in the 2006/2007 main article, but it still doesn’t stand out as a major decoding.
2. On January 10, 2013, clearly I fully get it, that {rock = block universe}, and that this is a major mytheme.
3. I corroborated how widespread the {rock} mytheme is and thus how major the breakthrough is, on January 13, 2013.

When did I first write articulate, fluent, clear assertion than the mytheme {rock} is decoded as block universe, and that {rock} is a major mytheme though unrecognized by others as a major thematic puzzle to solve, ubiquitous in religious mythology?

My main work decoding {rock} and {tree}, to appreciate how major these mythemes are, was after the 2006/2007 main article, in the fecund period 2010-2014.

But roots of my work decoding {rock} go back to at least 2004, and roots of {tree} decoding, I have yet to adequately trace.

I imagine that my trajectory or “mountain range” of developing the {snake} decoding is shifted earlier than {rock}, which is shifted earlier than {tree}.


Clearly in the main article of 2006/2007, I have full appreciation for how major of a decoding it is, that {snake = worldline}. But less appreciation for {rock = block universe}, and little if any appreciation for {tree/branching = Possibilism}.

Manly Hall’s book “Secret Teachings of the Ages” has a bare mention of psychoactive plants, and maybe a mention of no-free-will, but he’s miles away from grasping the Egodeath theory of ego transcendence and religious mythology as {loose-cognitive block-universe non-control}.

Sam Harris writes books about religion, about no-free-will, and about psychedelics-influenced spirituality, but he didn’t grasp the Egodeath theory, that religious mythology describes {loose-cognitive block-universe non-control}.


The historical research remains to be done, to trace my development timeline of the mytheme-decoding {tree = Possibilism}.

There is a trajectory of development of a decoding, over the years, with first mentions, then firm assertion, then full, articulate, fluent elaboration and connection.

Per Kuhn, “Revolutionary Science” identifies an explanatory skeletal paradigm framework as a research framework to be filled in by “Normal Science” afterwards. But the revolutionary idea might not by fully recognized as revolutionary when the idea first appears.

I got pretty far in decoding the {rock} mytheme before realizing and appreciating how revolutionary or major that decoding was, what a major mytheme I had decoded.

They say Minkowski and Lorentz discovered the Theory of Invariance / Theory of Relativity, without realizing, appreciating, and comprehending it, or without fanfare of selling it as a revolutionary breakthrough.

Same with {snake}: at first, I merely noted the shape similarity of snake and worldline, without realizing I had decoded the #1 most common, puzzling, mysterious religious mythology mytheme.

There is a counter-intuitive sequence of first decoding a mytheme, and then some time later, *appreciating* the decoding of the mytheme *as* a decoding of a major mytheme that has a surprisingly great number of connections throughout the domain.


Correction:
“I hadn’t decoded the mythemes {tree} or {rock} yet, in the 2007 main article.”

The main article decodes “stone”, though not the synonym “rock”.

I didn’t appreciate yet that {rock} is a major, top mytheme throughout myth, the decoding of which constitutes a major decoding, a breakthrough in myth interpretation.

Only on January 13, 2013, did I finally post a full, adequate treatment of the many, many instances of all forms of rock in myth — that post, stands as the definitive, full, mature assertion with corroboration, of the decoding {rock = block universe} — that’s when it struck me the extent to which rock is a master, unappreciated, key mytheme woven extensively throughout myth.

______________________________

Timeline of posts decoding {rock = block universe}:

On October 29, 2004, I made bare mention of the idea; the roots of my decoding {rock = block universe} go back much earlier than the 2006/2007 main article, such as bare mention of the idea.

I separately mentioned snake and “stone”, the elements of the decoding are present together but not tightly connected into {snake = worldline, rock = block universe}:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/3611
Subject: Snake referring to visual distortion, turning staff to snake
October 29, 2004
“Snake and no-choice labyrinth and meander all have similar spatial geometry.

The snake is wise because it has elixir of death, has rebirth, moves like visual waving distortion, and knows about the 1-D worldline frozen into the heimarmene-ruled block universe.

When you mentally perceive your experienced life as a 1-D worldline timelessly frozen into the block universe, your sense of open steersmanship dies, like seeing the attractive and deadly gorgon-face of the snake-haired Medusa and being thereby turned to stone.”


My 2006-2007 main article connects stone, altar, and block universe:
http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm
“The Block Universe and Frozen Worldlines
… Fixed Worldlines of Subjective Experiencing

Sacrifice is predestined and frozen into spacetime, comparable to the labyrinth path leading the sacrificial youths to the Minotaur in the central lair every year, and comparable to a city’s festival procession past sacred landmarks to a sacrifice at an altar. When Perseus shows Medusa’s head covered with Heimarmene-snakes to king Polydectes and his followers at the feast with ‘mixed wine’, the king and the other governors are turned into stone, helplessly frozen.”


On November 26, 2012, I mentioned rock = spacetime (frozen block universe containing embedded worldlines, implying a kind of cybernetic non-control):
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6079
Subject: The Hammer of Interpretation
November 26, 2012
“altar = marble slab = rock = spacetime = time = chains = tied up = fastened = bound = … captive”


On January 10, 2013, I strongly, articulately, and fluently asserted the decoding {rock = block universe}.

This posting shows that long before November 29, 2013, I posted all the key elements together: king, tree, snake, rock, Possibilism, Eternalism, though I didn’t quite see clearly yet the elegant math formula {tree vs. snake = king-in-tree vs. snake-in-rock = Possibilism vs. Eternalism}:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6274
Subject: Rock worship & the Rock altar of sacrifice
January 10, 2013
“Worshipping toward the black cube of Mecca is acknowledging block universe fatedness and its personal noncontrol implication. The black rock is spacetime fatedness to which we are subject, against our natural animalistic childish thinking in terms of autonomous control power.

To sacrifice, you must find and gather Rock, to build an altar of block universe divine Rock, and sacrifice the mentally purified, rightly willing victim who repudiates his egoic animal youthful cross-time control claims.

I claimed to roll, but now in sacrifice on the Rock altar I formally acknowledge that I am a rock.

At this altar of Rock, I formally acknowledge that I, including all my control thought and stream of intentions, am a product of the block universe. My entire worldline stream of thoughts and experiences, mental constructs, is like a worm-shaped, snake-shaped vein that is frozen in a spacetime marble block controlled by the creator of fate. I am not asserting about holistic determinism, so much as, my ultimate point is, asserting a particular noncontrol.

I assert Eternalism and brass rigid snaked shaped worldline *because* that forces my real, main point, which is a kind of repudiation of my assumption that I have a certain kind of control power: that type of control power which fits with the Possibilism model of time. I repudiate the “tree”; cybernetic possibility branching not that that is important in itself, but rather because I repudiate *the type and conception of personal control* that *fits with* that model of time and possibility.

I sacrifice my kingship claim on the tree, my kingship claimed fastened to the tree, hung on the tree. I affirm the snake and its Eternalism Rock altar and that’s not important in itself, but because I affirm the model if personal control that fits with that model. Metaphor’s correct logic, relevant and mathematically perfect: Tree ~= altar of Rock = snake = god-given sacrificial lamb = worldline = ultimately:

Mental model of personal control power that fits with the Eternalism model of time as opposed to the Possibilism model of time. The important ultimate point for mental regeneration or mental model transformation isn’t what time-model you have, but what control-model you have. Focus on the time-model is not important in itself, but is important insofar as it implies, forces, or phenomenologically coheres with your control-model you hold.”

The post continues in like fashion.


On January 13, 2013, I posted the full corroboration, listing many instances of the rock mytheme throughout religious mythology.

I fully elaborated and corroborated the variants of rock in myth, proving that rock is a master mytheme though that is not appreciated; I recognized that {rock} as a main mytheme to decode is overlooked in myth dictionaries.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6279
Subject: Rock worship & the Rock altar of sacrifice
January 13, 2013

— Michael Hoffman
September 19, 2018

When did I decode the {tree/branching} mytheme? Consider 3 dates:
1. initial proposal: November 23, 2011
2. elaborated assertion: November 29, 2013, posted December 2, 2013
3. complete explanation & corroborating myths/art: mid 2014


The earliest, initial post of mine with “branching” and “tree” is the familiar November 23, 2011 posting.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/5630
Subject: tree, snake, mshr; tree-wrapped/-climbing serpent
November 23, 2011
The post doesn’t mention Possibilism or Eternalism.

That post is the precursor to the peak November 29, 2013 breakthrough and its December 2, 2013 announcement posting of {tree vs. snake contrast = the Possibilism vs. Eternalism models of time & control}.

I hadn’t *fully* decoded {tree/branching} in 2011, given that I lacked the *combination* idea, the 2013 compound mytheme {tree/snake = Possibilism/Eternalism}; lacked decoding Staff of Aesclepius and Moses’ healing brass serpent on a pole; lacked the compound mytheme {king-in-tree vs. snake-in-rock}.

The _Power of Myth_ painting was important because it highlights the theme of branching: Eve’s branching legs, branch in front of them, stag’s antlers behind them: 3 layers of branching at Eve, and she holds onto a branch: 4 branching themes at once.

The adjacent book, with Jason kylix on the cover, shows a laurel tree with no branching, providing me with a 5th clue that tree/branching vs. snake/nonbranching was a Super-Mytheme to decode, using all my research I had done on those themes throughout myth by late 2013, combined with aggressive, persistent research on “block universe”, like a 4th, insistent pass, “How can people not be talking about the block universe?!” which turned up the badly drawn diagrams at Snodfart’s Junior University: the “tree” model not shown as a tree, next to the snake-shaped worldline.


I mentioned mushroom-trees with branching stems on October 28, 2005, but not the generalized principle of branching vs. nonbranching; it wasn’t a post about “branching theory”, though it helped lead to the idea. I noticed the issue of branching and nonbranching in mushroom trees: veil ring shown as cut-off branches. I may be a tree, but I’m against branching: laurel shrub & mushroom trees.

— Michael Hoffman
September 19, 2018

Eric Wargo, mythemes describing the 2 models of time

Erik Davis’ Expanding Mind podcast, episode September 27, 2018 with guest Eric Wargo, discusses Block Universe “determinism” per the Egodeath theory (around the final third).
https://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/expanding-mind-%E2%80%93-time-loops-092718/
“In part one of our conversation, author, blogger, and dreamer Eric Wargo talks about uncertainty, determinism, Zen, the evidence for “feeling the future,” and his brilliant and head-spinning book Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious.”


The discussion in the podcast comes close to comparing the “open future, branching possibilities” model to a *tree*, or a king steering in a tree, and to comparing the “block-universe with worldlines” model to a *snake*, or a snake embedded in rock.

The discussion comes close to mentioning the archetypal most-terrifying experience, of perceiving future control-thoughts as frozen in a pre-existing, snake-shaped rail embedded in spacetime with no change, or more exactly, no meta-change.

Typhon, the father of all monsters, refers to experientially perceiving one’s *Block-Universe Worldline* in the mystic altered state, removing the sense of personal control power: encountering the dragon that guards enlightenment.

The dragon (a serpent as *the* monster) demands prayer, reconciliation, and sacrifice, which means repudiation of the premise of relying on personal control power steering in a tree into the open future, relying instead, consciously, on pre-given personal control-thoughts that were established by the hidden, uncontrollable creator of the spacetime block.

The mind retains the original model of time and control, now qualified, and adds a new model of time and control, progressively revealed in the altered state in a series of purifying sessions of “mixed wine”, and eventually retained (conceptually, not experientially) in the ordinary state.

This model of psychedelics and mixed wine emphasizes the psycholytic, cognitive loosening effect of psychedelics.

The series of sacred meals given by the god leads to an overwhelming feeling and experience of “remembering” an epic, mythic-scale climactic peak experience of control-seizure realization, forcing a dramatic mental reconfiguration, with sacrifice and rescue, transforming the mental model of personal control power and time.


There are two models of time (and implicitly, of control) in Philosophy, which are contrasted in mythology, and are experienced in the two states of consciousness:

o First, the Tree model, called “Possibilism” in the Philosophy of Time, experienced and perceived in the ordinary state of consciousness, which has tight cognitive association binding. More fully, this model is described by analogy as a king steering in a tree.

o Second, the Snake model, called “Eternalism” in the Philosophy of Time, experienced and perceived in the altered state of consciousness, which has loose cognitive association binding. More fully, this model is described by analogy as a snake frozen embedded in rock.

The contrast between the initial tree view vs. the later snake view (after initiation into the sacred meals given by the gods), is depicted in Hellenistic and Biblical mythology as a rigid snake on a debranched tree, and other combinations of king or tree, vs. snake or rock, such as:

Hellenistic religious mythology:
o The staff of Aesclepius the healer (snake on debranched tree trunk).
o A snake on a debranched tree trunk (sculpted in rock) on ossuaries (stone coffin, depository for the bones of the dead).
o A snake on a debranched tree trunk (sculpted in rock) propping up statues.

Biblical religious mythology:
o Moses’ healing brass snake on a pole (a tree with the branches cut off), to prevent death by snake bite (that is, restabilizing mental control after ego death that results from perceiving Block-Universe Worldlines).
o The comparison of king Jesus fastened to wood (“hung on the tree”) to Moses’ brass snake lifted up on a pole, given as a “sign”.


Mythology describes psychedelics experientially revealing the block universe and no-free-will.

More generally, listing all the terms in the four key concept-categories:

{religious mythology, analogy, metaphor}
describes
{the altered state, psycholytics, psychedelics, entheogens, psychotomimetics, loose cognitive binding, loose mental construct processing}
experientially revealing
{Eternalism, Fatedness, Heimarmene, the block universe, frozen time, determinism, no meta-change}
and
{non-control, Cybernetics, control cancellation, self-control seizure, rail of control-thoughts, worldline, no-free-will, no meta-control}.


‘Determinism’ is an ok, familiar term for the Minkowski/Parmenides *Block Universe* with embedded pre-existing *Worldlines* of personal control, but ‘determinism’ amounts to a particular narrow theory about *how* it is that the future is pre-set: through domino-chain causality acting from one moment to the next.

‘Eternalism’, a less familiar but more relevant term, doesn’t emphasize the supposed domino-chain causal mechanism acting through time, but instead emphasizes timeless pre-existence of the future, especially the most fearsome, destabilizing, and dis-empowering perception, the pre-existence of the future rail of personal control-thoughts, frozen, unavoidable, unchangeable, the snake dragon monster guarding the treasure of enlightenment and mental transformation.


The Possibilism (tree) and Eternalism (snake) models of time are depicted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, though without recognition of the archaic mythology contrast {tree vs. snake}, or {king in tree vs. snake in rock}, which I recognized without the Philosophy terms ‘Possibilism’ vs. ‘Eternalism’ on November 23, 2011, and then with those terms on November 29, 2013 (announced December 1, 2013).

Diagrams:
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Article: “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/#PresPossEter

Subject: tree, snake, mshr; tree-wrapped/-climbing serpent
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/5630
November 23, 2011
Initial decoding of {tree vs. snake} in mythology, though without the terms ‘Possibilism vs. Eternalism’

Subject: Deciphered: tree vs. snake means Possibilism vs. Eternalism
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/6340
December 1, 2013, reporting the discovery of November 29, 2013
Announcement of fully decoding {tree vs. snake} in mythology, including the terms ‘Possibilism vs. Eternalism’. Confirmed by decoding various mythemes by mid-2014.


Expanding Mind podcast
Episode: Cybernetic Ego-death
January 28, 2016
“A talk with renegade religious philosopher Michael Hoffman about entheogens, determinism, and religious experience from an engineering point of view.”
https://expandingmind.podbean.com/2016/01/
https://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/expanding-mind-%E2%80%93-cybernetic-ego-death-%E2%80%93-012816/

— Michael Hoffman
October 1, 2018

Myth’s theory of control chaos & restabilization

Myth doesn’t prove control chaos & restabilization

Using mythology to identify and corroborate, but not prove, a specific, standard, traditional theory of how the mind works and develops in reaction to the loose cognitive state


I have definitely extracted the implicit theory of how the mind works according to religious mythology.


In the ordinary, tight cognitive state, Possibilism is experienced as the mental model of time and control.

In the altered, loose cognitive state, the Eternalism model is experienced, with block-universe noncontrol.

Mental self-control seizure, instability, initially results, as long as the Possibilism model is adhered to within the loosecog state.

Eventually, the non-viability of the Possibilism model while in the loosecog state, leads to shifting the foundation of reliance for power from personal origination to the uncontrollable block universe.

Cybernetic testing and observation, probing the vulnerability and dynamics of mental control in the mystic, loose cognitive state, is described in mythic analogy as {trial}, {fire} or {scourging}, which gradually drives and leads to this change of control-foundation reliance.


The specific dynamic, part of the traditional mythical theory of how the mind works: in the loosecog state, personal control power goes into chaos, control instability that escalates to panic and peak experience — peak panic, peak urgency, peak excitement, peak emotion, peak religious experiencing, peak seizure.

Cybernetic vulnerability to instability and fatal loss of control is resolved by sacrifice of depending on Possibilism, by repudiating depending on free will personal power according to the Possibilism model of time and control.

The mind becomes restabilized as soon as the mind shifts reliance per the Eternalism model of time and control, shifting dependency and reliance onto the uncontrollable block universe, putting trust in the hidden uncontrollable controller that has a most-intimate relationship with oneself as controller.

Prayer is a kind of communication, in god-mode consciousness, between the hidden, higher, beyond-control controller, where the person is forced — by control instability and the threat of control-chaos — to not rely on the system which is seizing (freewill Possibilism-premised personal control power).

Build the house (personal control power) on rock instead of sand — a stable cybernetic foundation, a new leg/foot/basis/foundation for personal control power, now derived from the hidden uncontrollable source or creator of the personal rail of control-thoughts distributed through time into the future.

That is the mythological theory of mind and control restabilization, sacrifice of Possibilism-reliance, and prayer for rescue or for a stabilizing declaration of a change of reliance, that was destined.

The hidden, uncontrollable controller of the rail of control-thoughts is the puppetmaster causing all of the following:

o The revealing/perceiving of block-universe noncontrol

o The testing of control

o The demonstration of chaos/instability potential

o The sacrifice of the Possibilism premise

o The adopting of the Eternalism premise

o The prayer to set in conscious 2-way relationship, the personal control agent and the hidden source of control-thoughts.

Prayer is initiated by the hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts, prayer is a communication from God to mystic, where the mystic is made to be aware of dependence on the hidden controller and acknowledge that dependence.

That acknowledgement communicates from mystic to God, from the personal control agent (in the trembling peak state) to the hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.


Mythology’s theory of cybernetics — mythology as 2-state cognitive science with restabilization upon sacrifice and prayer — this model of cognition is not *proved* by mythology, but certainly explains what the cognitive theory expressed by myth is.

Religious mythology as block-universe noncontrol is a good, informed point of reference: “Control is unstable until the mind is made to jettison the Possibilism premise and be consciously dependent on the uncontrollable source of control thoughts in the block universe with preexisting future rail of control-thoughts.”

Jonah’s sea-storm, or Jesus’ disciples’ sea-storm, subsides when the prophet renounces personal control origination per Possibilism-thinking, made to sacrifice Possibilism and made to assert Eternalism instead, per encountering the threatening snake-monster worldline helplessly frozen in the block universe, renouncing the king steering in a tree, when the king is perceived as helplessly fastened to the branching possibility tree.

Is this really how the mind works, per ultimate Loose Cognitive Science? That is not scientifically proved, but this really is the theory of 2-state cybernetics according to religious mythology, the theory which is ultimately conveyed by myth.

Cognitive dynamics in the mystic state in the late-Modern era generally confirms these dynamics reported in religious mythology.

