Technique of Ego Death

Although I don't believe Jesus existed, the mythic symbol of the willingly crucified sovereign on the cross enables us to say "I have so surrendered my false self." It is an experienced symbol; one *is* the man on the cross. And one lives to tell about the experience. How can I methodically and deliberately kill myself as false self, yet live and even be unharmed? By being and participating in such a symbol of surrendered sovereignty.

There is nothing to do to purchase identification with such a symbol of ego death; the only price is to want to reject any false aspect of personal sovereignty. When you hate false notions about personal sovereignty above all, and want to root them out of your thinking, such an experiential symbol of negating one's false self-sovereignty, a symbol of deliberately killing and negating one's false kingship, fits the requirements.

Such a symbol is valuable because through it, by participating mythically in it, we can completely and perfectly put the lower self in its proper place without requiring any physical observance, but instead requiring only the mythical or spiritual act -- a cognitive vision-logic act -- of comprehending and identifying with a symbol.

The only "letting go" that is really on-target is to deliberately reject the deluded concept of personal metaphysical sovereignty. This is an act of comprehension, not of letting go of the scepter -- rather, seeing that one's control of the scepter of self-rulership, of self-command, is and has always been essentially illusory. I never was the ultimate controller of the scepter in the first place, so there is nothing I can do to let go, except in the sense of rejecting serious belief in the illusion of being the ultimate controller of the scepter of self-control. Surrender is no other action than mentally realizing and understanding the illusory aspect of personal controllership.

I am investigating esoteric Christianity and comparing it to the equivalent approach in other major religions. I'm working on a fully esoteric Christianity such as Arthur Drews proposed in the book The Christ Myth. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573921904

Related books: http://www.egodeath.com/christmyth.htm

Ego repudiation to calm violent psyche disturbance & bring stability

>Absolutely there is a need for belief. Belief is structure, life support, and the variance of amount necessary is considerable. And is why it is mandatory, to have an understanding through a support system, such as those fluent in the understanding of transpersonal psychology, to help assist identity crisis which can occur during self inquiry as belief begins to shed like snake skin.

>I can't tell you where my life would be today if that had not occurred...It is the foundation for the acceptance and respect there is for 'each new day.'

>Norma

Ego repudiation to calm storm of violent psyche disturbance and bring new stability --

What to do in a Groffian "spiritual emergency"? Throw Jonas overboard or sacrifice the mythic godman, to regain stability.

When egoic thinking starts to break down and betray its flaws and innate contradictions, the first response is to flee from the crumbling back to familiar egoic thinking, regaining the egoic kind of stable thinking -- a mental framework based on the naive freewill and separate-self assumption -- the mental framework based on the assumption of oneself as a literally separate, primary control agent.

Gradually the mind constructs a stable mental framework based on virtual-only freewill and no-separate-self -- a framework that mainly preserves and incorporates but qualifies the egoic mental constructs.

This switch can be considered a change or conversion from one belief system to another. A suspiciously wide range of ancient writings (literature and philosophy) can be read this way. Throw the against-God Jonas overboard, to regain the stability of the ship in the storm. Epicurus used this standard "storm-calming" metaphor. Epicurus:

"Even bread and water [think 'sacred meal'] furnish the highest degree of pleasure [think 'enlightenment'] ... perfect health. It relieves the human person of worry [think egoic control collapse and anxiety] when faced with the necessary demands [ego death] that life makes. [Self-sufficiency (aytarkeia)] enables us even o accept invitations to more sumptuous banquets [entheogenic sacred meals] from time to time, and it frees us of fear [ego-death systemic collapse] in relation to the dictates of chance [fatal encounter with fate/heimarmene] ... For a life full of pleasure does not consist in drinking parties [ironic allusion to ingesting entheogens] ... but rather a sober [ironic allusion to entheogenic inebriation] manner of thought [transformed mental worldmodel (logismos)] which investigates [explore and test in the mystic altered state] the reasons why particular things [egoic thinking] should be chosen or rejected [repudiating egoic thinking] and which refutes the erroneous ideas [egoic thinking, free will, separate self] which are the ultimate cause of the most violent disturbance of our souls. Insight [phronesis] is the basis of all this, and the highest good." [In Neoplatonism of Plotinus/Maimonades, seeing the One is the highest good.]

This specific altered-state allegorical way of reading is the default first way to read ancient texts (philosophy, drama, poetry, mythology, quasi-history) and to hear Classic Rock lyrics. Assume a mystic-altered-state reading, unless there is clear reason not to.

"Drawing on an older metaphorical tradition, Epicurus employs the image of a storm at sea that abates, so that the sea becomes calm, to speak of the attainment of inner peace." -- Klauck, p. 395 (recommended)

The Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions

Hans-Josef Klauck

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800635930

June 2003

The "attainment of inner peace" is not some vague spiritualism, but the opposite: it refers specifically to an amazing, alarming mystic-altered-state religious-experiencing climax -- like the orchestral buildup and final piano chord of the psychedelic Classic Rock song "A Day in the Life".

Bob Daisley of the Ozzy Osbourne Band on justified speculative belief about cosmic determinism, based on altered-state experiencing:

Believer

Watching the time go and feeling belief grow

Rise above the obstacles.

People beseech me but they will never teach me

Things that I already know. (I know)

Dreams that I have shattered may not have mattered

Take another point of view.

Doubts will arise like though chasing a rainbow

I can tell a thing or two. (That's true)

You've got to believe in yourself or no one

Will believe in you

Imagination like a bird on the wing

Flying, free for you to use (OK baby).

I can't believe they stop and stare

And point their fingers doubting me

Their disbelief suppresses them

But they're not blind it's just that they won't see.

