Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Levels of Control, Self-Control Cybernetics
Contents
Kingship, transcendent personal
control versus uncontrollable transcendent controller
Delusions of control in egoic and
loosecog thinking
Motive of Self-Management through
Enlightenment
Sacred
kingship. Differentiating between egoic
personal control, transcendent personal control, and the hidden uncontrollable
transcendent controller
When we
talk about two modes of control -- before and after enlightenment, egoic
worldmodel vs. transcendent worldmodel, the mind's personal controllership
before enlightenment and the mind's personal controllership after enlightenment,
do not confuse the mind's transcendent thinking about control (or transcendent
mode of control) with the hidden uncontrollable transcendent controller.
Looking at
a person we may talk of the person's lower and higher self, but don't think
that that person's higher self or higher mode of thinking about control somehow
gives them powerful ability to control the hidden uncontrollable transcendent
controller. Differentiate:
o The mind's lower way of thinking about its
controllership
o The mind's higher way of thinking about its
controllership
o The hidden uncontrollable transcendent
controller (first entirely hidden, then speculatively seen like the
"backside of God")
You can
gain the transcendent way of thinking about control, but you as a personal
center of control agency cannot ever control the hidden uncontrollable
transcendent controller -- upon enlightenment ("awakening from
sleep"), you can become *aware of* the hidden uncontrollable transcendent
controller, but this does *not* enable you to command and control it -- quite
the opposite.
People
think that because Jesus is united with God in some way, he has power over God,
but the power relationship works the other way. Jesus is as a slave of God, but God is not as a slave of Jesus. God unites the mystic to himself as the
puppetmaster awakes the puppet to the real control relationship -- upon being
given knowledge of truth, the puppet does not become the puppetmaster or the
meta puppetmaster.
The
relationship is revealed and made conscious, yet does not change:
puppetmaster/puppet, parent/child, author/character, programmer/virtual agent,
master/slave. Never think that seeing
God and seeing your oneness with God gives you, a local and secondary center of
control, the power of God or power over God; learning to perceive the
uncontrollable transcendent controller in no way enables you to compel the
uncontrollable transcendent controller.
Enlightenment
does not confer power so much as it confers integrity and coherent purity of
thinking. It conveys a kind of
legitimate kingship, but kingship is the awareness that one does *not* wield
primary control power -- but that rather one is as a slave, or child, or
puppet, or virtual agent, under a master, babe's parent, puppetmaster, or
programmer.
The
initiate does come into their own higher self and higher worldmodel, and unites
with the divine transcendent controller, but the initiate's higher mode of
control absolutely remains below the transcendent controller. I am now come into my kingship, I have
ascended my throne in heaven, *but* there is a throne above mine.
I now may
be said to sit on a throne next to God, *but* God's throne always is
cybernetically a control-level above mine.
The divine sacred king is not God, but is one through whom God rules (to
qualify as a legit sacred king, the king must have been crashed and
rebooted/rescued by the Ultimate Level of Control.
In a
shallow reading, you might think that this theory of enlightenment as becoming
conscious of cybernetic levels of control only serves to explain Western
religion, that Zen and Buddhism are superior to all this nonsense. However, upon closer study, there are in
fact directly equivalent mythic concepts in the other world religions.
Only an
exoteric false characterization can pretend that all the religions are
different. Esoterically, all the
religions are the same; any other esotericism is either absent or false or
misunderstood. This cybernetic theory
is a universal theory of myth-religion that fully applies to Buddhism and Zen
and Christianity, Judaism and the "primitive religions" and the
religion of the androids on planet Zarkon.
As an
initiator, I will make you a true king (with spiritual legitimacy but not
necessarily with political power).
Every citizen of democratic Athens was initiated and thus considered a
legitimate king, but not one with subjects.
A true legitimate king is one whose controllership has been crashed and
generously rebooted by the Good, by the ever-inscrutable and ever-hidden
(though now intuitively "revealed") uncontrollable transcendent
controller.
Once you
discover that there has always been and will be a higher controller-king over
you, although you now clearly see the king, the will of the king still remains
utterly inscrutable to you. Although
when initiated you now learn to perceive and recognize the
rulership/controllership of Isis over you, the will of Isis still remains
utterly inscrutable to you.
You now
see God, the Light, the Good -- yet the will of God remains utterly hidden to you
as a separate control agent. Jesus sees
his Father, yet the will of the Father remains hidden and inscrutable to Jesus;
Jesus must be given faith by the Father that the Father will can crash but will
generously, out of the arbitrary Loving Goodness of his inscrutable heart,
reboot Jesus' viable personal controllership.
