The Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ): Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms – Omits Category “Threat of Loss of Control”!

Michael Hoffman, December 16, 2022 6:26 pm UTC+0

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Contents:

toc added/updated Dec. 27, 2024

Intro

pending

Updated Assessment December 20, 2022

Instead of expanding the present page, I started a fresh new page, planned title:
How Control-Loss Got Omitted from the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ)

Where did the control-related questions go? What happened to them? How did they get dropped along the way?

The CEQ questions are definitely flawed right at the most central key point:

The CEQ questions omit any “control” phrases, which are found elsewhere in the article.

Instead of words about control loss threat, the CEQ has duplicated, indistinguishable, redundant questions about:

  • fear/frightened 2x
  • death/dead 2x
  • isolation 2x
  • shake/shaky 2x.

The previous questionnaires and the body of the article have such phrasing. I list those exact “control” phrases from the CEQ article. I’m re-checking that list now.

At the bottom of this webpage, I’m doing a focused examination of the control-related wording in the CEQ questions, and comparing them to the control phrases elsewhere in the CEQ article.

Why are four or more questions exactly duplicated (fear, death), instead of having any questions about control?

Maturation of the Articles

Griffiths’ “Guidelines for Safety” article is 2008. Doesn’t mention heart palpitation/ uneven heartbeat.

Griffiths’ CEQ article is 2016. Mentions heart palpitation/ uneven heartbeat.

Where the action’s at: the last 2 pages of the article; section:
Appendix 2: Initial Item Pool for CEQ Development – top priority.

List these control-related questions from the previous questionnaires, along with which questionnaire they are from.

Map them to the CEQ’s questions to determine what became of the vanishing control-related words/phrases.

Then assess body of article, section by section, looking for discussion of why those control-related phrases got dropped when copying questions from previous questionnaires into the CEQ.

My Initial Assessment

Apparently, according to Roland Griffiths, the threat of loss of control isn’t a challenging experience with psilocybin mushrooms, even though his article mentions ‘control’ 19 times and quotes other questionnaires, including their entire category of questions, “Impaired cognition/control”.

So far, I’ve found 3 documents that misrepresent bad trips, due to Roland Griffiths’ cover-up of the main bad trip effect – the threat of loss of control:

I have informed the Oregon Advisory Board about the threat of loss of control and its folk solution, “surrender/ submit/ accept the loss of control”, as well as linking them to my Requirements for Guides webpage, along with informing them that Psilocybin is at the heart of Christian historical religious practice.

Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ)

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms

Step aside, MEQ, make way for the CEQ.

The article that develops and presents the CEQ:

https://www.academia.edu/33760114/The_Challenging_Experience_Questionnaire_Characterization_of_challenging_experiences_with_psilocybin_mushrooms

Frederick S Barrett, Matthew P Bradstreet,
Jeannie-Marie S Leoutsakos, Matthew W Johnson
and Roland R Griffiths, 2016

Summary of the Missing/ Covered-up Questions About Control-Loss

Copied from my analysis of Griffith’s question categories below, here is the list of missing, key, common questions that should’ve been in the CEQ.

Threat of Loss of Control (missing category)
  • marionette [helpless puppet – my formulation/ phrase]
  • sense of being trapped and helpless
  • volition
  • new thoughts [eg of control transgression]
  • dread of ego dissolution
  • loss of ego/control
  • impaired control and cognition
  • confusion, disorientation and/or chaos [control instability]
  • impaired control, disintegration of sense of control [not phrasing from pdf]
  • impaired control and cognition
  • no longer had a will of my own
  • paralyzed
  • unable to make decisions
  • felt threatened
  • frustrating attempt to control
  • loss of control of my mind
  • threat of loss of control [my formulation/ phrase]
  • psychotic immunity to fear; inappropriate affect regarding transgressive thoughts [my formulation/ phrase]
  • felt like my control-thoughts already exist in the future, unavoidably [my formulation/ phrase]

Article: “Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety”

Similarly, Griffiths’ article “Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety” is missing (almost entirely) the effect, Threat of Loss of Control; Fear of Loss of Control.

Panic about/ Apprehension of/ Fear of loss of control – yet that comes with an attraction element too, per the mytheme {sirens luring steersman/ sailors to their death on the rocks}.

Griffiths’ articles are also missing, or entirely short on, the solution, which is: {submit to/ give honor to/ pay obeisance to/ surrender to/ pacify/ mollify/ sacrifice to} the eternalism no-free-will {dragon/ planetary archon fate-ruler}.

Johnson, M.W., Richards, W.A., Griffiths, R.R. (2008).

url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056407/

Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22, 603-620.

commentary copied from https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/17/consciousness-religion-gurus-the-pitfalls-of-psychedelic-medicine-matthew-johnson/ –

Like Griffiths’ Challenging Experiences Questionnaire, this article has no real awareness of the main experience, the threat of loss of control.

Michelle Janikian’s 2019 book Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion has the correct focus on the problem of the threat of loss of control. Excerpts:

Standard Hazy Trip Advice on Surrender to the Shadow, Trust, Submit, and Let Go of Control

url https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/standard-hazy-trip-advice-on-surrender-to-shadow-trust-submit-and-let-go-of-control/

Griffiths’ articles seem like dated affectation, a pose that seemed marketable for 2008, but entirely inadequate and out of touch with the problem.

/ end of copied commentary

Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ)

MEQ: https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/5/22/the-mystical-experience-questionaire-30-questions

Article about MEQ: https://psychedelicreview.com/what-is-the-mystical-experience-questionnaire/

Charles Stang’s Critique of Whitewashed Pseudo-“Mystic Experience”

See in my past couple posts, Charles Stang’s criticism of Roland Griffiths’ lopsidedly positive, whitewashed marketing of “mystic experience”.

The Egodeath community has pointed out this marketing whitewashing.

Stang’s critique; find “Stang” in:
Psychedelics and the Future of Religion/ Transcendence and Transformation Initiative (Stang, Harvard)
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/psychedelics-and-the-future-of-religion-transcendence-and-transformation-initiative-stang-harvard/

CEQ Surprisingly Omits Entire Category of “Control Loss”

Griffiths has created a negative survey, that’s about 75% good, but has amazing huge gaps – surprised but not surprised.

I’m surprised at which omissions and blind spots are in the survey vs. what known negative experiences are mentioned in the course of creating the CEQ.

Here are phrases throughout the article that – astoundingly – didn’t make it into the 1-page questionnaire of 26 questions. Some are from other questionnaires.

  • volition
  • new thoughts [eg of control transgression]
  • dread of ego dissolution
  • loss of ego/control
  • impaired control and cognition
  • Question 21 Experience of confusion, disorientation and/or chaos [control instability]
  • Question 28 Sense of being trapped and helpless
  • Question 37 Visions of demons, devils or other wrathful deities [omitted b/c culture-specific myth omitted]
  • Question 40 Feeling that people were plotting against you [I’d say “thoughts conspiring to pull into vortex”, not “people”]
  • Question 44 Thoughts and ideas flashing by very rapidly [2112 lyrics, Lessons song]
  • Question 57 Feeling of being rejected or unwanted [repudiating/ sacrificing childish possibilism-thinking, have to jettison]
  • Question 75 Convincing feeling of contact with people who have died
  • Question 76 Sense of being separated from the normal world, as though you were enclosed in a thick, silent glass chamber [says “isolated and lonely” instead]
  • The subjective experience of one’s own death and loss of control of the mind
  • Question 66 Frustrating attempt to control the experience
  • Question 84 Feeling of disintegration, falling apart
  • Question 94 In control
  • 5DASC [questionnaire’s category] items: Impaired cognition/control subscale: [an entire category omitted!]
  • 5. I felt like a marionette. [Little Dolls song by Bob Daisley, Twilight Zone by Rush or Peart]
  • 16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
  • 33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
  • 44. I felt isolated from everything and everyone.
  • 45. I was not able to complete a thought, my thought repeatedly became disconnected.
  • 53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
  • 29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
  • 38. I felt threatened.

The grading guide arranges the questions by group – there is no “loss of control” category or questions!! Inconceivable. Even though they list such questions from other, previous questionnaires.

CEQ’s Questions Grouped into Categories

Threat of Loss of Control (missing category)
  • marionette [helpless puppet – my formulation/ phrase]
  • sense of being trapped and helpless
  • volition
  • new thoughts [eg of control transgression]
  • dread of ego dissolution
  • loss of ego/control
  • impaired control and cognition
  • confusion, disorientation and/or chaos [control instability]
  • impaired control, disintegration of sense of control
  • no longer had a will of my own
  • paralyzed
  • unable to make decisions
  • felt threatened
  • frustrating attempt to control
  • loss of control of my mind
  • threat of loss of control [my formulation/ phrase]
  • psychotic immunity to fear; inappropriate affect regarding transgressive thoughts [my formulation/ phrase]
  • felt like my control-thoughts already exist in the future, unavoidably [my formulation/ phrase]
Fear
  • I had the feeling something horrible would happen
  • Experience of fear
  • Anxiousness
  • Panic
  • I felt frightened
Grief
  • Sadness
  • Feelings of grief
  • I felt like crying
  • Feelings of despair
  • Despair
  • Emotional and/or physical suffering
Physical Distress
  • Feeling my heart beating
  • Feeling my body shake/tremble
  • I felt shaky inside [Michael Williams book: The Unshakeable Race (gnostics)]
  • I felt my heart beating irregularly or skipping beats
  • Pressure or weight in my chest or abdomen
Insanity
  • Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane
  • I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever
  • I experienced a decreased sense of sanity
Isolation
  • Isolation and loneliness
  • Feeling of isolation from people and things
  • I felt isolated from everything and everyone
Death
  • I had the profound experience of my own death
  • I felt as if I was dead or dying
Paranoia
  • I had the feeling that people were plotting against me
  • Experience of antagonism toward people around me

Zero Thought of Discussing “How Did You Solve/ Resolve the Problem?”

Not Solution-Oriented At All, only “Try to Predict & Avoid the Experiences”

The article says understanding challenging experiences helps predict and prevent them during therapy – yet has zero concept of “Hey, we should discuss how people solved these problems when they did come up.”

It merely mentions “responds to reassurance” (which assumes there’s a Guide to do the “reassuring”).

For the standard vague actual solutions people use, see my recent post https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/standard-hazy-trip-advice-on-surrender-to-shadow-trust-submit-and-let-go-of-control/

The mind is made to submit and surrender to the higher-level control source and jettison (repudiate, sacrifice, outgrow) the egoic claim to autonomous power of steering in a branching tree of possibilities.

Relying on left leg = unstable, branching-possibilities model, gives control failure/ cybernetic control death.

Relying on right leg = stable, non-branching model, gives viable control and ability to be in the psilocybin state with suitable, useful, appropriate, durable control mode.

More content below, including the actual questionnaire.

See Also

Strict Requirements for Teachers, Initiation Guides, and Students, Prior to Initiation
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/strict-requirements-for-teachers-initiation-guides-and-students-prior-to-initiation/

Standard Hazy Trip Advice on Surrender to the Shadow, Trust, Submit, and Let Go of Control
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/standard-hazy-trip-advice-on-surrender-to-shadow-trust-submit-and-let-go-of-control/
About extracted from Michelle Janikian’s book:
Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion: An Informative, Easy-to-Use Guide to Understanding Magic Mushrooms—From Tips and Trips to Microdosing and Psychedelic Therapy

Flawed CEQ that Omits the Entire Category of “Loss of Control” – DOH!