I'm a believer, I ain't no deceiver

Mountains move before my eyes

Destiny planned out I don't need no handout

Speculation of the wise.

How to safely demonstrate puppethood?

At last, I have remembered the most alarming insights from the Holy Spirit. It's taken quite a while to maneuver to find a way to make sense of these ideas. This is exceptionally difficult material to write about. I think it has to be covered; it's inevitable that we reflect on the enlightening potential of the exagerrated violence of the death of the godmen -- a standard theme that presents itself as a challenging puzzle.

This is the most advanced and difficult and challenging posting. All those questions Leary evaded? They are discussed here. I seem to be interested in a pair of subjects here: making sense of Western sacrificial kingship, and making sense of the longing to playfully destroy egoic self-control as a way of transcending it -- to see how the myth of the violently sacrificed godman-ruler could be fulfilling, satisfying, cathartic, and enlightening for the mind that seeks to exorcise the egoic control delusion.

This material about deliberate self-destruction seems fair for discussing Western religion -- but I wonder what it has to do with the East, in places where politics and religion were considered separate? I expect the East has equivalent sacred violence to some degree.

Might or might not be relevant:

Violence and the Sacred

by Rene Girard

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801822181

I've read a little of Girard's theory of sacred violence and haven't see potential in it. This posting presents my theory of why mythic violence specifically revolving around kingship and control can be considered transcendent, profound, cathartic, reconciling, and purifying. My emphasis is on ego-control disproof, the desire to demonstrate no-free-will, and vicarious, harmless mythic fulfillment of that desire.

A king is a pseudo-source of control power, a virtual control-source. A *real* control-source would be a god outside and above time. Thus the real meaning of sacrificial king is a virtual control-source that cancels itself to manifest its virtual-only nature on behalf of the slaved control-agents under it. To mystically become a slave of the Godman-king is to consider that king's self-cancellation as "covering" or including or extending to you.

Now I want to put forth once again the theory that the mythic storyline of Jesus has him escaping from near-death on the cross -- because fully enlightened knowledge knows that the symbol, the semblance, the idea, the *act* in the sense of "as-if", is what matters. Not literal blood, not even a story of a literal death.

Thus the most symbolic and highest gospel is that of the story of a fictional man who voluntarily self-cancels his kingship, to manifest puppethood fully, without physically dying -- yet seeming, to the lower and weaker readers, to die. Additional reasons why resuccitation makes most sense:

o This makes the story more parallel with his ancestor Isaac's *near*-sacrifice.

o Ego death is often experienced as a narrow escape from self-destruction.

o The Homeric stories the gospel drew from had the hero narrowly escape death.

o The ego remains after ego-death, but now is subservient to truth about its illusory nature.

The initiate may arrive at the problem of how, exactly, is a fitting and effective way to commit ego suicide, to cross out the ego, to break out of delusion about self-control and separate-self.

The following is theoretical and may or may not be correct.

Prior to that, you may come near Realization several times, but recoil in fear like Balaam's Ass (Numbers 22:21).

http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=numbers+22&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=english

You recoil out of good sense: "Danger! High voltage area! Fatal risk! Try to avoid!" And so you go wimpering and running away. That *may* be necessary -- can you ever safely look into the face of God, can you ever touch the high-voltage power line at the center of the self-control vortex? Maybe, maybe not -- I should hope so, and maybe you can in a certain way through a certain technique and mentality.

Maybe you can embrace it once you Overcome delusion; maybe the deadly danger becomes safe when you know that you never actually possessed control as an ego in the first place. In any case, the initiate may, upon the first few encounters, run away from understanding, knowing that to understand is to die and *in some sense* "lose control". This realization might perhaps be dangerous to lower initiates, and might perhaps be safe for higher initiates who have learned to meditate always on the illusory nature of their grip on self-control.

From what I gather, the advanced initiate can gradually become familiar with the self-control cancellation vortex and become a "Friend of God". This may be the high meaning of "the meditation on the decaying corpse". If so, you may after all be able to look God in the face without anymore dying, because you have been in purgatory near the control vortex for long enough for all ego delusion to burn away -- the mind has mentally reindexed its mental model to incorporate the dynamic concepts of no-free-will, no-separate-self, and puppet-of-God.

The mind eventually learns to watch the Greek Tragedy plays from both perspectives: the divine no-free-will, timeless frozen-future perspective, and the in-time, temporal, virtual freewill, virtual separate-self perspective. *This* is what it means to say that the plays were "cathartic"; the plays and poems and mystery rituals *all* were concerned with *this* -- all with the same dynamic themes. That's why Euripides could be put on trial for revealing the mysteries in his plays.

This is the relationship between the mystery religions and Attic tragedies. People would bring their wine (psychoactive mixtures) to the plays. One still had to drink in moderation; they say you'll go insane if you don't dilute the wine.

I'd venture to guess, on an oft dangerous topic, that with a moderate cognitive looseness, it is safe to make love with the control vortex, to directly thinking about loss or unreality of self-control while divinely mad with Dionysus.

It is dangerous for an infant to venture out of doors. Adults may safely venture out of doors and skydive and climb mountains -- for adventure with some controlled risk. It is likely the same with the loose cognitive state: temporary divine psychosis of Dionysus, or of Jesus the Drug of Immortality, may be relatively safe if you have the right experience and are not totally reckless.

So eventually, the initiate instead of running away from Realization of ego-death and the illusory nature of control, is finally ready to ask: Ok, God, ok mind of mine, what do I want? I want to know the Truth about my mind and my self-control system, about time and the will. Is that too much to ask? Must I live in delusion all my life? Is there no way to know this core Truth about my own heart, my own self?