Washington
was likely an entheogenically enlightened Masonic mystic who experienced
cybernetic death and rebirth, and who was in favor of giving divine kingship to
each citizen, so that each citizen is a legitimate sacred king who happens to
rule over no subjects except himself.
This is
the character of Hellenistic thinking, which integrates mystic ego-death and
rebirth, kingship, and politics: Is God a god of wrath and sheer crushing power,
or a god of sustaining love and nurturing compassion? Certainly God is true, there's no question about that, and
powerful -- the question is, is God just true and powerful, or true and
powerful *and* Good (virtuous)?
Is Isis
the puppetmaster heartless, or virtuous and kind? Does he worship sheer power, or love? Should our political system be based on the truth of will to
power, or on truth married to the law of love?
Is our political system based on power alone, or on truth that binds
itself to love and the Good?
>Watt's
frequently poined out that Westerners, or any practitioner
>of
"monarchical monotheism,"
have a hard time understanding the
>experience
of unity, since to say "I am God" seems to be the insane,
>and
obviously false claim, that "I am the controller of the world."
>
>Watts
would make that claim, then nonplus his audience by admitting
>that,
yes, he was controling everything that was going on. Of
>course,
he would point out, he didn't KNOW how he was doing it, but
>then
he (and we) didn't know how he was breathing by making his lungs
>move,
or circulating his blood by beating his heart.
In a
certain specifiable sense, I am the controller of the cosmos. However, the "I" in the sense of
me as a practical virtually separate controller, as a locus of control power,
is different than "I" in the sense of "controller of the
cosmos". The "I" when I
say "I am God" is distinct from the "I" when I say "I
am a local locus of control power."
The aspect of me which is God is not controllable by the aspect of me
which is a local limited locus of control power.
The
transcendent mind necessarily has mastered language to know that key words have
two meanings. It may be a matter of
some demonic panicked urgency to discover the second, saving
meaning-network.
Melody or
someone else asked why schizophrenia causes one to feel all-controlling or
all-controlled (delusions of control means either). My explanation: in the mind beset with long-term loose cognition,
the locus of perceived control actually shifts all over the place, everywhere
from "I feel like I control everything" to "I feel like
everything controls me", *including* the default, normal, unspoken middle
feeling, which is "I am one partial-controller among many".
Schizophrenics
feel all three, but no one mentions the middle -- it needs to be pointed out
that very often, a schizophrenic experiences themselves as one
partial-controller among many, with a limited degree of control over other
people and the world, and with the world and other people exerting a limited
degree of control over the schizophrenic person.
This
partial-controller feeling can be consciously studied during loose cognition by
thinking in terms of observing the social-control field in one's own mind. When someone walks along and comes into
view, that automatically causes a normal mind's thoughts to switch into
personal interaction mode, even though the mind doesn't consciously will that
mode. In loose cognition, the default,
ingrained, automatic dynamic mental structures are disengaged; the mind
switches from autopilot to manual control.
Normal,
healthy thinking is based on the delusion of the egoic interpretation of the
nature of one's control over one's thoughts and actions. Insofar as normal personal control is
largely deluded, so the two standard "delusions of control" (I'm
being controlled by the world, I have full control over the world) could be
described as somewhat enlightened.
Philosophical
thinking is aware that the mind in some sense solipsistically creates and
controls and projects the world. Who
can argue with the madman's good sense?
Certainly, in some sense, I *am* extremely controlled by the world, and
in *some* sense, I am the creator of the world and I have omnipotent control
over the world.
The madman
has one imbalanced interpretation of these word/meaning networks, and normal
deluded egoic thinking has a different imbalanced interpretation of these
word/meaning networks. Ideally, the
enlightened mind breaks through to a truly balanced interpretation.
From the
egoic deluded imbalanced delusion of egoic controllership, the mind moves to
the loose-cognition imbalanced "delusions of control", and through
that, through integrating those various imbalanced delusions of controllership,
the mind matures to understand the merely practical and conventional nature of
personal controllership and the ego illusion.
My goal
initially was to be radically non-neurotic.
The harder I pursued this goal, the more frustrating it became. I sought to control my ways of thinking, and
remained dysfunctional or self-conflicting and self-contradicting in practical
personal management. The clearer my
ideals were, the more conscious I was of utterly failing to attain them.