The word “control” doesn’t even appear in the questionnaire, The Challenging Experiences Questionnaire!! The word ‘control’ appears 19 times in the article.

Even though the 5DASC questionnaire which this article quotes has an entire category of questions, called “Impaired cognition/control subscale”.

HOW IN THE … CAN YOU MAKE A BAD TRIP QUESTIONNAIRE AND FAIL TO EVEN MENTION CONTROL??!! mega fail!!

🌳🍄🐍😵🪨🐉🚪💨💥💎🏆

Appendix 1: The Challenging Experience Questionnaire

Instructions: Looking back on the entirety of your session, please rate the degree to which at any time during that session you experienced the following phenomena. Answer each question according to your feelings, thoughts, and experiences at the time aof the session. In making each of your ratings, use the following scale:

  • 0 – none; not at all
  • 1 – so slight cannot decide
  • 2 – slight
  • 3 – moderate
  • 4 – strong
  • 5 – extreme (more than ever before in my life)

______ 1. Isolation and loneliness

______ 2. Sadness

______ 3. Feeling my heart beating

______ 4. I had the feeling something horrible would happen

______ 5. Feeling my body shake/tremble

______ 6. Feelings of grief

______ 7. Experience of fear

______ 8. Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane

______ 9. I felt like crying

______ 10. Feeling of isolation from people and things

______ 11. Feelings of despair

______ 12. I had the feeling that people were plotting against me

______ 13. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever

______ 14. Anxiousness

______ 15. I felt shaky inside

______ 16. I had the profound experience of my own death

______ 17. I felt my heart beating irregularly or skipping beats

______ 18. Pressure or weight in my chest or abdomen

______ 19. I experienced a decreased sense of sanity

______ 20. I felt as if I was dead or dying

______ 21. Panic

______ 22. Experience of antagonism toward people around me

______ 23. Despair

______ 24. I felt isolated from everything and everyone

______ 25. Emotional and/or physical suffering

______ 26. I felt frightened

Free for non-commerical[sic] use.

Control Transformation Art Imagery

Rescued by no-free-will from outside the local control agent system by the higher control level, pulled from the jaws of hell of control disproof/ transgression, and purified/ perfected/ enlightened/ transformed from (immature, temporary, contingent, perishable) possibilism-thinking to (mature) eternalism-thinking.

Childish branching-thinking (naive possibilism-thinking) is carried off, affirming non-branching possibilities, per branching-message mushroom trees.

Book: John Lash: Not In His Image, page 220, annotation by Cybermonk, July 4, 2022

One of my announcements of my full decoding of the major medieval mythic art trope {branching-message mushroom tree}.

That was drawn a few months after Brown sent me the 2019 version of the highlighted passage from the art scholar’s book about “youths in trees cutting branches” around March 2022, which has stronger highlighting than the 2016 book’s text.

The color plate in the 2016 book is fairly faint and faded, so I didn’t catch the “youths cutting branches” art mytheme motif when the book first shipped, but only 5-6 years later.

Photo credit above: Julie M. Brown, crop & processing by Cybermonk.

Photo credit above: Julie M. Brown, crop by Cybermonk.

Brown fails to mention or note this curved pruning knife (held in right hand, cutting the branches held by left hand) in the 2016 book or 2019 article. (Please prove me wrong.)

from Panofsky’s sekrit 2nd letter to Wasson, published by Brown & Brown 2019 https://www.academia.edu/40412411/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

if the artists had labored under the delusion that the model before him was meant to be a mushroom rather than a schematized tree he would have omitted the branches altogether.

Erwin Panofsky, secret 2nd letter to Wasson

WHOOSH the whole message and purpose of the branching mushroom tree imagery went completely over the head of the most influential art historian, who, in the case of mushroom imagery, presents infantile, flimsy argumentation not worthy of a grade schooler.

The mental world model of {control and time and possibilities branching} is conformed to {worldline in block universe} per eternalism.

Steersman Helios controlled by Mithras, reconciled operating in harmony/ unison as the two levels of your mind.

= cosmos level 8 (heimarmene / eternalism) & 9/10 (the ennead & the decans; the Empyrean where dwells God and the elect).

In the psilocybin eternalism state, rely on non-branching thinking (right leg), not branching-possibilities/ freewill thinking (left leg).

The branching vs. non-branching mental worldmodel of control, time, & possibilities.

Cista mystica lid-covered snake-basket mechanism veiled in the mind’s control-system at the fountainhead source of control-thoughts.

Helios & Mithras banqueting at the symposium party on the hide of the sacrificed egoic-thinking possibilism-thinking bull, psilocybin mixed wine in drinking horn.

Control stability restored from outside the egoic control system, jettisoning relying on naive possibilism-thinking.

Caption in main article’s section https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death-2006-main-article/#Transcending-Determinism-Requires-Two-Jumps –

“In Mark 9:14-29, Jesus exorcises the ego-demon from a youth supported by his father; these four figures are aspects of the psyche.”

Uploading an Image

Photo credit above: Julie M. Brown. Full wide image including knife in upper right, but I need more on the right that’s cut off.

Dec. 20, 2022 Reassessment of Whether Control Questions Are Discussed

Moved to or superseded by a separate webpage, planned title:
“How Control Loss Got Omitted from the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire CEQ”

There, I’m doing a fresh assessment of the CEQ article.

Where are all the places that the CEQ article mentions the threat of loss of control; control-related questions?

Ignore the word ‘control’ in the unrelated sense of controlling a scientific procedure.

Final CEQ questions: Where Did ‘Control’ Go??

Copied to a separate webpage.

Here are the final literal CEQ questions, with bold on words that are like threat of loss of control:

______ 1. Isolation and loneliness

______ 2. Sadness

______ 3. Feeling my heart beating

______ 4. I had the feeling something horrible would happen

______ 5. Feeling my body shake/tremble

______ 6. Feelings of grief

______ 7. Experience of fear

______ 8. Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane

______ 9. I felt like crying

______ 10. Feeling of isolation from people and things

______ 11. Feelings of despair

______ 12. I had the feeling that people were plotting against me

______ 13. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever

______ 14. Anxiousness

______ 15. I felt shaky inside

______ 16. I had the profound experience of my own death

______ 17. I felt my heart beating irregularly or skipping beats

______ 18. Pressure or weight in my chest or abdomen

______ 19. I experienced a decreased sense of sanity

______ 20. I felt as if I was dead or dying [dup of 16 – did this replace ‘control’?]

______ 21. Panic

______ 22. Experience of antagonism toward people around me

______ 23. Despair

______ 24. I felt isolated from everything and everyone

______ 25. Emotional and/or physical suffering

______ 26. I felt frightened [dup of 7 – did this replace ‘control’?]

Phrases from other pages about control that got omitted from the CEQ questions

This is from my initial pass. Below, in the TOC-based headings, I plan to list all of the quotes from each section of the CEQ article, with enough context to track what happened to control-phrasing such that it was omitted from the CEQ questions.

Actually I think these might be extracted only from the previous questinnaires (SOCQ, HRS, 5DASC); Appendix 2.

That’s a good strategy; do this first; so now re-do this first (copy entire questions this time, from previous q’aires (Apx2)), before extracting phases from body of article.

To do first: for each item below, confirm that it’s lifted from “Initial Item Pool” section: result: half the items in this list were from the questions in Appendix 2 (previous questionnaires), half were from body of article.

Therefore, work backwards:

  1. First, in Appendix 2’s subheadings (SOCQ, HRS, 5DASC), list all the questions (verbatim w/ number & any question-category that’s indicated). Status: about to start.
  2. Then, for each section of article body, extract phrases, with special attention of which q’air it came from and how Griffiths managed to omit that phrase from his CEQ questions. Status: not started.
  3. Finally: Describe assessment: How do the earlier q’airs have their control-related questions, and the body of the article contains control-related phrases, and yet how then did the CEQ end up lacking any control-related phrases? Status: not started.
  • marionette5DASC
  • sense of being trapped and helplessSOCQ
  • volition not a question. 2 hits: page 2 & 4.
  • new thoughtspage 2, not a question
  • dread of ego dissolutionpage 2, not a question. no q’aires mention “dissolution”. 8 hits in article.
  • loss of ego/control. not a question. 3 hits on “loss of ego”, all on page 2.
  • impaired control and cognition – not question. “impaired control” is 1 hit, in this whole phrase, page 2.
  • confusion, disorientation and/or chaos– SOCQ. ‘disorientation’ also p. 4: “disorientation, ego loss, loss of perception of time“
  • impaired control, disintegration of sense of control [not phrasing from pdf]
  • impaired control and cognition- not a question. 1 hit on “impaired control”: p. 2, in “impaired control and cognition”
  • no longer had a will of my own5DASC
  • paralyzed5DASC
  • unable to make decisions5DASC, actual wording: “difficulty making even the smallest decision.”
  • felt threatened5DASC
  • frustrating attempt to controlSOCQ
  • loss of control of my [the] mindNot a question. 1 hit on complete phrase “loss of control”: “experience of one’s own death and loss of control of the mind”, page 14.

Does the body text anywhere explain WHY these phrases got omitted from CEQ?

“Control” Wording in Each Section of the CEQ Article

Superseded by a separate webpage.

Start with the end: Appendix 2’s questions from previous questionnaires (SOC, HRS, 5DASC). Because the control-related phrases are there, and the format is comparable to the explanandum, which is the CEQ list of questions.

How come Griffiths started from the good questions he picked from SOC, HRS, 5DASC, and ended up removing/ omitting/ censoring/ whitewashing/ covering up all control-related wording from the CEQ’s version of those questions?

Psychedelics and the Future of Religion/ Transcendence and Transformation Initiative (Stang, Harvard)

Intro

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news

Has transcripts for each video.

That Harvard page lists all the Center for the Study of World Religion dept. videos, with the “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” series of 8 videos for the first academic year (Sep 2020-May 2021) mixed in, unmarked.

Generally, my copied passages are condensed excerpts; see link for exact original passage.

If I were publishing formally, though, I would not lie and misquote Wm James like all the posers (Ken Wilber) do; I would start: “On nitrous, it occurred to me…”

Motivation for Post

Had to make my own webpage to gather the list of the 8 episodes of the academic year 2020-2021 “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” video series.

Search:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=harvard+%22Psychedelics+and+the+Future+of+Religion%22

At Harvard’s page & YouTube channel, the episodes are jumbled in with others, not marked.

The 8 episodes are listed below with some of my excepts and comments.

The 8 Season 1 videos are buried mixed in at YouTube channel. Academic year 2020-2021.

Self-Suppression of Psychedelics Content

Harvard is trying to hide their psychedelics content.

Proof that there’s a cover-up: Newberg ‘s video’s description brags frankly and directly about the two authors being experts in psychedelics – and yet the book itself does not advertise as psychedelics, and keeps that buried and hidden, and they try to downplay that and whitewash and cover up psychedelics hidden in the “altered states” chapter at the end.