Is self-knowledge really entirely incompatible with the mind? That would be a pity indeed! So, how can I know truth, cast out delusion, and be reconciled? I am tired of running away from the angel of ego-death on the labyrinthine path ahead. What is required of me? What must I do to reconcile my conscious mental worldmodel with my own cybernetic nature?

I am sober and deranged at the same time: I have considered this in the default state of tight cognition and in the altered state of loose cognition. I want to die to the false ego -- *surely* this doesn't require running amok in that sense of "loss of control" - that wouldn't accomplish anything. Berserking really doesn't accomplish as much as *understanding* the ideas about running amok. I am, in a general sense, ready to sacrifice my delusion: the egoic translations, per Wilber, have failed to satisfy me. I am tired of living a lie. I want to transform -- how is it possible, safely?

It seems that the Godman Logos/pattern/blueprint provides the answer. To "believe in the savior/preserver" is to "become Godman-shaped", to "become a follower of the savior/preserver". When egoic control delusion fails and dies in the light of clear thinking and clear observation of the mind (the mental construct processing system), there are two possibilities: uncomprehending irrational insanity/delusion, which is some kind of regressive mental chaos of illogical mush, or, become Godman-shaped, become Christ-patterned, with the Christ-pattern in your mind, replacing the old ego-pattern, and with your mind now becoming "in Christ", part of the Ground of Being that is conscious of no-separate-self.

I suppose that this choice isn't really a choice; although *fear* of insanity is reasonable, in the Dionysian state of whirlwind cognitive dis-integration, any mind that is rational enough to discover and coherently model and comprehend no-free-will *and* understand that the Christ idea is a reasonable and effective replacement pattern, has discovered both a fatal problem and a life-preserving solution.

Problem: How can I truly and completely sacrifice and extinguish deluded self-control without falling short of truth about my will and without harmfully losing control?

Solution: Officially, though not practically, reject the egoic mental model, and officially adopt the transcendent, Godman mental model. Believe in Jesus/the savior/the Godman/the annointed. Believe in, be in, trust in, accept, adopt, welcome the approved pattern that is available. The mind can, and is designed to, replace the egoic dynamic mental worldmodel with the Godman-patterned dynamic mental worldmodel.

Accept Christ into your self-control cybernetic core as a replacement for your own childish self-control notion that has been false, dumb, asininely magical, logically naive, deluded, metaphysically impossible, ultimately practically impossible when seen clearly, morally absurd, self-contradictory, self-inconsistent, sinful (hamartia), distorted, and missing the mark.

The experienced initiate has again reached a by-now familiar, though dangerous, uncertain situation: I wanted and again wish to kill ego, egoic control, but how to do so without destroying anything desirable/warranted? What must I pay? Found the saving paattern: "acknowledge that the savior/preserver idea is fitting."

There is an alarming insane absence of fear, all the more alarming because one is so insane as to not feel fearful when mentally hovering near the thought that kills self-control. This state of religious red alert permits one to sacrifice and kill oneself, tear oneself to pieces ritually (loose cognition), throw a wrench into the heart of the egoic control system.

This dangerous cognitive state -- Dire Straits, actively Flirting with Disaster -- is composed of loose cognition combined with an increasingly sophisticated mental model of the greatest problem of all time, "The Problem Of Self-Control Over Time". This divine deranged state is Dionysian, all too sober, all-*too*-clear thinking, all *too* clear-observing of mental construct dynamics in the mind.

The mind is much too excellent and skilled and perceptive and logical, to any longer rely on the childish logically-impossible and manifestly self-contradicatory mental model of time, self, and control.

The loose-cog, advanced mental-model state enables the mind to dare to understand the thought that kills oneself as controller. It enables one to spear the cybernetic heart, to plunge the sacrificial knife into Isaac. I'm ready, but what is required and effective, to effectively sacrifice the egoic control delusion?

What is the right, proper, fitting, effective, and reasonable way to officially and forever shake off the slumber in egoic delusion and animal thinking? How can I get a complete grip on what is messed-up thinking about self-control, and what is correct thinking about self-control?

Would running amok accomplish and manifest and secure this understanding of "unreality of egoic self-control"? That can't be right; that would lead to mere destruction, and how could Abraham then live to inherit the promised land? The question is, is there, or is there not, a loving and effective and healthy way to *both* know the truth about self-control *and* live to tell about it -- a way to both understand it *and* retain and *secure* and "prove" it.

The last point seems a "thorn" or "catch". You see, the mind still wishes it could *prove* somehow, the puppethood principle. Would slapping my own face prove it? Would pretending to act randomly and run amok prove that I understand the puppethood principle? Would total self-destruction prove it? Would remaining silent in Pilate's court, so that I coerce him into scourging and crucifying me to near death, although I am innocent, prove my full comprehension of the puppethood principle?

That is the question. That is what the Doubting Thomas doubts, or perhaps what the temptation is tempted to. The mind is certainly curious about doing an absolute proof of the puppethood principle. According to Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand), in the book The Ominous Parallels, that was exactly what Hitler's concentration camps were about: making Jews and whoever else got tangled up in the mess, ritually cross their own egoic self-control, performing exercises in studied insanity-acting -- Wilber would call that a perverted equivalent of transcendence of the ego, a morbid Literalist mockery of transcendence of the egoic control system.

So the mind may lust for exploring what it means to be a helpless puppet of God, but the mind also wants to live and enter the promised land. Shall we elect one of us to explore what it means to be a helpless puppet of God? You might say that understanding it is the only thing that matters, but that's weak -- it *is* intriguing to contemplate, like in a brutal Roman colliseum, exercises in mayhem.

What is television but this sort of exercise in "What if anything, even things totally crazy, might happen next?" So the very advanced mind admits that yes, it *does* wish it could fully act out and physically explore the idea of "being a helpless puppet of God". It may possibly be inevitable and -- amazingly -- *healthy* -- to admit to ourselves that we are, naturally, curious about the idea.