I turned
to problems of control, and encountered a series of partial worldmodel
transformations regarding self, time, will, control, and world. Then I became busy systematizing that
worldmodel change and mapping it to historical myth-religion. I don't work much to try to become radically
non-neurotic. I found that the attempt
to become radically non-neurotic amounted to a self-exacerbating circular
control problem; not only was I as neurotic as ever, I became neurotic about
being neurotic.
Now,
adhering to and developing a model of *non* control or the inherent limitations
of control, and a definition of enlightenment as understanding the inherent
limitations of control, I am neurotic but no longer neurotic about being
neurotic.
I am
interested in finding out about your method of attempting to attain radical
non-neurosis. If you define your goal
in an extreme way and insistently pursue it with every resource you can muster,
but remain critical of your remaining imperfections (as judged by your
criteria), you could become chronically frustrated. But this may be determined by your basic personality or
constitution.
My model
of enlightenment is centrally concerned with revising ideas about the nature of
personal control -- essentially a rigorously systematized and more
straightforward version of Alan Watts' conception of religious insight. I have at least reduced some major aspects
of meta-neurosis. I set the goals low,
for what "basic full enlightenment" should mean.
My early
notebooks are filled with work on the problem you are describing: the goal of
eliminating self-conflict. I have
eliminated certain aspects of self-conflict by securing a certain kind of
classic enlightenment. I generally
concluded that the mind is inherently prone to self-conflict, and that the
attempt to eliminate self-conflict is highly liable to actually exacerbate
self-conflict, so that minimizing self-conflict requires accepting a reasonable
degree of self-conflict.
Minimizing
neurosis requires accepting a reasonable degree of neurosis. There is a huge difference between
minimizing neurosis and radically eliminating neurosis. I think degree of neurosis is largely
genetically determined. Some people are
more constitutionally neurotic, inherently.
Therefore
your own personal system of attaining some type of radical non-neurosis might
possibly work for you, to attain your goal as you conceive it, while other
people might not be able to effectively take advantage of your method; it might
have poor reproducibility because dependent on individual constitution. I am systematizing a universally attainable
conception of enlightenment.
Many
people could try your method and I suspect -- not knowing anything about it
except my own grappling with eliminating self-conflict -- that only a few will
succeed, and many will wind up in a tight knot of frustration. I follow Watts here, in his portrayal of Zen
-- self-conflict remains after enlightenment, but not meta-self-conflict. I bracket off enlightenment, in certain
respects, so that in some ways it eliminates neurosis, and in some ways not.
>From:
Glenn
>
>I
note, FWIW, that your intentions and mine are only partly overlapping.
>You
are in large part interested in overturning the dominant
>publicly-held
paradigm of what enlightenment is and how to achieve it.
>This
drives you to frequently evaluate, generalize and simplify the
>positions
taken by various "camps." Your interest is historical,
>scholarly
and polemic as well as practical.
That is
only my *recent* concern. I first
developed my core theory of transcendent knowledge by taking the same attitude
as you -- studying theories of enlightenment with a skeptical and utilitarian
strategy, based on the axiom that previous systematizations were crude and
garbled, which I still hold.
>My
interest is far more narrow. I want to become enlightened as quickly
>as
possible.
That was
my concern, too, in my initial phase -- Oct 1985-Jan 1988.
>Consequently,
I don't care a whit what various camps claim
>about
what enlightenment is or is not, except as it has a bearing on my
>project.
(BTW: This specifically and explicitly includes not caring what
>Ken
Wilber thinks. :-D)
That was
my strategy, too, in my initial phase of struggling for non-neurosis, leading
to discovering my core theory of transcendent knowledge.
>In
fact, I think focusing too much on what enlightenment has
>historically
been thought to be is directly counter to my project. Why?
>Because
science has overturned many of the assumptions on which such
>historical
notions were founded.
That was
my attitude, too, and essentially remains my basic attitude, with my historical
studies added later as a peripheral layer.
A theory of enlightenment that fails to map to historical religions to
identify the degree of insight they had is of less relevance, and if you think
they had no insight, I disagree (but that would require detailed discussion).
>I am
of the opinion, further, that the
>"science"
of psychology is so much in its infancy that it barely
>deserves
to be called such.
That
attitude has always served me well.
>This
is partly IMO because of institutional
>biases
against the perceived philosophical, political, and dare I say
>religious
implications of certain scientific facts, such as Darwinian
>natural
selection.
>
>So I
rely very heavily on my own judgments, intuitions and experience.
That was
my strategy that served me well.
>Some
of what I say sounds consistent with the "orthodox" view; i.e.
>"Enlightenment
is a shift in who one is from being an ego to being
>nothing-in-particular."