The mind, as long as it adheres to the Possibilism model of time and control, is bedeviled by cybernetic instability leading inevitably to tightening of the noose, leading to control-death and failure and panic, untenable loss-of-control in a forced demonstration — opted into by god-mode thinking in the mystic state.

The mind is forced to demonstrate *untenable* loss-of-control, as long as Possibilism is treated seriously as the foundation which personal control power trusts and relies on.

According to myth and contemporary experiencing; according to myth’s theory which I have extracted and identified, and as contemporary experience suggests as reported in Rock lyrics and other reports:


As long as thinking continues to rely on Possibilism, the higher mind continues to put control on trial, continues to put personal control power to the test, and continues to reveal that personal control is subject to disastrous, untenable loss of control.

When the mind is made to convert from Possibilism to Eternalism, the storm (increasingly heading for doom and cybernetic death and disaster) subsides, and control returns immediately to stability.

Rely more on Possibilism, experience more vulnerability to loss of control;
rely more on Eternalism, immediately experience control stability.

— Michael Hoffman
October 24, 2018

Summary statements of Egodeath theory


🌳🐍 the two experiential models of control and time

In the ordinary, tight cognitive state, Possibilism is experienced as the mental model of time and control.

In the altered, loose cognitive state, the Eternalism model is experienced, with block-universe noncontrol.


Mental self-control seizure, instability, initially results, as long as the Possibilism model is adhered to within the loosecog state.

Eventually, the non-viability of the Possibilism model while in the loosecog state, leads to shifting the foundation of reliance for power from personal origination to the uncontrollable block universe.

Cybernetic testing and observation, probing the vulnerability and dynamics of mental control in the mystic, loose cognitive state, is described in mythic analogy as {trial}, {fire} or {scourging}, which gradually drives and leads to this change of control-foundation reliance.


Everyone begins life demon-possessed, until eucharistic initiation which eventually casts out the bedeviling demon that makes personal control unstable.

Higher religion describes the experience of being a helpless receiver of control thoughts, puppet of the uncontrollable source of thoughts, subject to the pre-created block-universe worldline.

High classic tragedy and sacrifice is the revealing and experiencing of the block-universe worldline model of time and control, after the sacred meal.

Atheistic materialistic no-free-will is like mystic noncontrol and predestination, or pre-existence of thoughts. + experiencing that.

fear of loss of control of thoughts, in the Holy Spirit – highest terror and glory

God takes over control of the mind after ingesting the Eucharist; the personal control agent is forced into putting reliance on Creator rather than on the creature’s power of controlling thought.


r.o. wrote “Religion is an esoteric representation of humanity and civilization. Don’t look at it so basically.”


Greek myth isn’t morality tales, it is description of the sacred meal bringing an intense experience of frozen block-universe non-control rather than branching tree possibilities – moral agency shift.

Atheism taken far enough, consistently, leads to religious revelation about veiled no-free-will, and moral agency transformation.

Hyper-Calvinism: everything is the Creator’s fault.

alchemical experience of death and rebirth: transformed from the original branching-tree model of time and control, through ingesting sacred food, to the experience of block-universe worldline

Science solved the Mystery Religion mystery: The sacred food induces experiencing block-universe no-free-will (worldline = snake) rather than the usual branching-tree model of time and control.

What is sacrificed is reliance on freewill-premised control, upon experiencing the frozen block universe with snake-shaped worldline of personal control, after ingesting divine food.

High science = high religion: the sacred meal switches the experience and model of time and control, from possibility branching to pre-existing path of no-free-will, described by mythology.

What is occult and veiled is the block universe with unchangeable, pre-existing, snake-shaped worldline of personal control – revealed by the sacred meal, bringing loose cognitive binding.


Hermeneutic key unlocking all the mysteries: numinous flesh of Christ 🍄 revealing block universe worldline monster demanding sacrifice🐉, not a king steering with freewill power in a branching tree.

numinous flesh of Christ 🍄 revealing block universe worldline monster demanding sacrifice🐉


The mind is able to experience Minkowski’s iron cube universe, including pre-setness and noncontrol, creating religion.

The eternal value: transcending the premise of egoic control agency wielding the power of steering among possibility branches, through experiencing and perceiving the frozen block universe worldline.

Ancient Greek mystery religions are now completely figured out and explained, by late-modern science.


Must sacrifice the freewill premise. What is sacrificed to please the god is the freewill premise, the branching-tree model of time and control.

Must affirm instead, to restore stable personal control, no-free-will — the snake model of time and control.

During mental turmoil and testing control instability, god-mode thinking demands repudiation and disavowal of freewill thinking.

The free will premise is the original sin, which all people are born into.

The purifying fires burn away, and prove-away through demonstration, freewill thinking.

When put to the test, freewill model of time and control is a trap, a tightening noose.

The more that freewill-premised control power is tested, the more control goes unstable.


dead king hung in a tree causing sacrifice, prayer to the hidden uncontrollable controller of the personal control worldline, and new life born from the rock

reclining at table with rounds of mixed wine brought by the gods

The foundation of religions: block universe worldline revealed in the loose cognitive state, producing the second innate model of time and personal control power.

A theory of religion must be based on experiencing and visionary plants, experiencing and perceiving the block-universe worldline snake explains intense religious experiencing and gives a perspective on moral conduct of life as lower interpretation of religion.


God is the truth about personal control agency; God is the hidden uncontrollable source of control-thoughts.

The new revelation is the oldest: tree vs. snake = “freewill branching” vs. “block universe worldline” model of time and personal control power.


Real ecstasy is the sacrament revealing the block universe worldline snake and noncontrol.

Religion without the intense altered state is half-developed at best.

Elaine Pagels contrasted “Orthodox vs. Gnostics”, Freke & Gandy used the terms “Exoteric vs. Esoteric”. Freke wrote about entheogens, ahistoricity of Jesus, and no-free-will.

Mithras is born from the cyberspacetime rock block universe worldline.


ancient wisdom 😈👹🐏🐍🐲🐉🌳🍄🍾🍷⛵

🐄🍄🌳✝🐍

🐄💩🍄✝

⛄🎅🎄🎁✝🚼🍄🦌

🎅🎄 Happy Yule! 🍄🦌

🐍🐲🐉🌳

🎄🎁✝🚼🍄🦌

— Michael Hoffman
December 30, 2018

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

He saw something terrifying and died: he saw a snake monster controlling his thoughts.

garden gate guarded by the angel of death, fruit in the garden guarded by the snake monster unveiled, the unworthy cast themselves out running away in terror back through the gate


seeing something transcendent that kills the seer

the classic mytheme of {seeing something transcendent that kills the seer}

myths about seeing or hearing something captivating, a fatal perception, beautifully attractive and deathly horrific

Perceiving the normally veiled block-universe worldline snake monster causes death, sacrifice, and rebirth; gives transformed model of time and control.


classic peak experiential insight leading to prayer and sacrifice of child-thinking, the mind eventually washed as white garments, a helpless superpuppet conscious of ever-dependence on the Creator

a different innate mode, a different experiential model of time and control, as a puppet frozen in rock rather than a king steering in a tree

Loose cognitive association binding reveals the experience of block-universe noncontrol and one’s pre-given worldline of control-thoughts forced upon the mind by the hidden uncontrollable controller.


We are normally unaware that our thoughts depend on the Creator.

Putting trust in God means becoming aware that our control-thoughts have always secretly come from God; we were always dependent on God.

The hidden uncontrollable controller created and continues to run all of Creation.

Hyper-Calvinism: everything is the Creator’s fault.


Not pointed out enough: the entire descendants of Abraham are through Isaac, and Abraham is willing to obey God’s order to eliminate Isaac therefore eliminate all his promised descendants.

Abraham’s pseudo-sacrifice of Isaac is myth about sustainability of a nation.

If a people is to sustain, they must sacrifice the ram, not the child, not damaging personal control agency, but understanding cybernetic transcendence, no-free-will, the block-universe worldline.


The visionary-state experience is ultimately of timeless pre-setness and noncontrol.

The visionary-state experience is initially of nondual unity oneness.

_____________________

Elements of Egodeath theory connecting to disparate religion positions:

Christian — Biblical myth, esoteric Christianity

Atheist — loosecog block universe experiencing discovery that religious experiencing is about source of control

Pagan — world religious mythology is decoded by the Egodeath theory

_____________________
Misc:

🍄 inspired Rock is the authentic mystery religion of the late-modern era

Reality breaks through into the matrix virtual reality.

spiritual dunamis (experience of power overpowered)

You burn in hell until purified and regenerated.

redeem Christianity

Pop Sike Cult is slightly steered off a cliff.

Metal poetry wrote about the most intense experience, then late-modern Science formalized the experiential discovery.

— Michael Hoffman
January 3, 2019

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

12pp/4K words

_________________________________
The call to pursue the Greatest Achievements; Exploration and Discovery

The scientific theory of transcendent knowledge is the intersection of religious mythology, music, mental-model transformation, Physics, experiencing no-free-will, & psychedelic loose cognition.

Brains that take us to the stars were inspired throughout history by the cognitive loosening effect of visionary plants.

Intellectual Leaders heed the call to transcendent achievement.

“We will cure diseases, we will go to the stars, there’ll be nothing that we cannot do”

The spirit of “going to the stars” means “explore the frontier of consciousness”.

The Western mind is driven to discovery in new fields, an ambition, duty, and expectation to make the most profound breakthroughs.

Greco/Roman culture sought not just to journey to the stars, but to journey beyond the sphere of fixed stars.

The Western mind has a heroic drive to find the greatest achievements, particularly to slay the dragon, which is the altered-state block universe worldline snake monster.


Science solved the Mystery Religion mystery: The sacred food induces experiencing block-universe no-free-will (worldline = snake) rather than the usual branching-tree model of time and control.

Exploring the frontiers, discovery in new fields, profound breakthroughs, journey beyond the sphere of fixed stars, greatest achievements, slay the dragon.

Peak exploration, “going to the stars”, includes consciousness exploration, and decoding religious mythology as description of consciousness exploration.

_________________________________
Egodeath Core Theory

Religious mythology is metaphor describing psychedelic loose cognition revealing noncontrol and the frozen, pre-set block-universe.

Religious mythology is description of psychedelic loosened cognition experientially revealing noncontrol and block-universe Eternalism.

Spirituality is the mind’s capability of entering the loose cognitive associative state, to experience the no-free-will, fixed-future model of control and time per Minkowski & Parmenides.


{perfection} is attainable, per New Testament. {perfection} is esoteric; it means developing the mental model of personal control power and time, in the altered state. removing naive freewill-premised thinking.

{perfection} means {completion} of the series of mystic-state experiences, to still have freewill-premised thinking but add hidden no-free-will thinking. cleansing mental error about control-power and time.


Religious mythology is description of psychoactive plants giving experience of one’s worldline frozen into the block universe (Minkowski), leading to revised mental model of control and time.

The mytheme {sacrificing your son} is metaphor describing repudiating the naive childish freewill-premised way of thinking about control and time.

Jung and Campbell substitute the dream state of consciousness for what’s really the visionary plant state of consciousness giving intense, mind-changing mystic experience.


In the intense mystic altered state, is experienced the frozen block-universe model of control and time, perceiving one’s future path as snake-shaped, transforming the mental model of personal control agency.

Time, in one’s life, is a snake-shaped worldline frozen into the block universe.


There are two states of human experience: the ordinary state for daily mundane life, and the intense mystic altered state, a crazy trip casting out the demon of freewill-premised thinking.


“God exists” means we are not in control of our future thoughts and actions, but are puppets of something outside our control.

The word ‘God’ refers to that which secretly forces our control-thoughts upon us.

‘God’ is that which is secretly in control of our thoughts and actions, as revealed by the sacred meal.


‘multiverse’ assumes there are multiple really possible futures. The block-universe Eternalism of Parmenides and Minkowski is premised on a single ever-existing future we’re powerless to change.

Replace exoteric-only Christianity by authentic, 2-layer, New Testament Christianity: exoteric literalism + esoteric metaphorical description of altered-state experiential revelation of control & time.

Christianity is true and correct, when understood as a 2-layer system: first exoteric literalist ordinary-state freewill moralism, and then additionally, esoteric, metaphorical, altered-state, no-free-will, revised thinking about moral agency culpability.

The mytheme {garden of Eden} is ironic: actually, the snake’s fruit reveals the secret of no-free-will; the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil loosens cognition actually *removes* the illusion of freewill.

Ordinary-state theories of mythology fail to address *experience* in the altered state, where religion comes from, contrasted with the ordinary state (literalist religion).

There are 2 experiential perspectives.

Exoteric literalist Christianity is only the lower half of Christianity, for not-yet-mature people.

In the mystic altered state, is the no-free-will experience of being a helpless puppet controlled by a hidden uncontrollable controller.

The {virgin birth} is an altered-state METAPHOR, a mytheme.

Choice is not the same as free will. We make choices, that doesn’t mean freewill is real. Our choices are frozen in the future, we discover what we are destined/forced to choose.

Consider ancient Greek society with Mystery Religion: children & animals = freewill-premised thinkers; initiated adults sacrifice & repudiate their previous freewill-premised thinking about control & time.

Free will is for children who haven’t been initiated in the series of sacred meals, to produce transformed thinking.

Saturn eats his children, at the sphere of the fixed stars.

Is there a *single* future, or, a branching plurality of futures or truly potential futures? The block universe model of time and control has a single ever-existing future.

The ego is the experience of personal control power moving through time, during daily life in the ordinary state of consciousness.

The completed perfected monk does not “lack” ego; the monk has added an *additional* alternative perspective, where the ego is recognized to be an illusion of experiential perspective.

There’s the childish sinful error of freewill-premised thinking — until the Eucharistic fire purifies the mental model of control and time.

Salvation is preordained, per Calvinism. Against Calvinism, heaven and hell are metaphors, describing intense mystic-state experiencing during revising the mental model of control and time. Those destined to have their mental model revised are {the elect}.

“Those whom the gods wish to regenerate, they first make mad; ecstatic, frenzied.

Hell is a myth, a metaphorical description of intense mystic-state experiencing.


Contrast the nonbranching shape of the snake, vs. the shape of the branching tree.

The shape of the branching tree (personal control premised on freewill) is contrasted with the shape of the snake (personal control premised on no-free-will).

The {snake} or {dragon-monster} is the mystic-state experience of the frozen pre-existing worldline of your future control-thoughts, in the block universe per Minkowski & Parmenides.

The {snake} or {dragon-monster} is the most important mytheme, in world religious mythology.

The {snake} or {dragon-monster} describes one’s pre-given worldline frozen into the block universe per Minkowski, experienced in the intense mystic altered state.

The {snake} or {dragon-monster} is one’s frozen, pre-given worldline frozen into the block universe per Minkowski, perceived and experienced in the mystic altered state.

The mytheme {snake} means worldline frozen into block universe reclining at god’s banquet with “mixed wine”.

The {snake} is the most common mytheme in world religious mythology because experiencing one’s frozen block universe *worldline* in the loose cognitive state changes the mental model of control & time.

🌳🐍 The mythemes {tree} and {snake} describe the two experiential models of control and time, based on the shape of the branching tree, and the shape of the linear, non-branching snake.


The Egodeath theory scientifically explains psychedelic loose cognition in religion.

Experiencing no-free-will by being brought to ingest the sacred meal repeatedly, leads to changing the mental model of control and time to the block universe model, retaining the initial, freewill model too.

Psychedelic loose cognition reliably give the experience of frozen block universe containing one’s snake-shaped worldline and non-control — our 2nd mental model of control and time.

When you perceive the frozen rock block universe, you die as a control agent; death is rock.

“Mixed wine” in Western Antiquity was mushroom wine, as in the Eucharist and Mystery Religions; the timeless inspiration for high Western culture.

Mushrooms put the mind into a different experiential mode, showing the alternative, block-universe model of control and time.

Religious mythology (mainly Western, also World) is description of altered-state block-universe worldline experience.

The Egodeath theory is a positive theory of how the mind works, and how myth is description of how the mind works.

Myth describes cognitive phenomenology of the intense altered state of loose cognitive association.

Forming transcendent knowledge requires combining the intense visionary state with timeless no-free-will ideas — these multiple pieces have to be put together, not just presented each in isolation.

Theory of religion is altered-state based above all.

Religious mythology is description of psychedelic loose cognition revealing *experience* — experience of block universe worldline presetness and noncontrol, contrasted with the other, initial model of control and time (branching possibilities with power of steering).


The mytheme-combinations {a king steering in a tree} and {a snake frozen in rock} are the most direct analogies describing the ordinary-state mental model of self, control, and time (Possibilism) and the altered-state model (Eternalism).

What’s objectively real is metaphorically described by religious mythology. Religious myth is description of the revealed real.

“Literalist Ordinary-state Freewill” thinking (exoteric) vs. higher, “Metaphorical Altered-state No-free-will/Noncontrol” thinking (the esoteric layer of religion).

Ptolemaic astral ascent mysticism was the frame of reference throughout antiquity and the early Modern era, for mystic experiencing and series of initiations.

The theory of religious mythology and experiential transformation.

The unenlightened imagine enlightenment, and are disappointed by what enlightenment is.

There are two distinct systems of morality – exoterics’ conception of personal moral agency culpability, vs. esoterics’ conception in which the Creator is ultimately responsible, as puppetmaster, for all control-thoughts and personal actions.

In antiquity, children are temporarily misled, but upon initiation, the higher meaning of mythemes was revealed. conceal but then reveal. Not just conceal/mislead.

Both atheism and fundamentalism are based in the ordinary state of consciousness; gnosticism and mysticism are based in the altered state – New Testament alludes to double-meanings.

Bible verses about two meanings, secret meaning, understood only by the elect:

Mark 4:12

1 Corinthians‬ ‭2:7‬ ‭ESV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” ‭‭


The word ‘death’ has two meanings: literal bodily death, vs. mystic-state ego death.

In religious mythology, any talk of ‘death’ must cover mystic ego death too, or else the result is literalist reductionism, which fails to account for intense religious experiencing.


The goal in Buddhist religious mythology is to *avoid* and stop reincarnating back into the earthly body again; stop returning to the Possibilism mental model of self, control, and time.

Buddhist escape from reincarnation is equivalent to the equivalent Christian heaven/hell. The goal is to *avoid* reincarnation.

Reincarnation was considered undesirable, not good.


Unless you experience spiritual crucifixion first-hand, you doubt it.

Doubting Thomas had to experience the wound in the side (an altered-state mytheme).

Direct intense mystic experiencing characterized Mystery Religion throughout antiquity, including esoteric Christianity and Gnosticism.


Mythemes, mythological entities exist but not literally.

{heaven, hell, , demon possession, angels, regeneration, death and rebirth} are metaphorical descriptions of the classic series of mystic-state experiencing.


Christianity is metaphorical description of the Eucharist-induced altered state changing the experience and model of control and time.

Be able to withstand esoteric ideas:
o Jesus was a composite figure, including the mushroom.
o There’s no free will; the future already exists.
o Religion comes from visionary plants.

The mytheme {God} refers to the uncontrollable hidden controller/creator of personal control thoughts.

Religion is two-level: first exoteric, then esoteric; lower religion then higher religion.

Forgiveness of the elect occurs through experiencing no-free-will / noncontrol, in the altered state from the Eucharist “mixed wine”.

The future already exists and the path of control through time is frozen in stone.

🌳🐍🍄


Hypercalvinism: everything is the creator’s fault. God is the author of evil.

The devil is a helpless puppet of God the puppetmaster; God is culpable for the devil’s actions.


The veiled secret of no-free-will is revealed by the Eucharist, revealing through altered perception and experiencing, the veiled truth about personal control.