Otherwise we'll project the idea as a disowned shadow onto others and wreak havoc some other way without admitting it -- like throwing harmless cannabis users in jail or burning them because they are Other, or because they are guilty of being black or Jewish or Islamic-colored and "therefore a threat, genetically inclined and likely" to harm people.

So what can we do to exorcise our morbid fascination with the idea of "physically demonstrating understanding of being a helpless puppet of God"? Jesus is the answer -- that is, the radically demolished puppet on the puppet-control cross is provided as a saving image or manifestation. Instead of doing mayhem like a crazed puppet, part of the standard godman theme is exagerrated violence.

True, the Old Testament era didn't need a mythic-only sacrificial savior, but then, they had no shortage of altars for mass-slaughter of livestock representing Isaac, Abraham, and faithful acknowledgement of their puppethood and willing-slavehood that is ready to be self-cancelled as demonstration of God's omnipotent puppetstring-puller relation to creatures.

Lost Goddess says that a man tortured to death on a cross is no longer fitting for our time -- that assertion might be a dangerous delusion that could backfire. Look at people, consider television: I cannot express how deeply I loathe television. TV viewers are sick, sick, sick! It's nothing but crying, torture, guns, violence, more violence, more violence.

People *claim* that they want peace, so why do they watch program after program based on morbid terror? War and death and nukes is what people want or fancy that they want -- action movies, explosions, destruction, combat. The Roman Colliseum on tap, 500 channels.

The kings of old didn't have a mythic religious thrashed-king on the cross. To act like a king is to be a carrier of guilt, of responsible agency. The kings of old took away guilt and kept the community cleansed of responsbililty-guilt by being the only person in command; all people were his slave. Then the king would destroy himself violently as a full and *satisfying* demonstration of his puppethood, thus clearing community guilt and responsbility.

Mythic godmen provide a better solution: we identify with them and have them kill themselves violently as a demonstration of puppethood that satisfies us and makes us righteous.

The church of the anti-Christ is the Great *Mother* (Wilber) Literal human sacrifice church. The Christ church is the Great *Goddess* (Wilber) church that says that the concept is the thing. This is the same as the distinction between fictional violence on tv versus human violence in the Colliseum. The sophisticated civilized classic Greeks used *plays* to functionally fulfill the need to demonstrate the transcendent Truth of puppethood.

The brutal Romans including the elite monsters in Rome who created the Literalist Catholic church -- the Literalist Church Fathers -- demonstrated the transcendent Truth of our puppethood through human sacrifice of various victims and through enactments that stressed and claimed to be literal human sacrifices in the Mass. The Literalists are almost inevitably the magic-thinking supernaturalists, saying that the literal blood of literal Jesus gives you literal resurrection through literally transferring your literal sinfulness to him.

It might actually be a great relief when one discovers the horrific curiosity about manifesting puppethood and extremely sacrificing self-control. Sacred sacrificial violence can be consciously understood or not, and it can be literal violence or virtual symbolic violence. For a civilized society, the ideal sacrificial violence is consciously understood as a demonstration of awareness of metaphysical puppethood, and is virtual symbolic only -- the mythic-only Godmen figures, when understood, fulfill this.

Suppose a contemporary initiate in the peak of enlightenment about puppethood: when that most terrrible question arises, "how can I demonstrate my understanding of my own puppethood?", they can be fulfilled by the idea of the mythic self-thrashed-to-near-death Jesus. Would it benefit the initiate if that mythic Jesus had be real? No, because all is just mental constructs in the initiate's head anyway.

As far as the mental construct realm is concerned, the idea of the self-thrashing of Jesus is the same as the reality having happened literally; in either case, only the *idea* is relevant to having a sense of fulfillment, a sense that for demonstration of puppethood, "it is known, it is manifested, it is finished, puppethood is willingly Manifested, Demonstrated, Represented -- Fully and Perfectly and Completely."

Would running amok do the trick and fulfill my divine drive for full self-knowledge? Just understand that your will is as a slave, dead. Kneeling was more to communicate to me that delusion is finished, that I have sacrificed the deluded way of thinking, have overcome delusion, have become an adult coherent thinker.

You meet your fate when you realize the purpose of the exagerrated violence of the Cross, the Cross of the willing self-destruction which proves one's puppetlike obedience and self-mastery. To understand this violence is part of divine destiny. When Jesus unites the lower Mary Magdalene part of the psyche with the higher Virgin Mary, the virtual physical demonstration of puppethood is fulfilled, perfected, realized, completed.

The mind discovers a terrible fascination, the wish and the longing to vividly prove and manifest the full self-transgression of control, control self-crossing-out, control suicide/disproof, and refutation - to secure at last a full debunking and DISPROOF of egoic control attachment. The frustration of not understanding this longing, of not understanding the meaning of the violently self-transgressed savior-Godman, historically has resulted in literal violence such as witch hunts and various persecutions.

Could it be that fully transcendently understanding the meaning of the violence of the savior-controller's self-sacrifice, leads to peace, while failing to understanding the meaning of it leads to egoic violence and persecution of one's shadow projected onto other people?

Ritual gestures to repudiate the freewill delusion

______________________

For an entirely modernity-based meaningful ritual gesture of repudiating the freewill delusion, I suggest that you clasp your hands, close your eyes, slightly bow your head, and either sit, stand, or kneel.

______________________

What exactly do you *do*, most simply and directly, to "repudiate the freewill delusion"? You could do extreme bodily gestures, but that is more associated with confused magical thinking, an indication of failure to understand. The gesture does not accomplish anything at all except to assist you in the only purifying action, which is the action of understanding.