But when I unpack what I mean, hopefully some
>surprises
will come out of the box -- that would be a good sign that I'm
>thinking
for myself and not being a parrot.
>You
would do me a service by trying to listen to what I say in that
>spirit,
and not being too quick to lump my views into one "camp" or
>another.
Note, for instance, that while I'm not yet convinced of the
>efficacy
of entheogen-use as a means to enlightenment
The
efficacy depends on what definition of enlightenment you hold. Entheogens certainly are efficient for the
definition of enlightenment I hold and advocate.
>
(strictly, I might
>add,
because of an apparent lack of evidence and from personal
>experience,
as opposed to any bias against drug use),
Whether
there is evidence depends first of all on the definition of enlightenment you
hold.
>I'm
not a
>"meditationist."
In fact I'm formulating and testing my own method, a
>method
which places very little emphasis on meditation. If I'm
>successful
I should be enlightened any day now! :-D
You
haven't said a word yet about what that method is.
>The
question arises again: What do I mean by enlightenment? And why
>would
I consider it a desirable attainment?
>
>Let me
take another cut at the subject by defining what I consider the
>alternative
-- endarkenment. "Normal" consciousness consists of
>enslavement
to an unpleasant illusion. A "normal" person has a set of
>thoughts
that he or she constantly refers to as his or her "self" -- a
>lump
of stories, images, judgments, goals, desires, etc. Most of us are
>more
or less unhappy with "who we are," which makes us neurotically
>preoccupied
with the past and the future.
It sounds
like you are setting up an assumption that knowing truly who one is necessarily
eliminates all aspects of neurosis or self-conflict. I hold that there is only a partial connection; knowing who one
is only eliminates certain aspects of neurosis -- it is no panacea.
>"I
did such-and-such in the
>past.
I'm happy/sad about it. I hope to/hope not to get to such-and-such
>place
in the future." (Since "neurotic" is an important term for me,
>I'll
define what I mean by it. "Neurotic", for me, means
>"unhappy/upset/anxious/fearful/angry
about something that's not actually
>happening
or has no reasonably real bearing on one's present or imminent
>well-being.)
Self-control
and personal management operates across time.
It will always make good sense for good reasons that me-now is anxious
about me-later. Some amount of anxiety
is inherent in being a self-controlling agent.
We can reasonably minimize anxiety, but it is impossible to eliminate or
radically reduce it down to almost nothing.
We can eliminate only some aspects of anxiety.
The
anxiety-free enlightened person is a pie-in-the-sky ideal and I confidently
predict that an attempt to be almost totally anxiety free will fail, except for
a few odd individuals who happen to have an anxiety-free life and a low-anxiety
constitution. I support your research
and want to know the result, but this is a caution that you might fail, or your
method might never pan out for most other people. Lots of self-help programs promise a radical reduction of
anxiety, elimination of self-conflict.
>Furthermore,
being social animals, most of us are
>neurotically
preoccupied and anxious about our relationships with
>others.
Our energy and attention is absorbed and monopolized by these
>preoccupations.
Normal egoic consciousness, with apologies to Joyce, is
>a
nightmare from which we ought to be trying to awake.
Do you
think there are enlightened people who are almost totally free of worry about
interpersonal relationships, and that there exists a method of becoming almost
totally free of such worry?
>That
we are "endarkened" can best be appreciated when one contrasts
>normal
consciousness with the point of view of the "peak experience." I
>had my
first such altered state at the age of 22. It was literally as
>if, up
to that point, I had been wearing glasses that flattened
>everything
and leached much of the color out of my perception. Upon
>"taking
the glasses off," I was in absolute awe of how beautiful
>everything
was; colors were brighter and objects were "more
>3-dimensional."
I was also in Love with everyone and everything; talking
>to
people filled me with ecstasy. I had much more energy than normal,
>but I
wasn't manic -- on the contrary, I experienced a deeper peace and
>serenity
than I had ever known.
>
>This
experience passed, as all experiences must. By enlightenment, do I
>mean a
permanent peak experience? No. I think an enlightened person
>would
have ups and downs just like a regular person.
Yes.
>The
contrast
>between
the peak experience and normal consciousness, however, does
>highlight
just how dim, constrictive and downright hellish is that which
>we
consider "normal."
>
>The
key difference, IMO, between enlightened consciousness and regular
>consciousness
is that an enlightened person is non-neurotic --
>_radically_
non-neurotic. Here are a few specific details of what that
>might
look like:
I formed a
type of enlightenment that causes certain dysfunctional aspects of thinking to
be solved or cured -- I can cure some types or aspects of neurosis, but I am
not able to cure all aspects or types of neurosis. Will you be able to promise that your method cures practically
all your neurosis, or all of any normal person's neurosis? I doubt that anyone can deliver on that
claim.
