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> “I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a

> “I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a day.… We finally were just drinking out of the bottle.… We were very high. What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. And at the end of the three weeks, we walked out of the house and within a few days, we came down! It was a very frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was…and then you got cast out again.” Ram Dass and his retelling of this experience contributed to my shift from psychedelics to established spiritual traditions. They had the territory mapped out thousands of years ago. Ram Dass ultimately settled as a Hindu where as I find myself drawn to Buddhism. Anatta maps nicely to experiences of ego death and I find that I can see all drugs as part of the conditioned world. If you rely on a physical substance of the conditioned world for access to the divine then you're not free yet.

kgwxd 1y ago
If the goal is death, what's the point of living? shouldn't we be doing something completely different here than trying to find a way back? if we're going to end up back there no matter what, it seems a waste of life to spend it on that.
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  > the goal is death ?
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I presume they are referring to “ego death”.
  - kgwxd 1y ago
    What's the difference between ego death and physical death? Doesn't physical death include ego death? If so, why bother trying to kill it before then. Is it something we must kill before physical death? If so, why? If we don't kill it before physical death, then what? If we already have "connected to everything" at home, shouldn't we take advantage of the situation while we're out? Because home sounds kind of boring.
    - haswell 1y ago
      > What's the difference between ego death and physical death? When the body dies, the lights go out (as far as we know). When the ego "dies" (I agree with your sibling comment that maybe the word "death" is not the right word), you can go on living your life with a fundamentally shifted perspective. > Doesn't physical death include ego death? If so, why bother trying to kill it before then. This line of questioning doesn't make much sense to me. Why learn language, study philosophy, form relationships, have kids, and otherwise gain life experience if we're just going to die eventually? For the same reasons "death" is potentially a misnomer, so too is framing this as "killing" it. The ego does not "die" because it was killed. It "dies" because we realize it was never what we thought it was to begin with. Ego is an idea. A concept. A formulation of thoughts and feelings that is so pervasive in our psyche that we form beliefs about its nature despite those beliefs not withstanding rational scrutiny. The "death" of ego is the felt sense of this truth. Clearly there is a difference between physical death and adjusting one's beliefs based on new evidence/experience. > If we already have "connected to everything" at home, shouldn't we take advantage of the situation while we're out? This is a misconception about the experience of no-self. Many people hear about this concept, and draw conclusions about what such an experience means about the rest of life that are unfounded (I was one of them). It reminds me a bit of the arguments some of my religious friends make. "Well if we all just evolved, and are the result of random chance, what's the point of living life?" as if gaining a deeper understanding of existence will somehow suddenly change what it means to be human and to have a human experience. To me, this is a nonsensical line of reasoning. Learning more about the fundamental aspects of the universe doesn't de-value life for most people. If anything, it makes it all the more fantastical. > Because home sounds kind of boring. I'm right there with you. Experiencing ego "death" didn't make me suddenly decide to just rot at home because I have everything I need. It didn't remove the things I'm passionate about in life or make me less likely to engage with the world and do interesting things. It didn't even remove that internal collections of thoughts and feelings that I had previously identified with as synonymous with "me". It just changed how I understand myself, relate to those feelings, and how I relate to the world around me. In a practical sense, it helped me reframe the more distressing aspects of life and deal with my anxiety and depression in new ways. Your questions seem to reveal a belief that experiencing no-self somehow devalues or reduces the richness of experience. In my experience, the opposite is true. It makes life richer, fuller, and more amazing. It's anything but boring.
- haswell 1y ago
  The goal is not death. The comment mentioned ego death which is something else entirely. At the risk of trivializing something that must be experienced not explained, the realization of no-self (ego death) is one of the most liberating things one can experience. It’s the realization that the feeling of “I” is just another feeling that arises in the same space as all other feelings, and that this feeling is ultimately greatly constraining/limiting. It’s the realization that what we are is far more expansive than most people realize without such exploration of self and no-self. It’s liberation from the illusion that is our default state. > what's the point of living? For me, experiencing it is what makes life worth living. The best way I can describe this is that it was the gradual dissolution of certain ideas I had about what it means to be me. This dissolution wasn’t just experiential - it was also the result of rational interrogation of various beliefs I had about myself. To put this another way, it was the sum total of a series of realizations about what it can’t mean to be me. - It feels like “I” is at the “center” of me, but biologically and neurologically, there is no discernible center - It feels like “I” am my thoughts and feelings, but who then is aware of these thoughts and feelings? - It feels like “I” am looking out at the world through the windows of my eyes, “I” am in the inside, and the world is on the outside. Except this relies on the unexamined belief that there’s some kind of homunculus inside my head doing the seeing. Instead, there’s just seeing. And a list of related realizations too long to enumerate without making this comment longer than it already is. The end result that people often refer to as ego death is the opposite of a waste in my experience. A life without breaking down these illusions is a life of servitude to our evolutionary defaults. A life lost in thought is a life that hasn’t experienced some of the most awe inspiring states of consciousness on offer. As a skeptic, I spent the first 35 years of my life lost in my thoughts and feelings, and unaware that I could experience life any other way, and frankly uninterested in such ideas. Life circumstances gave me a taste of what ego death entails, at which point I realized how completely oblivious I’d been and how deep my misconceptions about people who talked about such things were. This comment is a stream of thought and not sufficient to communicate what ego death entails, but it is certainly not the scary/bad thing I had once believed, and is one of the most meaningful/helpful experiences of my life and has made life much richer. Anything but a waste.
  - echelon_musk 1y ago
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  The goal is ego death, to let your day-to-day machine mind die and be reborn as yourself without having to physically die. Keeping your soul, subconsciousness and your experience, while shedding the crust and rust that we accumulate over the years. Now you know what born again Christians are all about.
jobs_throwaway 1y ago
> What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. I've often wondered what happened here

kgwxd 1y ago

If the goal is death, what's the point of living? shouldn't we be doing something completely different here than trying to find a way back? if we're going to end up back there no matter what, it seems a waste of life to spend it on that.