I found the same pattern in a Wouter Hanegraaff video, where the description of the video was no-nonsense, no BS baloney; it said that entheogens are plants, period – no BS affectation posturing dancing-about with “entheogens in the wide sense”.

Academics are really low IQ and stupid because they allow themselves to be handcuffed/ censored in 18 different ways, and so of course they can’t write anything of any interest or relevance; it’s all double-talk/ cover-up.

Transcendence and Transformation Initiative

Official precious webpage: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/about/transcendence-and-transformation – translation: PSYCHEDELICS & ENTHEOGENS

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/about/transcendence-and-transformation

Search:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=harvard+%22Transcendence+and+Transformation%22

Article: Transcending and Transforming Psychedelics

Alice Denison, Nov 2021

https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/11/04/transcending-and-transforming-psychedelics

“In the first event of the [Psychedelics and the Future of Religion] series, Charles M. Stang, CSWR Director and Professor of Early Christian Thought, hosted Dr. Roland Griffiths of John Hopkins University, perhaps the leading researcher into the healing possibilities of psilocybin.

“Stang pushed Griffiths on how his studies seem to sanitize mystical experiences by defining them as profoundly moving encounters with a loving, transcendent source, and sidelining harrowing experiences of the divine as abysmal, dark, and even terrifying.

“Stang remarks: “This is where the history of religion is important, because it is shot through with the full archive of experiences.

inches away from being shot through by psilocybernetics

“Religions know how to deal with harrowing experiences of God as an abyss because, guess what, people regularly have experiences of God as an abyss.

“And communities have to hold that, have to help people work with those experiences.” 👏

“The [8] webinars [at YouTube] explored a range of topics, including:

bold claims made by psychedelic researchers about religion, spirituality, and mysticism;

limitations inherent in the scientific study of psychedelics (and the need for the humanities, especially the study of religion to take more of a lead); [give it up, loser academics, you forfeited to Park St Press, caved in to the boot-heel of Prohibitionism]

the possibility of training spiritual guides for psychedelic experiences, sometimes called “psychedelic chaplaincy”;

the evidence for psychedelic use in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, from the Eleusinian Mysteries to early Christianity; [not medieval] and

how to honor and include indigenous voices that are often sidelined in popular discourse.”

Harvard Divinity School

Charles Stang

Video Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion

Video 8 (May 2021): Between Sacred & Profane: Psychedelic Culture, Drug Spiritualities, and Contemporary America (Charles Stang, Erik Davis, Gary Laderman, Christian Greer)

May 2021

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/06/02/video-between-sacred-profane-psychedelic-culture-drug-spiritualites-and-contemporary

transcript

url https://youtu.be/ymfw3VOgy6g Charles Stang, Erik Davis, Gary Laderman, Christian Greer – May 10, 2021: a superior video, worth multiple times

Book: The Varieties of Spiritual Experience: 21st Century Research and Perspectives (Yaden & Newberg)

David B. Yaden and 1 more

published Sep 1, 2022

url https://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Spiritual-Experience-Research-Perspectives/dp/019066567X/

Chapter on “Unity and Ego Dissolution”.

The final chapter is on “Consciousness and Altered States”.

The intro pulls the same shiite as the first sentence in Ken Wilber’s first book: Censors “[On nitrous oxide], it occurs to me…” – Wm James wrote lowercase “it”; this censored version falsely starts their whitewashed misquote with “It”.

I found the Andrew Newberg school of writers disappointing, boring, straight, denatured, unmystical, OSC squares, maybe they were ordinary-state only, or meditation pushers, like CSR lameness: the (ordinary-state) Cog Sci of Religion. <– don’t care! irrel, reductionist, off-base, nothing of dionysus in it

religionless religion

exoteric esotericism

ordinary-state mystic experiencing

Video: The Varieties of Spiritual Experience (David Yaden)

Nov 2022 (not part of “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” series)

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/video-varieties-spiritual-experience-21st-century-research-and-perspectives

Listen to Stang’s intro describing the T and T program/initiative: https://youtu.be/j4mjX5ZsUVk

Charles Stang:

“It always strikes me as strange why should we think that depriving oneself of something like food would induce a– could induce a legitimate spiritual experience but if we ingest something that is somehow illegitimate?

“And I’ve wondered whether the worry about ingesting something is troublesome precisely because of the Eucharist?“

“There’s a sense in which only one thing [the Eucharist] that you can ingest should transform you.

“You can do all kinds of other bodily exercises, but if you’re going to put something in your– if you’re going to eat or drink something that would transform you, it should be the Eucharist.

“And so anything [else] that might do that is kind of rendered illegitimate by virtue of its stepping into the space of the Eucharist.“

Who is going to break it to Stang that the Eucharist is Psilocybin?

“I’m wondering if you find that even remotely compelling as an explanation for Christian worries about psychedelics?”

Michael Ferguson:

“One is to look within Christendom and to correlate the degree to which a particular faith tradition has a high veneration for the Eucharist.

“And then to see if there is an association with an increased or decreased anxiety surrounding psychedelics.

“Because with this working hypothesis you would predict that the higher that the reverence is given to the Eucharist sacramentally, that the higher the anxiety around psychedelics would be for some kind of authenticity of mystical experience induction.

“And then a second dimension of analysis would be to look across different traditions, Islamic traditions, Jewish traditions, et cetera to see if there is comparable anxiety, or if there is really something uniquely elevated about Christian anxiety.

“But if we were to run that experiment, my wager is that perhaps there would be some correlation there.

“But that there would be perhaps a larger explanatory value to the anxieties about intoxicated states generally.

“I think that already with spiritual rapture there is such a patently intoxicating effect about it.

“That this delicate dance between ecstatic transformation versus delusion is so difficult to really finely walk and to discern.

“And so my speculation is that it’s more generally an anxiety about any type of intoxicant that would compromise the ability for discernment.”

Stang:

“Are people as anxious about that as a technique for inducing altered states as they are about techniques that involve of ingesting something, and if so why?”

Video: Transcendence and Transformation [initiative, Oct 2021]

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/10/01/video-transcendence-transformation

HOME / EVENTS / PAST CSWR EVENT VIDEOS /

October 1, 2021

The Transcendence and Transformation kick-off event took place Sept. 23. [2021]

Charles M. Stang, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), discussed the Center’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation,” and introduced its first cohort.

“The new initiative will study religious and spiritual traditions and practices—ancient and modern, global in reach—that aim for the transcendence of our normal states of being, consciousness, and embodiment, and the consequent transformation of individual, community, and society.”

The webpage has a transcript.

Video: Transcendence and Transformation [initiative, Nov 2022]

Nov 2, 2022 / recd Oct 3

Take 2: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/3/video-transcendence-and-transformation-take-two

November 2, 2022

https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/10/3/video-transcendence-and-transformation-take-two

page has transcript:

“we’re continuing our very popular series on Psychedelics and the Future of Religion,

“the start of that series … Spring [2023] semester.

[season 2 is acad yr 2022-2023 but only 2023]

“lining up an array of great guests who will cover an array of topics, such as

the central Dahomey tradition,

other Indigenous religious movements using plant medicine sacraments;

debates over how to interpret and integrate “bad trips”

a panel discussion on Psychedelics and Hinduism.”

“the launch of a podcast called Pop Apocalypse, led by another of our postdoctoral fellows, Matthew Dillon. Pop Apocalypse will offer an examination of myth and mysticism in popular culture, and will be aimed at audiences inside and outside the academy.

“So please be on the lookout for an announcement of the podcast release sometime later in the Fall semester.” [eg Dec 15 2022]

search: “Pop Apocalypse” podcast

“reading groups, open to members of the Harvard community, one on Mircea Eliade, and another on Plant Consciousness.

[ie are plants conscious? 😞 🍄 <– this one is ]

“the initiative also supports research associates and postdoctoral fellows who are pursuing private research projects, projects which will someday be public facing.

“it will be published in whatever form is most appropriate, an article, a book, a website, or a public lecture.”

“T&T, this Initiative in its second year is devoted to the study of

religious and spiritual traditions and practices, ancient and modern, global in reach, that aim for the transcendence of our normal states of being, consciousness, and embodiment, and the transformation of individual community and society.

“T&T affirms the existence of the sacred, different levels of reality, seen and unseen, and different modes of access to them.

“It investigates metaphysics and mysticism – the traditions across time, people, and places that have cultivated practices of transcendence and transformation and have articulated worldviews to make sense of those practices.

“we launched two new speaker series and continued a third.

“We launched Gnoseologies, led by my colleague Giovanna Parmigiani, a series which explored

ways of knowing that are often labeled nonrational.

[I like his handling there; “non-rational” is a false word that actually means rationality in the altered state. -cm]

Giovanna is continuing that series this year. Her next event will be on Wednesday, October 19 [2022], a Conversation with [? Marcelit Faella. ?]”

Video: TechGnosis Today (April 13, 2022, Erik Davis)

This video is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation.”

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/techgnosis-today/2022/4/13

Transcript planned, as of Dec. 30, 2022.

Video: Matt Dillon against Academic Denatured Sawdust

not in Psychedelics series

Feb 2022

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2022/02/24/matt-dillon

“Those of us who study of mysticism typically do so because we have an ecstatic origin story. We pursue this knowledge as a vision quest.

“Graduate school and early career research, on the other hand, is about preparing us for the field of religious studies as it currently operates.

“We learn grammars and syntax of dead languages;

become proficient in cognitive psychology, critical theory, and sociology;

analyze discursive formations, exploitive practices, and power.

“But the pendulum has swung so far in this direction, that I fear the discipline is in danger of losing what makes it distinctive, even transformative.

“We take accounts of mystical events seriously.

These are the events that spur individuals to join religious communities (or even found them!).

Groups and societies have been founded to trigger and explore such experiences.

“No serious study of religion can ignore them.

“By moving the mystical back to the heart of religious studies, we are NOT circling back to the pre-critical period of mystical studies.

“We are envisioning how to spiral up in a way that incorporates critical insights into the study of transcendence.”

“[my] podcast that centers on myth and mysticism in popular culture.

“the scholars one meets in the study of mysticism, gnosticism, or esotericism found their weird way through popular media, not traditional religion.

“introduced to the occult by heavy metal,

“Pop culture/ occulture is a resource for, and expression of, this new spiritual endeavor.

“intersection of mysticism and culture.

“descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical scholarship on religion and popular culture in real-time.”

Video (Nov 2021): Archaeology and Ecstasy

Nov 2021, maybe not in Psychedelics series, though relevant

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/archaeology-ecstasy/21/11/30

Video: Exploring Magical Consciousness as a Form of Knowledge

Oct 2021, not in Psychedelics series; in series: Gnoseologies

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/exploring-magic/2021/10/27

has transcript

The most tiresome thing in the world is so-called “critical”, “criticism”, which just means: destroy everything to death by exclusively complaining and criticizing and destroying everything, and then pretending you deserve a medal (or obeisance as you lord over your moral inferiors) for being everyone’s savior.

But they get some things right, per my excerpts below, and we ally.

“This series focuses on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.”

“Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research.

“What is the place of spirit possession, divination, and experiences perceived as “out-of-the ordinary” in our lives?