One
semi-hypothetical bad guy for me is the privileged smug white person in the
ruling class, who proclaims "you create your own reality", and feels
that they have left behind neurosis -- can they say that when the chips are
down?
Before
enlightenment (as I define it), life is suffering; during the enlightenment
process, life is even more suffering because of additional meta-suffering;
after enlightenment, the mind returns to regular suffering -- now mitigated in
certain respects by metaphysical enlightenment.
This is a
Wattsian view. He was an
alcoholic. Ozzy Osbourne is enlightened
by my definition -- he is an alcoholic.
From struggle combined with incomprehension, to struggle about struggle
in addition to struggle, to struggle combined with comprehension.
It is
possible that you could wrap yourself in a knot of frustration, and conclude
that human life is inherently anxious, neurotic, and includes self-conflict;
you could follow the same trajectory as me and reach the same sobered,
skeptical, restricted view of enlightenment I have systematized.
I
axiomatically assume that one cannot attain any enlightenment like you define
without first passing through this door of basic full enlightenment of the type
I have systematized, because it is about control dynamics that are quickly
encountered in the entheogenic altered state, and those control dynamics are
very relevant to any project of radical non-neurosis and non-self-conflict.
>1.
Inner peace/radical absence of anxiety. Anxiety, as opposed to
>rational
fear i.e. fight-or-flight response when someone is lunging at
>you with
a knife, is IMO inherently neurotic.
If one
enters loose cognition -- the intense mystic altered state -- one *is* fully
vulnerable to control-seizure panic, with fight-or-flight reaction; here is
where one can truly get religion, in a fight-or-flight panic reaction to onset
of ego death, in which self-control is undermined by one's creatureliness with
respect to the ground of being. This is
a classic, orgasm-like potential of the mystic state, and is a doorway through
which one must pass to explore loose cognition.
Any system
of radical non-neurosis that lacks intimate acquaintance with this troublesome
and awesome innate potential is a system of mundane self-help, not religious
enlightenment.
My initial
phase of discovering my core theory of transcedent knowledge was such a
non-transcendent system of mundane self-help -- it was transcendent in certain
respects, but then, regular run-of-the-mill self-help is also transcendent in
certain respects -- that type of self-help that talks all about stopping
self-conflict and stopping neurosis.
>Ordinary
consciousness is
>saturated
with anxiety, both gross and subtle; in fact, in my way of
>looking
at things the ego is in a certain sense _created_ by anxiety.
Ego is
central to the mind's control-system, and the control system inherently
involves anxiety, before and after enlightenment as I define it. I provide comprehension of anxiety that
takes some edge off anxiety, but I won't promise to basically get rid of anxiety.
>More
on this in a later e-mail. An enlightened person's day-to-day
>consciousness
would be deeply peaceful and free of free-floating anxiety
>to a
degree we normal dysfunctional folks can only imagine.
That's an
ideal, and circumstances might permit a few people during a few episodes of life
to feel that way, and some people might constitutionally maintain that --
especially if they live a privileged or oblivious life. But there's no system of enlightenment that
will basically eliminate anxiety to a very strong degree. Define 'deeply', 'free of', and 'degree we
... can only imagine'.
>2.
Flow/Presence. In his book _Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
>Experience_
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi distinguishes _Flow_ -- a state of
>consciousness
in which time and the "self" disappears because we are so
>fully
engaged in what we are doing. Most of us have experienced it -- it
>is the
timeless and profoundly pleasurable state we may enter while
>skiing,
playing a musical instrument, having sex, doing work we love or
>any
other activity in which we are able to lose ourselves. I would
>expect
an enlightened person to be remarkably "present" in everyday
>life,
to such a degree that most of his or her waking moments would be
>spent
in a state of "flow."
Sounds
like regular self-help, which has high potential. We really need to discuss the overlap between self-help and
enlightenment, and perhaps self-transcendence.
The
dominant paradigm of enlightenment is very heavily based in the realm of
self-help, so that there is a risk of reducing and distorting enlightenment to
mundane self-help, producing extremely self-help-optimized healthy people, who
may or may not be spiritually or metaphysically enlightened, or might not have
experienced intense mystic insight.