Salvation or enlightenment is obtained strictly through understanding. Understanding may be helped by ritual gestures. But extreme ritual gestures distract and detract from understanding, and encourage continuance of confusion: the confused mind assumes that the ritual gesture itself is a cause of salvation.

One philosophy of ritual is that the more subtle the ritual, the clearer the understanding, until the extreme endpoint of the self-pitying zen guy who is just moving through life long after having attained full enlightenment: his common styled life and manner is itself his ritual of repudiating the freewill delusion.

Extreme gestures are associated with failure of comprehension. Highly subtle gestures are too subtle to be useful. The best and most fitting gesture is not too extreme, not too subtle -- just frank and straightforward. Slave gestures such as full protration are too much, failing to enlighten -- they backfire, strengthening ego delusion by reifying ego and trying to make it small and dense and compact.

One that some settled upon in slave culture and military culture and U.S. national religion was hand on heart.

What do you do to acknowledge no-free-will? The shortest possible answer is "understand", because to understand is to sacrifice your impure self. When you are struggling to understand, you may want to ritually represent no-free-will. How can the reasonable intermediate mystic ritually represent no-free-will in a modern straightforward way?

What is Neil Peart's answer? The android bows its head and prays to the mother of all machines. Bow your head and pray to the mother of all machines. I think that bowing and praying are perfectly reasonable modern ritual gestures -- they are universal, not owned by any one religion.

Can we do better, more reasonable, more modern, more straightforward for a ritual of acknowledgeing and strengthening our comprehension of no-free-will during the intense overwhelming mystic peak? Other acid rock songs reflect this ritual as well: U2: "if you want to kiss the sky you better learn how to kneel, on your knees boy."

This is a gesture of submission to a higher power to which you are fully subject and which is not at all subject to you -- your near-future control-thoughts are entirely at its discretion and you can't even directly see that higher controller -- just wires between you and the hidden IT -- you don't know anything about IT -- not its character or ways or inclinations, likes, dislikes, nature; you don't know if it is machine or person.

From the mystic's point of view as control agent, you cannot do anything but hope, ask, petition, pray, request, beg, beseech, implore, entreat, ask, call upon, rely upon, and take refuge in -- the uncontrollable transcendent controller. These may be slave-related gestures -- another is placing hand on heart. Others are right hand: two fingers up, two down.

Buddha ritually touches the ground. Such gestures could be more modern and direct than full prostration or kneeling with hands together. Early Christians, and Pagans, spread their arms and held them up in a gesture of "behold the glory", often toward the sun, similar to the naked guy on the inside cover of the acid rock album 2112, apprehending the inverted goat's head (which would be, apprehending the no-free-will sheep).

On the back cover of the acid rock album Diary of a Madman, Ozzy Osbourne gestures to repudiate the freewill delusion by spreading and raising his entire arms, with an upside down cross on the wall behind him, with base of cross hidden so that looking only at this picture without the front picture, you would assume that this is a large, right-side-up cross.

This was set up carefully. It's a 12" silver cross over a 4' wooden cross, hanging upside down on the wall, with the intersection just higher than the top of Ozzy's head, so that you see just a portion of the lower arm of the silver and wood crosses. But this ritual gesture of crucifixion is too Christian, not universal enough to be suitable for a modern, non-metaphorical system of ego transcendence.

The non-extreme universal gestures thus include:

Touching the ground (too subtle, too Buddhist-associated)

Hand over heart (too associated with civic religion and military)

Two fingers up, two down (too Christian associated)

Praying hands (too Christian associated, too associated with major religions)

Kneeling (too Christian associated, too associated with major religions)

Prostration such as kneeling + hands extended and forehead touching ground (too Islamic)

Bowed head (too self-deprecating, backfires into ego reification, as though egoic humility = ego transcendence)

How do some Asians solve this in a practical manner? When you meet Buddha, who is everyone, put hands together and bow the head slightly, briefly. My own trembling and ecstatic ritual gesture, coming while decoding the Christian mythic framework, was, if I recall correctly, kneeling, hands in prayer, head bowed.

My best advice for a gesture for those in need is, as a short answer, "pray" -- probably just like Peart says, bow the head and pray.

I use Neil Peart (lyricist of Acid Rock band Rush) for a reference point because he comes from the true entheogenic origin and source of religion, through Hellenistic philosophy and late 20th Century techno-culture -- using not visionary plants so much as a modern synthetic chemical which hasn't been found yet in nature; certainly cannabis ("Passage to Bangkok", "Chemistry" ("burning p-hotter")) and especially LSD (erratic heartbeat on Cygnus X-1).

Psilocybin mushrooms was probably a minor influence -- most likely, frequent use of pot and acid. If anyone wants the mystic state as much as possible in the conditions of the 70s and 80s (frequently, cheaply, discretely, long-lastingly, reliably, intensely), LSD blows away mushrooms.

Although Peart was grounded in Hellenistic religion, he almost entirely avoided Christian mythic elements, and avoided anything that strikes the Rock audience as "religious" in style. Peart was intent on forming a non-religious styled religion, and this comes across particularly clearly in "The Body Electric", which answers the same question I ask: the true universal underlying religion underneath the mythic metahporical layer must be one that non-carbon intelligent conscious systems would understand -- how would an android be religious and discover enlightenment?

The song "The Body Electric" addresses that exact issue, combining android, ego death, and religious gesture themes, highlighting cybernetic self-control breakdown, which is the true heart of religion.

Peart was intent on avoiding superficial religious style and getting to the real heart of the matter of religious experiecnign, and what gesture of understanding did Peart consider fit and appropriate for a completely modern, non-religious styled religion fit for androids? Bowing the head and praying (presumably with palms together) -- I don't know if standing or sitting or kneeling; presumably any of them.