“How can we study and approach these types of phenomena?

“Going beyond dichotomies such as body and mind, ordinary and extraordinary, reason and experience, and matter and spirit,

this series hosts scholars of different disciplines and practitioners interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of what counts as “knowledge” today.”

Book: Developing Magical Consciousness

My mind is closed on this matter: all important is psilocybin:

Developing Magical Consciousness: a theoretical and practical guide for the expansion of perception (Routledge 2020)

url https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Magical-Consciousness-Susan-Greenwood/dp/1138078697/

A 2-seconds skim suggests it’s just another typical beat-around-the-bush, substitution/ avoidance replacement ersatz inauthentic coverage, a for-profit cover-up, run of the mill witches shamanism book with near-zero mention of psychedelics, mentioning them just barely enough to be able to say that you mentioned them – in order for you to make 500 pages of not mentioning them – to “plaster over” the topic to prevent engaging the elephant-in-room topic.

It’s an old formula in the Prohibition era, is mentioning psychedelics (one time) in order to not cover them, rather than mentioning them for the purpose of actually covering them, engaging them.

Kindle Previews

by searching for book title is working on mobile. To view TOC / Intro.

Video 7 (March 22, 2021): Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience (Wouter Hanegraaff)

Apr 2021

Wouter Hanegraaff

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/04/19/video-reasonably-irrational-theurgy-and-pathologization-entheogenic-experience

Apr 9 2021

“The next, last event in the series will take place on April 21st: Between Sacred and Profane, Psychedelic Culture, Drugs, Spirituality in Contemporary America.” [Erik Davis]

“the relevance of entheogens to liturgy and ritual invocation in Roman Egypt,

“the story of Thessalos , the Mithras Liturgy, and the neoplatonic practice of Iamblichus.

“Professor Hanegraaff will be arguing that if we deny or marginalize the clear evidence for entheogenic practice in this concept while acknowledging the spectacular visions and experiences that are claimed in the text, it is hard to avoid traditional pathologization interpretations of spiritual practices that, in fact, can be rationally accounted for.”

Video 6 (March 8, 2021): Honoring the Indigenous Roots of the Psychedelic Movement

Mar 2021

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/03/18/honoring-indigenous-roots-psychedelic-movement

“what psychedelic therapists and scientists can learn from ayahuasca shamanism, as well as critique some common misunderstandings around the notions of set, setting, and integration.”

transcript

Video 5 (Feb. 22, 2021): What is Psychedelic Chaplaincy?

March 8, 2021

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/03/08/video-what-psychedelic-chaplaincy

“This panel brought together Daan Keiman, spiritual caregiver and facilitator at a psilocybin retreat in the Netherlands, with Jamie Beachy, a MAPS MDMA Therapist and director of the Center for Contemplative Chaplaincy at Naropa University, in dialogue with Trace Haythorn of ACPE to explore their visions for psychedelic chaplaincy.

“What is the potential role of spiritual caregivers in providing support for people preparing for, undergoing, or integrating psychedelic experiences?

“What are the challenges in creating psychedelic education and training opportunities for chaplains and clergy?

“To what extent does the continually increasing access to psychedelics call on us to rethink, reshape, or expand conceptions of chaplaincy writ large?”

Video 4: Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name? (Brian Muraresku)

Feb 2021 Brian Muraresku

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/12/video-psychedelics-ancient-religion-no-name

Video 3 (Nov 2020): Sisters of the Psychedelic Revolution: A Conversation with Leni Sinclair and Genie Parker

Nov 2020

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/24/video-sisters-psychedelic-revolution-conversation-leni-sinclair-and-genie-parker

Video 2: Medicalizing Mysticism: Religion in Contemporary Psychedelic Trials

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/03/video-medicalizing-mysticism-religion-contemporary-psychedelic-trials
Two psilocybin clinical trial participants, Rachael Petersen and Rita Powell, and historian Jeffrey Kripal.

My commentary and excerpts where Stang rejects Griffiths’ conception and representation of what mystic experiencing is when validating psilocybin:
Stang Rejects Griffiths’ Conception of “Mystic Experiencing” Used to Experimentally Validate Psilocybin
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/stang-rejects-griffiths-conception-of-mystic-experiencing-used-to-validate-psilocybin/

Eternalism Exorcism

This video is not part of the “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” series.

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/26/video-having-spirit-christ-spirit-possession-and-exorcism-early-christ-groups

Video 1 (Sep 2020): Psilocybin and Mystical Experience: Implications for Healthy Psychological Functioning, Spirituality, and Religion (Roland Griffiths, Charles Stang)

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/09/29/video-psilocybin-and-mystical-experience-implications-healthy-psychological

My commentary and excerpts where Stang rejects Griffiths’ conception and representation of what mystic experiencing is when validating psilocybin:
Stang Rejects Griffiths’ Conception of “Mystic Experiencing” Used to Experimentally Validate Psilocybin
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/stang-rejects-griffiths-conception-of-mystic-experiencing-used-to-validate-psilocybin/

Video: All the Time in the World: An Artist’s Awakening with Ayahuasca

https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2019/11/14/video-all-time-world-artists-awakening-ayahuasca

2019 is earlier than the 2020-2021 Psychedelics series.

part of series: “Rachel’s exhibition and lecture falls into one of the center’s ongoing series entitled, Matter and Spirit: Ecology and the Non-human Turn.”

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire

See my critical analysis at various pages eg:
Griffiths’ CEQ’s Mistakes, Not Studerus’ 11-Factors’ Mistakes, Omitting Most Challenging Experiences from Psychedelics Effects Questionnaire
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/30/griffiths-ceqs-mistakes-not-studerus-11-factors-mistakes-omitting-most-challenging-experiences-from-psychedelic-effects-questionnaire/

https://www.academia.edu/33760114/The_Challenging_Experience_Questionnaire_Characterization_of_challenging_experiences_with_psilocybin_mushrooms

https://www.bing.com/search?q=challenging+experience+questionnaire

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27856683/

Barrett FS, Bradstreet MP, Leoutsakos JS, Johnson MW, Griffiths RR. The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms. J Psychopharmacol. 2016 Dec;30(12):1279-1295.

Abstract

excerpts

“Acute adverse psychological reactions to classic hallucinogens (“bad trips” or “challenging experiences”), while usually benign with proper screening, preparation, and support in controlled settings, remain a safety concern in uncontrolled settings (such as illicit use contexts).

“Anecdotal and case reports suggest potential adverse acute symptoms including affective (panic, depressed mood), cognitive (confusion, feelings of losing sanity), and somatic (nausea, heart palpitation) symptoms.

“Responses to items from several hallucinogen-sensitive questionnaires (Hallucinogen Rating Scale, the States of Consciousness Questionnaire, and the Five-Dimensional Altered States of Consciousness questionnaire) in an Internet survey of challenging experiences with the classic hallucinogen psilocybin were used to construct and validate a Challenging Experience Questionnaire.

“The stand-alone Challenging Experience Questionnaire was then validated in a separate sample.

“Seven Challenging Experience Questionnaire factors (grief, fear, death, insanity, isolation, physical distress, and paranoia) provide a phenomenological profile of challenging aspects of experiences with psilocybin.

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire provides a basis for future investigation of predictors and outcomes of challenging experiences with classic hallucinogens.

Keywords: Psilocybin; challenging experiences; factor analysis; psychedelics; scale development.

page has links to related articles

Sacred Drugs Course and Book (Gary Laderman)

Michael Hoffmann, December 16, 2022 12:04 am UTC+0

Contents:

Intro

Laderman is working on a book, has a course: “To create a space for people to explore drugs and religion and consider their value and significance in the American spiritual landscape.”

Wrote books about death, including Psychedelics focus. Video content. Articles.

A video discussion with Charles Stang, Christian Greer, & Erik Davis.

Website

https://garyladerman.com

https://garyladerman.com/media/ – Media (interviews, talks):

“The course discusses the theory that psychoactive drugs are intimately related to religious life historically.

“A historian by training. A leading scholar in the study of death and the sacred.

“He is working on a book on the topic.

“To create a space for people to explore drugs and religion and consider their value and significance in the American spiritual landscape.”

Book Project

Course: Sacred Drugs (2017)

“currently working on a book project exploring religion and drugs, the focus of a new course first taught in 2017, “Sacred Drugs.”

Laderman’s courses and seminars include:

US Religious History

Mind, Medicine, and Healing

Death and Dying

Theory and Method

Sacred Drugs

Introduction to Religion

Religion and Music

Video Interview: Charles Stang, Christian Greer, Gary Laderman, Erik Davis (Good)

Charles Stang, Christian Greer, Gary Laderman, Erik Davis: https://youtu.be/ymfw3VOgy6g – very good, merits multiple watches

26:00-38:00 – dark side of psychedelic mystic experience

Essays

Essays Webpage
https://garyladerman.com/writings/

The familiar categories that are employed when discussing why people use drugs—“medicinal,” “recreational,” and “spiritual”—are not unhelpful when sorting out some of what drives people to seek out mind-altering substances.

But they are also somewhat conceptually limiting, as they deny the messier reality: that these categories are not mutually exclusive and allow for overlap and combinations.

GL in Psychology Today – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/religiousness/202208/mind-altering-drugs-are-here-stay

The overlaps can be found in, for example, … the activities from the symposia in ancient Greece, or … in the ecstatic experiences of participants at your typical EDM festival.

The end of that article is like my recent {spear} mytheme post yesterday:

… potentially poisonous but also potentially life-altering, with powers that might even be understood by some as sacred.

Although it is alluring and seems domesticated, the psychedelic renaissance is really only the tip of the psychoactive spear, and the deeper it penetrates culture, the more we will realize how revolutionary this “rebirth” is for the futures of medicine, psychology, and religion.

GL

End of sentence skipped “recreation”.

I’m against dismissively (& self-servingly) labelling other people’s use as “recreational”, and also against omitting a recreational approach to the sacred altered state.

Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way of Life (Lundborg)

Why/where did Lundborg come up re: Laderman?

It’s surprising how little I cite this book.

I received hardcover – HUGE – 2024/12/31.

There’s a book on ancient Dionysian religion and electric music festival culture, I posted at the Egodeath Yahoo Group in 2014: https://www.amazon.com/dp/9197652326/ –

Patrick Lundborg

https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-125/#message6452 –

“Interview with Patrick Lundborg: 60’s psych & garage guru, psychedelic culture scholar and author of brilliant „Psychedelia” and „Acid Archives” books”

There is too little recognition of pop sike cult during 1970-1990.

Religious Electric Music Festivals

Study of 1,225 festival-goers pinpoints positive effects of trippy drugs (Pattillo, Jan. 2020)

Psychedelic study shows why people love taking psychedelics at music festivals.

“Public perceptions of psychedelics, and the people who use them, are becoming more accurate.”

https://www.inverse.com/article/62372-psychedelic-study-shows-why-people-love-taking-lsd-at-music-festivals

Saint Martin Church: Jesus Left Fingers Branching, Right Non-Branching

No idea why this is here, except principle of “better to type in-place than lose an idea”.

left hand branching
right hand non-branching

See Also

pending

The Shadow Threat per Jung and Pop Psychedelics Mapped to the Egodeath Theory

The {shadow} is specifically identified by the Egodeath theory as the threat of loss of control in the loose cognitive association binding state from Psilocybin.

from Eadwine’s image in the Great Mushroom Psalter: fear & mastery of non-branching; eternalism-thinking

The shadow is the non-branching serpent dragon monster threat of catastrophic loss of control, and of non-viable control instability.