You can
characterize my recent efforts as tearing self-help away from metaphysical
enlightenment, in order to make metaphysical enlightenment attainable. Self-help is like a weed that chokes and
hides metaphysical enlightenment, resulting in self-help falsely labeled as
self-transcendence. The popular
conception of meditation completely intertwines self-help and
self-transcendence, with the actual result being half-baked self-help and
half-baked self-transcendence.
The
solution is to integrate and differentiate the two realms, which are currently
conflated. The current lack of
differentiation between the areas of self-help and self-transcendence prevents
self-transcendence. Enlightenment
defined as self-transcendence is very easy and universally accessible with the
optimal tools, which are entheogens and the compact set of concepts I've
systematized.
Self-help
(ideally the elimination of anxiety, neurosis, and self-conflict) is much more
difficult than metaphysical enlightenment. There's certainly some relationship
and overlap between the two areas.
Separating out metaphysical enlightenment and obtaining it could well be
considered a prerequisite for the harder problem of self-help/self-development
(the elimination of anxiety, neurosis, and self-conflict).
>3.
Radical spontaneity. Most people are, for the most part,
>anxiety-driven
robots (whether they realize it or not, IMO). They spend
>most
waking moments in a state of gross or subtle anxious reaction,
>either
to something that happened in the past or worrying about
>something
that might happen in the future. I would expect an enlightened
>person
to be delightfully spontaneous and un-self-conscious, devoting
>the
very minimum necessary time, effort or emotion to thinking about
>past
and future.
That
sounds unreal, idealistic, fantastic -- if pictured at some extreme
degree. That goal is easy to say, and
hard to accomplish to any real degree.
Sure, if you are a majorly messed-up person, you can make huge improvements,
but for ineliminable practical reasons, an active life requires spending a
large amount of time, effort, and emotion to think about past and future.
Your
description matches the very first ideas I encountered in the self-help and
spirituality-book world. It sounds
straight out of my early notebooks. You
may be lucky and blessed with a less conflicted constitution than me, but I
caution you that there is the possibility you could be heading off in the same
direction of complete frustration I did.
Don't be disappointed if you conclude that only a minor reduction in
what you label 'neurosis' is possible.
If you
want to bring it down 10%, you will likely succeed, but if you are committed to
bringing it down 90%, I'm sure you'll end up in a tight knot of
frustration. Your goal may be just
plain unrealistic and unreal and unreasonable -- in fact unattainable. If you fail, it might be your fault in that
you adhered to an incoherent, idealistic goal -- not your fault in the sense
that your goal was reasonable but there's something neurotic about you,
preventing you from reaching the supposedly reasonable goal.
This might
not apply to you and your method, but it reflects the common experiences of
some people. Self-help philosophy often
causes an intensification of neurosis -- see the apostle Paul's statement of
what I'd call revelation through frustration: he attempted with all his
resources to attain full self-mastery and closely adhere to a defined method of
conduct, but the harder he tried, the more frustrated he became.
After
that, he had religious revelations. I
am averting the possibility of you heading down that path at a slow pace, by
fast-forwarding you. That path of
frustration through revelation leads to my conclusions that one can only
minimize anxiety to a degree, and can do so by transcendent insights about the
inherently problematic aspects of personal self-control.
Now I'm
confident you won't undergo several years of agonizing frustration, leading
only slowly to the classic kind of enlightenment I'm systematizing. You're effectively starting out with the
sober wisdom I've pulled together -- that life very likely for most people in
most situations is inherently anxious and neurotic, due to the inherent nature
of controllership in the real world, and the comprehending mind doesn't kill
itself with self-blame over its inability to do away with a tangible amount of
neurosis.
Be
prepared to accept that a controller in the world can only reduce anxiety and
neurosis to some limited degree, less than your ideal, which may be an
unrealistic and naive ideal that lacks wisdom.
I support your evident tentativeness, the tentativeness of your
optimism. You seem to have a healthy
tentativeness. Don't take success for
granted; you don't in fact know for sure if your system will fly.
>4.
Radical un-self-consciousness. Norma says:
>
> >I
cannot say to another that the existence of life
>
>is dependent on something external, alone, when I can not see a
>beginning
or
>
>an end, an outside or an inside.
>
>(Norma
frequently talks, to my mind, the way an enlightened person might
>talk.)
If we
grant that you are unenlightened, your estimate of what enlightenment is about
and the way an enlightened person might talk might be completely wrong and
require wholesale revision. A zillion
spiritualists write in that standard mode of expression -- your current
assessment of an enlightened way of talking would suggest that many, many
people are enlightened.
It might
be easy to tell (by my definition of enlightenment) whether someone is
enlightened, through conversing online with them. I'd have to develop this idea.