The lower, exoteric layer of religion is free-will premised; the higher, esoteric layer of religion is no-free-will premised. This is a kind of way around contradiction, a kind of compatibilism.

You are forced to choose the way the Creator made you choose, when the Creator created your worldline rail of control thoughts laid out frozen into the block universe.


Job was right and righteous: God is the author of evil. Job’s neighbors, unrighteous, with confused preconceptions about the Creator.

Esoteric religious experiencing, in the intense mystic altered state, experientially reveals a different model of control and time.

Every brand of religion or interpretation has a kernel of truth. What is the primary meaning, the main referent of religious mythology, regardless of the surface brand of religion.

Inferior theories of mythology don’t base mythology in the psychedelic loose cognitive state.

Bad theories of myth fail to account for or address the experiential altered-state dimension, so are reductionist, based in Ordinary State of Consciousness.

The incorrect theories of religious mythology are based in the mundane, day-to-day, ordinary state of consciousness; they lack intense mystic-state, religious experiencing.

Religion and mythology without psychedelic loose cognition is reductionist, exoteric-only.

Real religion has a lower, exoteric layer, and then additionally, a higher, esoteric layer.


To understand spirituality, understand psychedelic effects on cognition, experiencing frozen block-universe w/ snake-shaped worldline monster demanding sacrifice of the freewill premise, per myth.

Be a higher-level, esoteric-aware Christian, not an ignorant exoteric literalist Christian with a childish level of understanding.

Religion has always been informed by visionary plants. Abundant evidence has been gathered.


People don’t necessarily need first-hand ingesting of the sacred meal.

Fully recognize the cognitive loosening effects of the ‘mixed wine’: experiencing control and time differently and describing the experience by mythic analogy.

Ordinary-state based theories of mythology are flimsy and reductionists and irrelevant: for example, “the gods represent historical heroes”, or “myth refers to the sun and planets” is reductionist, only true in a minor, incidental sense.

The dream theory of myth is off-base, but is correct in placing mythology in a state of consciousness other than the ordinary waking state.

Mythic symbols describe psychedelically loosened cognition associations, to give the perception of and experienc of block universe noncontrol and pre-setness.

Psychedelic loose cognition is the common source of mystic experience throughout history.

Higher, esoteric religionists are allied with lower, exoteric, literalist, ordinary-state-based Christians, but it’s difficult to relate, as a kind of “gnostic”, higher-level, esoteric, metaphorical, mystic-state Christian.

In antiquity, the stars were thought to be closer, but we could travel beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, through the “hierarchical heavens”, in the ancient altered state-based Ptolemaic astral ascent mysticism.


Popular Psychedelic Culture is half-truth at best; a dead end, pseudo-transcendence.

Pop Sike is mainly late 1960s singles made by small labels.

Popular Psychedelic culture is broader, 20th Century, social engineering.

Psychedelics conferences promote Pop Sike Cult and are a degenerate dead end, not leading to transcendent knowledge or mental model transformation from the Possibilism to the Eternalism model of self, control, and time.

Reject & disavow Pop Sike Cult – popular psychedelic culture.


Loss of the experience of being in control leads to revdising the mental model of control and time, per intense religious experiencing myth describes: hell, flames, trial, regeneration.

I don’t advocate first-hand use of psychoactives. People should understand what occurs in the mind immersed in psychedelic loose cognitive association.

Psychedelic loose cognition isn’t inherently degenerate; it can lead to higher mental structuring and multi-state durability, to endure the experience of no-free-will.

Psychedelic loose cognition was foundational for Greek, Roman, and Christian history.

Psychedelic loose cognition can be used to weaken or strengthen culture.


Eating the body of Jesus and drinking the blood of Jesus, or of Dionysus, makes sense if the composite Jesus figure included mushrooms.

Various miracles and riddles in the New Testament make sense if descriptions of expeirencing no-free-will and discovering the veiled situation of profound dependence on the Creator.


Jesus didn’t exist as a single historical individual; Jesus is a composite figure, who existed figuratively/mythically in experience.

Ingesting Jesus is ingesting the sacred meal, mixed wine, the Eucharist.

The series of sacred meal immersions in loose cognitive association transforms the mental model of self, control, and time.


Psychedelic loose cognition, to experience the block universe worldline, is the backbone of high civilization throughout history, including manna in the Old Testament, the sacred meal throughout Hellenistic Mystery Religion, and the Eucharist in New Testament Christianity.

Christian morality does not mean prohibition of mind-revealing plants, except during the initial, childish phase of religious participation.

Psychoactive mushrooms are the most representative fountain of inspiration of Western religion, including Ancient Near Eastern religion, ancient Greek religion, Hellenistic religion, Roman religion, Jewish religion, New Testament Christianity, and Northern paganism.


The psychoactive “sacred meal” was the foundation and inspiration of Mystery Religion, the means by which the mental model was profoundly transformed.

Psychedelic loose cognition isn’t demonic, but casts out the demon that possesses the mind and causes turmoil in the loose cognitive state.

‘drugs’ != dark. depends. heaven & hell & transformation.

Parenting in Greece integrated Mystery Religion initiation, transforming the child into the adult, properly integrating psychedelics into the maturation process in a society with strong families.


The Egodeath theory supports direct, scientifically explained religious revelation and transformation, free of any arbitrary brand stylization.

The scientific Egodeath theory is compatible with a parallel particular brand of religious mythology as a particular description and expression, forming a twofold combination of a pure higher-power spirituality distinct from but parallel with (for example) restorationist New Testament Christianity.

The Egodeath scientific model and the particular brand of religion are mutually supporting, especially with a 2-level version of Christianity (exoteric then additionally esoteric).

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Christian history

The King Jesus figure is altered-state metaphor, with modified Roman Imperial ruler cult metaphor.

Independent primitive churches were later taken over by ruling-class Mithraic “fathers”, leading to top-down Catholicism.

The Jesus figure is a synthetic composite.


Edwin Johnson in England around 1895 claimed that none of the caesars ever heard of Jesus or Christianity; that’s how late and retrojected Christian pseudo-history is.

Jesus is a synthetic composite figure per esotericism, but can support exoteric Christians.

Atheists are literalists, like fundamentalists (lower, exoteric Christians).

Ignorant Catholics deny that the “universal church” strategically embraced and co-opted paganism.

Jesus is a mythic composite figure. Jesus didn’t literally live, nor die.

Be an esoteric, not literalist, religionist/Christian.

Christianity is true, when correctly recognized as a 2-layer religion; 2-level Christianity, supported by gospel verses.

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New Testament Christianity Co-opted the Old Testament

The Old Testament is attached to the New Testament because old was considered true.

The new, Christian movement needed a pseudo-historical lineage, so co-opted the Old Testament.

Christianity is only incidentally Jewish; Christianity is counter-Jewish in ways.

New Testament Christianity is Jewish themed but is not of Jewish origin.

Christianity countered and co-opted the Old Testament.

Primitive Christians stole and commandeered and co-opted the Old Testament to serve as a fake venerable long (pseudo) history for their actually brand new religion.

People thought old = true/wisdom.

Christianity stole the Old Testament, to pretend not to be a new religion.

Old was considered true, so Christians needed a claim to antiquity, and successfully commandeered the Old Testament.

The original disciples of Jesus (“the Christians”) commandeered the Jews’ scriptures, to deny the truth, that Christianity was a new religion.

Antiquity held “old = true”, so Christianity had to pretend to be an old religion, so strategically stole, commandeered, and co-opted the Old Testament.

New Testament Christianity didn’t value the Old Testament in itself, but valued it because the Old Testament provided a (fake, pseudo) validation that their “new” religion was archaic thus true.

Wouter Hanegraaff is a scientific historian, who differentiates pseudo-history, fake lineage, fake claims to historical antiquity.

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Reclaiming Transcendent / Ecstatic Dionysus

Psychedelic loose cognition needs to be incorporated into civilization in the way that strengthens and supports people.

Take back and reclaim Dionysus, ecstatic religion, music, festivals, technology, electric music, colored lights, and light shows.

The best psychedelics-inspired art clearly expresses transformation of the mental model, through perception and experiencing, the mind immersed in a series of sacred meal intense altered state sessions.

Art and music inspired by psychedelic loose cognition is the authentic mystery religion of the late-modern era.

🎸🎹

Psychedelics can possibly weaken culture, but we cannot simply negatively value Dionysus.

High culture specifically needs to co-opt electric music, Dionysus, and visionary plants knowledge.

Lyrics convey the altered state, describing the classic phenomenology of the loose cognitive experience.

Good psychedelic inspired music has intelligent descriptions of the altered-state phenomenology.

Strong Western culture, and cultural roots, requires integrating Dionysus — not just mundane ordinary-state-based daily family life.

Greeks had family and sacred meal mystery religion.

Lyrics that are inspired by psychedelic loose cognition are authentic.

Uninspired music has no no sacred meal, no Bacchus; it is mundane, based only in the ordinary state.

Uninspired means not inspired by psychedelic loose cognition; there’s nothing of Dionysus in it

You can’t extract the transcendent truth out of Pop Sike Cult, because Pop Sike Cult fails to include transcendent truth: esoteric, altered-state based, capturing and explaining the frozen block universe worldline experience.

The mysteries of the universe are the revealed mysteries of the source of personal control across time, expressed in psychedelic music.


Psychedelic loose cognitive music and art is the authentic mystery religion of the late-modern era.

Transcendent music describes experiencing loose cognitive, nonbranching, block-universe worldline Eternalism.

Commandeer the fruits of unbound, loosened culture, and reevaluate valuation of them, the products of Dionysus.

Psychedelic loose cognition is not all bad or all good, not inherently debasing or degenerate.

It depends on use, as the Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians put the sacred meal to use in strengthening people to endure a direct experience of profound dependence on the Creator.

Reaching the transcendent potentials of the mind requires music, Dionysus, entertainment, culture, light shows, integrated healthily into culture, bringing Dionysus Mystery Religion to the family and society, like in Greek antiquity.

Everyone is born in a state of Original Degeneracy, unable to withstand an encounter with God-consciousness.

Some minds — the Elect — are destined to turn, see the truth, revise their mental model, and their sin be forgiven, their mental error about personal moral control agency corrected.


There needs to be a vent for decadence and playful exploration.

We must reevaluate all cultural values.

Don’t allow the products of decadence to be controlled and owned by the decadent.


Culture must have space for Dionysus and transgression, or else people go looking for authenticity outside the culture.

Psychedelics-inspired music connects with Mystery Religion cultural roots.

Authentic psychedelics-inspired lyrics.

Music inspired by psychedelic loose cognition is the authentic mystery religion of the late-modern era.

The best altered-state inspired lyrics are classic, hearkening back to Greek myth, conveying timeless peak profundity.

The Egodeath theory redeems and transforms Pop Sike Cult.


Moralist Christianity considers all of popular culture to be Satan’s realm, disavowing it all, including Christian music. Popular culture is all “the world”, and we should “reject the world”.


Culture must have space for Dionysus and transgression, or else will project authenticity outside the culture, and look for transcendence and authenticity outside the culture.

Dionysus has a big place in Western culture.

Embrace in a healthy strong family culture: electric music, movies that describe experiencing block-universe eternalism, and light shows.

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

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

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

The Egodeath theory is the “analogy/ psychedelics/ block-universe/ noncontrol” theory of religious experiencing, religious mythology, and mental model transformation.

o analogy/metaphor/description
… describes
o psychedelics/entheogens/sacred meal/Eucharist
… revealing experience and perception of
o block universe/ snake-shaped worldline/ timelessness/ frozen time/ preexisting future thoughts
… and
o no-free-will, non-control, puppethood, control-thoughts forced upon you, loss of sense of wielding personal control power

The Egodeath theory provides direct, plain, straight-talking summary statements providing uncensored, non-euphemistic summaries of the analogy/ psychedelics/ block-universe worldlines/ noncontrol” theory of religious mental model transformation.


In the ordinary state of consciousness, the mind experiences time and control as a king-like autonomous control agent that wields personal control while steering through branching possibilities.

In the psychedelic sacred meal state of consciousness, with loose cognitive association enabling mental restructuring, the mind experiences time and control as a snake-shaped, pre-given path of control-thoughts frozen in time, frozen in a space-time block universe; experiencing timeless non-control, no-free-will, and monopossibility.


The Eleusinian mysteries are explained the same as all Hellenistic mystery religions.

The kykeon is the same as the Eucharist and the sacred meal.

In mystery religion, religious mythology describes repeatedly ingesting the sacred meal, giving the mystic-state experience of timeless no-free-will, eventually directing the mind to create and add an alternate mental model of time and personal control.

A coherent version of Compatibilism:

In the ordinary state of consciousness, we experience freewill-based control power, the ability to steer among branching possibilities, into an open, non-existing future.

In the altered state from the sacred meal, we experience no-free-will.

The mind has the potential to experience both freewill and no-free-will.

The ultimate experience is the mystic-state experiential revelation of no-free-will and helpless dependence on pre-existing control thoughts.
_________________

In the mystic altered state from the sacred meal, the mental model and experiential mode is transformed to reveal the veiled nature of frozen time and pre-set control.

The Egodeath theory clearly, openly reveals the veiled Mysteries for the world.

Mythology describes the sacred meal revealing veiled no-free-will, a different mental model that is innate in the mind.

The ultimate truth stems from timeless natural order.
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The ‘church’ means the collection of individuals who are destined for salvation/ redemption/ awakening to higher reality.

Christianity is one description of esoteric truth, about how the mind works in the mystic state after the sacred meal, combined with a certain social-political & mundane moral-conduct system.
_________________

The mind has interesting potential in multiple states of consciousness including from the Eucharist that transforms thinking about personal control power and time.

A mind can lack or have firsthand experience of the intense altered state.

A mind can lack or have the understanding of what is revealed in the mystic altered state; understanding the two experiential mental models of possibility branching, time, and control, and the dynamics of switching to the later, second innate mode of experiencing and the second mental model of time and control.

The strongest understanding combines firsthand experience with full conceptual understanding as in the Egodeath theory.

There can be largely full understanding with 2nd-hand understanding of first-hand experiencing.
_________________

Dionysus is a major elevated component of high civilization.

Esoteric mysticism is simple to rationally explain as metaphor or analogy describing the psychedelic sacred meal-induced experience of frozen-time noncontrol, no-free-will, and monopossibility.

The future already exists set in stone.

In the mystic state experience, the mind is conscious of being helplessly dependent on the external creator of control thoughts.

A person’s future control-thoughts laid out in spacetime like a snake frozen in rock.

Mind metaprogramming is psychedelic self-help, in which you run into the limit of control and autonomous self-creation – the classic revelation of the snake frozen in rock, with personal control experienced as being profoundly dependent on the god-level.

The worldline snake of personal control thoughts, that is frozen without autonomous control in the Minkowski block universe, is the ultimate heroic resulting vision when you reprogram thinking.
_________________

The ‘church’ is the set of people who at least understand, and possibly also experience, psychedelic block-universe no-free-will — the complete set of people across time and place.

The mind relates directly to God in terms of control, the ultimate source of personal control.

The veiled source of control-thoughts is revealed in the Eucharist-induced numinous ecstatic state.
_________________

The Eucharistic sacred meal was mushrooms, the flesh of Christ, bringing the experience and vision of no-free-will and utter dependence on pre-set thoughts.

Against lower, exoteric Christianity, Jesus is a figure and a mushroom sent to us by God in the likeness of human flesh, revealing no-free-will & non-control, perceiving control-thoughts as pre-set, given to us from a hidden uncontrollable source.

Jesus is the sacred meal sent to us by God in the likeness of human flesh, that sacrifices the initial mental model of time, self, and control.
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Religions borrow; they are equivalent, they each have a lower, exoteric, literalist level and a higher, esoteric level, and some content on the mundane, daily social-political level.
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No-free-will experiencing is partly bad, or a sacrifice, insofar as it entails the death of the usual experiential identity, as the price of gaining a revised mental model of time and control.

The sacred meal brings the power of the Holy Spirit, including the loss of the normal experience of control.
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Cultural Christians adopt exotic alien foreign religion of Buddhism. If you go running after other cultures’ religions, you fail to understand any culture’s religion; you fail to understand esoteric, higher-level religion.
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Miracles are rational and metaphorical, not literal.

Miracles are taken literally by those on the outside; miracles are recognized as metaphorical description of the Eucharistic altered state by those on the inside.

Religion in its lower form is irrational; religion in its higher form or mode or layer is metaphorical — metaphorical description of the non-ordinary state of experiencing, from the sacred meal.
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Sacred (vs. profane) music reflects sacrificing one’s childish, inexperienced premise of freewill thinking and possibility branching into a supposedly open future.

High art, high poetry, describes the higher level of experiencing, in the transformative altered state.

The debased, mundane, lower level of art and poetry reflects the mundane, daily life, ordinary state of consciousness.

Real poetry and art describes mystic revelation, not mundane ordinary-state experiencing in daily life.
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Exoteric literalists = the lower level of religion, of outsiders.

Esoteric insiders = the higher level of religion, of those on the inside.
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Salvation in the mystic state is a real phenomenon, but everything depends on definitions.
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At the time of a person’s mystic ego death, Hell is the futility, the state of being under condemnation, while trying to retain stable control based on unstable childish delusion.

There is literal hell or heaven for lower, exoteric thinking.

For lower, exoteric religion, the freewill agent is punished in hell or rewarded in heaven.

For higher, esoteric religion, hell is the corrective non-control, no-free-will mystic-state experience from the Eucharist sacred meal; heaven is the positive experiencing of dependence and unity.

The mystic altered state is the experience of block-universe no-free-will, with one’s stream of thoughts perceived as a snake-shaped worldline frozen in the spacetime rock, per Minkowski & Parmenides.
_________________

Christianity is a resource to be revised and corrected, to give a people life and durability.

Christianity isn’t something given as-is; own and control and forcefully define Christianity and set it aright.
_________________

The tree and the snake 🌳🐍 are the two fundamental contrasting models of control and time, based on the key idea of possibility branching or non-branching as the control-agent moves into the future while wielding the power of steering and thus creating the future, where the future was purportedly undefined and nonexistent.

Ingesting the sacred meal is not necessary, for a strong degree of mental model transformation.

Religious revelation about time & control can be explained simply and straightforwardly.

People who only experience the ordinary state *can* understand the analogy, how religious mythology describes by analogies the transformation of experiential mode and of the mental model of time and control.

The Egodeath theory explains how the normal mind normally, typically works when initially only exposed to the ordinary state of consciousness, and then repeatedly exposed to the altered state.

A few people can do non-drug-based meditation to experience the intense mystic state, but that is not the traditional, normal, reliable, repeatable, achievable way.

Anyone can intellectually understand the theory of mental model transformation without needing the altered state (regardless of whether the mystic altered state is accessed via psychedelics).

‘Knowing god’ means understanding that personal control doesn’t actually come from the person, but from the Creator.

The person helplessly receives their control thoughts from God, where ‘God’ refers to the hidden, uncontrollable source of control.

The snake is the #1 mytheme in world mythology, becasue experiencing the personal control worldline frozen into the block universe is the peak religious experience from the sacred meal.

The shape of the branching tree is the mind’s initial incorrect model of time and control. In contrast, the snake is the shape of the worldline of personal control-thoughts frozen in the block universe.

If you are among the elect, the snake describes fatedness to bring the Eucharist 🍄 to you repeatedly, the “fire” that eventually revises your mental model of time and control, by revealing and exposing and disproving the intial model of control, putting it to the test.
_________________

An esoteric Christian is counted among the elect, as a pre-determined member of “those on the inside”.

The sacred garden, and Heaven, have a ‘death’-gate; in the garden is the snake vs. tree contrast.

The snake brings the Elect the fruit that makes you die as a control agency model, but not die as a viable agent with a mind and body.