The shadow threat is resolved and accommodated by the mind being made to consciously put trust in the transpersonal uncontrollable source of control thoughts.

The mind is made tranquil, transformed, and harmonious by being made to adopt a 2-level control model, instead of the egoic model of control, which is experienced as autonomous monolithic control agency steering in a tree of branching possibilities into an open future.

‘The unconscious’ doesn’t mean personal autobiography details per the ordinary-state limited Psychology view.

‘The unconscious’ means the altered-state mind’s standard experience of psilocybin eternalism including the attractive threat of the control vortex climax transformation {gateway} (Grof’s {birth canal passage}) to eternalism-thinking.

Why ‘Psilocybin’

In my writings, “Amanita” 🍄 is the billboard for Psilocybin, and “Psilocybin” means chemicals that produce classic psychedelic effects, such as eternalism experiencing, such as Mescaline, Ergot, & 4-ACE.

I employ the term ‘Psilocybin’ strategically in order to force people to not be able to avoid & replace & substitute BS that doesn’t work, or that hasn’t been proved to produce the exact same effect as Psilocybin, such as non-drug cave meditation imagination exercises.

And to highlight that our own religious religious history uses Psilocybin, so fully repeal Psilocybin prohibition.

And because redosing psilocybin is an efficient intensity curve.

And because Psilocybin is being legalized.

And because it’s easy to cultivate. https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/07/transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episodes/#Episode-15 – https://youtu.be/b1uoASqG4xQ –

Charles Stang

Charles Stang’s recent videos on entheogens – Muraresku interview https://youtu.be/r8VCBNGBeqg

John Vervaeke’s interview of Stang re divine double: https://youtu.be/HOIjuWYhJNQ

Zoom meeting: Charles Stang on Corbin, Plato, & the Divine Double https://youtu.be/Fq0B6kP68zQ

Charles Stang hosts, Christian Greer interviews Gary Laderman & Erik Davis https://youtu.be/ymfw3VOgy6g

26:15 – dark side of psychedelic mystic experience

Psilocybin Mushroom Companion

Panic from threat of loss of control in book The Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, Michelle Janikian, 2019 – https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/standard-hazy-trip-advice-on-surrender-to-shadow-trust-submit-and-let-go-of-control/

Effects Index

Josie Kins’ Psychedelic Effects Index on fear of losing control – https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death#fear%20of%20losing%20control

My Article Summary Sections

My 1997 summary’s sections about control loss: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/self-control-cybernetics-dissociative-cognition-mystic-ego-death/#tioscc and https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/self-control-cybernetics-dissociative-cognition-mystic-ego-death/#sdsvop

My 2006 main article’s section 4 of 4, about control loss: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death-2006-main-article/#Self-Control-and-the-Hidden-Source-of-Thoughts

Section from webpage “Strict Requirements for Teachers, Initiation Guides, and Students, Prior to Initiation”; excerpted from the Canterbury Psalter “mushroom tree/ hanging/ sword” image article), re: steering toward the shadow: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/24/strict-requirements-for-teachers-initiation-guides-and-students-prior-to-initiation/#Message-Mandatory-for-Utilizing-Psychedelics

SHWEP – Charles Stang on the Divine Double

Charles M. Stang on the Divine Double in Late Antiquity

Charles M. Stang Doubles Down

https://shwep.net/podcast/charles-m-stang-doubles-down/ –

E C J Williams comments:

“the double has a negative shade. Carl Jung notes that when contact is first made with the unconscious, it is often in the form of a stranger breaking into the house, and is seen as a threat to the individual.

“If the seeker is not searching for the divine and is simply fated to meet their double, would not the first contact [with the double, aka the unconscious] be felt as a threat?

It is after all a serious challenge to the ego, and like Near-Death Experiences will utterly change everything the individual knows about themselves.”

Clark Aitkins comment:

“the modern notion of a dark double. … Jung’s notion of the shadow.”

SHWEP Podcast on Astral Ascent Mysticism Earth Centered Cosmos Model

Site Map: Astral Ascent Mysticism

Contents:

  • Diagrams of Cosmos with Variable Levels
  • Unveiled Mental Construct Processing
  • Mapping the Mystic Cosmos Model to the Scientific Model of Psilocybin Mental Development
  • Phase 1: Possibilism Experiencing, Possibilism Thinking
  • Phase 1.5: Eternalism Experiencing, Possibilism Thinking
  • Phase 2: Eternalism Experiencing, Eternalism Thinking
  • Phase 3: Possibilism Experiencing, Eternalism Thinking
  • Episode 40: Wheels Within Wheels: Toward Western Esoteric Cosmology
  • Episode 41: Fate and Foreknowledge: Toward Hellenistic Astrology
  • Episode 42: Chris Brennan on Hellenistic Astrology
  • Episode 33: Nowhere to Go But Up: Philosophic Ascent in Plato
  • Episode 31: Sun, Line, Cave: Plato’s Inner Republic
  • Episode 25: The Esoteric Plato
  • Episode 23-1/2 : The Greek Iatromanteis: Katabasis, Metempsychosis, Soul-Flight, and the Question of ‘Shamanism’
  • Article: Shamanism in Classical Scholarship: Where are We Now? (Bremmer, 2016)
  • Episode 20: All for One, and One for All: Parmenides of Elea
  • Episode 12: Richard Seaford on the Mysteries
  • Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Bremmer, 2014)
    • Back Cover
    • Official reviews
  • See Also

Diagrams of Cosmos with Variable Levels

It’s funny & telling that bands 9 & 10 are blank in this diagram at top of page.

It shows how artificial they are, and less important within the psilocybin mental-model transformation sequence than passing through the ego death & rebirth gate from Saturn turmoil to reconciled eternalism in the fixed stars level (contains the zodiac constellations).

Unveiled Mental Construct Processing

Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast

vs.

Egodeath Mystery Show

See episode pages/articles.

IMO, the important line in the Earth-centered cosmos model as mystically used, is the line between Saturn & fixed stars (the zodiac belt & the other star-constellations).

That’s why I instantly knew Hanegraaff’s book Hermetic Spirituality 2022 book had a major malformation:

There are no fixed stars in Hanegraaff’s misrepresentation of the Earth-centered cosmos model used mystically.

Hanegraaff’s system of assertions (ie. “the 8th level, outside heimarmene”) collapses into rubble when you try to add stars (heimarmene; eternalism) to it.

Hanegraaff rightly fixes the ego death and rebirth gate at the top of level 7 (Saturn), but he tries to covertly move and sneak the stars to below (= before) the mental-model transformation gate.

The password to get through the serpent-guarded death-angel guarded gateway filter is:

repudiate and jettison the freewill premise

ie:

no-free-will / non-branching possibilities

Mapping the Mystic Cosmos Model to the Scientific Model of Psilocybin Mental Development

To interpret the cosmos model, map to my 3-phase model of psilocybin mental model development in terms of experiential states and the mental models they produce.

Phase 1: Possibilism Experiencing, Possibilism Thinking

1. The possibilism experiential state of consciousness produces naive possibilism-thinking (mental model).

= cosmos level: Earth. Or sub-lunar realm.

Phase 1.5: Eternalism Experiencing, Possibilism Thinking

Turmoil; instability of control; incompatible.

Phase 2: Eternalism Experiencing, Eternalism Thinking

2. The psilocybin eternalism experiential state of consciousness produces eternalism-thinking (mental model).

= cosmos level 8: the sphere of the fixed stars; heimarmene; fatedness.

Pass through the serpent-guarded gate at top of Saturn (planetary level 7) onion layer to reach the treasure destination.

Lose egoic child thinking, to pass through the no-free-will gate and become immortal aka perfected aka enlightened.

Phase 3: Possibilism Experiencing, Eternalism Thinking

3. The possibilism state of consciousness retains eternalism-thinking (mental model) including qualified possibilism-thinking.

= cosmos level 9 & 10, the Empyrean.

No death-and-rebirth is involved to get from the fixed stars (level 8) to the Ennead or Decad Empyrean (level 9 & 10);

Ego death is into eternalism, NOT into possibilism/ “freedom”.

Completion of maturation (perfection, enlightenment, satori, purification, gnosis, becoming immortal) is not a revelation of personally empowering, egoic possibilism, but is about reconciling the mental model with the experience of eternalism.

The return to the possibilism ordinary-state experience that’s shaped in the form of “autonomous agent freely steering in a branching-possibilities world” is merely minor.

The essential transformation, the actual transformation, is from possibilism to eternalism – not the reverse, as Hanegraaff egoically naturally assumes, in his overeager receptivity to the “I Hate Fate” theme that’s sold by the Hermetic writers/ priests/ hierophants.

“Escape from fate” is the main theme of Late Antiquity.

J. Z. Smith

Episode 40: Wheels Within Wheels: Toward Western Esoteric Cosmology

Episode 40: Wheels Within Wheels: Toward Western Esoteric Cosmology

Aug. 2, 2018

Peter Adamson writes about cosmos model, see episode webpage – “Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast, of which we are big fans here at the SHWEP, takes astrology seriously in discussing ideas about fate, free-will, and related ideas in the history of western thought.”

See episode article:

Wheels Within Wheels: Toward Western Esoteric Cosmology

30:00 – “primum mobile” is level 9.

Level 10 is timeless & spaceless. Unmoved mover.

“the cosmos which ended up winning the debate and becoming the standard scientific model from antiquity until the early modern period was the geocentric model developed by, among others, Plato, Eudoxus, and Aristotle.

“It was a refined and sifted version of this model which Ptolemy would bequeath to the middle ages.

“The west, and western esotericism, was, for the majority of its history, living on an immobile earth at the centre of a rather small universe made up of nested, concentric spheres.

“Questions arise from this model of the cosmos, such as:

“What’s outside the spheres, and how can I get there?

“What are the spheres made of?

“How do the spheres influence us?

“These are questions which we find played out in the history both of occult sciences like astrology and alchemy, and of western religious movements from the Hellenistic period onward.”

Episode 41: Fate and Foreknowledge: Toward Hellenistic Astrology

Aug. 13, 2018

See episode article:

Fate and Foreknowledge: Toward Hellenistic Astrology

AUGUST 13, 2018

Episode 41: Fate and Foreknowledge: Toward Hellenistic Astrology

Episode 42: Chris Brennan on Hellenistic Astrology

AUGUST 19, 2018

Episode 42: Chris Brennan on Hellenistic Astrology

Aug. 19, 2018

See episode article:

Chris Brennan on Hellenistic Astrology

I’m pragmatic about free will, in the sense that its existence doesn’t fall in the category of episteme but of praxis.