I'm just cautioning not to mistake some spiritual stylings and phrases
for actual full transformation -- an analogy might be not to mistake a child
for an adult online. I wonder how old
poster's are -- it is possible to guess skilfully, but it's not easy and one
must be ready to be completely mistaken.
My
definition of enlightenment involves a conceptual component and experiential
component; I hold that a most classic definition requires both together:
knowing a particular set of concepts, including some advanced language skills,
and also a series of experiences of those concepts. One could be enlightened conceptually but not
experientially. Your definition would
include lacking anxiety and writing in such a way that manifests lack of
anxiety.
It could
be tricky to assess whether a writer lacks anxiety. Also, a writer like me may lack a certain *type* of anxiety, and
it may require splitting hairs to distinguish this. I'm basically unconcerned with what people think of me as a person
-- it's irrelevant, so I may have sort of vestigial natural anxiety responses
if someone criticizes me, but I don't take seriously that response; I
effectively bracket it off.
I can
always think of this as just text, not people -- that *flexibility* of response
is an indication of certain kinds of transcendence. We can measure that.
That's one deeply false thing about the common conception of
enlightenment: it's an incredibly unreal, brittle, narrow, 1-dimensional
response style. People think Jesus
could only respond in one single way.
The
Wattsian school holds the opposite: the enlightened mind is free and enjoys a
broad, flexible range of responses.
Popular spirituality is an extremely tight straightjacket -- self-help
also is prone to become a straightjacket dead-set against real-world
flexibility.
Ironically,
in idealizing that "the enlightened person is free and spontaneous",
that proves to be self-deception; everyone says Buddha is so enlightened, he is
free and spontaneous -- but they then turn around and dictate that he only walk
and talk in one narrow little way. If
Buddha came to earth, the first thing people would say to him is "Hey, you
can't do that! You're supposed to be
enlightened! I'm so disappointed in
you!"
People try
to straightjacket me by saying I should be humble -- they think enlightenment
means being a spineless pushover. They
don't grasp the meaning of "free" and "spontaneous". The enlightened person has no obligation to
be a certain way, in surface style -- that's basic existential theory.
People
talk and talk about "free and spontaneous" living, and are offended
to death when they actually come across it; this is a very common backfiring
effect, like when in the name of freedom, people try to all dictate each other's
actions.
>I
would expect enlightenment to bring about the loss of a defined sense
>of
"self," which would of course result in a lack of preoccupation with
>such a
fictional entity.
The mind
in the real world can get rid of certain limited aspects of preoccupation with
the semi-fictional self. You grossly
overestimate the degree to which a corrected conception of self results in
elimination of "preoccupation" with oneself. Most enlightenment definition is extreme,
ending up in sheer fantasy-land. Real
world life demands being largely occupied with the concerns of the self.
Only
escapism, living in a cave, can eliminate "preoccupation" with self
to such a large degree. Scale back your
ideals with a major reality check.
Don't believe everything you read; consider that the ideals you hold and
have picked up are grossly unrealistic in degree -- fine as hypothetical
ideals, but not something to be taken too literally in degree.
>Heidegger
says "a person is not a thing or a
>process,
but an opening through which the Absolute can manifest." For an
>enlightened
(according
to your definition)
>person,
>this
would not be [merely] a pleasing intellectual concept
>but an
ongoing, real presence beyond reflection or talking about, not a
>dramatic
event but a "no big deal" aspect of everyday reality. An
>enlightened
person would effortlessly and spontaneously be fully engaged
>in the
given contents of present awareness, not preoccupied with mental
>chatter
or inner "dress rehearsals" for future events.
I consider
that a kind of mental training, not enlightenment. If that mode of mental conduct is ultra-valuable to you, you can
likely attain it to a moderate degree.
Don't berate yourself if it's harder and less possible that you wish, or
if other people cannot efficiently use your method to attain this goal to any
great degree.
>I
could go on. Is there anything vague about what I'm describing?
When I
began my reflective life, I held those same ideas. I wish everyone wrote as clearly, in as much detail, as you.
>Repeated
glimpses of paradise provide cold comfort when one has to live
>in the
dim dark cave of ordinary consciousness.
You may
have to get used to it -- I wouldn't put down ordinary mundane consciousness
too bad. You may find that besides metaphysical
enlightenment as I'm systematizing, you may only be able to do a little spring
cleaning and put up some fresh flowers and brighter art on the walls. If you are currently totally neurotic, you
can make great gains, to a point, but much further gains may well be
unrealistic wishful thinking.