The snake vs. tree in the gated garden is metaphorical description of the altered-state experiential revelation of time and control.

The 4D block universe with personal noncontrol is experienced in the Holy Spirit mystic state after ingesting the Eucharistic sacred meal.

An initiate is a person whose mind has been mentally immersed in multiple sessions to revise mental model by loosened-mind experience.

Learning the Egodeath theory — the analogy/ psychedelic/ block-universe/ no-free-will model of religious mythology — only in the ordinary, tight-binding state of consciousness produces understanding, though such a person isn’t properly an “initiate”.
_________________

Spacetime containing personal control is a frozen spacetime block (Minkowski & Parmenides) containing the embedded personal worldline of control-thoughts.

An Old Testament passage speaks of the 4-dimensional block universe with length & width & breadth & depth.

Mature initiates can bear the revealed knowledge of 4D control-space-time.

Non-initiates die ego death upon {seeing the face of God} and {pronouncing the tetragrammaton}.

The initial control-agent model will necessarily die, become unstable and non-viable as a basis (foot/leg/foundation) for control, upon identifying, expeirencing, and perceiving the unveiled underlying reality of the 4D block universe and its pre-existing frozen worldline of personal control.
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A version of Christianity that ends personal viable life and control upon enlightenment or unveiling of the truth about time and control power, is not actual Christianity.

“Christianity” that ends viable personal control would contradict the promise to Abraham to have many offspring.
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Enlightenment or regeneration or salvation through experience of the Holy Spirit applies to any human mind.

Higher-level, *esoteric* Spaghetti Monster Pastafarianism is by definition true and profound: ingesting the noodle given by the noodel-monster-god means experiencing the snake-shaped worldline frozen in the block universe with noncontrol and pre-set future control-thoughts.

Mormonism started with Datura (scopalamine) esotericism.

All religions have lower exoteric and then higher esoteric layers; childish then adult/mature/transformed levels.

Esoteric higher religion, religious mythology, describes the intense mystic altered state, which causes mental model transformation.

‘The exotericists’ is a funny phrase/term, a lofty word for clueless literalists/outsiders/ spiritual infants.

Euhemerism is an exoteric, non-experiential approach to the interpretation of mythology, in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages.

Most interpretation of religion is based in the assumed ordinary state of consciousness; ordinary-state interpretation of religion fails to be based in mystic-state *experience*, so it is reductionist; lower layer of religion, only; held by “those on the outside”.
_________________

Gnostic thought in its higher level is based in the intense mystic altered-state experience that results from ingesting sacred food and drink, same as all higher-level, esoteric religion.

Newage, Buddhism, and Christianity have lower, exoteric and higher, esoteric levels.

In the Bible, there are two levels of understanding: that of children, that of mature adult initiates (those on the inside, the elect).

The esoteric layer of religion is the Faustian pursuit of transformation of the mental model of time and control.
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Whenever you say ‘death’ and ‘sin’, ‘death’ esoterically means the mystic-state ego-death experience of no-free-will, not literal bodily death.
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Magic, gnosticism, and occluded knowledge revealed only to some:

{Magic} is metaphor for mystic-state experience that causes mental model change.

Give us a {sign} means give a metaphorical description of mystic experiencing and revelation of mental model of time and control.

Jesus is a magician casting out demons, but not by complex actions: Jesus simply commands “leave” and they leave; he doesn’t command them to provide a lover, for example; Jesus only commands the demon to leave permanently and not return.

Jesus’ magic and signs and miracles are good. It’s not a matter of “bible vs. occult/magic/esotericism” or “Our Biblical esotericism is valid, their esotericism is invalid”.

Those on the inside recognize magic as metaphor, non-literal double-meaning that serves to describe the mind-transforming, sacred meal-induced mystic state of consciousness.

If you remove magic from religion, that’s literalist incomprehension.

{magic} = {signs} = metaphorical description of the dimension of non-ordinary experience resulting from the sacred meal given by the god.

If you Believe, as one of the elect, you will do the magic Jesus did, and more, says the Jesus figure.

Cryptography = magic = metaphors; non-literal; describing the nonordinary state of experiencing.

Esotericism, nonliteralism, and magic are metaphors describing experiencing in the mystic loose cognitive state.

_________________

Occluded knowledge revealed only to some:

Religious mythology is metaphorical description, not nonsense.

To declare religious mythology as “nonsense” is merely to demonstrate one’s lack of understanding, lack of recognition of how myth describes the experience of block-universe no-free-will and mental model transformation.

The New Testament includes occluded, hidden-then-revealed, veiled knowledge. Paul: At first, we see darkly, in an obscured way, as in a mirror made from polished metal.

Jesus in the New Testament advocates occult meaning, knowledge, symbolism: “A sign: I will be lifted up like Moses’ healing snake”, such as Mark 4:12.

The Gospel of John and of Mark: the New Testament says that there is insiders’ knowledge that is not revealed to “those who are on the outside”.

The Bible talks of selectively revealed knowledge that is held only by those on the inside, inside the gated garden containing the tree vs. snake and the sacred meal that is brought only to the elect, by the healing snake.

Lower, exoteric religionists are blinded to the passages which assert that truth is veiled and is only revealed to the Elect.
_________________

Schizophrenia is loose cognitive association, verbal salad, jumping all over, a puppet mystic consciousness breaking in, and hearing voices including command voices.

The illusory and provisional ‘self’ is a freewill-premised king-like agent steering in a branching possibility tree.

The real, lasting self is no-free-will premised snake-shaped worldline frozen in the spacetime rock block universe.

The potent, numinous, overpowering Holy Spirit is the highest, most awesome, and most deeply mind-changing experience a person can have.

post 10725 has more than a few corrections and clarifications, gathered ‘magic’ statements.

2 scopes of explanation & explanandum

The Foo theory of Bar
The two scopes of explanation & explanandum in the Egodeath theory

Quadrant diagram with

2 explanation scopes on the left,
2 explanandum scopes on the right:

lower half is my 1985-1988 Phase 1 theory, of mental model transformation;
upper half is my 2001-2013 theory of religious mythology.


Lower left:
The psychedelics/ block-universe/ no-free-will theory of…

Lower right:
Transcendent Knowledge and mental model transformation about time and control across the two states of consciousness

Upper left:
The *analogy*/ psychedelics/ block-universe/ no-free-will theory of…

Upper right:
Religious mythology


A clear cut aspect is that if I include analogy on the left, I also include religious mythology on the right. This gives 2 scopes of saying the Foo theory of Bar:

The psychedelics/ block-universe/ no-free-will theory of Transcendent Knowledge and mental model transformation about time and control across the two states of consciousness

The analogy/ psychedelics/ block-universe/ no-free-will theory of religious mythology

A nice 2-part breakout is:

1)The psychedelics/ block-universe/ no-free-will theory of Transcendent Knowledge and mental model transformation about time and control across the two states of consciousness, and 2) the analogy theory of religious mythology

The Egodeath theory is not only a theory explaining religious mythology; it is a theory discovering and explaining the transformation of the mental model of time and control.

In 1988, the Egodeath theory was a correction/replacement of the Wilber/JTP theory of what Transcendent Knowledge is about.

In 2001, I added a correction/replacement of Wilber’s theory of interpreting the snake in _Up from Eden_ — religious mythology.


The Egodeath theory is a theory of how these key components (A-H) relate:

analogy
psychedelics
block universe
no-free-will

religious mythology
Transcendent Knowledge
cross-time personal control
transformation of the mental model of control and time

In total, the Egodeath theory is the ABCD theory of EFGH.

Regarding Cog Sci, the Egodeath theory is the BCD theory of FGH (omitting A, analogy and E, religious experiencing).

The CogSci and religious mythology portions of the Theory are distinct and mutually reinforcing.

If the vote results are certified a week in the future, Denver joins the block universe, experiencing numinous tremendous awe in the no-free-will state of consciousness, revealing the ordinarily hidden situation of profound dependence on the hidden, uncontrollable source of control-thoughts, with the rail of future control-thoughts frozen inalterably in spacetime, only waiting to be discovered.


https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/topics/4254
There are changes
Lyin’ 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

Transcendent Knowledge Podcast, episode 12 – perennialism, psychedelia and ego death theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xve1Ic1x4-Q
Max Freakout with Kafei.

Topics:

Popular atheist thinking

atheist attitudes to psychedelic tripping

Terence Mckenna’s ideas

belief-based religion vs experience-based religion

the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia

her perennialist thinking and her gruesome death at the hands of Christians

modern Christian attitudes towards mystical and psychedelic experiences

the possibility of tripping without taking drugs

literal and non-literal interpretations of the crucifixion of Jesus

historicity and ahistoricity

interpretation of mystical writing

the writing of Vladimir Lossky

higher truth embedded in religious scripture

universality of mystical experience

the meaning of Christianity and being a christian

Posting about episode 12: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/10730

Commentary thread
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/egodeath/conversations/messages/9817

One of the stories in the bible library is that Jesus was still alive when removed from the cross, as evidenced by water and blood *flowing* from his side.  The Swoon Theory of the resurrection [story].

Around 12:00-17:00 

Around 40:00-46:00, and 54:00, Max does a good job of identifying inconsistencies in the half-mystic interpretation of the Jesus figure, where Mr. Historical Jesus was a regular man who had archetypal mystic experiences and should be specially revered for that.

{resurrection} analogy/metaphor/description/mytheme


{resurrection} analogy/metaphor/description/mytheme, as description of cognitive dynamics in the loose cognitive state


In the ordinary state of consciousness, which is tight cognitive association binding, experiencing and the mental model of control and time are in the form of an autonomous control agent, like a sovereign king, steering among branching possibilities while moving into the future, as an open future that depends on the steering power wielded by the kingly agent.


In the altered state of consciousness, which is loose cognitive association binding, the mental model and experiencing is in the form of a puppet with no-free-will, with a pre-existing, unchanging future, in a frozen block universe with snake-shaped worldline of control thoughts pre-given, frozen into the spacetime block, with monopossibility.

The future is experienced as closed and pre-existing.

Control-thoughts are experienced as arising from outside the personal control agent, from a hidden, uncontrollable source.

The mental model of time and control and possibility changes, in the loose cognitive state, changing from one particular mental worldmodel to another, additional model.


Death of the king on the cross or tree, and resurrection into a new, permanent form of life, describes this mental model transformation that results from a series of loose cognitive binding sessions.

Cybernetic death of the control agent, is experienced as death, because the personal agent is above all, a control agent, and when control is experientially transformed, in experiencing and in the mental worldmodel, this is experienced as death of the main principle or identity of the agent: death of control, of the previous form of control, of the previous experience and mental model of control.

Resurrection is analogy describing the experience of a new mental worldmodel and experience of personal control agency and control-power.

The new life, resurrection, rebirth, transformation, completion of initiation, describe the experience that follows upon the full death or cessation of the old, previous, childish, non-initiated worldmodel of time and control and possibility.


A-thanatos, non-dying, eternal life: After dying the full ego death, fully gaining the new mental worldmodel of time and control and possibility, the mind no long undergoes that struggle, that futility of trying to use the freewill basis of control-power, and that failure of control-stability that results from pushing that control-model to its limits.

The mind no longer dies that drastic ego death, that control seizure, but is put on a new, stable foundation, based on a rock, that can endure when immersed in the loose cognitive state.

The mind is no longer subject to altered-state cybernetic death experience.

The initial full cybernetic control seizure, bringing realization of no-free-will and profound dependency on the external control-source, is like a maiden being abducted in religious mythology.

Subsequent, post-enlightenment loose cognitive experiences occur, but are routinized, like a woman in the wedding chamber *after* marriage.

The guest mentions reading the website but not the blog/discussion group.

The website is for the unworthy.

The insiders are 2019-2007 = 12 years more advanced, in this latest discussion group.

No one reads or knows about the discussion group, because no one is worthy of the latest 12 years of theory development.


The website is easy to survey and navigate.

Like the general ‘weblog’ format, the discussion group is an awkward, pinhole UI — it’s hard to survey.

This pattern is like how books are lately written: first post blog posts, with little structure among the posts, then collate them into a printed book (in this case, the website).

When evaluating the TK podcasts, factor-in the value of my commentary in response, such as in the present thread.

Resurrection is passive.

The person after a series of loose cognitive sessions is sacrificed as the old agent-life and resurrected into the new agent-life.

Everything is discovered to be passive.

Personal initiative is revealed to be passive in origin.

The person doesn’t take kingly initiative to ingest the sacred meal; the god forcibly calls the devotee to the god’s banquet of the sacrament.

The person doesn’t resurrect themselves; the person is resurrected by the external controller, per the Sam Harris atheists’ doctrine (when finally applied consistently) of no-free-will, into new life.

The external, trans-personal controller, the external control source per no-free-will, is the initiator of initiation, and the initiator of resurrection into transformed agency-life with a new mental worldmodel of time and control.

Atheists brag about logical adherence to no-free-will, rationalism, and psychedelics, as against religion (assumed to be exoteric literalist religion).

Atheists eventually realize that consistent no-free-will is profoundly radical noncontrol and profound dependency on the external world that sets personal control-thoughts fixed in time, and that religious mythology is intended to be interpreted as description of the realization of no-free-will, noncontrol, and profound dependency on an unknown puppetmaster in a position of power over one’s control-thoughts.

People debating “whether God exists” fail to appropriately define ‘God’.

‘God’ is the hidden uncontrollable control-source that is the source of personal control thoughts, upon which the person is profoundly dependent.

The mind in the loose cognitive state is brought to realize and perceive its utter helpless, female-like dependency on the superior control level, the hidden uncontrollable source of personal control thoughts, a threat revealed like a dragon hiding in a well spring in a cave, demanding sacrifice of one’s child self, sacrifice and repudiation of the premise of being able to use power that rests on a foundation of personal control agency as originator of control thoughts.

Belief in God means having conscious, ideally first-hand, understanding of the profound dependency of personal control power on an uncontrollable external source: the Creator, the Ground of Being, the Tao.

The mind is brought to put trust in that source, as the archetypal ‘woman’ is abducted and married by the God, as the Church is lifted up and married by Christ to himself.

Christ the Architect of 4-D cyberspacetime brings the devotee to sacrifice their childish freewill-based thinking; this is the sacrifice of the son of God, the sacrifice of the ram and lamb and lower self.

Sacrifice the lower self so that the higher self can be born; the lower self is sacrificed for the salvation and resurrection of the higher self.

The mytheme of {resurrection} in Christianity is equivalent to {cessation of rebirth} in Buddhism.

24:00 

The guest is like the unstable halfway point:

o The unstable half-transformed mental model of control,

o The unstable and inconsistent advocate of no-free-will and separately of psychedelics;

o The unstable fence-sitting *moderate* entheogen theory of religion (the half-consistent position of Ruck & McKenna and most all Pop Sike authors who Jan Irvin flipped against)

o The book Zig Zag Zen, from Tricycle Buddhist special issue on Psychedelics

Half-baked, contradiction-filled, less rational and sensible than posed, because missing adequate consideration of loosecog experiencing. An exception is Benny Shanon, who combines (inadequately) mythology and phenomenology.

Benny Shanon attempts to account for and inventory the various mythology and phenomenology of ayahuasca based on large quanitity of reports and experiences.

Shanon’s research is valuable because it is a building block for a bona fide Theory:

the “analogy/ psychedelics/ block universe/ no-free-will worldline” theory of religious mythology and how the mind transforms: loosecog, experiencing of control and time, perception of the source of control, across sessions of mental model transformation from one way of thinking to another, an additional, alternative way of perceiving time and control.


Religious mythology describes the plant? That’s vague, at best. Ruck; typical of Pop Sike History books.

The half-baked, moderate entheogen theory of religion is superficial, reductionist, ordinary-state-based, Possibilism-based, not experience-based, not based in systemic comparison of experiencing and thinking in the ordinary state and the loose cognitive state.

Religious mythology is about a different experience, perception, and understanding of personal *control* ability.

Religious mythology is not, firstly, about a plant, even if the plant is the flesh of the savior, body of the Holy Spirit.



49:00 —

Max is omitting “without whom Christianity wouldn’t have been created”:

“The historical Jesus” proposal is best defined as: a single identifiable individual, *without whom* Christianity wouldn’t have been created.

Mr. Historical Jesus was the founder of, or the foundation of, the origins of Christianity.

Mr. Historical Jesus was like the Historical Paul but more important and more the source of religion.

53:00

Jesus was the most powerful mystic.

Jesus was really killed.

Jesus didn’t really resurrect.

Jesus resurrecting was Mr. Jesus’ way of experiencing mystic experiencing after the Last Supper with mixed wine.

AND ALSO the life of Jesus was the ideal metaphor.

And Jesus was mocked as a king, and Jesus had a sign over his head; Pontius Pilate put on Jesus a sign:


The King of the Jews


A king drinks mixed wine at the last supper, feels dread but gives way to God’s will, is sacrificed in order to then be resurrected into new life with new, corrected, purified mind.


60:00

“After the session, life goes on” – that’s a brief way of putting it.


After the final required cleansing session in the water and fire, the person is completed, perfected, washed clean in God’s eyes, and has continued life with a new, additional, transformed mental model of time and control and possibility.

That model is immunized to seeing God and putting trust in the uncontrollable controller of your control-thoughts, normally veiled and hidden from perception, until ingesting the mixed wine sacred meal that brings prayer, dread, and being sacrificed for salvation and everlasting life,

eternal life, everlasting life, non-dying, a-thanatos: no more series of failed attempts at grasping the temporary experience and mental model, now corrected,

correction of thinking: scourged by flames in hell,


trespassing into heaven,

thrown out through the gate by not trusting in the mysterious puppetmaster of personal control-thoughts,


the {male} upon whom the {female} is dependent and overpowered, abducted and set right in the eyes of God-level perception.

God-level perception is the ability to see the serpent in the wellspring in the cave demanding as the price of the jewel that you are brought to pursue,

To take the snake-held jewel, given that the snake possesses the jewel sought,
sacrifice the freewill-premised foundation of personal control power,

instead perceiving the situation normally veiled,

Exorcise Sam Harris freewill-contaminated thinking that invokes the fury of being in God-level consciousness of the mind’s control-source.


The mind behaves differently after eating the Flesh of Christ

The mind experiences control and time and perception differently, after the last supper.

The mind in loosecog is taught to think differently about the foundation of control, readily reconfiguring via loose cognitive association binding.

All religions lack and have mystical experiencing.

The lower, beginners’, exoteric level of Christianity and Buddhism lacks mystic state experiencing.

The higher, initiates’, esoteric level of Christianity and Buddhism has mystic state experiencing, not recognized by exotericists.

It is not the case that some religions have mystical experiences and other religions lack them.

Transcendent Knowledge podcast, episode 13: perennialism, psychedelia, and ego death theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX84TYfocrc

Different interpretations of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Supernaturalist and non-supernaturalist interpretations of bible stories.

Psychotherapeutic use of psychedelic drugs to treat anxiety in cancer patients.

Theoria in ancient Christian mysticism.

The difference between historicist, non-historicist and mythicist interpretations of Jesus.

Atheism, theism and agnosticism.

Interpreting religion in light of the Ego Death Theory.

Metaphysical vs phenomenological treatment of religion.

Phenomenology of religious/mystical experience.

Perception of frozen time during mystical experience.

The effect of intense mystical experience on a person’s thinking.

Failure to recognise the significance of mystical experience by atheists.

Using analogy to illustrate the difference between exoteric and esoteric religion.

Per atheists, forget ‘religion’. Instead of religion, use cognitive metaprogramming in the loosecog state, studying personal control integrity across time.

Study no-free-will and control stability.