Nathan Burgess

Episode 33: Nowhere to Go But Up: Philosophic Ascent in Plato

AY 8, 2018

Episode 33: Nowhere to Go But Up: Philosophic Ascent in Plato

See episode article:

Nowhere to Go But Up: Philosophic Ascent in Plato

Episode 31: Sun, Line, Cave: Plato’s Inner Republic

Sun, Line, Cave: Plato’s Inner Republic

APRIL 8, 2018

Episode 25: The Esoteric Plato

FEBRUARY 25, 2018

Episode 25: The Esoteric Plato

The Esoteric Plato

“the modern debate between Plato specialists over his supposed esotericism.

“Along the way we define ‘esoteric’ and ‘Platonism’, both very important terms … which are, rather surprisingly, rarely defined in the scholarly literature which treats them. We also have a look at my idea of ‘esoteric reading’.”

– Earl Fountainelle

Episode 23-1/2 : The Greek Iatromanteis: Katabasis, Metempsychosis, Soul-Flight, and the Question of ‘Shamanism’

The Greek Iatromanteis: Katabasis, Metempsychosis, Soul-Flight, and the Question of ‘Shamanism’

Article: Shamanism in Classical Scholarship: Where are We Now? (Bremmer, 2016)

Bibliomania frenzy includes:

Jan N. Bremmer. Shamanism in Classical Scholarship: Where are We Now?

That’s a chapter in book by P. Jackson, editor:

Horizons of Shamanism: A Triangular Approach to the History and Anthropology of Ecstatic Techniques
https://www.amazon.com/Horizons-Shamanism-Triangular-Anthropology-Comparative/dp/9176350274/

pages 52–78. Stockholm University Press, Stockholm, 2016.

Episode 20: All for One, and One for All: Parmenides of Elea

All for One, and One for All: Parmenides of Elea

JANUARY 17, 2018

Episode 12: Richard Seaford on the Mysteries

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Episode 12: Richard Seaford on the Mysteries

Richard Seaford on the Mysteries

Episode article cites the book:

Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Bremmer, 2014)

Bremmer, J. N., 2014. Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, NY.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3110299291/ —

“The ancient Mysteries have long attracted the interest of scholars, an interest that goes back at least to the time of the Reformation.

“After a period of interest around the turn of the twentieth century, recent decades have seen an important study of Walter Burkert (1987).

“Yet his thematic approach makes it hard to see how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place.

“To do precisely that is the aim of this book.

“It gives a ‘thick description’ of the major Mysteries, not only of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also those located at the interface of Greece and Anatolia: the Mysteries of Samothrace, Imbros and Lemnos as well as those of the Corybants.

“It then proceeds to look at the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, which have become increasingly better understood due to the many discoveries of new texts in the recent times.

“Having looked at classical Greece we move on to the Roman Empire, where we study not only the lesser Mysteries, which we know especially from Pausanias, but also the new ones of Isis and Mithras.

“We conclude our book with a discussion of the possible influence of the Mysteries on emerging Christianity.

“Its detailed references and up-to-date bibliography will make this book indispensable for any scholar interested in the Mysteries and ancient religion, but also for those scholars who work on initiation or esoteric rituals, which were often inspired by the ancient Mysteries.”

/ end blurb

Back Cover

“This book explores ancient mystery cults with emphasis on the question how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place.

“Discussed are not only the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also smaller and lesser-known Greek and Roman Mysteries as those of Samothrace and Thebes, the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, and the new Mysteries of Isis and Mithras.

“Concluding with the influence on emerging Christianity, the author offers an indispensable in-depth analysis of this fascinating phenomenon.”

Official reviews

🤖 –

“Jan Bremmer has managed to write an interesting book on a topic about which there are almost no information, because because of the arcane discipline, the reconstruction of mystery processes is extremely tedious.

“This honesty is a strength of the book, as it does not transcend into conjectures, but explains what can be said in a honest way about the mystery cults.

“Since Bremmer receives all the arguments from modern literature on the way to a balanced judgment and discusses them extremely critically, despite the difficulties that have to face when dealing with the mystery cults, he succeeds in a publication rich in information.”

– Matthias Helmer in: Biblical Journal 62 (2018), 175-178

🤖 –

“In his lectures, Jan Bremmer has not only developed a brief summary of state-of-the-art research and worked through all linguistic, literary, epigraphic, pictorial and archaeological sources, far beyond the questions and phenomena discussed so far in the field of mystery research, but also created a foundation with his sharp but clear evaluations of previous research theses and reconstructions,

“The ripe fruit of a master of research on ancient religious history, presented with a dash of humor and (sometimes daring) comparisons to contemporary religious behaviors.”

– Christoph Auffarth in: Gnomon 89 (2017) No.6: 485

etc and 60 ratings/reviews:

DAJ wrote:

“Jan Bremmer is better than Bowden at clearly describing what we know did happen. Bremmer’s book is also available for free, in PDF form, from the publisher.”

Bowden: bought it when new, have it, have read it:
https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Cults-Ancient-World-Bowden/dp/0691146381/

“The chapters in the book are dedicated to

the Eleusinian Mysteries, the oldest mystery rites;

the mysteries of Samothrace and groups of deities related to them,

the Kabeiroi and Korybantes;

the ecstatic Orphic and Bacchic mysteries;

a variety of lesser, local mysteries in Greece in Roman times;

the mysteries of Isis and Mithras; and

the relationship of the mystery cults to Christianity.

He also has two appendices:

One examines the cult of Demeter in Megara and its relationship to the Eleusinian Mysteries and

the other one discusses the underworld portrayed in Virgil’s Aeneid (an important source for understanding the afterlife beliefs that were circulating at the start of the Roman Empire).

Unlike Alvar and Bowden, Bremmer devotes only a passing mention to one of the best-known “oriental” mystery cults, that of Cybele.”

See Also

Site Map: Astral Ascent Mysticism
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Astral-Ascent-Mysticism

Spear Dagger Arrowhead of Non-Branching Worldline that Pointedly Kills Possibilism-Premised Control

Mytheme of {spear}: how is a pointed non-branching blade the thing that causes cybernetic control-death fatal transgression/ violation/ failure in the eternalism state of consciousness?

url https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/mytheme-blade-harvest-mature-for-sacrifice-to-gain-eternalism/

right: worldline in block universe

An immature youth form of mental model of controller-in-branching-world has the ability to be eternalismized.

{death = climax = rebirth = transformation = poison arrow = spear = wedding chamber = stability = adult = initiated} =

exposed to THE VISION OF ETERNALISM, shown the Mystery of Eternalism

The mind on psilocybin wine is transformatively exposed to perceive the mind in its loosecog state, seeing abnormal mental operation from an abnormal point of view, the God-mode meta control level.

Look under the lid to see the spear dragon blade threat climax ability sacrifice transformation.

cista mystica lidded snake basket

What’s Hidden in the Snake Basket that Kills Upon Seeing?

To see snake-shaped worldline in block universe = spear = climax potential transforming from possibilism to eternalism

A temp state but a permament transformation of the mind the moment light shines on the revealed altered state workings.

Because it’s a loosened mind that’s operating abnormally, you are able to observe the mind during its temporary abnormal functioning.

to be brought to see the snake and give over your youth

transformed instantly upon seeing the reavealed snake frozen in rock

repudiate and jettison the youth

marrying off your youth to the eternalism serpent god

giants lusted after the daughters of men

{wedding chamber}; cybernetic control climax transformation gate sacrifice – spear drives demonstration of 2-level control dynamics and self-transgressive chaotic unstable threatening self-cancelling potential that drives transformation turning the king steering in tree to king statue frozen in rock.

The youth/ maiden is vulnerable to being changed, taken into cybernetic control information climax.

Ripe and near-mature and ready to transform into adult form, Eros draws the almost-bearded youth into adulthood transformation.

Key = poison = spear = ego death = wedding chamber = take the youth

My mind’s, been eternalismized

He was made to climax and perceive the control vortex transformation from psilocybin experience of eternalism.

The key, spearing with poision tip

Egoic control is fatally subject to as the mind is brought up to demonstrate and test and judge and put to trial and probe the dynamics of the control loss vortex climax gate to Psilocybin Eternalismland.

pass through the no-free-will gate = poison-speared, bladed, harvested

the mind’s ability to be made to undergo that experience of seeing and experiencing eternalism and its control dynamics seizure transgressive climactic capability into adulthood mature form

Now the mind has been transformed and made able to go in and out through the serpent-guarded gate via password key form-conformant shape shifter, to eat of the fruit of immortality from the tree and snake.

Mind reshaped by seeing the dragon serpent monster to reconcile to.

The dragon demands/extracts the ruler maiden, for the king to have a non-vexed kingdom.

The pregnant people of the kingdom harassed by the heimarmene dragon demanding honor sacrifice to make the mind conform to eternalism in the adult form.

Poisoned arrow, arrow = poison = dagger = cybernetic control death, non-viable, plus side: climax ability, treasure, enlightenment about eternalism consciousness control dynamics possibilism-thinking is non-viable.

eternalism-thinking dependent control is the viable model that can withstand or enjoy cyberclimax vortex in the psilocybin loosecog state

the destination: the wedding chamber of the immortals ambrosia

🍄 means Psilocybin.

Psilocybin means ergot classic effects eg 4-HO-DiPT

The mind is transformed from possibilism-thinking & -experiencing to eternalism-thinking & -experiencing, and then is returned to the possibilism experiential state always, but allowed through the gate of control seizure threat climax into Psilocybin Eternalismland.

The key to the lock, the blade is the key that fits the egodeath violation climax transformation potential.

meant image with key and torch
no-free-will death angel guarding gate to garden with tree of fruit of immortal life.
John Rush’s lifted garment and mushroom hem. Angel’s weight supported by right leg = eternalism-thinking.
Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop & processing by Cybermonk.
Right arm: A spear aimed at Jesus’ side, not Browns’ “slightly curved sword”.
discussing sword of control loss failure threat
God’s blade of control-instability test and demonstration
self-threatening psalter image viewer with arrowhead inches from head
Eadwine’s image with blades
Mithras’ dagger
Rock-born Mithras born from the block-universe eternalism rock = sacrificial dagger + torch light to perceive the mind’s control-functioning
Right arm: non-branching spear, Dionysus ‘ victory wedding procession mosaic
Douris’ Jason Athena (with full-height, boundary-divider spear) Ladon fleece kylix for psilocybin mixed wine
photo: Cybermonk, Nov 29, 2013
Eternalism-aware Abraham usually raises a knife over possibilism-thinking/ youth-thinking Isaac.

Set the Controls for the Heart of Ultra Simplicity of Explanatory Theory

What’s greater than Truth? An elegant Theory.

If the Truth doesn’t agree with the Theory, then too bad for the Truth; the Theory is correct. 😑

Religious myth that doesn’t fit the Entheogen Eternalism Mytheme theory is not proper, well-formed, inspired myth.

The Egodeath theory is 100% successful at explaining inspired myth.

Corollary: If a myth doesn’t match the Egodeath theory, then that myth is manifestly uninspired. 🤷‍♂️

The Diamond Hammer of Interpretation is always successful, because anything that doesn’t fit its forced, Procrustean form is therefore deemed objectively malformed.

You have to vigorously commit to an explanatory model to sincerely do everything possible to contort the data to make it fit.

Add as many corrective epicycles as needed, and discard and ignore 5/6 of the evidence types, like Thomas Hatsis does: the end (the Theory) justifies the means (selection bias).

