Experiential Differences RE: DMT w/THC vs. Without

[dithyramb]

Just training to relax into full surrender when it is legitimately called for is a huge gain in life. During healthy psychedelic experiences or other times, including such ordinary things as being fully receptive to people when in conversation or other interactions. İt's a basic requirement of maturation actually.

And slowly it becomes clear to the awareness that we are all part of something much bigger, and when we act as instruments for that thing to do it's thing, it is to the highest benefit of us and everything.

 

[fink]

Awareness with zero memory or knowledge of existence or the concept of self. Does it need to be more complicated than that? The memory of awakening in the womb is surely buried inside us all.

 

[northape]

Awareness with zero memory or knowledge of existence or the concept of self. Does it need to be more complicated than that?

Ego death is very well formulated in Vedanta and Buddhism. The ego just needs form (rupa) to exist. If there is seen, seeing, and seer present, you have your ego active.
Samadhi, or a dive into the non-dual, is possible, but without maturity, you pop right back. So losing concepts is not enough, in my opinion.

The memory of awakening in the womb is surely buried inside us all.

Yeah, but you're already an ego there. The ego comes into existence with form and the world. All this information is readily available nowadays; you just need to have an interest in it and an open mind. Philosophy exists to get you to the abyss of not knowing. Making the last step is far from any of it.

 

[fink]

Surely the ego is formed by singular or continuous felt experience from one perspective.

Impossible to form an ego from the first ever experience of awareness as it is happening. It's only when looking back at an experience is it possible to say the 'I' who experienced that is the same 'I' who is remembering the first experience.

After building consecutive experiences from the same focal point the ego strengthens.

Slightly paradoxical. Even after having an experience without previous ego, an ego will be formed in describing the ego death. It is now an experience and a memory of that experience from the same perspective.

 

[northape]

Surely the ego is formed by singular or continuous felt experience from one perspective.

When it comes to the ego and the common usage of the term, I have a slightly different perspective. The basic ego is this sense of separate existence: "I am form."
After that, it takes on more and more layers of complexity and creates a structure that psychology calls the ego. The ego is more like a current in an ocean. When it's strong, you can even visually see it. However, it's never separate from the larger body of water. So, from that viewpoint, the ego is not permanent or illusory. Most of the problems come from people reading from here and there and creating their own mixed philosophy. It's better to stick with one well-defined system and go from there. That way, even other points of view would be easier to understand. I always come back to Sri Ramana and his teachings if I get stuck. Here is a good book for anyone interested.

Impossible to form an ego from the first ever experience of awareness as it is happening. It's only when looking back at an experience is it possible to say the 'I' who experienced that is the same 'I' who is remembering the first experience.

"I" is a constant flow of change; it's more like a river. What we call experience assumes the previous existence of an "I."

After building consecutive experiences from the same focal point the ego strengthens.

The ego strengthens itself all the time. It always takes more objects and makes them "mine."

Slightly paradoxical. Even after having an experience without previous ego, an ego will be formed in describing the ego death. It is now an experience and a memory of that experience from the same perspective.

There is no paradox here, but a wrong assumption about who we are. We take the ego as a reference point and, by doing so, disregard any experience where it is absent.
The ego can create a number of tales about it later on and even provide some logical reasons why it is so.

Edit: Upon rereading, I mostly misunderstood @fink's point and may have sounded arrogant at times. Here, I mostly tried to describe my experience and struggles (like having too many philosophical systems in my head). Please don't take it too close to heart.

 

[northape]

Here is a good book on this topic for anyone who is secular and into science:

 

[fink]

The paradox is that in order to acknowledge having had an ego death experience, one must be viewing it as a memory. Thus creating two points for an ego to cling to. The experience itself as well as the memory of it.

I'm saying that it is impossible to even understand the concept of an ego, or ego death, without an ego present.

The best we can do is aknowledge a past experience where an ego was not present.