Pursue perceiving the frozen-time block universe worldline, per no-free-will, with unchangeable control-thoughts that will come into the mind uncontrollably, and experience personal control in light of no-free-will.

A control seizure, profound dependence on that which is the actual source of control thoughts.

What to call these dynamics? Religion, prayer, sacrifice, resurrection, salvation, eternal life? Or other labels, for the most shocking, profound, transcendent, numinous experiencing?

If ‘religion’ is taken to mean “whether God exists” and religion is literalist supernaturalism, then the terms from Religion cannot be used to describe cognitive dynamics and mental model transformation in the “analogical/ psychedelic/ block universe worldline/ no-free-will” state of consciousness.

Esoteric religious mythology is in fact positioned in contrast to exoteric literalist thinking, the two are contrasted in the New Testament by the Jesus figure.

Avoiding religion and studying personal control power instead, in the block universe no-free-will state of consciousness that results from the metaprogramming agent that loosens cognitive associations, leads to experiential dynamics and a mental model transformation that is described by religious mythology and religious language, when recognized.

The target dynamics must be understood, before religious figuration can be recognized as descriptions of those cognitive dynamics in the religious state of consciousness, which is the loose cognitive association state, which switches from Possibilism to the Eternalism mode of experiencing and mental worldmodel.

This core theory has been stable for several years, though it may be time to
rewrite and update this compact introduction to the core concepts. My recent
work has focused on mapping the mystery-religions and Hellenistic myths onto
this core theory.


============================================

Introduction to the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence

This Theory of Ego Transcendence is designed as a simple cybernetic device to
trigger the experience of ego death, with emphasis on self-control breakdown,
using the breakdown of self-control logic as the pivotal point. It is as
simple and to-the-point as possible, while vividly portraying and conveying
the main insights provided by the mystic altered state of cognition. This
combination of ideas is the most concise and selective expression possible, of
the essential insights involved in ego transcendence.

Contents
o The Virtual Ego and the Illusory Aspect of its Control Power
o Block-Universe Determinism and Autonomous Control
o The Instability of Self-Control Cybernetics, the Control Vortex, and
Self-Cancelling Control
o The Pre-set Stream of Injected Thoughts, Puppethood, and the Inability to
Control Future Actions
o Self-Distrust, Self-Violation of Personal Control, and Needing a
Higher-Level Controller
o Moral Agency, Theology, Levels of Control, and Delusion
o Mental Construct Binding and the Mind-Revealing Dissociative State
o Meta-perception and Solipsistic Perception
o The Egoic and Transcendent Mental Models and Advanced Rationality

_________________________________________________

The Virtual Ego and the Illusory Aspect of its Control Power

One real part of the ego system is the ego as representation, and another real
part of the ego system is the ego as a referent (including one’s actual body,
thoughts, and history). Asking whether the ego exists is too simplistic. The
real issue is “In what sense does the ego exist?” or “What is the real nature
of the ego?”

The mind is designed to accept the mentally projected self-representation as
literally identical to oneself. But the imagined, distorted concept of self
arising from this conflation is not the whole of the ego, so it’s not true
that “the ego is only an illusion”. The ego system includes an illusion, but
is more than that.

The ego exists, but in a way that is more limited and complex than is usually
felt. The Enlightenment conceived of the ego as an autonomous self-steering
entity, rather than as a slave or puppet of gods or Fate.

The cognitive structures of the semi-illusory ego must be preserved even while
discovering that its thoughts and actions originate from the underlying plane,
rather than originating from the ego. The ego exists virtually, or in certain
limited aspects, the naive concept of ego is distorted, accepting the
projected ego image as being as real as the egoic cognitive structures.

The ego-entity exists as a real set of patterns and dynamics, but the ego is
not as solid, continuous, or powerful as it seems. The ego is both a set of
real patterns, but also a projected, constructed image. In a way, the
perceived ego exists, and in a way, it does not. The mind usually projects and
constructs a fairly solid and simple image of oneself.

Seeing the illusory aspects of this mental representation and feeling the
absence of the accustomed sense of personal solidity can be experienced as
death, as literal cessation of personal existence, because the naive mind
strongly identifies with the projected image and the sense. Mental processing
is structured with the conscious ego-representation as the center of control
and experiencing. This representation of the ego is a dynamic set of mental
constructs. This deceivingly tangible representation of the self or ego is
only a part of the ego.

In a dissociative cognitive state, the usual cognitive structures constituting
the ego cease, and the projection of the ego image also ceases. Oneself still
exists in many ways, such as a body, a brain, a mind, possessions, and a
personal past. One genuine aspect of oneself has temporarily ceased to firmly
exist: the egoic cognitive processing, which is largely but not entirely
suspended.

The projection of the self-image is also partly suspended. Insofar as the mind
confuses the projected self-image with that part of the self which is genuine,
that projected self never existed, other than a perceptual illusion, and so
could not cease to exist. If the ego is defined strictly as the natural
assumption that the mentally projected self-representation is literally
oneself, then it can be said that “the ego is only an illusion”.

But such a narrowed definition of “ego” raises the question of what to call
the real cognitive structures that reliably project that illusion. The ego is
more than just an illusion. It’s a large, complex, and dynamic set of mental
processes, of which the deceivingly tangible mental representation is only one
part.

The will exerts control power, but this power is virtual rather than literal.
There is some control-power, but the normal perception of this power is
distorted. The sense of having control power is taken too literally and too
simply. Ego structures are refined after enlightenment, not eliminated.
Physics cannot provide a legitimate dwelling place for the ego entity, because
the ego is largely illusory.

Delusion or enlightenment are collective: first there is a uniform interegoic
control field, deluded about control agency, then the rational, cybernetics
explanation of enlightenment is discovered and communicated. There is a
shocking feeling of helplessness upon realizing the insubstantiality of the
cross-time ego.

_________________________________________________

Block-Universe Determinism and Autonomous Control

One controls one’s hand, but this control is driven by the pre-set path of
control-events injected by the block universe. The control stream manifests in
individual control-acts permanently, eternally located at each time-slice.

The time axis combines with the 3 dimensions of space to form a 4-dimensional
block universe, or crystalline ground of being. Even if the time axis is
warped, relative, or branching, and there are more than 3 dimensions of space,
one can coherently and usefully frame the experienced world as an ultimately
unchanging, 4-dimensional spacetime block.

Conceiving of the world as a fixed spacetime block leads to the astonishing
potential of experiencing ego death, because the logic of ego’s control power
is coherently disrupted. If one consistently adopts the mental model of the
block universe, the usual sense of exerting the power of choice disappears,
and the logic of personal self-determination cancels itself out.

Conventional determinism overemphasizes predictability in principle and
perfect seamlessness of the chain of cause and effect, and cannot tolerate the
slightest bit of true randomness or disjoint in the chain of cause and effect.
More relevant to discovering ego-transcendence is that each point on any
timeline is predetermined, and the future permanently exists, elsewhere in the
spacetime block.

The hypothesis about the eternally unbroken causal chain, in which the past
eventually controls the future, is excessive, delicate, and irrelevant to
higher experience. Even if there is some true randomness in the world, the
future remains predetermined, because of the illusory nature of the flow of
time, and the inability to the ego-entity to be an ultimate origin of its own
thoughts and choices.

Proper Fatalism emphasizes the fixity of the personal future actions, without
committing to an unbroken chain of causality. Fatalism overemphasizes final
outcomes. All the intermediate personal actions are fated, not just the
outcome.

The mind is virtually free: it is free on the practical, visible level, while
predetermined on the underlying, hidden level. The underlying block universe
is at a higher level in the hierarchy of control than the practically free
actions that take place within the stream of personal actions within the block
universe. The universe forcefully controls the stream of personal
control-actions, then the stream of control actions exerts its secondary
power.

One can postulate a god — a creator and controller — at an even higher level
in the control hierarchy, one would then hope that it’s a compassionate god
pulling the puppet-strings of the world and its creatures.

The choice of thoughts and actions is practically free, but thoughts are
forced into the mind from the underlying plane, the mind is a slave to the
free acts of will injected by the underlying block universe. Time, change,
flexibility, variability, and movement are all fixed at all points along the
time axis or branching axes.

The stream of personal control-actions such as decision-making is frozen and
predetermined at each point in time. The stream of consciousness and control
can be seen as a set of distinct time-slices, with the events at each
particular time-slice permanently fixed.

The world casts forth the entire set of time-slices of an object or stream of
actions all at once, actions at two adjacent time-slices are isolated, and
slightly different. The later action is not predetermined simply because it is
caused by the first, but because both actions have always been permanently
pre-set, the entire set of actions came into existence all at once.

The similarity of each time-slice of a stream of actions produces the sense of
continuity of the ego-entity across time and the sense of smooth motion
through time. Self-control is unable to forcefully reach across time to
control one’s thoughts, will, and actions in the future.

_________________________________________________

The Instability of Self-Control Cybernetics, the Control Vortex, and
Self-Cancelling Control

The ego is a nexus of cybernetic control in the apparent form on an inner
entity, but the entity cannot control the cybercontrol system of which it is
merely a helplessly produced component; the system produces the ego, in the
system; the control-system projects the illusion of an ego-agent that appears
to stand outside the system and control the control-system.

Personal self-control forms a cybernetic control loop. The ego-entity is an
essentially illusory homunculus, a self-steering helmsman dwelling inside the
mind’s self-control loop. Self-control controls itself indirectly. Alcoholism
and compulsions demonstrate the inability of self-control to reach across
time. Metaprogramming one’s mental biocomputer promises power, but leads to
the problem of controlling the source of one’s thoughts and will.

Control agents are embodied as self-control tunnels or streams, floating in
locked, stationary spacetime. Schizophrenia and mystic rapture both present
the sense of being remotely monitored and controlled by a dominant
observer-and-controller entity who is in a position of power, one becomes a
cybernetic puppet and the perceived locus of control shifts up to a separate
control agent who resides on a higher level in the control hierarchy.

_________________________________________________

The Pre-set Stream of Injected Thoughts, Puppethood, and the Inability to
Control Future Actions

When the mind models the ego-entity and its control coherently and vividly,
the ego dies as a helmsman, the sense of being a self-governing entity
profoundly changes. The mind has a latent potential to discover the
self-control vortex, the strange-attractor vortex of self-control violation.
There is a sudden homeostatic state shift out of the egoic mental mode.

This vortex is the control singularity, at which point self-control perfectly
cancels itself out. One discovers the possibility of the self in the near
future deliberately violating one’s long-term intentions and wreaking the
worst havoc against oneself.

Such a demonstration would be intellectually and morally satisfying in several
ways, though disastrous by definition. A demonstration of absolute
self-violation could disprove the ability for self-control or self-restraint
to forcefully reach across time, prove the impotence of moral self-restraint,
and demonstrate the independence and isolation of each time-slice in the
stream of self-control.

Responsible moral agency is manifestly invalid upon perceiving the
predetermined character of the thinking that is injected into the mind by the
spacetime block at each time-slice. A demonstration of self-control violation
would also be of interest because it would concord with understanding that the
ego entity who exerts control power is largely an illusory projection of the
mind.

When the mind grasps its potential for control instability, the thinker
trembles from the cybernetic instability and is shakingly disrupted and thrown
off balance. The ego’s accustomed virtual power is cancelled by overly vivid
awareness of how one’s thoughts and actions could very well be pre-set by the
underlying block universe. Virtual moral agency collapses when the illusory
aspect of the ego’s power is vividly understood.

In pursuit of truth and self-understanding, it is tempting to make a serious
sacrifice of one’s deepest values in order to reflect one’s consciousness of
one’s true nature. Given the inherent insecurity of self-control over time,
due to the inability to reach across time and due to the fact that one’s
future actions are already defined at all future points in time, one might
begin to urgently wish to secure self-determination to forcefully extend
self-control over one’s near-future actions.

It feels like a trap, when fully confronting that there is logically no way,
no possible move, that would forcefully extend self-control to restrain one’s
near-future actions. Stable self-control inherently requires distorted
thinking, which obscures one’s nature as a product of the completely
predetermined block universe. Self-control can be stabilized by looking away
from the radical potentials of one’s near-future actions in the stream of
control, by stopping the apprehension of them.

One inherently cannot trust one’s own near-future actions, which are beyond
one’s present control. Dissociative cognition combined with advanced
rationality leads to the conscious experience of one’s permanent situation of
being a puppet of fate, a complete slave of the block universe.

_________________________________________________

Self-Distrust, Self-Violation of Personal Control, and Needing a Higher-Level
Controller

Upon discovering the perfectly coherent model of self-control extending along
a frozen stream in the block universe, one finds oneself in a submissive
position, and it’s effective action to pray, to turn one’s attention away from
the emptiness of the power at one’s core, and regain the deluded but stable
sense of controlling one’s thoughts and actions.

In the midst of the self-control singularity, self-control cancels itself out
and one is tempted to perform a sacrificial self-violation to prove this
astonishing potential and disprove the moral agency upon which life depends.
It would be ecstatic horror to make a high self-sacrifice of one’s integrity
as a moral agent, and perfectly violate one’s personal wishes, to disprove
moral culpability and reflect one’s grasp of the astonishing truth about the
nature of moral agency, self-control, and self-determination.

At the peak of grasping transcendent knowledge and fully confronting one’s
inability to restrain one’s actions in the near future, one can completely
lose trust in oneself, but it’s a cybernetically effective move to project a
trustworthy entity to a higher level in the control hierarchy and place faith
in that entity instead of in oneself, that is, let the entity take one’s
cybernetic helm of self-control.

The stability-producing prayer (a committed assumption and transmitted
communication) for this purpose is that the creator of the block universe
created it such that one’s future stream of thoughts and actions are not
disastrous to one’s integrity of selfhood as a cross-time controller with
values and investments. This assumes a personal god, because the universe
itself is not easily conceived of as a controlling agent able to hear and
respond.

_________________________________________________

Moral Agency, Theology, Levels of Control, and Delusion

There is a level of control beyond the ego that gives rise to the ego’s
control actions, which are not self-originating. Personal self-control is
secondary-level control. The ego effectively and apparently is the only origin
of its actions, but this isolated autonomy of the ego’s power is illusory. The
ego’s power is an epiphenomenon, a mere appearance that arises as a result of
the more ultimate driving factor beyond or outside the ego. The primary level
of control is the underlying ground of being, or block universe, which gives
rise to the ego’s entire stream of thoughts and control actions.

One hypothetical example of a control hierarchy is God, fate, the lower gods,
the block universe, creatures, and finally puppets, fictional characters,
virtual agents, and cybernetic devices. The same logic that implies that
creatures are predetermined seems to implies that the hypothetical God would
be predetermined as well, unless God were unfathomably different. Christianity
is largely about maintaining the delusion of our freedom, to make us
individual moral agents that we cannot logically be. Even the deterministic
variants of Christianity insist on moral agency and moral freedom.

If a god is at the higher level of control, outside of time, he is in a
position to prophecy. Prophecy is the revealing of what fate or a creator has
already created at a relatively “future” point in time.

The Creator, like a programmer, can disclaim direct responsibility for the
control-actions of his creatures, but he remains indirectly and ultimately
responsible. When a computer artist creates a fractal image, the artist does
not directly define every bit of the fractal, but defines general equations
and thus indirectly creates every detail. So has the hypothetical Creator
caused our every action, while denying direct responsibility.

Insofar as the Creator avoids direct manipulation of the details of our lives,
he can give Satan freedom, the freedom which is sin and delusion. The
Creator’s omnipotence permits only a practical, virtual type of moral freedom.

The coil of a snake represents the cybernetic self-control loop inside the
mind. Sin is our sense of self-origination of our thoughts and actions, and
our experience of ourselves as autonomous agents who are potential moral
subjects. The egoic mind is arranged with the ego-entity at the center of
personal experiencing and action, and assumes that the ego is the primary
origin of its actions. This ego-entity at the center includes the deceiving,
projected representation of the ego-entity.

The transcendent mind is not so firmly self-centered, but acknowledges the
priority of the underlying block universe, which controls or gives rise to the
ego’s stream of control actions. Moral freedom is legitimate as an experience
but not as a logical proposition. Enlightenment was artificially delayed and
withheld, buying some time for humanity to live as seemingly autonomous
agents.

_________________________________________________

Mental Construct Binding and the Mind-Revealing Dissociative State

Mental constructs are highly dynamic association matrixes, held together by
some degree of binding intensity. Deep re-indexing of mental construct groups
(such as concepts of “time” and “change” together) enables a wholesale mental
model shift or inversion to another mode. Normally, for convenience, the mind
uses linguistic and conceptual associations in a rigid, rutted, and repetitive
way, debates are permanent standoffs, because the same cliched assumptions are
carelessly adhered to every time words are used.

Mastery of semantics enables one to release one’s assumptions about every
single word in an argument, not just a key term in isolation.
The dissociative cognitive state enables deep-level symbolic re-indexing of
mental constructs. There are multiple triggers for the dissociative cognitive
state, including psychedelics, meditation, schizophrenia, sensory deprivation,
hyperventilation, temporal-lobe epilepsy, UFO abduction, and near-death
experiences.

The most powerful trigger for long sessions of cognitive dissociation is
lysergic acid, a key technology. Psychoactive substances should be of great
interest to theorists in many fields. The absence of such psychoactive keys
preserves delusion, to preserve the sense of freedom and autonomous agency.
The New Testament morally permits ingesting anything (Mark 7:6, Matthew 15:7).
Acid-rock mysticism vividly alludes to and resonates with ego death and the
dissociative cognition that leads up to it.

_________________________________________________

Meta-perception and Solipsistic Perception

Pattern-perception becomes highly flexible and innovative in the dissociative
cognitive state. Blatant perceptual distortion in the dissociative state
directly presents questions of epistemology and the philosophy of perception.
All that is presented to awareness is mental constructs, which point to
alleged referent objects which might or might not exist, or might exist in a
way other than the mental constructs representing them, which might be
distorted.

Meta-perception is the perception of the layer of mental constructs presented
to awareness. In the dissociative state, the world blatantly appears as mental
representations which are themselves frozen into the block universe, extension
of objects and the controlling ego-entity across time appears to be
distributed along a fixed and pre-set stream of time-slices. The vantage point
of awareness can be raised, or stepped back a level, to observe mental
construct processing and perception itself. Time is no longer perceived as a
flow, but as a frozen expanse.

_________________________________________________

The Egoic and Transcendent Mental Models and Advanced Rationality

There is a standard egoic mental model of the ego-entity and the world, and a
standard transcendent mental model. Delusion and transcendent knowledge are
both collective: first there is a uniform interegoic control field, deluded
about control agency; then the rational, cybernetics-based explanation of ego
death is discovered and communicated.

Transformation from the egoic to the transcendent mental model requires a
synchronized shift of the meaning of entire groups of concepts. The egoic
conceptual system thrives for a limited time, awaiting the right technologies
to end its illusion of sovereignty. The full development of reason in the
service of amplifying the ego’s control-power necessarily leads to
ego-transcendent knowledge. The rational systematization of ego death, as in
this paper, permits fast propagation of both ego-transcendent knowledge and
the experience of ego death.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — designing the most convenient path to an intense
peak experience of control-cancellation

Discussion participants mentioned these ideas:

>The ‘cross’ of the believer is a Cynic-Stoic proverb about enduring hardship

for the sake of one’s beliefs or the movement one belongs to. Forsaking
father and mother is like carrying a heavy, onerous cross to one’s demise.
The cross is not here a symbol of salvation connected with the death
specifically of a Jesus figure. This does not refer to a future, specific
death on a cross, but Jesus means it in a sense that includes himself.

>’Carry or take up a cross’ means a specific death on a cross, an instrument

of execution. Whoever is carrying a cross is on the way to his own
crucifixion. The saying makes no sense at all unless Jesus is seen as
carrying his own cross to his own crucifixion. Whether the crucifixion is
literal or not is the major question we need to resolve.