For every isolated bit of data that refuses to conform to the dictate of my Theory, I’ll outdo even the master himself, the anti-mushroom Psychedelic Witch, and invent an ad-hoc, invented on -the-spot, specially devised “new rule” fabricated just to explain-away each individual case, like:

“That mushroom tree in a Christian document doesn’t count, because, ah… um… It has to be a “devotional” Christian document. Yeah, that’s the ticket!”

Square peg data neatly fits into round hole theory, if you smash the evidence-base with the right magic hammer.

This is where I learned my powerful, unstoppable theorizing from.

Book TWICE recommended to Gordon Wasson by Erwin Panofsky’s PAIR of letters, censored multiple times by the FRAUD Wasson as proved by Browns’ 2019 article.

https://www.academia.edu/40312824/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

Wasson’s own handwriting of accurate Brinckmann book title that he looked up but then censored, multiple times, from “the public” and the mycologists (leader: John Ramsbottom).
https://www.academia.edu/40312824/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

Brinckmann’s book cover, Wasson would agree with Hatsis, shows parasols of victory.

url https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/brinckmann-mushroom-trees-asymmetrical-branching/

This identification is even more certain than in other images, because a triple parasol of victory! 😲

You just can’t cut with Occam’s razor any more than that! Cut off all unneeded branching overgrowth.

Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop & processing by Cybermonk

This type of medieval painting cannot represent psilocybin mushrooms, because:

The image means a tree, and therefore, cannot mean mushrooms. In medieval art, an image can only have a single meaning (except in the case of, anything other than mushroom imagery).

There are branches. If the artist had wanted to deliver the impression of a mushroom (for what we art historians say delivers to us an impression of mushrooms, per our describing them as “mushroom trees”), the artist would have omitted the branches altogether.

Erwin Panofsky, the most influential art historian

Panofsky’s SECOND letter to Wasson
https://www.academia.edu/40312824/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

Panofsky’s watertight reasoning proves that the left mushroom plant doesn’t look like a mushroom, because it has branching, and therefore the right mushroom plant cannot look like a mushroom either, because it looks like the left-hand, branching mushroom.

Yet another instance of alleged mushroom imagery explained away in fine historiographical methodological Hatsis fashion.

Anyway, this Eustace window image from Chartres Cathedral depicts a story that was later deemed heretical, therefore it doesn’t count as Christian art.

All mushroom imagery in Christian art is easily explained away by tried and true historical methodology, which I allude to somewhere in my online blogs.

Hatsis, Psychedelic Mystery Traditions

The anti-mushroom Psychedelic Witch’s theory is saved again! 😓

url https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/psychedelic-mystery-traditions-hatsis/

Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop by Cybermonk.
left arm = branching illusion, branching cut by right arm.
Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop by Cybermonk
Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop & processing by Cybermonk.

Right arm = non-branching possibilities; the psilocybin eternalism revelation that’s the initiation from youth to adult.

Unless you are Brown, in which case, it means “holding a slightly curved sword” (by its blade).

The shape of the liberty cap is anachronistic. (You guys got a big problem!)

Hatsis, pers. comm.

Cubensis doesn’t grow on bovine dung IF (year < 1976) AND (region = England).

Paul Stamets: Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide, and Letcher, and Hatsis
Eadwine’s image

Ya Think?

🤔 Hey i have an idea, someone oughtta look for psilocybin in Western religion.

M Hoffman, director of entheogen scholarship since 1976, in 2015 article

https://www.academia.edu/44235520/Entheogens_Psychedelic_Drugs_and_the_Ancient_Mystery_Religions_Mark_A_Hoffman

See Related Papers.

“1976” joke because his article’s typo says “1976” but should instead say ‘entheogen’ was coined in 1979.

Mystical and Transpersonal Experience Tier List (Josie Kins)

Beginners’ vs. Advanced Ego Death

https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death#subjective-differences-between-various-substances –

“Dissociative ego death is less likely to cause an anxious response for those who are inexperienced compared to psychedelic ego death.

“… many people experience dissociatives as inherently calming and tranquil, while high doses of psychedelics are quite often experienced as the opposite.”

“Psychedelic ego death … intense and often overwhelming nature. … elevate the subjective intensity and transpersonal significance of ego death experiences.

Two Versions of Unity Experience

I distinguish 2 versions of “unity consciousness” experience:

From my notes below on the “Unity and interconnectedness” section of video:

beginners’ sensation of unity, but unearned, {trespassing}, and {impure} and impious {pollution}, because unstable use of & reliance on the naive possibilism mental model.

the advanced kind of unity after repudiating relying on naive possibilism-thinking.

Two Versions of Ego Death Experience

From my notes below on the “Ego death” section of video:

I distinguish 2 versions of “ego death” experience:

beginners’ suspension/dissolution

advanced active cancellation; cybernetic control violation per Eadwine’s {blade}

Effects Index: Ego Death

url https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death

Stop fighting the loss of control, and surrender to the experience of ego death.

https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death#fear%20of%20losing%20control

Transpersonal Effects

https://effectindex.com/categories/transpersonal-effects

Perception of Eternalism

https://effectindex.com/effects/perception-of-eternalism

“a perspective that is very difficult to shake off after having this experience a number of times.”

” … it is truly fascinating to me that without any prior knowledge, myself and many other psychedelic users can experience incredibly specific states of mind that seem to line up with entire philosophical theories. This holds true for a number of transpersonal effects …”

That’s because these “philosophical theories” came from psilocybin.

Pan 😱 🐐

https://effectindex.com/effects/panic-attack

🍿

Sudden onset of intense fear or terror. Fear of going crazy or losing control. Some great calamity is imminent. A crushing sense of impending doom, accompanied by panic and dread.

When the mind is pulled through the no-free-will Saturn gate into Eternalismland, childish, perishable reliance on naive possibilism-thinking is tested, demonstrated, threatened, found vulnerable, repudiated & jettisoned as a liability, and left behind.

Childish, naive possibilism-thinking is no longer used as something to try to rely on as a defense against seeing too clearly how control works, in the altered state.

The Madness of Heracles

Overstating How Much People’s Experience Is Socially Influenced

The Mystical Experience Questionnaire for trips research (on rank newbies) is under scrutiny lately for priming and bias and arbitrariness.

url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3539773/#S2title

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3539773/#S2title

Over-informed, excessively well-read academics then complain “people are being primed”, though I object: most people have not been primed at all; they just try the substance and see for themselves what it does.

Just because YOU, academics, read 20 books before the experience, doesn’t mean everyone else does.

John Lash similarly makes an insane overreach of granting to Wasson complete ownership of every single idea about religious use of visionary plants that anyone has, even though I had not heard of Wasson (or Allegro) when I read the book of Revelation in 1986 and said “the scroll is a psychedelic, but which one?”

Thomas Hatsis makes the same crude irrational granting of all credit – but to Allegro instead of Wasson.

Hatsis told me that the ONLY reason I assert Psilocybin is because Allegro… as if Allegro had any influence on my thinking, like happened to Hatsis, the true “follower of Allegro”.

John Lash wildly idolizes and pays way too much attention to Wasson, and then he projects his own fanboi fanaticism onto everybody else in the world, and he describes everybody who has any idea, John Lash says that that person is thinking “the Wasson idea”.

Why not call it “the Eadwine/ Reko/ Schultes/ Graves idea”?

Or simply call it with no one’s name, the obvious idea which everyone independently thinks of, including me in 1986.

No one “owns” the idea of entheogens, but Lash is intent on granting total ownership of “the Wasson theory” = the idea of religious use of visionary plants.

Fortunately, no one follows Lash’s atrocious term-usage, just as no one buys Hanegraaff’s harebrained notion of “entheogens in the wide sense” (except Erik Davis, who wrote to Hanegraaff “You’re right, but stay away from redefining & similarly cheapening & ruining our word ‘psychedelics’).

Hanegraaff and Letcher would both disapprove of Lash’s childishly crude and linear “transmission of the idea” model.

Wasson claims to be first at everything, but the French mycologists were 50 years ahead of Wasson’s “original idea” that the Eden tree is Amanita.

Hatsis pays WAY too much attention to Allegro, who isn’t even an entheogen scholar, and then projects his own fanatical fanboism, his radical overestimation of Allegro’s importance, onto everyone else – while ignoring where the 20th C mushroom research came from.

Even fanatical Wasson fanboi John Lash acknowledges that his idol, Wasson, wasn’t first – an admission buried in an endnote about “the word that Wasson coined”, ‘entheogen’.

I find it offensive or insulting, that Michael Pollan says that there is only a single unbiased ergot trip: Hofmann’s first deliberate session.

Everyone else just dumbly copies Huxley’s or Hofmann’s writeup, claims Jan Irvin and Michael Pollan.

You experience what you do (they say) only because you are at the complete mercy of what previous people claim to you that the experience is.

That’s a crude view. You might speak for yourself, not for others on this point.

At the extreme, of that assertion, we get a schizophrenic type of view, as if your thoughts are inserted into your mind remotely by some hidden controller (which is true in a metaphysical or revealed cybernetic sense).

Maybe Huxley and Wasson control YOUR experience. This just indicates to me that YOU have no independence or originality of thought.

Video

Like everybody else, Josie commits the massive error of conflating “the size of your ego” with ego death.

These have precisely jack squat to do with each other.

url https://youtu.be/9jxMSYTTEPE

Below are my own valuations on JK’s phenomena list. -cm

Timestamp links are in the description:

00:00 – Introduction

01:01 – Mystical & Transpersonal Experiences definition

01:36 – Atemporality 👍

02:12 – Ego death 👎👍

url https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death

https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death

Josie is hypocritical here: in every other sentence, Josie employs the term “ego death” but here complains that the word is underdefined, so discards it in the chart, yet continues to centrally, heavily employ the term.

I distinguish 2 senses:

beginners’ suspension/dissolution

advanced active cancellation; cybernetic control violation per Eadwine’s {blade} -cm

02:54 – Absent Selfhood

03:57 – Fractured selfhood

04:41 – Unity and interconnectedness

beginners’ sensation of unity, but unearned, and {impure} and impious {pollution}, because unstable use of the possibilism mental model.

versus the advanced kind of unity after repudiating relying on naive possibilism-thinking.

05:33 – Perception of eternalism

7:27 – Existential culmination

8:08 – Perception of synchronicity 👎

08:59 – Existential reaffirmation

10:40 – Perception of death

11:44 – Perception of rebirth

14:00 – Reduced fear of death

14:55 – Perception of interdependent opposites

16:09 – Perception of causal determinism 👎

With Kafei, I object to causal-chain determinism, as experienced or pictured per the way of thinking in the possibilism model in the ordinary state: as a semi-open future that doesn’t exist yet. Domino-chain, in-time determinism. One thing state at one point in time causes the next. -cm

18:29 – Perception of sacredness 👎

not my conceptual vocabulary lexicon.

experiencing something as religious? If cybernetics transgression and comprehension and reset equals religious experience. -cm

19:43 – Reverence

20:30 – Perception of divine presence

21:25 – Existential dread

22:40 – Spirituality enhancement

27:11 – Perceived exposure to inner mechanics of consciousness 👍

28:42 – Perceived exposure to semantic concept network

31:12 – Perception of telepathy 👎

32:52 – Ineffability 👎

Rank newbie beginners can’t use words – proves nothing. -cm

36:46 – Transpersonal hallucinations

37:59 – Noetic insight

40:02 – Noetic truth

40:32 – Noetic realism

41:29 – Platonic conceptualisation

42:34 – Unfathomable beauty

44:24 – Perception of self as designer

46:58 – Perception of self as illusion

I’m against the popular usage of the idea of illusion, or “x is just an illusion”.