Palm-together prayer may indicate bound hands, which is a highly relevant symbol. Hand on heart just fails to convey relevant meaning. To concentrate on meaning and comprehension in the gesture, eyes justifiably should be closed. There is also justification for bowing head -- not just because it's a symbol of reverence, but because if one is concentrating on an idea with the eyes closed, slight bowing of the head is most natural. We lift the head to look with the eyes.

A fine suggestion for an entirely modernity-based meaningful ritual gesture of repudiating the freewill delusion is palms together or hands clasped, eyes closed, head bowed, either sitting, standing, or kneeling -- most likely kneeling, which conveys, without extreme prostration, the idea of being lower than that which is being recognized. However, it is too Catholic, so ultimately I don't care. And hands clasped also seems right. The most important thing to me seems to be eyes closed, head slightly bowed -- as a position of deep focus on a transcendent concept. However, something needs to be done with the hands, it seems.

______________________

How Specifically to "Root Out Ego"?

Experience and rational understanding are multiplicative factors; full understanding requires full experience and vice versa.

Mystic-state cognition is cheap, easily available on tap, the flesh of the diety is potentially growing on every streetcorner. Any seeming scarcity is purely artificial, an artificial scarcity of mystic experiencing. There could well be a sacred garden in every dwelling. What is truly rare is a clear and rational and simple -- ergonomic -- explanation of the things that are encountered. Only with such an explanation can the experience reach its full height.

We can't talk about full experience without also talking about full understanding, because limited understanding restricts experiencing, just as limited experiencing restricts understanding. We must throw our full weight and commitment behind understanding -- and behind experiencing. We must take into account the real restrictions artificially imposed by today's culture, but we must also ignore and bracket off today's culture and ask what the ultimate potential is.

What is the ultimate potential of mystic state experiencing?

What is the ultimate potential of rational explanation?

What is the ultimate potential of mystic state experiencing in conjunction with the ultimate potential of rational explanation?

>let us begin the inquiry with the primary questions, and upon answering them, be aware of whether the conclusions are formed from direct investigation/experience or from accepted concept/theory:

Beware of false mutual-exclusion dichotomies. As Ken Wilber's Integral Theory suggests, the conclusions must be based on direct investigation/experiencing in skillful conjunction with skillful concept/theory. Develop all threads together as distinct, differentiated, yet also integrated, realms of development.

>1) what is the ego?

>2) where does the ego come from?

>3) where does one find the ego?)

>4) who is the ego?

> >2) what does the term/concept 'ego-death' truly signify?

>The end of the dominance of a mental worldmodel that assumes oneself is an

>absolute creator of one's thoughts, actions, future, and movement of will.

>The main components of the mental model that transform are the concepts of

>time, self, control, and will. A large network of concepts is transformed

>all together.

>s) why do the concepts undergo only a "transformation", merely replacing one set of concepts/theories for another? is one not seeking to dissolve all illusion completely? and what is the illusion based upon other than the illusive 'ego' which we are seeking to destroy.

Dissolving concepts can lead to schizophrenic regression and disintegration rather than transcendence. Illusion is dissolved, delusion is cast away, but the mind switches from one specific mental construct processing system, or mental worldmodel, to another. Ego is partly an illusion, partly real; it's better to ask "how should we think of the ego and reconceive it". The "real" vs. "unreal" dichotomy is far too simplistic to achieve deep understanding, in many fields.

Most spiritual language has been far too crude and simplistic to grasp ego death. It's *that* kind of crude use of language about which one can truly say "Language cannot grasp enlightenment." Most spiritualists have far too low aspirations and standards for the use of language.

Great skill and subtlety in language -- including philosophical training -- requires too much developmental work and sophistication for most people, so they cop out and give up, with the excuse that language is incapable, when the reality is that they are too lazy to develop skill and mastery in their use of language.

Many philosophers have developed adequate linguistic skill, but lack adequate experience of mystic-state phenomena. Premature abandonment of linguistic standards is a chronic problem that has prevented spirituality from blossoming into full rational enlightenment even when mystic experiencing is present.

Right age for egodeath initiation?

The mind is designed to retain freewillist thinking by default as a child, and then experience initiation and learn determinism or frozen-future fatedness. Leaving aside the factors of cultural context, the individual mind in general begins with a freewill worldmodel that corresponds with a certain level or type of morality -- metaphysically free moral agency, culpable for blame and praise as a self-moving moral agent.

The essence of a coming-of-age ceremony is the use of entheogens to switch from the animal/childish freewillist mental model to the determinist, fixed-destiny mental model. This switch of mental models involves a switch of moral models, a switch from blaming and praising oneself as moral agent to blaming and praising the gods/fates, who are the true controllers of destiny.

I am speaking in a highly general and ideal sense, to simplify the data and focus on the main ideas. The universal ideal coming-of-age initiation is done after puberty, after the ego has developed and is entrenched enough to die while remaining coherently in place as a practical, convention-based tool. The ideal initiation uses entheogens because of their main property, which is to loosen cognition to enable the mind to switch from one worldmodel to another.

The right age depends so much on the culture. 18 seems rather young -- but the fact is, many 18 year olds are attracted to entheogens anyway. 21 seems rather old. Based on the fact that 18 is a common age for driving, gun ownership, and military service, and drinking alcohol, and smoking tobacco, and marrying, and trial as an adult, it must be admitted that entheogenic ego death is on the same order of risk and responsibility. Any older seems too late for an initiation into adulthood, and I consider egodeath to be a thing of adulthood. Any argument for delaying egodeath can be used just as well for delaying any of the other things of adulthood.