echelon_musk 1y ago
> the goal is death ?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  I presume they are referring to “ego death”.
- kgwxd 1y ago
  What's the difference between ego death and physical death? Doesn't physical death include ego death? If so, why bother trying to kill it before then. Is it something we must kill before physical death? If so, why? If we don't kill it before physical death, then what? If we already have "connected to everything" at home, shouldn't we take advantage of the situation while we're out? Because home sounds kind of boring.
  - haswell 1y ago
    > What's the difference between ego death and physical death? When the body dies, the lights go out (as far as we know). When the ego "dies" (I agree with your sibling comment that maybe the word "death" is not the right word), you can go on living your life with a fundamentally shifted perspective. > Doesn't physical death include ego death? If so, why bother trying to kill it before then. This line of questioning doesn't make much sense to me. Why learn language, study philosophy, form relationships, have kids, and otherwise gain life experience if we're just going to die eventually? For the same reasons "death" is potentially a misnomer, so too is framing this as "killing" it. The ego does not "die" because it was killed. It "dies" because we realize it was never what we thought it was to begin with. Ego is an idea. A concept. A formulation of thoughts and feelings that is so pervasive in our psyche that we form beliefs about its nature despite those beliefs not withstanding rational scrutiny. The "death" of ego is the felt sense of this truth. Clearly there is a difference between physical death and adjusting one's beliefs based on new evidence/experience. > If we already have "connected to everything" at home, shouldn't we take advantage of the situation while we're out? This is a misconception about the experience of no-self. Many people hear about this concept, and draw conclusions about what such an experience means about the rest of life that are unfounded (I was one of them). It reminds me a bit of the arguments some of my religious friends make. "Well if we all just evolved, and are the result of random chance, what's the point of living life?" as if gaining a deeper understanding of existence will somehow suddenly change what it means to be human and to have a human experience. To me, this is a nonsensical line of reasoning. Learning more about the fundamental aspects of the universe doesn't de-value life for most people. If anything, it makes it all the more fantastical. > Because home sounds kind of boring. I'm right there with you. Experiencing ego "death" didn't make me suddenly decide to just rot at home because I have everything I need. It didn't remove the things I'm passionate about in life or make me less likely to engage with the world and do interesting things. It didn't even remove that internal collections of thoughts and feelings that I had previously identified with as synonymous with "me". It just changed how I understand myself, relate to those feelings, and how I relate to the world around me. In a practical sense, it helped me reframe the more distressing aspects of life and deal with my anxiety and depression in new ways. Your questions seem to reveal a belief that experiencing no-self somehow devalues or reduces the richness of experience. In my experience, the opposite is true. It makes life richer, fuller, and more amazing. It's anything but boring.
haswell 1y ago
The goal is not death. The comment mentioned ego death which is something else entirely. At the risk of trivializing something that must be experienced not explained, the realization of no-self (ego death) is one of the most liberating things one can experience. It’s the realization that the feeling of “I” is just another feeling that arises in the same space as all other feelings, and that this feeling is ultimately greatly constraining/limiting. It’s the realization that what we are is far more expansive than most people realize without such exploration of self and no-self. It’s liberation from the illusion that is our default state. > what's the point of living? For me, experiencing it is what makes life worth living. The best way I can describe this is that it was the gradual dissolution of certain ideas I had about what it means to be me. This dissolution wasn’t just experiential - it was also the result of rational interrogation of various beliefs I had about myself. To put this another way, it was the sum total of a series of realizations about what it can’t mean to be me. - It feels like “I” is at the “center” of me, but biologically and neurologically, there is no discernible center - It feels like “I” am my thoughts and feelings, but who then is aware of these thoughts and feelings? - It feels like “I” am looking out at the world through the windows of my eyes, “I” am in the inside, and the world is on the outside. Except this relies on the unexamined belief that there’s some kind of homunculus inside my head doing the seeing. Instead, there’s just seeing. And a list of related realizations too long to enumerate without making this comment longer than it already is. The end result that people often refer to as ego death is the opposite of a waste in my experience. A life without breaking down these illusions is a life of servitude to our evolutionary defaults. A life lost in thought is a life that hasn’t experienced some of the most awe inspiring states of consciousness on offer. As a skeptic, I spent the first 35 years of my life lost in my thoughts and feelings, and unaware that I could experience life any other way, and frankly uninterested in such ideas. Life circumstances gave me a taste of what ego death entails, at which point I realized how completely oblivious I’d been and how deep my misconceptions about people who talked about such things were. This comment is a stream of thought and not sufficient to communicate what ego death entails, but it is certainly not the scary/bad thing I had once believed, and is one of the most meaningful/helpful experiences of my life and has made life much richer. Anything but a waste.
- echelon_musk 1y ago
carlosjobim 1y ago
The goal is ego death, to let your day-to-day machine mind die and be reborn as yourself without having to physically die. Keeping your soul, subconsciousness and your experience, while shedding the crust and rust that we accumulate over the years. Now you know what born again Christians are all about.

jobs_throwaway 1y ago

> What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. I've often wondered what happened here