Michael:
Compare also John 11, where Thomas says “Let us also go [to Lazarus’ tomb],
that we may die with him.”
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=JOHN+11

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has
fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” His disciples replied,
“Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his
death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them
plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so
that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Then Thomas (called Didymus)
said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

New American Bible: “Let us also go to die with him.”
Amplified Bible: “Let us go too, that we may die [be killed] along with Him.”

In the Amplified Bible and New American Standard Bible, “Him” is capitalized
though it presumably refers to Lazarus rather than Jesus. The capitalization
seems to imply that Lazarus is identified or spiritually united with Jesus.

The mythic meaning when explained clearly provides the most compelling
alternative for the Historical Jesus view.

Carrying one’s own cross does not refer to mere ordinary sufferings. It
refers to the same sufferings as Prometheus suffered: the humiliation and
psychological torment of experientially discovering that one’s personal power
is nullified by the omnipotence of the gods or the Fates. This kind of
experience, this kind of cross, is the kind that is powerful enough to compete
with the idea of a Historical Jesus.

The mystic crucifixion experienced by the mystery-religion initiate after
taking the Eucharist of apolytrosis is specifically the suffering and
humiliation that is the essence of mystic ego death, when the will
(liver/heart) is slain by intensely visualizing cosmic determinism or
Fatedness, ultimately implying a closed future, which was the strongly
dominant worldview of that era.

After the mystery-religion initiate carries his own apprehended-rebel cross
and is crucified, the initiate’s lower self (the apparent self-willing agent
who authors his own future) is thus crucified as a false upstart rebel, a mere
pretender to the power of self-authoring.

o Like the archetypal form of Prometheus, the initiate is then released into
a new life with a newly re-formed, higher kind of will that is not susceptible
to the giant eagle sent by Zeus.
o Like the archetypal form of Mithras, the initiate is then born out of the
rock of astrological determinism, born into a new cosmos that is outside the
frozen-future cosmos.
o Like the archetypal form of Jesus, the initiate then arises and comes forth
from the tomb, born out of the frozen cosmic space-time matrix-womb with a
newly re-formed, higher kind of will that is not susceptible to being slain by
the (Roman eagle standard) spear.

The idea of the spiritual crucifixion of the seemingly self-authoring agent
fits well with the Hellenistic mythic concepts of the mystery religions of the
era. The initiate suffers demise as a steersman sailing into an open,
not-yet-settled future — that version of oneself, and the mental model
constructed around it with that idea at the center, is overthrown and soon
replaced by a higher identity and some other conception of the will and one’s
personal ability to control and author one’s own will.

Spiritual crucifixion is certainly not mere mundane suffering — it is the
suffering that follows *after* one has died; it is the suffering of Demeter
*after* the childish deluded conception of the self, Persephone/Core, has been
suddenly carried off to Hades, the realm of entities that no longer exist
except as ghostly memories.

In the reverse sequence from Literalist assumptions, the initiate actually
dies first and then suffers afterwards, just as Persephone was abducted to the
land of dead entities and then Demeter suffers afterwards.

1. First, the impossible self who would claim to author his own future dies
as a possibility and as a viable mental model of time, will, freedom, and
personal control.

2. Afterwards, the initiate suffers and mourns for the death of that
impossible, virtual-only version of himself — mourns upon seeing that the
future is already closed, existing, given or forced upon him, and is
pre-authored without his consent or consultation.

3. Finally, the initiate constructs a new mental model of self, identified
now with a higher will that transcends the individual person and transcends
cosmic astrological determinism or Fatedness.


The more mundane and physical kinds of suffering and crucifixion are less
specific, less compelling, and have led to oppression (Jesus was bodily
tortured, so his followers should seek and accept bodily torture as well).
The latter are low, limited, less interesting types of suffering.

A philosophy limited to such literalist types of suffering and death is not
sufficient to provide a compelling alternative to Literalist views.

Purely mystical suffering, identified and explained specifically, provides a
compelling alternative. The essence of mystical suffering is experiencing a
vision of the closed future and being thus stripped of the accustomed sense of
personal power to author one’s own future and one’s own life-script. Such
traumatically insulting spiritual crucifixion of one’s own power of will leads
to the need and the hope of constructing or discovering a new kind of will and
power that cannot be overthrown like the lower will.


References:
David Ulansey. The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology & Salvation
in the Ancient World. 1989
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html
Carl Kerenyi. Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence. 1963.
Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece.
1988. Chap. 1-5, especially chapter 3, Intimations of the Will in Greek
Tragedy.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — convenient method of eliciting a peak experience of
control-cancellation

Covert agendas and evasive conversational dynamics in the GnosticsMillenium
discussion group


Michael:
I don’t get helplessly caught up in flaming like so many people often do, but
I do have a weakness, and fondness, of studying conversational dynamics.
Actually, I think mastering conversational dynamics is mandatory for an
online-based scholar. These dynamics are fascinating in their own right, and
an interesting challenge to master. I’m constantly experimenting with writing
style and communication techniques.

After all, we do live and exist online; I am in my text. I am an arrangement
of ASCII. I am in ASCII. I am 1001001, which is I in ASCII. Yet I transcend
the text I manipulate and am not it.

George, to Coraxo, the GnosticsMillenium discussion group moderator:

>When I joined this list I was amazed at your refusal to acknowledge the first

and second century Gnostic Christians. I simply could not understand why you
would dismiss such a rich heritage as never having existed. Now I understand.
Your concept of the Gnostic experience is completely at odds with theirs. You
deny that union with god is gnosticism. To the ancient gnostics it was
central.

>You are correct about it being the knowledge of the true nature of one’s

self, but that knowledge is the realization that the true nature of one’s self
is that one is a part of God. That was the first and second century Gnostic
Christian experience and that is why you deny they were Gnostics.

Michael:
An important distinction or qualification is whether this “God” is the type
that is imbedded in the Fated (frozen-future) cosmos, and is thus a slave of
the Fates, or resides outside the Fated cosmos like Mithras, and is thus in
command of the Fates, with the ability to move the stars (the commanders of
our future) from their fixed positions.

Gnostics reject the God who is immanent in the Fated cosmos and become (or
become one with) the God who is transcendent above the Fated cosmos.

George:
[Though he may have adhered to the official description of the
GnosticsMillenium discussion list],

>Michael did misinterpret the [actual, covert] doctrine of this list. That

doctrine is, “Gnosticsm is what Crowley said it was, as interpreted by Coraxo
[the list moderator].”

George:

>You realize we must all come to Gnosis by ourselves and receive our own

Knowledge from our Gnosis, but [contradicting yourself,] if the knowledge from
our Gnosis differs from yours and Crowley’s, you deny it is Gnosis.

>
>You are a narrow path Gnostic, no different from the narrow path Christians
>you despise. Look in the mirror I am holding up to you and see yourself, you
> will see a Crowley priest no different from a Catholic priest.

Coraxo:

>>The gnosis is not the mystical union of one’s self with God, one’s self
>>with the universe, or dissolution into some medium of other.

George:

>It was, according to the ancient Gnostics and according to many modern

Gnostics.

Michael:
Gnosis is the distinct rejection of identifying with the Fated cosmos, and a
rejection of the metaphysical enslavement inherent in the fixed-future model
of the cosmos. Gnostics did not deny that the future is fixed; they did not
deny that the cosmos is determined/Fated. They sought a way to exit such a
cosmos, rather than a way to philosophically disprove or refute the idea that
the cosmos is determined/Fated. They did not believe in naive free will as a
power exercised by the folk idea of the self as a controller/steersman. They
understood that the (properly conceived) Fatalist view was unimpeachable and
without flaw, as a metaphysical system.

The oppressive social and political systems of the classic era wanted a way to
justify oppression by spinning it as “cosmic order”. “I was destined by the
stars to rule over you, and you were destined by the stars to submit to me.”
The state religion wanted people to worship the cosmic order and become
passive by adopting a degraded version of Fatalism as passivism, by munging
together different types of freedom, without distinguishing between them — by
conflating metaphysical unfreedom with political and practical unfreedom.
“The cosmos is ordered, rather than free and chaotic, so you must submit to my
ordered social and political system, rather than be free.”

But metaphysical freedom, practical freedom, and political freedom operate on
entirely different and independent planes. Metaphysical freedom is false.
Practical freedom is true. Political freedom is good.

Gnostics rejected that conflation. They wanted metaphysical freedom, but knew
reason saw the cosmos as Fated and metaphysically unfree — this posed a
problem they sought to solve by transcendently postulating some way rising
above the cosmos itself, by envisioning a transcendent level of personal being
that is outside the cosmos (that is, independent of the frozen, Fated,
closed-future space-time block).

They had practical freedom, as we all do. Every philosopher agrees that we
undeniably make choices on the practical plane — all the debate is really
about the metaphysical layer underlying the undeniable activity of making
choices.

The Gnostics wanted political freedom — part of the approach to achieve this
was by rejecting the official State doctrine of “accepting the cosmic order”
(the political status quo of ruler and ruled).

Coraxo:

>>Finally, this is not a doctrinal group,

George:

>But it is. [This is covertly a doctrinal group, enforcing] The doctrine of

Crowley according to Coraxo.

Coraxo:

>however, I will resist [Michael’s] current attempt to impose the fallacy of

block universe on the group as doctrine.

Michael:
Gnostics do not think the block universe model is false. They think it is so
real, so true, it is the main problem they seek to rise out of. They *hate*
the block universe (the frozen, pre-existing future that is forced upon us),
but they do not consider it a false or incoherent metaphysical model of the
cosmos. Gnostics, like the Hellenistic world in general, conceived of the
cosmos as a fixed entity — their belief in the block-universe cosmos idea is
the very reason they so hated the cosmos.

George:

>It appears I was right about you all along. I figured you were the type of

person who would not put up with competing ideas for long. You have announced
you will now censor Michael’s posts because he won’t listen to the truth as
revealed by you.

>
>He is welcome to disagree with me as much as he wishes on either of my lists.
>
>And don’t worry about having to censor me. This is my last post to this list.

I will answer no more no matter how you or PJ misinterpret or misquote what I
am writing here.

Michael:
Yes, they are inveterate deliberate, willful misquoters. When I clearly
presented compelling arguments, several people on the list, instead of
attempting to refute what I said, invented stereotyped caricatures of other
schools of thought, imputed those to me, and then rejected those. Sometimes
they took my statements out of context when the overall postings on the
subject made my position fully clear.

They forcefully closed their eyes to what I said — they had to, because it
was the only possible way to appear to refute my sober and reasonable
assertions. I have conducted profitable discussions with many immature,
combat-driven people online before, but never have I seen this blatantly
willful misrepresentation of my statements.

The GnosticsMillenium moderator has a covert agenda and does not care what
people actually write — his first goal is to make other people look wrong by
any means possible, and his second goal is to promote his bizarrely limited
and truncated view of Gnosticism.

Such a tactic of refutation through deliberate misrepresentation is like
people who wish to appear to refute Fatalism by addressing an absurd
caricature of the position. They are unable to refute the genuine, properly
defined Fatalism that is clearly expressed by its adherents, so instead, they
cover their ears, close their eyes, draw the most absurd cartoonish
misrepresentation of Fatalism they can think of, and refute that instead, and
declare themselves to have vanquished the threat to metaphysical freedom.

George:

>I will lurk and read the posts… unless… you ban me from this list. If you

do that, so be it. Your and PJ’s biggest problem is you both refuse to read
what is written [by the discussion participants] and instead insist on
answering [instead] some preprogrammed doctrine which you attribute to whoever
is posting, based on your preconceived ideas about specific groups such as
Christians or whatever group your mind places them [the post’er].

Michael:
For example, his cartoon picture of the entheogenists’ position, “refuting”
the hypothetical position that entheogens are the only trigger for the mystic
state of consciousness — a position which surely no entheogenist has ever
maintained. Not even a madman would claim that entheogens are the only way to
experience the mystic state.

Sure, in the middle of a posting, I may have included a sentence that, taken
out of context, seemed to assert that entheogens are required for
enlightenment, but the moderator and his cohorts had to murder the overall
posting in order to artificially extract that sentence. Am I supposed to be
so on the defense, so overcautious, that I never construct any sentence that
lends itself to such vicious, willful, deliberate, ill-meaning
misinterpretation?

Am I really such a poor communicator that it was possible for them to miss the
many times I clearly stated that entheogens were *one* way (and the most
convenient way) to trigger the mystic state, just because one time, in one
sentence in the middle of a discussion, I omitted the qualifiers which I try
to always include? They apparently concluded there is only one way they could
refute me: by deliberately murdering my clear meaning.

My position included these points which the moderator sought to dispute:

o Gnosis in some sense often involved some sort of what was often referred to
as “spiritual death” of some sort of lower self. He claimed to reject this,
but then he would make some assertion, in the middle of his refutation, that
indicated support for the “death” metaphor.

o Entheogens are the most convenient way of triggering the mystic state. He
sought to belittle entheogens and “rejected” entheogens because “there are too
other ways of entering the mystic state” — the latter position, of course, no
one ever denied. So he was really just seeking to be disputatious — a
childish motive for discussion that I want no part of.

He exhibited perhaps seven different ways of evading a genuine refutation of
my actual statements and meanings. Saying I wrote too much so he wouldn’t
reply, or pulling some crazy misportrayal of someone else’s position out of
thin air and then shooting it down as though he had refuted my position, or
throwing a bunch of exotic foreign terms at me, or posting excerpts from books
that had no apparent connection with my concerns, or saying he was writing
poetically so didn’t need to be consistent.

Such an array of dirty debate strategies, I have not come across, over a
decade of online existence. Those were not flamers’ techniques; they were
worse: intellectual perversions, intellectual exchange for the purpose of
distorting the other person’s position. He gives Gnostics a bad name.

I was disappointed that no one responded to my posting that investigated ideas
about shades of ad hominem. I thought it was interesting, an intriguing
contrarian view (clearly and straightforwardly expressed). I made the
interesting assertion that avoiding ad hominem statements really has nothing
to do with Great scholarship. Only the petty would place such overemphasis on
superficialities like always trying to word things so that there is no
possibility of anyone taking offense.

One of the most solid points made therein was that ad hominem writing is not
an all-or-nothing, yes-or-no, total foundation of an argument — there can be
shades and aspects, and especially, there are some ad hominem aspects in many
or most postings in that discussion group, and others. Also noteworthy in the
overall situation is that the host was not defending some poor ordinary
participant from my criticisms — he warned me because (according to his
interpretation) I used some ad hominem statements about *him*, the host.

I did not expect this tough host to be such a delicate pansy that I had to
treat him with such kid gloves and restrict my range of expression to such a
degree. In the end, he came out looking so delicate — but I don’t believe
for a moment that he really found my criticism of him emotionally offensive.
Rather, his “ad hominem” complaint was in fact just a bluffing technique to
avoid addressing the substance of my postings.

I may not have lived up to some harshly critical standard for writing (“Never
slight the other person!”), but one thing is guaranteed from me: I am an
*extremely* straightforward person in dealing with others. I say clearly what
my position is, and I study carefully what their position is and address that.

My goal is to know and express truth, according to standards I hold, through
*constructive* conversation, not that this means superstitiously avoiding ever
slighting the other person. But many people online are motivated by some more
dubious goal: some psychological project of elevating themselves by negatively
portraying others. Such a social kind of elevation, I have no time for.

So ultimately, I was disappointed with the all-too-typical dominance of social
goals over serious intellectual goals. I was a fool; I dreamed that I had
found a group that steered by serious informational goals rather than social
games.

I enjoyed the posting about the technique of “slow reading”, in which the
reader first learns to agree with the author and live in his point of view,
before refuting him. However, I don’t think the moderator misunderstood me at
all. He understood the strength of my position full well, and he knew he
could not refute it, but could only evade it.

He had to really dance around to try to avoid contradicting himself, but of
course he couldn’t avoid contradicting himself since his position was not
driven by the serious quest for coherence, but rather, by the effort to make
other people appear to be wrong and himself appear to be right, by any means
possible, including self-contradiction.

Even if I had posted short, succinct postings that never made a misstep —
perfect, flawless, constructive, and so on — he would have evaded my
arguments one way or another, as was very clear before everyone’s eyes, when
he deleted my actual statements more than once and inserted a completely
invented portrayal of some stereotypical position instead, and refuted that as
though mine.

George:

>Why am I saying all this? To change your mind? If that were all I wouldn’t

bother. You have a closed mind and will open it about the same time the Pope
opens his. Not impossible, but hardly likely.

>
>No, my purpose in saying all this is to inform all the lurkers on this list

that the Gospel of Crowley according to Coraxo and sometimes PJ is not the
only Gnosticism. In fact although he to some degree started modern Gnosticism,
Crowley and his followers are a very minor part of Gnosticism today.

>The Gnostic experience is an individual thing. Let no person tell you that

you are or are not a Gnostic. That is for you alone to decide for yourself.

>
>… you will misinterpret what I said to mean [that] I got my idea of the

Gnosis from first century Gnostic Christians. Then you are likely to rant
about [the irrelevance of] book learning

Michael:
What are they doing at that group? They are certainly not discussing ideas in
a direct and straightforward exchange. The main activity there is to project
crazy views onto other people and then shoot down those views, and declare the
other person wrong. That is not just one trend or tendency of the group; that
is the main, driving activity, the functional purpose, of the discussion
group. It’s really weird, a real weird vibe at that group — it’s a big game
of “put words into others’ mouths, then condemn them”, repeated over and over.

That alternates with the usual contentless newage spiritual vagueness, which
the host may loathe but which he engages in as well, partly because it’s a
good evasion strategy when a sober, specific, clear philosophical position is
presented and contradicts his statements — that’s “the mush-out defense”,
when you escape from difficult philosophical conversational situations by
running for cover into the Louisiana swamplands of spiritual vague-speak.

>or modern Christians and are likely to quote something from one of Crowley’s

books to prove your case. I know that is what you will believe regardless of
what I say, but for the sake of the lurkers looking on I must explain that
that is not the case at all.

Michael:
It is good you clarified the situation for the lurkers.

George:

>I discovered my Gnosis all by myself with no help from Crowley or the Gnostic

Christians or anyone else. It was only several years later that I discovered
Gnosticism on the internet are recognized they were talking about the same
experience I had had.

>I don’t agree with Michael,

Michael:
(Note that I don’t know which points you disagree with.)

>I just believe he has the right to disagree with the moderator on an

[supposedly] unmoderated list such as this. If you want to censor, then change
it to a moderated list and at least be honest about it.

The GnosticsMillenium group does smell of dishonesty — claiming to discuss
one set of topics in one way, to draw people in, but then covertly enforcing a
different way of discussing a different set of topics. And the purpose seems
to be not to investigate cooperatively or persuade through scholarly and
intellectual means, as advertised, but to appear to win arguments, through any
possible technique or manipulation.

I thought at first that this Gnostics group could clarify Gnosticism for me,
but clarifying Gnosticism turned out not to be the actual goal of the group,
and overall, they have nothing significant to offer me, and no way to justify
spending time there. I have plenty of excellent scholarly books that
communicate such ideas to me in a straightforward manner.

I am now able to start connecting my ideas to Gnosticism, despite the group.
Who ever heard of a Gnosticism that seeks to cut itself off *entirely* from
early Christianity? Such a position that all of early Christianity is
entirely incompatible with Gnosis is inherently too sweeping of a rejection,
too sweeping of a view, to cohere.

Everything the moderator said directly contradicted Pagels’ portrayal of the
Valentinian Gnostics’ interpretation of Paul the Apostle’s early,
held-authentic epistles. Whatever Gnosticism he’s enforcing in his “open”
discussion group, it’s artificially distanced from that which my books
describe, as far as Christian aspects. He seems to have an absolutist, mad
grudge against Christianity, that renders him unwilling to use nuance.