Given that delaying the age will only lead to the disasters of driving something underground, it's better to permit initiation earlier. And 18 is certainly later than the age of some puberty initiations that mark adulthood. In the U.S. a good way to consider this is, should egodeath be included as part of high-school graduation (18 yrs) or as part of college graduation (22 years)?

I would hope that any student entering an institution of higher learning had already been introduced to egodeath -- it would be absurd to have a college junior who was ignorant of egodeath. There *is* the phrase "college kid", but that's meant to be somewhat of an oxymoron. I can honestly say "high-school kid", "a child in high-school". High school is for very young adults. College is for young but not brand-new adults.

I discovered the core entheogenic/cybernetic theory of ego death as an undergraduate in college soon after age 21; my egoic worldmodel was retained successfully while being transcended. The ego-transcendent worldmodel is psychologically safe to discover around age 21, so surely the followers can be given it ready-made at an earlier age.

There is some individual variation; I am assuming a normal young adult with a healthy ego. Advanced minds should not be retarded in their development just because *some* 18 year old minds need a few more years of ego development before they can safely be cognitively loosened and transformed.

I cannot countenance giving a college diploma to someone who has been ignorant of egodeath for the past four years. The religious education argument supports a high-school graduation egodeath: colleges were started in the U.S. to train ministers. A religious education *followed* by knowledge of egodeath doesn't make any sense.

Many people don't even go to college -- should they be psychologically deprived of egodeath by tying it to the age of college graduation? No.

Argument from simplicity: egodeath is really simple and an 18 year old mind will have not the slightest trouble grasping the concepts of egodeath.

The worry is whether at 18 the mind has formed the structures of the ego delusion well enough so that they will not disintegrate into chaos upon experiencing loose cognition and the religious seizure experience of control-puppethood. Schizophrenia sets in around 18-21. It is not known whether entheogens substantially trigger nascent schizophrenia -- we are ignorant of this due to total prohibition of entheogen research.

The reverse schizophrenia argument: since schizophrenia's onset is around 18-21, egodeath should be taught early, to prevent schizophrenia by presenting an orderly discovery of the concepts and content. By training people for egodeath, we can prevent malformation.

The Jesus argument: Jesus was crucified at age 30-35, so that is when egodeath should be allowed.

The short lifespan argument: if someone is destined to die before age 21, should we deprive their life of the egodeath experience? The ancients had a short lifespan and likely permitted full initiation a few years after puberty.

The stability-of-society argument: society needs ego stability, so we should delay initiation to age 21 or 30.

The ego-delusion-is-evil argument: children should kill their ego from the crib.

On anti-prohibitionist principles alone, I would pick the younger age as a legally permissible age, but not necessarily the socially conventional age. I could imagine fully legalizing all psychoactives while still keeping initiation unlawful.

The freedom-of-religion argument: This can be seen as a religious matter that can only be decided by each parents. The parents are the logical authorities to permit their child to have entheogenic egodeath at a younger age.

The religious initiation argument: consenting believers are baptised as adults - I suppose this means 16. It's absurd to claim that you have been saved by Jesus when you don't have knowledge of egodeath.

Just as some conservative churches require studying the beliefs before taking the eucharist, it makes sense to teach and test the prospective initiate on the principles of egodeath before administering the psychoactive sacrament of redemption.

It is pointless to delay egodeath to age 26 or 30 -- the age of grad school graduation. That would make egodeath too lofty and remote.

The best way to phrase the question is, should egodeath be taught and administered around highschool graduation, or around 4-year-college graduation?

There are so many cultural factors, it's hard to provide a general answer. So I'm left having to say "egodeath education and initiation at age 18 or 21". In the world I know, I consider high school the place to teach reading, writing, and math, and history -- the *practical* basics for today's world. College is for *higher* learning, which includes ego death. Egodeath should be studied and experienced *during* college, as a central *part* of the overall higher education. This would mean around age 20 -- an answer I can live with.

In the mystery-religion era, it was forbidden by law to reveal the mysteries to the uninitiated outside the authorized ceremonies. They didn't make mundane use of entheogens outside the ceremony illegal, but instead made teaching the concepts or ritually administering the entheogens outside the ceremony illegal. It seems that protecting the uninitiated may have been considered politically important to protect the democracy -- to maintain the democratic legal fiction of individual responsible agency."

Modern adulthood is spiritually retarded, not normal

>Sometimes it's only funny how stupid modern man is. He thinks he is the most clever ever and in truth he's just incredibly ignorant of the truth.

Modern man uses only the lower half of the mind, and fully develops that in isolation from the upper half, and produces an entire civilization with its so-called "religion" and "sprirituality" that is all confined within and informed by just the lower half of the mind. Thus we end up with the clueless egoic version of "higher knowledge" and "enlightenment" and "transcendence" -- a civilization of mental children, adult-age children, spiritual retards.

Modern adults consider enlightenment "advanced", but really, today's adulthood is retarded and hardly has a right to call itself "mature" or "adult". These "adults" have never been through a real initiation; they are still spiritual virgins, have never had a mystical climax -- unlike the normal adults of the Greco-Roman era.

Sexual Abstinence and Enlightenment

Greek satyr: has permanent involuntary erection. Goat-man. Represents the idea that freewillist thinking is merely practical animal "logic" and that involuntary functions such as erection bring enlightenment because they disprove the mind's power of self-control. Close relation between "control yourself" and "don't have an erection". A saint never has an erection -- speaking in a certain sense.

Tell your friend if he ever has an erection, his righteousness is disproven and he ought to castrate himself: that's the only way to, as he says, "abstain from sexual activities". Have him research Attis -- now *there* is a holy godman who abstains. The holy man, obedient and chaste, never ever has an erection.

