Let’s just say the altered states of consciousness are alien enough that most lexicons don’t have the vocabulary to define it. The attempts that have been made, while somewhat resonant, don’t capture and communicate the essence of the experience.
Wow, and I thought you were rolling your eyes because of the obvious validity of the statements. Like, “Of course they are!”
Just goes to show that maybe words are still the best symbols for communication.
“A picture is worth a thousand words; which one did you mean?” Shé
OK, Zadaka, we get it. You can stop being defensive now.
Do you have anything serious to contribute to this discussion?
Well, since everyone seems to be so hyper on my eye rolling instead of what I posted, I guess not.
O_o
My apologies. I should have said “anything else” - you have made serious posts in this thread already.
However, “everyone” is not hyper on your eye rolling. A few people commented on it, pro and con, but frankly you are making more of it than anyone else!
Ready to move on?
I completely agree. The alternate state of consciousness can be interpreted in many ways like anything else. I think people that lean towards religion to begin with will see it as a message from God. The rest of us see it as either a some kind of brain event or simply as an experience we can’t explain without attributing it to an unseen diety.
Well, another possibility is that, subsequent to having such an experience, you think you now know what the legend of “God” arose from (i.e., something other than bullshit & unfounded fairytales passed down over the millennia), and it really is something special and of great importance, albeit something difficult to put into words.
The OP basically has it right, but I would formulate it thus: all ideas, concepts, thoughts, propositions, and beliefs that we humans create, have, and hold arise from mental states, or are the content thereof.
In other words, if we’re not thinking it, we’re not thinking it.
Mental content pertaining to religion is no different, obviously. The atheists and agnostics, however, say, “It’s just the brain; therefore it’s no big deal.” If there were actually a spirit or soul, it might be a big deal, but since there is not, any religious/spiritual thoughts/feelings are unimpressive and unimportant.
By this logic we may conclude that any mental content is unimpressive or unimportant simply because it arises from the brain and not from a pure and ethereal spirit. This reasoning is flawed. Whether religious/spiritual mental content arises from the brain or from something else in no wise changes how we experience it, nor can it change the degree to which it impresses or affects us.
Atheists and agnosists are free to point out that there is no separate soul, and I believe they are right, but their pejorative “haw! it’s just the brain–tough luck!” is an emotional tag arbitrarily fixed to the conclusion but in no way organically connected to it. The “haw! just the brain!” locution is, in reality, a childish rebellion against an outdated conception of consciousness. Of course, a cornball Christian belief in “God” and souls manufactured individually by “Him” is just as childish.
Our mind is a pattern mediated by the brain and other systems of the body. The body in turn is made of atoms, which are in turn made of particles, which ultimately are made of–I assert–nothing but pattern itself. To despair because we are composed of crass matter is to fail to see the big picture.
To claim that one’s thoughts are not “real,” whereas the world of matter is “real,” is quite similar to the distinction between real and imaginary numbers. It is the relation of one pattern to another, and not a genuine difference in status. When people talk of experiences such as NDEs or feeling God, they are making claims about that one pattern (their own consciousness) experienced a relationship to other patterns (the consciousnesses of persons/entities within the experience). This is why these experiences are marked differently from plain dreams, in which the entire experience is perceived as self-generated.
But let us not overreach. In this day and age, we understand consciousness to about the same degree as Democritus understood particle physics. We have decades if not centuries to go before we can consider ourselves even infants in knowledge.
Although your conclusion holds true, the above statements miss the point and seem trapped within the ‘scale’ device, i.e. things which are bigger in size are “made up” of constituents smaller in size, whereas they are just correlates of the same manifestation, in other words, the correlation is another pattern.
Onto the general topic, like some poster indicated, there should be a clear demarcation, if not definition, of the ASC that’s of interest here. Simple sense and/or cognitive enhancement and/or mild synaesthesia is not of ultimate interest. Ego death is.
Why does ego death relate to Truth? Because you’re living it. What drives the laws of physics? What drives our perception & cognition? Why do the following two letters look the same: o o ? All science can do is categorize (A is made up of B; B has x,y,z elements and ruleset ‘p’; Elements x,y,z are, in turn, “made up” of constituents d,e,f with ruleset ‘q’ ). Then you have the metanarratives (patterns of patterns: chaos and complexity theory, fractals, cellular automata). Of course the output objects of research here, are also, necessarily, themselves patterns, since any communication of insight, is necessarily, a sensory event, which are patterns. They get you no closer to appreciating Truth. The essence of ego death cannot be explained since it is an unique experience. There are no available metaphors, which is what the symbology of language, and communication in general, manipulate and utilize. Ego death is void of concept and context. Quite simply, if you appreciate and analyse all other experiences of being and find a common underlying essence, ego death will present its subsumption as well.
I’ve done some meditation and stripped away the layers of consciousness until there was nothing left but that raw entelechy saying only, “I.”
Is this close to the “ego death” whereof you speak?
I don’t think this experience is the only one that can be really, big-time meaningful. I once had a very odd and meaningful experience as I was waking up one morning. There were intelligences, balls of orange light, in a world of orange. This was unlike any dream; dreams are always (at least for me) simulacra of the ordinary physical world.
This was nothing close to the physical or even mental worlds I know. About the only thing that was similar is that there existed light and color. I think there was also a kind of sound or music, this too totally unearthly. But the feelings, the qualia of it all, were astounding. My verbal takeaway from this was, “Every attribute is expressed in every other attribute.”
I have no idea why this very beautiful and clean (nothing wrong, drugged-out, hallucinatory, or freaky about it) experience just happened one morning. You can say, “It was just the brain that did it!” but I would have to reply that, if so, there is a hell of a lot about the brain we don’t know.
Just one of many experiences I’ve had that tell me reductionist materialism is dead wrong.
No. In fact, it seems closer to the other experience.
Could be. In that experience my consciousness was not defined as it is normally–merged with and flowing among these other entities, yet somehow still individual (perhaps only through the connection to my waking body).
I have no interest in ego death. Rather than destroy my ego, I prefer to expand it into the world around me. I’ve made a lot of progress in this area. To enter my apartment is, to an extent, to enter my mind. The many material possesions are not distractions from my inner self. They are a model of it. My dwelling pace is my hopes, my dreams, and my fears. Who am I, at the innermost heart of my being? The Creature from the Black Lagoon models, the boxes filled with electronic spare parts, the overflowing book shelves, that is who I am.
I disagree. Just because it’s the brain, and not God, theres no reason to believe that “its no big deal”. It’s a huge deal, because its coming from US. The fact that its not caused by a God makes it all the more intriguing.