He’s an extreme dogmatic counter-Christian, a counter-dogmatic. A kind of
dogmatic adherence to certain specific principles is fine, in my view, except
where reason and direct straightforward debate are discarded when reason and
dogma conflict — as I saw repeatedly in the GnosticsMillenium group. In
practice, it’s more like a Crowley cult (roughly) than what you would expect
in a general Gnosticism discussion group.

I was essentially considered guilty of creating a different, contending
cult — trying to take over his community, by the nefarious scheme of
proferring and seriously defending a system of ideas that generally match what
I have read about early Gnostics — those Gnostics which, according to George,
the moderator rejects and artificially distances himself from.

There is no way to develop online discussion skills without jumping into the
fray and learning a wide variety of interactive dynamics. I learned more
about conversational dynamics at that quasi-Gnostic group than about general
Gnosticism.

——————

After considering it ever since Yahoo took over the previous discussion
groups, I decided to create an egodeath discussion group, initially to
conveniently archive my daily postings, since writing and posting via email
utility is so much easier than updating my web site. It seems I don’t write
web pages directly: all my writing has always originated as Net postings,
which I later organize onto Web pages.

I love posting, love writing in an online discussion environment. In
1985-1989, I developed my core theory, gradually moving from handwritten
brainstorming to shorthand idea development in word-processor files, to heavy
posting in 1989. I have never just sat down in a word processor or webpage
authoring environment to write a polished article to publish or upload. By
the time I created my first postings in 1989, I already had my complete core
theory. Most of what I’ve done since then has been cracking the code of the
mystery-religions.

My writing has been either in the form of shorthand notes (handwritten or
keyed in), or Net postings which I later convert into webpages. I am addicted
to the immediacy of posting; I’d always rather write another posting than work
on writing a polished article. Posting as publishing, I love that Howard
Rheingold or WELL way of looking at online discussion. It’s so awesome: I can
strive to make key philosophy connections on a daily basis and immediately
publish them in an interactive conversation environment.

That is why it makes sense for me to finally start my own discussion group. I
tried it before in Deja groups, but that was far inferior to the awesome
YahooGroups framework which enables such integrated and controllable use of
email or Web-based interfaces. I made my discussion archive fully open to the
public, so I can create URLs as pointers then simply organize and re-sort the
pointers at my normal website.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — convenient method of eliciting a peak experience of
control-cancellation

>(Michael:)
>> 1. First, the impossible self who would claim to author his own future
>dies
>> as a possibility and as a viable mental model of time, will, freedom, and
>> personal control.
>
>(Frank:)
>OR, the very limited self dies to its limitations, having reached a point
>where the very thought of his barriers is hateful and demeaning;

That sounds like a Ken Wilber somewhat vague portrayal of how we are
dissatisfied with the “limitations” of the “limited self”, and what kind of
“barriers” these are. The visionary-state is far more intense: it is an
intense full confrontation with the concept of the fixed future, as against
the power to steer oneself into the personally-created future as one chooses.
I consider my description above to be compatible with yours, and largely
equivalent, but much more specific.

>(Michael:)
>> 2. Afterwards, the initiate suffers and mourns for the death of that
>> impossible, virtual-only version of himself — mourns upon seeing that the
>> future is already closed, existing, given or forced upon him, and is
>> pre-authored without his consent or consultation.
>
>(Frank:)
>OR, the initiate suffers and mourns for the safety, security and EXCUSE of
>his former limitations. Now he sees that they were a crutch. And he sees
>that limitations of thought and action are a blessing to the Lower Self;
>they allowed it phoney peace of mind and excused its rationalizations.

This reminds me of one important dynamic: seeing the fixed future and becoming
thereby destabilized can send the mind fleeing downward in an effort to avoid
seeing the killer vision of one’s death as a metaphysically free agent. The
mind then seeks, in a state of emergency, to thrust itself back down into the
deluded worldmodel, and it is a tremendous relief when the light fades and the
naive deluded child-mind returns, with its limited visionary horizons and
uncomfortable, confusing self-contradictions regarding personal control.

But the mind starts growing and pushing upwards: transformation cannot happen
until it is more uncomfortable to remain at the old, secure, accustomed level
than to proceed forward through the painful birth to a new level of mental
structuring.

>(Michael:)
>>3. initiate constructs a new mental model of self, identified
>> now with a higher will that transcends the individual person and
>transcends
>> cosmic astrological determinism or Fatedness.
>
>(Frank:)
>3. OR, the initiate, now a being aware of his lack of limitations, now must
>fact the responsibility and fact of his liberation. He must rearrange his
>thoughts and habits to conform to his new reality (And find the courage to
>face the downside of freedom, which is often a crushing sense of duty.

A downside of freedom is instability of self-control — control beyond
control, or control chaos, an elevated unrestrained wildness which cannot
sustain a viable life.

Existential emptiness is also a life-and-death problem to grapple with and
somehow overcome.

>Whether Michael is right or wrong in his version I won’t dispute; I can’t
>because I’m not a fatalist.

We’re moderns and you probably think like a modern but don’t know how to think
like the ancients. We must remember that the ancients *were* (properly
defined) Fatalists. This key fact lends a lot of weight to the views I put
forth. How would the mystic altered state be experienced by determinists (or
Fatalists) who believed that the future was closed and locked into place as
surely as the stars are fixed in their movements? You have to learn to be a
Fatalist or think as a Fatalist in order to fathom what sort of “escape from
the rock-cosmos” the ancients sought.

I strive to explain exactly that, with reference to the myths of the age.
What attitudes did they have about the presumed, or mystically observed,
fixity of the future? It gave them both security and the feeling of stifling
oppression, including political oppression that was justified in terms of
metaphysical unfreedom. Why did the Christianity movement take off fairly
well, in light of these mixed feelings about astrological determinism? How
was the idea of the fixed future experienced before, during, and after the
mystery initiations? These are questions posed in the native conceptual
categories of the ancients rather than questions expressed in the terms of
modernity and answered in such terms.

> I’d only point out that everyone I’ve known who
>was initiated in any system (including Catholic confirmation) always looked
>at it as a step forward into growth, and viewed with trepidation the fact
>that it freed them to more responsibilities.

>Mourning the innocent, more
>carefree “self” that died in the initiation is probably the most interesting
>part because it’s usually neglected.
>
>Frank

That smells like a modern, psychologist, perhaps Jungian explanation rather
than using the conceptual categories (terms) that were active in the ancient
mind.

There are three crucial elements missing from most spiritual analyses:

o The will
o The determinist/Fatalist fixed future
o Entheogens

The puzzle of the meaning of the mysteries for the ancients is solved by
introducing these three elements.

— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — convenient method of eliciting a peak experience of
control-cancellation

Why cracking the mythic code is mandatory to convince Historical Jesus
believers of the greater likelihood of the Mythic-only Christ


Michael:

>>Has anyone read this? Arthur Drews: The Legend of Saint Peter. I might

order it to read about the similarities of Mithraism and Christianity.

>>The book is a work of German Enlightenment scholarship of the early 20th

century. It demonstrates that Saint Peter is a literary invention of early
Christianity and was not a historical figure. Includes sources that make
Drews’ argument more compelling. Has an illustration, Hercules as Crucifer.

>>The publisher claims this work has been unjustifiably forgotten by mainline

biblical scholars and freethinking critics. Drews presents classical,
biblical, and patristic literature regarding the question of the historicity
of Saint Peter. Simon Peter is a fiction created by the church. Simon Peter
evolved from Janus and Mithra, who carried the keys to the gates of heaven.
Cover the Tyrian Hercules (Melkart).

>>Like Drews’ book The Christ Myth, this book argues for the non-historicity

of Saint Peter, a central character in Orthodox Christianity.


Frans-Joris:

>I’ve got “Die Petruslegende” (3rd revised edition, Jena 1924)… ‘tolle,

lege’ i.e. buy and read! I learnt amazing things… there was a pope Peter on
the very Vatican [grounds] a long time before Catholic papacy became into
being.


Michael:
I naturally assume that this “rock” of Peter is the rock out of which Mithras
is born: the rock of cosmic astrological determinism/Fatedness. That is the
rock which he, in some way, leaves or comes out from, like we leave and come
out of the cave/womb, like Jesus in the story comes out of the cave after his
quasi-death on the cross. And isomorphically, this would be the same “rock”
to which Prometheus is chained.


Frans-Joris:

>…”No doubt: the Christian Peter is nothing but a reduplicated and humanized

Persian Petros or Mithra, who got that way into the Gospels. The papal Church
is nothing but the immediate continuation or the Christian substitute of the
old Petros cult. The Archigallus, the highest priest or pagan Pope of the
Mithras-Attis cult corresponds to the highest or archpriest of the entire
Catholic Christendom. He had his residence on the Vatican, worshipped the Sun
as Saviour and in the Kybele the ‘virgin’-Godmother, who would be represented
sitting with a baby boy on her lap having the Virgin Mary as her Christian
counterpart.”

>Besides “Die Christusmythe” I possess Drews’ “Das Markusevangelium als

Zeugnis gegen die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu” (1921), where he claims to have
proved that ‘not a single word’ of Mark’s Gospel has any basis whatsoever in
historical facts.

>As for the thesis that gnostic Christianism preceded literalist “Die

Entstehung des Christentums aus dem Gnostizismus” (1924) could be of great
interest and for the use of dating; naming; construing ‘facts’ according to
astronomy/astrology both in pagan (and derived therefrom in Christian)
religion “Der Sternhimmel in der Dichtung und Religion der alten Völker und
des Christentums” (1924).


Michael:
What has all this irrelevant idle myth-comparison have to do with whether or
not Jesus existed historically? Discovering such isomorphisms is tantamount
to cracking the code of mythic symbolism of key myths that lie at the
foundation of the Jesus story. When we learn how to fluently think in the
language of these myths, we can better discuss and understand the Jesus story
and its meaning.

Many contemporary investigators try to use a shallow kind of “historical
scholarship” method that limits itself to a certain style of detective work
that is stiffly forensic without grasping the very language of the “crime”
being investigated — but superior detective-work requires getting into the
headspace of the people involved, which we largely *can* do and *must* do to
understand the motives of the incident.

In our case, the incident is the “crime” of creating the lie of the Historical
Jesus. To determine if there was such a crime, we must become fluent in the
mythic language and build it up inside our mental repertoire of evidence for
the case. Can you find the criminal while utterly lacking the ability to
think like the criminal? To prove that Jesus was mythical, we can and must
think mythically, otherwise our case will be as unconvincing as a stack of
copies of The Jesus Puzzle is to narrowly historical scholars who really only
are a shallow contemporary parody of scholarship, lacking the ability to think
mythically.

Researchers who learn to think mythically are likely to recognize the mythic
nature of the Jesus story and conclude that the mythic-Jesus scenario is
completely compelling and plausible. But researchers who try to only think in
a contemporary hard-headed detective way are like ordinary police who are
stumped by the crime — they cannot understand what the criminal’s motives
were, so they cannot relate to the criminal and follow his trail in order to
successfully locate him.

Mere “historical” detectives will be prone to assuming a Historical Jesus.
Detectives who also possess the facility of mythical thinking will be prone to
conclude a Mythic Jesus.

Researchers who maintain the Historical Jesus view are unlikely to find the
book The Jesus Puzzle persuasive. Ultimately the only way to build a fully
compelling case for the mythical nature of Jesus is to build a complete mythic
explanation in addition to a complete contemporary, forensic, and narrowly
historical explanation. I postulate that the earlier Christ Myth books had a
more potent and comprehensive approach: they built a solid case by covering
both components and building a substantial mythic explanation along with a
substantial narrowly-historical case.

Today’s approach to the problem attempts to build a compelling case while
omitting the mythic dimension of the explanation in its own right — the
mythic dimension is treated as an afterthought, something we helplessly throw
our arms up at, in a too-hasty defeat. The
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries discussion group cannot ever,
despite thousands of narrowly scholarly postings, convince, compel, and
persuade people on a narrowly historical basis. The limitations of such a
1-sided approach eliminates the possibility of success at compelling the
Historical Jesus crowd — what do we do, at this impasse we have reached?

How can anyone still believe the Historical Jesus view, after having read The
Jesus Mysteries, The Christ Myth, The Christ Conspiracy, Pagan Christs, The
Jesus Puzzle, and Deconstructing Jesus? The narrowly historical approach will
never persuade such believers, no matter how many solid arguments are amassed.
The only effective way to break through this undeniable stalemate and make
real progress, the only untilled soil and virgin ground left, is to move the
conversation toward the direction of mythic codebreaking.

We’ll never prove the fictional nature of the Jesus story until we can explain
what the story meant to those who constructed it. If you say that we are
unable to understand what the Jesus story meant to those who constructed it,
then there is no hope of ever persuading the Historical Jesus believers. No
amount of such limited and helpless thinking and discussion will ever attain
persuasiveness.

Researchers who assume that we are unable to determine what the Jesus story
meant to those who created, developed, and propagated it, assume a helpless
and weak view of the scope of scholarly power. Such a diminished and reduced
notion of “scholarly evidence” is inherently incapable of building a
convincing case. Such an approach dooms itself to defeat from the start.

Essentially the Christ-Myth theorists must crack the mythic code, then teach
the Historical Jesus researchers how to think mythically, because what stops
the Historical Jesus crowd from accepting Earl Doherty’s book The Jesus Puzzle
is not some deficiency of Doherty’s sober, modern “forensic” evidence, but
because of their lack of ability to think mythically. In practice, a
historical thinker who lacks the ability to think mythically is likely to
maintain the Historical Jesus view, while a researchers who has the ability to
think mythically as well as historically is likely to adopt the mythic-Christ
view.

A person whose mental repertoire includes mythic thinking is able to see the
full self-sufficiency of the mythic version of Jesus as the complete
foundation of Christianity. A person who is unable to think in the mythic
language is unable to see how Christianity could possibly have been created
and propagated without a historical Jesus founding Christianity.

The Historical Jesus crowd’s main objection to the Christ Myth amounts to the
belief that a merely mythic Christ cannot be sufficient to explain the origin
of Christianity. The Historical Jesus crowd does not understand the
conceptual language of myth, so they cannot understand that mythic motives are
completely sufficient to explain the origin Christianity. The *cannot*
believe Doherty; they are *incapable* of believing Doherty, because he does
not teach them how to think mythically and therefore he cannot ever prove to
them that mythic thinking can provide a sufficient basis and complete
explanation of how it is possible for Christianity to begin as a myth.

This is my prophecy: only when the Christ-Myth researchers provide a fully
serious and complete case on the grounds of the sufficiency of myth to explain
the origin of Christianity, will the Historical Jesus crowd accept the Christ
Myth view. Until then, they are unable to accept the Christ Myth view,
because they underestimate the mythic dimension of human thought and cannot
understand how mythic thinking could have given rise to Christianity.

Without a *full* and substantial mythic-thinking based explanation of the
origin of Christianity, you can disprove the Historical Jesus view on narrowly
historical grounds forever but that only disproves the conventional
explanation of the origin of Christianity, *without providing an adequate
alternative* in the form of a sufficiently compelling mythic-thinking based
explanation of the origin of Christianity.

The JesusMysteries discussion group is determined to pursue the problem in
only a narrowly historical mode of research, and therefore will never make any
real progress, because it can only nullify the Historical Jesus explanation of
the origin of Christianity; it can never provide a proven-sufficient and
demonstrably plausible alternative explanation of the origin of Christianity:
the entirely plausible mythic-only basis.

There is really only one practical solution: there needs to be two moderated
newsgroups or two distinct areas of the moderated newsgroup: one that is
dedicated to disproving the Historical Jesus explanation of the origin of
Christianity, and one that is dedicated to proving the sufficiency of the
mythic origin of Christianity, including cracking the code of the meaning of
the Jesus myth in light of the mythic language of the time.

Now that the discussion group has become proficient at keeping the narrowly
historical discussion on-track and constructive, it needs to expand its
conception of “historical scholarship” to the more classic understanding of
that as philology: the study of the meaning of classic writings. In the
discussion group, the conception of what “historical scholarly evidence” is
has remained limited to the printed evidence that there is insufficient basis
to conclude that Jesus existed as a bodily, historical person.

But that negative project only nullifies and disempowers the Historical Jesus
explanation, without providing a fully plausible alternative explanation, so
the Historical Jesus believers will continue to maintain their views for lack
of a *convincing* alternative. So far, the building of a positive case for
the sufficiency of myth to provide a basis for the origin of Christianity has
been anything but convincing, because that alternative has been put forth as a
default alternative without fully and seriously fleshing it out.

As Doherty’s proposed alternative, he offers what comes across to the
Historical Jesus crowd as only a vague and diminished “myth”. The Christ Myth
scholars must become theorists who are adequate to the task of fleshing out a
fully detailed, compelling, and vital alternative scenario, to put forth a
mythic Jesus who is sufficiently fleshed out to become a real threat to the
Historical Jesus scenario.

Doherty must present, reveal, and thus resurrect a Mythic Christ who regains
enough vital substantiality to enable us to reasonably sacrifice the
Historical Jesus. In contrast to the Historical Jesus, we must present a
convincing enough positive case for the Mythic Christ that he can been seen to
have a real body which even the disbelievers in him can see and touch.

We must explain in a convincing way, unlike before, how Paul saw Christ so
compellingly that he created Christianity. Without such a fleshed-out
scenario, we are left with two equally null and dubious explanations for the
origin of Christianity: the implausible Historical Jesus for which we have no
significant evidence, and the equivalently implausible “Mythic Christ” which
today’s scholars deny we can even explain or understand.

Given the choice between two such feeble explanations, people may become
doubters in the Historical Jesus scenario but they will not become believers
in the Mythic Christ scenario for the origin of Christianity. In the
restricted approach that has been dominant so far, an approach that is not
wide-ranging enough to deserve the name of “historical research”, the most
that the discussion can ever really hope to achieve is to weaken the certainty
of the Historical Jesus crowd; the discussion has no chance of actively
pulling them toward favoring the Mythic Christ scenario.

The Christ Myth theorists can never achieve satisfaction by using their
existing approach, because they assume that all they need to construct is the
negative side of the change of understanding: getting people to see the
implausibility of the Historical Jesus view. It’s a matter of how you
conceive of “the mythic explanation” — does “myth” merely the nonexistence of
Jesus, or is myth the active existence of a mythic kind of Jesus?

There are two distinct senses of “the Christ Myth position”. One is negative:
Jesus didn’t exist, he was only a myth. The other is positive: Jesus *did*
exist, in a compelling and substantial way — as a specific mythic being who
was encountered in a mythic state of experiencing. But this positive case has
not been seriously and thoroughly attempted yet.

The positive case combined with the negative case is far more powerfully
persuasive than the negative case alone. The Historical Jesus crowd will
loosen their belief in Historical Jesus but it is not possible for them to
adopt a Christ Myth scenario on a purely negative basis; they can only change
to some form of the Christ Myth position when the Christ Myth scenario is
fully filled out, even if they are currently locked into the Historical Jesus
worldview and are alienated from mythic thinking.

They cannot become interested in mythic thinking until it’s presented with
full convincing detailed explanation, and they cannot switch from the
Historical Jesus view to some CM view until they are brought to become
interested in mythic thinking well enough to see how convincing and plausible
the Mythic Christ scenario is. As long as Historical Jesus believers are
uninterested in mythic thinking, they cannot possibly switch to a Mythic
Christ view.