I only discuss “illusion” in a technical mechanism analysis perspective.

Photo: Julie M. Brown, crop by Cybermonk

Egoic possibilism-thinking “is just an illusion”, a cloak, a layer of veiling the underlying mechanism.

That’s as unhelpful as saying that the graphical user interface on a computer “is just an illusion” “but at the lower level machine language is the reality”.

We need a Douglas Hofstadter levels analysis here.

You might as well say that “Everything is an illusion – and there, now I have explained everything”.

That is completely unhelpful of an analysis.

I don’t attach a dismissive value to “illusion”, it is the same as newton’s theory of optics: there is a virtual image, it’s not good, it’s not bad,

The thing, the referent that’s represented by mental constructs exists in some way.

The lazy evasion is to just dismiss something as “just an illusion”. That explains exactly nothing.

What the hard adult work requires is to explain: in what way does something exist, and in what way does it not exist?

I wrote that in my 1997 theory summary outline.

Referents of mental constructs exist, even if they exist in a different way than we initially experience, so I would not simply label a referent of a mental construct “an illusion”.

Any moron can go around labeling everything as “illusion”, this is unhelpful, it does not represent how representation works.

47:54 – Perception of transcension

48:45 – Perception of enlightenment 👍

List of words is a matter of definitions; the disputes are a matter of definition.

I treat the word ‘enlightenment’ exactly identically to how I treat ‘satori, ‘revelation’, ‘completion’, ‘purification’, ‘cleansing’, ‘transformation’, and 10 other words.

People are way too precious about the word, as if magical, ‘enlightened’.

There is nothing special in such a way about being enlightened: every mystery-religion initiate was immortal, completed, adult, mature, having the expected ordinary state of being enlightened.

Stop putting satori artificially elevated on a deliberately out-of-reach pedestal.

Against everyone else in the world, I disagree that if someone says “I am enlightened” that means they are not enlightened.

Only an unenlightened person who falsely thinks that enlightenment is something difficult and rare and impossible to attain would assert that nobody is allowed to be enlightened and nobody is allowed to state the fact of their state of knowledge.

Anyone who acts this way is falsely conflating this confused notion of “shrinking the size of your ego”.

They think that that has something to do with being enlightened.

The person making the accusation simply indicates that they themselves don’t have enlightenment.

It is wrong for them to declare that nobody else is enlightened.

They themselves think in terms of social realm.

It is reductionism, reducing metaphysical knowledge to the social realm of claiming to be better socially than other people in the social realm.

This is the realm of “you are supposed to shrink the size of your ego in relation to the size of other people’s ego”.

That is nonsensical and reductionist.

That view reduces Psilocybin Eternalism to something it’s not, the domain of Social Relations.

From the Egodeath theory point of view and value system, Transcendent Knowledge is not in the domain of social relations.

Only someone who’s completely trapped within the low level of the social realm would accuse other people of being motivated by the social realm.

Like Hatsis saying “Your view is because Allegro…” merely reveals that HIS thinking is stuck in a little orbit limited by Allegro.

A statement of description, that’s all; it’s merely a descriptor term:

Have you incorporated relying on no-free-will in the altered state, to form eternalism-thinking?

Notice how all of the other theorists, they tell you that you are not allowed to be enlightened, and they tell you that you are not allowed to state that you were enlightened, only I allow you and permit you to say, I permit you to be enlightened and I permit you to say that you’re enlightened or that you have satori or that you are perfected through mystical rebirth.

The Egodeath theory, being expressed in the form of Science, provides enlightenment, satori, gnosis, and purification, immediately and straightforwardly, to everyone.

With the Egodeath theory in hand, there is no shortage of enlightenment.

I am not very satisfied with my 1997 Core theory as a sufficient criteria For Enlightenment.

For people who have Transcendent Knowledge to be appropriately literate, I want them to recognize religious myth as description of enlightenment; realization of the eternalism mental world model, added to the possibilism model.

Notice the conflict of interest: the bunk fraudulent meditation gurus tell you that nobody is enlightened, because if anybody achieved enlightenment, then that fake fraudster guru would be out of business; they cannot permit completion and success.

When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs – or at least becomes 10% smaller in its impurity.

Other theories make your ego 10% smaller each session. Lifetime payments; incremental ego shrinkage on a never-ending installment plan.

The Egodeath theory makes your ego cancel out to zero.

The world’s tiniest theory of Ego Transcendence and Transcendent Knowledge is the Egodeath theory: it is the smallest, and has the biggest explanatory power, and only this theory grants you permission to be enlightened.

Every other theory (and they are all wrong of course) tells you that you are not allowed to be enlightened, there’s no way that you’re enlightened.

Fake, failed theories say that cannot be, that people readily can be enlightened and have satori and completion of mystical rebirth.

These bunk fake impostor theories, they talk about how you need to “reduce the size of your ego” – and in so framing Transcendent Knowledge, they actually reify that which they claim to diminish.

Mystically speaking, are you a child, or are you an adult?

If you are an adult, that’s the same thing as saying you’re enlightened.

Are you an immortal, non-dying?

Have you passed through the dragon-guarded garden gate to eat of the fruit of immortality – shedding your child-thinking at the gate?

Then you’re enlightened; then you have satori; then you have purification; you have advanced mystical unity or true unity.

Why are you frightened?

I am enlightened 😱

Psychedelic Grunge song

Microdosing with Amanita (Masha, Foreward by Fadiman)

Amanita muscaria is the most famous entheogen in the world that nobody uses.

Dale Pendell

The first real book about Amanita?

Not just sky-castle conjecture & childish fantasizing & conflation with Psilocybin, but actual information about effects, more than Heinrich’s 1994 book Strange Fruit.

However, only microdosing, so still, in 2022, after churning out piles of baseless popular books since 1957, we have no proper book directly about Amanita.

“shares some Amanita large-dose trip reports, cautioning against this practice because of the mushroom’s strong dissociative properties, including amnesia.”

url https://www.innertraditions.com/books/microdosing-with-amanita-muscaria

https://www.innertraditions.com/books/microdosing-with-amanita-muscaria

Blurb

“Shares the results of a more-than-3,000 participant study on the medicinal effects of Amanita muscaria microdoses.

Examining the findings from the first international study on the medicinal effects of microdosing with Amanita muscaria, the psychoactive fly agaric mushroom, Baba Masha, M.D., documents how more than 3,000 volunteers experienced positive outcomes for a broad range of health conditions as well as enhanced creativity and sports performance.

Microdosing with Amanita Muscaria

• Shows how Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for a broad range of conditions, including hormonal dysfunction, allergies, gingivitis, heartburn, eczema, psoriasis, depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and migraine

• Reveals how Amanita microdoses are effective for pain relief and for interrupting addictions to alcohol, opiates, nicotine, caffeine, and other narcotics 

• Details how to safely identify, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, including recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts 

Exploring the results of the first international study on the medicinal effects of microdosing with Amanita muscaria, the psychoactive fly agaric mushroom, Baba Masha, M.D., documents how more than 3,000 volunteers experienced positive outcomes for a broad range of health conditions as well as enhanced creativity and sports performance.

Masha discovered that Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for hormonal dysfunction, low libido, allergies, asthma, swelling, gingivitis, nail fungus, digestive issues, and skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis as well as recovery from stroke and cardiac arrest.

She found beneficial effects on depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and low appetite and shows how Amanita microdoses are quite effective for pain relief, including in cases of rheumatoid arthritis, menstrual pain, and migraine.

The author also reveals how Amanita microdoses can interrupt addictions to alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opiates, and other narcotics.

The author details how to safely identify, harvest, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, and she includes recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts.

She shares more than 780 personal Amanita microdose reports from study participants, detailing the positive, negative, and neutral effects they experienced, and she also shares some Amanita large-dose trip reports, cautioning against this practice because of the mushroom’s strong dissociative properties, including amnesia.

Revealing the vast healing potential of this ancient mushroom ally, Masha’s study shows not only how Amanita can help with many health conditions but also how it activates the ability to feel the value and the significance of your own life experience.

Multistate Compatibilism

A new type of definition for compatibilism of freewill and eternalism.

To debate religion or religious philosophy theology is to debate free will.

Religion comes from the altered state.

The no-free-will experience comes from the altered state.

This explains why debates about religion are the same thing as debates about freewill.

Low-IQ people reduce the entire subject of religion to “Does God exist, yes or no?”

In contrast, I approach the topic of religious theory in terms of no-free-will, or the transformative altered experience of control, as the central driving topic.

See also: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/valentinian-freewill-compatibilism/

The Freewill State of Consciousness

Phenomenologically, in the ordinary state, which is the possibilism experiential state, freewill is true or functionally true, experientially the case and is the form of the mental model.

Experiencing is in the form of freewill branching.

Autonomous monolithic control steering in branching possibilities.

The No-free-will State of Consciousness

Phenomenologically, in the altered state, which is the eternalism experiential state, no-free-will is true or functionally true, experientially is the case and is the form of the mental model.

Experiencing is in the form of no-free-will/ non-branching.

Dependent 2-level pre-existing control-thoughts frozen worldline in block universe.

Control Compatibilism

A fully formed mind can handle stable control in the possibilism state of consciousness and the eternalism state of consciousness.

4D

Breadth, Width, Depth, & Height

William James vs. experiencing block-universe eternalism

Summary article:

url https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/com/com_jame.html

I assume the ordinary state is assumed by James, like in Sam Harris’ no-free-will book.

William James argues in terms of “our experience” – but the big question is, our experience in which state of consciousness?

the default, free will/ possibilism/ open-future state of consciousness, or

the psilocybin, no-free-will/ eternalism/ closed -future state of consciousness?

What does his NO2 experience say about possibilism vs. eternalism?

Book claims James became more open minded about eternalism:

The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’ Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment

url https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1438456271/

scroll down in this section to see book’s TOC and my commentary: https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2021/01/14/ideas-for-podcast-topics/#Philosophy-of-Time

Richard Double Metaphilosophy and Free Will

His thesis:

People who are driven by truth assert no-free-will.

People who are driven by fabricating and propping up a wobbly system of ethics assert free will.

See the book review, but beware, need to fact-check these dubious reviewers 🤷‍♂️

Purchased June 17, 2001.

I started the Egodeath Yahoo Group June 10, 2001: https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-1/#message1 – there might be a Double post there & at Egodeath.com, he is mentioned.

I posted about his book The Non-Reality of Free will: https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-1/#message42

Substantive posts, as usual.

The first member of the Egodeath community, Michael Anderson, asked about the topic, and he is of the guitar amp tone religion.

url https://www.amazon.com/Metaphilosophy-Free-Will-Richard-Double/dp/0195107624/

url https://www.amazon.com/Non-Reality-Free-Will-Richard-Double/dp/0195064976/