For some women in the highly, overly structured Roman Empire, claiming to refuse sex served as a strategy for social emancipation (Pagels, probably in her book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent). There were very compelling social reasons, not just sexual reasons, for women to opt out of the repressive society and be lesbians instead. I know almost nothing about this subject.

I am enlightened and I have never abstained from sexual activity. End of argument.

I don't know the history of the association between celibacy and holiness, don't know all about where the idea came from. But Wilber's integral theory would suggest fully developing, to moderate maturity, all our potentials, and harmonizing them.

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Mervyn Georges [mailto:mgeorges38~at~hotmail.com]

>Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 10:18 PM

>To: egodeath~at~yahoogroups.com

>Subject: [egodeath] Can Enlightenment Exist without the Abstinence of

>Sexual Activities?

>I got into a conversion with a friend of mine today about enlightenment.

>Anyway, he is a strict buddhist living a celibate lifestyle and truly

>believes enlightenment or nirvana cannot exist without abstinence of sexual

>activities. I asked him what is so bad about sex that it should stop someone

>from experiencing enlightenment if that's what a persons heart really wants.

>To make a long story short, he could not answer my question. His only

>response was that Buddha, Jesus, and the Daili Lama are celibate and

Jesus and Mary Magdalene did it every which way. Buddha, who is fictional like the rest, was too busy meditating to consider the subject.

>enlightened beings therefore celibacy is the only way.

Ego death is the only way to ego death. Some kind of spiritual celibacy is required in a mythic sense: don't sleep with the prostitute called separate self.

>Is it really

>necessary to abstain from sex to experience enlightenment, nirvana, the

>experience of God?

No.

>I notice celibacy is a common theme for many of those who

>are on the higher spiritual paths, particularly christian mystics, buddhists

>monks and yoga priests.

I noticed that being deluded is a common theme for many religionists. And a need to focus on religion. As a very busy theorist, I would rather spend any given time reading a book than having sex. I resent the social obligations of relationships -- I don't have time for that nonsense, not now anyway.

I find religious theory more interesting than sex. I regret being bothered by sexual needs, but it's just not a big deal; it's as irrelevant to enlightenment as avoiding mismatched socks, or -- like a lower Christian I met -- getting rid of your heavy Rock albums because they are un-Christian. I consider conventional Buddhism and meditation to have an absolutely pathetic success rate. I think my approach is vastly, profoundly better, more effective, more ergonomic, or I wouldn't bother pulling it together.

>I'm not sure if Sufis believe celibacy is necessary.

>Where did the idea that abstaining from sex is a prerequisite to becoming

>enlightened?

That's a very good question. Consider social and practical reasons disguised as religious reasons. In the Catholic church, priests in fact had sex all the time. Remember, these were elite power-mongers who can and did buy all the pleasures that are traditional for the ruling elite. They weren't really discouraged from continuous sex orgies by their cohorts. The priests had sex all the time and had many sons and daughters and lovers.

What they were officially and actually forbidden to do was to legally marry, because then when the priest died his inheritance would go to the legally legitimate son -- leaving the Church/racket. The legal system, including marriage and inheritance, was largely designed to preserve the exclusive elite class of power-mongers -- not to prevent the conception of lots of illegitimate children.

The elite priests had tons of actual children and de facto wives, but legally, they had no children at all and no wives at all. Therefore, these priests were celibate and holy.

The initiates of the Greek mystery-religions were enlightened, and hardly any of them refrained from sexual activity.

So, in several ways, claiming that celibacy is required for enlightenment is a socio-political con-game, deception.

______________

>>I got into a conversion with a friend of mine today about enlightenment.

>>Anyway, he is a strict buddhist living a celibate lifestyle and truly

>>believes enlightenment or nirvana cannot exist without abstinence of sexual

>>activities. I asked him what is so bad about sex that it should stop someone

>>from experiencing enlightenment if that's what a persons heart really wants.

>>To make a long story short, he could not answer my question.

I agree fully with him, but he doesn't go far enough, being focused on the material realm of physical activity. If mere sexual abstinance were key to enlightenment, then the many people who aren't sexually active would be enlightened. He misses the point and sets far too easy a goal, if what you say is true. The key is not only must he refrain from physically fulfilling the sexual impulse; he must, much more importantly, avoid thinking arousing thoughts.

Samsara is the cycle of rebirth. You are reborn into a better life, as reward, if you are morally good in your present life. You are reborn into a worse life, as punishment, in you are morally bad in your present life. How can you escape from this frustrating and tedious cycle?

The good news is that there is a way to escape from the cycle of rebirth and attain nirvana, in the present lifetime. Sitting meditation, fasting, and eating nothing but holy food, enables seeing through the illusion of the separate self who is reincarnated again and again in the cycle of frustration. The meditation that is guaranteed to enlighten you to the unreality of the apparent separate self who is the moral controller is, do not think sexual thoughts and do not become sexually aroused.

He will become insane with frustration and humility, and then he will become enlightened and escape the frustrating wheel of rebirth, entering nirvana.

____________________

Procreating is like asserting that one is a creator, author, do-er, god, sovereign, independent primal cause.

Religion is assertion that one is not, after all, from the metaphysical or higher point of view, a sovereign creator/author.

In the effort to deny one's own power of sovereign authorship, to deny that one is the creator of one's own thoughts and future, consider refraining from authoring, procreating, descendents.

There is a strong parallel between authoring your stream of future thoughts -- the future you -- and engendering a future stream of descendents. To deny your power to alter and create your own future thought-stream, you could consider denying your power to create your future stream of descendents.

Authoring a child is like being a God, creating life from nothing, and creating a future self by power of your present will.

There's also the idea of zero-sum energies: if energy is used in sexual activity it's unavailable for higher chakras

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