>What
good does it do to
>change
one's "world model" if such a change has little impact on one's
>ordinary,
day-to-day existence?
The mind
moves from confusion and error to clarity and truth, on certain points. This
eliminates certain specific dissonances, certain neuroses, certain
self-conflicts. It's easy to promise
more, and dream of more, but beyond a point, can one deliver on the promises? One can pursue "enlightenment as
infinite relaxation" and attain it to some limited degree, limited by
one's consitution and circumstances.
I make
reduced promises for enlightenment and *deliver* on those promises -- this is
finite but is no pie-in-the-sky fantasies about how the mind ought to
work. I advise studying my
systematization of classic enlightenment, and being ready to scale back your
ideals for your conception of enlightenment.
>Also:
you deride the idea of a permanent altered state. Why? What's so
>sacred
about our normal state?
It's too
broad to say that I deride it. It would
be desirable to have a DMT state of cognition on demand, at any intensity, but
there is no basis for thinking that to be possible or easily achievable for
typical people. There is good reason to
assume that for most people, their mind is designed to return to the default
state, which is a natural fit for mundane daily life.
People
have overemphasized enlightenment as including an altered state so much, that
they fail to gain the type of enlightenment that is certain and ergonomically
accessible to typical people. They run off chasing ideals or hypothetical
possibilities, without attaining the proven attainable goals and levels of
consciousness that are our certain potential inheritance.
Wishful
and idealistic enlightenment, versus sure and certain enlightenment -- popular
definition/goal vs. my definition/goal.
I don't doubt that you can attain *some* reduction in neurosis, but I
doubt you can meet your pure ideals in the real world, to such a great degree
as you casually assume is possible and unproblematic. And if you can, I still doubt that your method will work for
typical people in real life. Can your
ideals pass the general reality test?
[As a
sidebar, I'm surprised you have
>expressed,
unless I missed something, no interest in psychobiology.com
>and
David Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative.
Most
likely, I'd have a "been there, done that, didn't amount to much, it was
ok back in that era" reaction. For
example, Extropians and Mondo 2000 -- yeah, fine, ok. I just glance that that stuff now. The book TechGnosis already provides everything of value like
that. My core theory has been settled
for years, and lately I've been mapping it to particular existing historical
religions and philosophies -- not to purely contemporary approaches.
I did the
pomo-cybertech hipster thing to death, took the most valuable parts, and have
reached the point of diminishing returns from that direction. I skim books like biology of transcendence
and find little additional value. I
have plenty of unread books like that.
Mystery religion has been a more profitable puzzle lately, for more
progress/change per day.
People
want me to cover contemporary theories, domains, and approaches, but I've
already more than covered it, in that I've engineered the core theory, the
cybernetic theory of ego transcendence.
That's way more than enough. It
has been time to connect this born-in-the-cyber-age theory to some things other
than the cyberage.
>You
two would seem to have a
>lot to
talk about. More about Pearce's position, which provides an
>interesting
counterpoint, later.]
I would
value your pointing out particular points.
>The
peak experiences and
>"enlightenment-like"
experiences I've had did indeed remind somewhat of
>being
on LSD, in the sense that they conferred a sense of hyperreality,
>but
they were blissfully free of any sense of "drugginess."
Sounds
like a mild salvia altered state.
> I
wasn't
>impaired;
my ability to function was in fact greatly heightened. Again,
>I
don't mean to imply that enlightenment is like a permanent peak
>experience.
I merely believe these experience give us glimpses, in
>something
like the way drug experiences do, of other possible modes of
>consciousness.
My
systematic theory is only concerned with two modes of consciousness,
characterized by tight and loose binding of mental construct matrixes. I'm skeptical about the attainability and
relevance of altered states other than essentially what would be the internally
released DMT state. I'm very selective
about which directions I speculate in.
I'm wholly focused on constructing the simplest possible model of
enlightenment, something that everyone can surely attain.
>This
e-mail was about clarifying the _goal_, which, for me, is a
>more-or-less
permanently altered state of consciousness which would
>include
the characteristics I've described above. I've had some
>incremental
experiences that make me hopeful and optimistic that such a
>permanently
altered state is possible, and that I am on the right track.
>I'll
describe some ideas about the structure of consciousness, what
>keeps
us "locked in" to ordinary, neurotic consciousness, why this state
>seems
so intractable, and how I propose to break through it, in another
>e-mail.
I'm
interested in the dynamics of breakthrough, and breakthrough past a seemingly
intractible state. Homeostatic state
shift.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)