The negative or neutral form of the Mythic Christ view cannot succeed, cannot
convince people to let go of the Historical Jesus view. Only the positive
form of the Mythic Christ view can actively pull people from the one scenario
to another. The mission and mode of operation of the discussion group is to
get people to switch from the Historical Jesus view to the *neutral* Mythic
Christ view, but that project is evidently doomed to failure. We must present
a much more detailed and coherent alternative that compels people’s interest.
Otherwise, this status quo cannot change.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — convenient method of eliciting a peak experience of
control-cancellation

The Jesus Mysteries discussion group members try to investigate the existence
of Jesus as historians but not as philosophers or philologists.

The historian mentality by itself is insufficient to explain how myth can be
more potent than a historical figure. Their kind of historian mentality is
the vulgar form of history, which considers philosophy (particularly the
philosophy of myth) to be outside of rational intellectual research. Great
historians are also philosophers and are able to insightfully trace the
history of ideas.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — convenient method of eliciting a peak experience of
control-cancellation

Current breakthrough of the hour: “death penalty” as metaphor for mystic
death. “Death penalty” for revealing the secrets of the mysteries: just a
figure of speech? Prometheus as suffering (ego death) *unjustly*.

The genuine mystic may ask: Why do I deserve to die*, when all I did was hold
the delusion of my own metaphysical sovereignty?

*mystically


I have been on one long breakthrough recently. I have cracked the code, have
learned to think in the mythic framework of the Greeks.

I have finally made full connection between the Greek mythic themes and the
theory of ego death. I can trace Paul’s “we die and rise with Christ”, to
Mark’s “we are metaphysically like Jesus: upstart rebels who carry ourselves
as sovereigns and are crucified mystically with Jesus”, to the orthodox “We
are all sinners in rebellion against God and are rightly subject to the death
penalty. Only Christ’s death, as us, can clear our sins and make us right
with God’s perfect judgement.”

The historical study of the origin of Christianity leads us back to Dionysus,
Prometheus, Mithras, Paul’s Christ, Mark’s gospel crucified Historical Jesus,
to the Orthodox Jesus Christ. Either you can explain the mystic code behind
all these, or none — and they are each distinct.

Explaining the metaphorical allusions to mystic experiencing in Paul’s
framework (the early, “authentic” epistles), is different from explaining the
metaphorical system in later Orthodox Christianity, just as much as Dionysus
and Prometheus are different permutations or a different dialect of
essentially the same mystery-language.

It is interesting to see this same mystery-language encoding in acid-rock
lyrics. Acid-oriented rock is the authentic mystery-school of our time.

Now I am entering a period of *systematically* mapping out each myth in terms
of the theory of ego-death, just as, once I cracked the code of acid-rock
allusions to altered-state phenomena, I was able to sweep across the lyrics of
many Rock artists, to identify the clearest examples of such allusions.

Now I do the same with myths: armed with the interpretive framework of the
cybernetic theory of ego transcendence, including the code of the mystery
religions, it becomes routine to spot these mythic patterns in myths I have
only recently heard of. Research is now reduced to pattern matching, and by
this point, I don’t even really need to follow through. Here is the key that
does unlock the doors — try it yourself.

— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions



Ride the Lightning


Guilty as charged
But damn it, it ain’t right
There’s someone else controlling me
Death in the air
Strapped in the electric chair
This can’t be happening to me

Who made you God to say
“I’ll take your life from you!”

Flash before my eyes
Now it’s time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flames


Wait for the sign
To flick the switch of death
It’s the beginning of the end

Sweat, chilling cold
As I watch death unfold
Consciousness my only friend

My fingers grip with fear
What I am doing here?

Flash before my eyes
Now it’s time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flames


Someone help me
Oh please God help me
They are trying to take it all away
I don’t want to die

Time moving slowly
The minutes seem like hours
The final curtain call I see

How true is this?
Just get it over with
If this is true, just let it be

Wakened by the horrid scream
Freed from the frightening dream

Flash before my eyes
Now it’s time to die
Burning in my brain
I can feel the flames


http://www.egodeath.com

>I have just been reading your interpretation of Rush lyrics and with respect

most are way off mark.

>I simply disagree that any lyrics are alluding to LSD etc….”Witchhunt”

which you say is about the “drugs war” is about the evils of racism,xenophobia
etc and has absolutely nothing to do with LSD,it’s blatantly clear from the
lyrics.

>Rush are probably one of the cleanest living bands in rock and always have

been,drugs have never been on there agenda.


What is your position regarding the song Passage to Bangkok? You didn’t
address that, but should have. Without addressing it, your message lacks
credibility.

http://www.egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22938

Do you have any evidence that Peart and Rush in the 70s were clean, rather
than heavy drug users? I have a lot of lyrical evidence that Peart was
intimately familiar with the phenomena that occur in the mystic altered state.
With no evidence, your assertion is a preconception, an empty opinion,
carrying no weight and possessing no ability to persuade.

If you are not familiar with the phenomena of the mystic altered state and are
not familiar with the mystery religions and Hellenistic thinking, you are in a
poor position to evaluate whether the themes and wording in Rush lyrics
include allusions to the phenomena that are common in the mystic altered
state.

— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions

Cracking the code of the mystery-religions

I’m currently reading the latest 25 books I purchased a week ago, and some
library books:

o Hellenistic myths and mystery religions
o The controversy over Copenhagenist quantum mechanics
o Tenseless (illusory) time
o Several ~$85 books on determinism, including in Stoic thought
o Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category

The Gnostics, like the mystery initiates, understood the threat of
block-universe fatalism to human freedom, and were motivated mainly by hating
such a metaphysically disempowering jail cell of “astrological” cosmic
determinism, and by *wanting* and *attempting* to find a way of transcending,
in some sense, the frozen space-time cosmos.

Whether they succeeded, in some sense, at transcending the ego-killing trap of
illusory/frozen time is a matter of debate and a matter of investigating the
notion of transcendence. All the hatred and loathing of my block-universe
idea exhibited by some contemporary Gnostics only serves to confirm the
plausibility of my portrayal of how the ancients had mixed feelings about the
Fatalism they perceived and believed in.

I’m not interested in truth per se, but by making sense out of
mystery-experiencing. I’m constructing a simple, consistent model of how our
personal power of will and self-control sits with respect to the time
dimension, and how the ancients experienced initiation in the mystery
religions. The ancients were concerned above all with the problematic
metaphysical aspects of personal freedom.

We cannot say, with low-level detail, that their myths had only one meaning,
regarding our metaphysical freedom or lack of it, or our transcendence of
metaphysical unfreedom. But we can certainly say that the Gnostics and
mysteries had one high-level, overarching meaning: grappling with the
problematic nature of personal metaphysical freedom.

Each Gnostic group or thinker, and each mystery tradition, and each myth, may
have drawn different conclusions or told the religious story in different
ways, but there is one commonality across all this diversity: they all were
concerned primarily with the problematic nature of personal metaphysical
freedom. When certain contemporary Gnostics rail against my model of the
frozen block universe, they only add support to the above thesis of what
concern, what issue, what *problem* unites all the variant traditions of the
diverse Gnostic groups and mystery traditions.

I have cracked the code, penetrated the mysteries, and solved the puzzle, by
identifying the question, the problem, what was really at issue. The way to
finally make sense of the various Hellenistic myths in an encompassing way is
through reading them as encoded allegories of mystic-state encounters with the
problematic nature of personal metaphysical freedom. Cries by certain
Gnostics against the frozen block-universe model only strengthen this thesis.

o Is the universe in fact frozen, with time being illusory?
o Is our power and freedom a frozen illusion as well?
o Can we meaningfully transcend such deathly freezing or rock-embedding of
the entire time axis?
o Is there a legitimate and coherent way that we can, like Mithras, exit from
the rock-womb and become legitimately free?

These are matters for debate and do not overthrow the value of my model of
time and personal control, as a fundamental and basic model to consider as a
hypothesis and reference point that all initiates must know. No one should
believe that time is an illusion, along with our personal power to author our
own future, but *everyone* should *know* this idea as a fundamental hypothesis
and point of reference.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions

Corresponding history of fatalism and entheogens

The model of time and personal control I have elucidated is a fundamental and
basic model to consider as a hypothesis and reference point that all initiates
and theorists of the origins of religion must know. No one should believe
that time is an illusion, along with our personal power to author our own
future, but *everyone* should *know* this idea as a fundamental hypothesis and
point of reference.

If you don’t know the idea of block-universe fatalism, you have not begun to
engage with the ancients in their own terms; you cannot understand them as
they understood and experienced themselves. People try to understand the
ancients in terms of modern freedom or modern determinism, but the only way to
understand them is how they understood and experienced themselves: as trapped
in frozen, illusory time, with a pre-existing future forced upon them, seeking
to somehow find freedom and escape from such a frozen tomb.

The ancient version of reductionistic determinism was probably only a later,
proto-scientific way of thinking about a much older idea, of Fatalism as the
fixity of the future and of the entire time axis. The ancients were
block-universe-, frozen-time-, preexisting-future-Fatalists long before they
were reductionist determinists. People believed in the frozenness and
preexistence of the future, and our metaphysical inability to change our
future, long before they created atomism and the atomist concept of
‘determinism’.

We can set a specific date for the end of the shared tradition of perceiving
the frozen future in the mystic altered state: around 410, when the mystery
religions were crushed. On that date, the open future was (for awhile)
declared open for business. Yet, of course, the problematic nature of our
personal control with respect to time was bound to thrust itself up
embarrassingly again, traitoriously overthrowing the pretense of our personal
power of will — the phallus wielded by some god or devil speared the
liver/will controlled by our personal agency.

As always, the will (organ of personal control), and the member of rebellious
uprising remained at war with each other, and Augustine eventually embraced a
kind of determinism and predestination that remained at the center of
intellectual concern during the rest of the Christian era.

The mainstream did not engage with the issue of personal control and the
presetness of the future, and they did not have access to the mystic altered
state, so they continued, in a naive and innocent mode, to experience the
future as open and contingent on their own initiated acts as sovereign moral
agents.

It was truly the age of sin and delusion, with the masses assuming the future
to be open, as they were oppressed (or oppressed themselves) into being all
uninitiated, all naively innocent children, lacking experience of initiation,
lacking the perception of the fixity of the future and the experience of our
impotence as metaphysical agents who initiate our own actions and author our
own future.

The ancient tradition of the mystic altered state and the habit of
intellectual investigation of our nature as change-agents continued, but only
with the kind of suppressed vigor of an underground tradition.


The early to middle modern era created the clockwork universe with
reductionist determinism (with the future “closed” in the sense of being
pre-set but *not* pre-existing).

The 20th century world invented the Copenhagenist interpretation of quantum
mechanics to attempt to evade the great problem of metaphysical unfreedom, but
they managed only a fleeting victory, through suppressing the problematic
alternative, hidden variables, endorsed by no less than Einstein and Bohm.
Even Schrodinger’s cat was an unreliable and ultimately traitorious ally for
the Copenhagenists, because the cat was only created by Schrodinger to portray
the absurd and dubious aspect of Copenhagenism, to show what dubious beliefs
you must also adopt if you embrace Copenhagenist quantum indeterminacy.

References for QM controversies:
James T. Cushing – all his QM books, including his recent textbook,
Philosophical Concepts in Physics. He’s the authority on how Copenhagenism
cheated to win dominance and shut out the hidden variables interpretation of
QM.
Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism – Christopher Norris. I haven’t
read it yet; appears relevant.
Einstein, Bohr and the Quantum Dilemma – Whitaker. I haven’t read it yet;
appears relevant.

Finally, with the rediscovery of entheogens, the Nag Hammadi library, and the
Dead Sea Scrolls, we re-discover the initiation experience of the fixity of
the future and the perception of our impotence as metaphysical change-agents.

So we have three eras, which Jonathan Ott contrasts in terms of entheogen
availability and I characterize also in terms of grasping the concept of the
non-open future.

o In the Age of Entheogens, people experienced the future as pre-existing and
closed; freedom was problematic.
o In the Pharmacratic Inquisition, people experienced the future as open;
freedom was taken for granted.
o In the Entheogenic Reformation, people learn again the concept of the
pre-existing and closed future; freedom is problematic or taken with a
metaphysical caveat, but has become a stable convention.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions

Key themes of mystery allusions to mystic dissociative phenomena


I could explain Attis in terms of the mystic altered state and its associated
concepts, adding that to my new pile of cracked mythic codes, such as
Promethus, several modes or variants of the Christ myth, and Dionysus.
However, by this time, I need to do the same as I did when sweeping the
classic-rock lyrics to seek out the allusions to the common distinctive
phenomena of the mystic altered state: list the categories of themes, forming
a catalog of themes that can be freely arranged so that you can construct your
own genuine mythic tradition, following the strict rules of the ancient poets.

o ithyphallus = goat = the inability of our personal power of will to control
ourselves

o pierced side = slaying of the illusion of our personal will = arrow of time

o donkey = goat = bull = unenslavable, disobedient, self-willed, sovereign
(self-ruling)

o horse = sheep = ox = enslavable, obdient, other-controlled, subject (ruled
over)

o goats vs. sheep = seemingly self-willed (deluded) vs. metaphysically
ever-obedient (enlightened)

o insane = dionysian = entheogenic loose cognition

o torn to pieces = entheogenic loose cognition; cognitive dis-integration

o castrated = unrebellious/obedient = ultimate securing of control over one’s
rebellious will = mind has transcended illusion of authoring its will =
Amanita under pine tree

o drunken = unmixed wine = psychoactive mixture in a preservative wine base

o gorgon face = bloated face of rancid, unburied death = metaphor for ego
death upon seeing illusory aspect of time & fixity/preexistence of future

o child = uninitiated = naive delusion of metaphysical freedom

o abduction of young daughter or son = sudden destroying of one’s naively
confident illusion of metaphysical freedom by seeing the frozen-future concept

o winnow = separate the poisonous/psychoactive ergot from the ordinary grain

o death penalty = penalty of death = what the uninitiated is subject to, and
suffers upon enlightenment

o doll = puppet = experience of metaphysical helplessness in light of
frozen/illusory time

o sin = morality = error of moral thinking = pseudo-guilt of conceiving
people as morally culpable

o rebel = uprising = contender for king = would-be-king = rebel king = false
sovereign = illusion of metaphysically free ego who controls oneself and
authors the open, not-yet-settled future

o transgression = sin = trespasses = trespassing = conceiving of ourselves as
wielding sovereign power over the space-time block that produces our every
thought and action

o tomb = womb = cave = matrix = cosmos = rock = astrological determinism =
frozen space-time block that prevents metaphysical freedom

o slavery = captivity = realizing the plausible concept that we are frozen
into space-time and authored ultimately by it rather than our own power as
free agents.

o delivered = ransomed = released = freed = exodus = exit = reborn =
resurrected = redeemed = the hope that we can in some sense transcend the
frozen-future concept or realization that would destroy our power of
originating our own actions and future states.

o judgement = trial = court = justice = condemnation = in the mystic altered
state, examining our concept of oneself as initiator and change-agent, and
finding it untenable in light of our altered-state peception of time and
personal control

o forgiven = sanctified = cleansed = washed = sin-cancellation = letting go
of the naive assumption of our moral culpability, necessarily together with
letting go of the assumption of our metaphysical freedom and the open future

o sacrifice = substitute sacrifice = willing sacrifice = abandoning our naive
assumption of metaphysical freedom and corresponding mental-model of oneself
and the world, in order to gain a new view of ourselves as being produced as
part of the frozen space-time block.


These are allegorical metaphors for the mystic altered state and the concepts
and experiences brought forth in it. These metaphors explain the mystic
meaning of the Jesus myth, the Attis myth, the Dionysus and Prometheus myths,
and all other paradigmatic Hellenistic myths. The central theme is the
problematic nature of our metaphysical freedom, including encountering and
seeking to transcend the problem.

Now I am entering a period where cracking the code, deciphering the language,
has become reduced to routine. Today, or this week, marks the effective
culmination and peak of such mystery-concept code-cracking, just as there was
a specific week during which I wrote lists of lyrical allusions to the
phenomena of the mystic altered state in popular acid rock or classic rock
songs.

http://www.egodeath.com/mcpnotes.htm#xtocid15387 — Key themes of lyrical
allusions to mystic dissociative phenomena

http://www.egodeath.com/rushacid.htm#xtocid12715 – lyric lines for one artist

Since I have characterized acid rock as the genuine mystery religion of our
era, it is fitting that my greatest summary of acid-rock thematic categories
should so closely match my catalog of themes from the mystery religions and
myths. If we dissolve or analyze the mystery stories into their key motifs,
we have the building blocks for such classic-rock lyrical allusions.

Where in classic rock/acid rock lyrics do we find anything that can be called
a mythic story, as opposed to a mere technique of inserting isolated allusions
as a secondary encoded layer? These rock lyrics usually are put forth in the
guise of a song about a non-mystery subject, with individual phrases serving
as isolated pointers to prompt the altered mind to recognize a hidden layer of
meaning alluding to the shared experience of artist and hearer.

These classic-rock songs and ancient religious mythic stories both have the
form of a surface story that serves to allude to the phenomena, experiences,
and insights that come forth in the mystic altered state. The story embodies,
encodes, and conveys the materials that have come forth from the experience
and serve to reproduce and lead back into the experience.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions

CG:

>Granted you may have some good points,but there is some big difference
>between the heady 70s and the eighties onwards and anyone who has followed
>Rush for a long time (as I have since I was 12) knows that the guys are
>wonderful,caring,family minded guys with a great sense of fun.
>
>Many of their lyrics in recent times have been about issues like personal
>ambition and life in general and about internationalism.
>The lyrics of Rush have been inspirational to a great many people who have
>no truck with LSD or anything else of that ilk.
>The guys are consummate musicians who have always put the music first and
>never went for the whole Rock scene and all the associated baggage,this has
>been recorded many times in biographies and in Fanzines.
>
>You are way off mark and its very sad that you make such a superb band look
>like a group of drug addicts when they have NEVER been anything like that.

You have not explained how your points supposedly disprove Rush’s repeated use
of LSD. I will spell out your implied reasoning to see how compelling it is.

>Rush are wonderful, caring, family minded guys with a great sense of fun.

Therefore they must not have been LSD enthusiasts or acid mystics, because LSD
users are not wonderful, caring, family minded guys, and they do not have a
great sense of fun.

>Many of their lyrics in recent times have been about issues like personal

ambition and life in general and about internationalism. Therefore the lyrics
do not contain allusions to LSD phenomena or acid mysticism, because lyrics
can only contain a single level of meaning.

>The lyrics of Rush have been inspirational to a great many people who have no

truck with LSD or anything else of that ilk. Therefore the lyrics do not
contain deliberate allusions to LSD phenomena, because songs cannot be
inspirational to non-LSD users while still having elements that are intended
for listeners in the altered state.

>The guys are consummate musicians who have always put the music first.

Therefore they have not used LSD repeatedly, because people who put the music
first must avoid using LSD.

>As documented in biographies and in Fanzines, they never went for the whole

Rock scene and all the associated baggage. Therefore they have not used LSD,
because rejecting the common Rock lifestyle means avoiding taking LSD.

>You make a superb band look like a group of drug addicts when they have never

been anything like that.

Your arguments are weak indeed, as well as ignorant, narrow-minded,
prejudiced, and jam-packed full of preconceptions. It’s not really thinking,
but rather, superficial, unexamined, assumed associations. So I see what kind
of critical thinking is needed to reject the hypothesis I put forward. You
don’t know anything at all about LSD, evidently, except pop-culture and
propaganda. I’d be surprised if you knew anything about the Greek
mystery-religions and the Hellenistic myths.

What can I say to the ignorant children, except, I’m glad that I can introduce
them to the world of higher thought for the first time.


— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — theory of ego death and rebirth in mystery
religions