 

[dithyramb]

As long as one is alive, the ego never "dies" as in a permanent erasure. Ego death can refer to a temporary loss of control of the ego, or if it is used in the context of enlightenment, i.e. something long term, it means that the ego becomes a servant to the Soul or Spirit or God (these things are not clear cut and intercept with each other), rather than being in the driver's seat.

As long as one is alive, one is and acts as an autonomous being in this world of duality. A mature human plays their duality theater role for the purpose of unifying.

 

[northape]

I'm saying that it is impossible to even understand the concept of an ego, or ego death, without an ego present.
The best we can do is aknowledge a past experience where an ego was not present.

I totally agree. All understanding is the domain of the ego. We create a story about ego death after the fact. That's what our brain does, and it's not concerned with its stories being real. What I meant is that we use that strategy because the ego is our default reference point. From the point of a larger reality or God, there is no difference between states.

As long as one is alive, the ego never "dies" as in a permanent erasure. Ego death can refer to a temporary loss of control of the ego, or if it is used in the context of enlightenment, i.e. something long term, it means that the ego becomes a servant to the Soul or Spirit or God (these things are not clear cut and intercept with each other), rather than being in the driver's seat.

That's why "ego death" is a misnomer; it's not a death at all, but a temporary disappearance. There is a possibility for the real death of the ego while we are alive, but it's extremely rare. Most of the sages who reached it paid a great neurological price for it. Even working with psychedelics could lead to some real complications later on. The ego wants to stay in power and is ready to kill the body if needed. That's our sad predicament. The total surrender of the ego to God leads to liberation. There is only God left in the end because the soul was just an imagination.

"There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth."

 

[dithyramb]

I tend to approach this topic more in practical terms. I don't imagine monks who have erased their egos to higher and higher degrees. The end point of that seems to be a non-functional vegetative state, honestly. I think in terms of training the ego to be aware of being part of something greater and more real, and consequently becoming authentically constructive members of society, earth, and cosmos.

Like, God didn't give us an ego to simply destroy it. We are here to learn to be and function to the fullest as the beings that God made us to be.

 

[northape]

I tend to approach this topic more in practical terms. I don't imagine monks who have erased their egos to higher and higher degrees. The end point of that seems to be a non-functional vegetative state, honestly. I think in terms of training the ego to be aware of being part of something greater and more real, and consequently becoming authentically constructive members of society, earth, and cosmos.

Like, God didn't give us an ego to simply destroy it. We are here to learn to be and function to the fullest as the beings that God made us to be.

Yeah, I went deep. It's better to stay practical.
We will reach it when we reach it. How it's going to look is beyond the ego, anyway.
Peace, everyone

 

[universecannon]

Very cool to see McGilchrist and Ramana Maharshi mentioned in the same vein. It is always Interesting to hear Ramana talk about the ego in quite harsh terms at times and it reminds me of Tony Wright's work that really bridges those two areas. Seems pretty obvious Ramana was addressing the left hemisphere as the ego/individual sense of self (I'm not saying we ARE our brain in a reductionist sense but it seems like a lens or instrument of sorts). From its fear driven perspective, significant shifts towards the right hemisphere can feel like dying. When given enough time at the helm, it seems like the right hemisphere is capable of an increasingly integrated level of non-dual/cosmic sense of self, where the left hemisphere ego takes an increasingly relegated back seat (or possibly even falls asleep at times) Hemispheric annealing and lateralization under psychedelics (HEALS): A novel hypothesis of psychedelic action in the brain - PubMed

Anyways cannabis is in many ways more complicated than any other Psychedelic to me. It's been a long weird journey of profound insights and blissful energetic states, or crippling anxiety/paranoia

It was always the opposite of addicting personally, as it's such a double edged sword. I'm more sensitive than I would like to be to its psychedelic potential but I need to ground it or it goes sideways all too easily. Smaller amounts can integrate well into an LSD or DMT experience for me but I like to wait till hour 4 or 5, once I've already worked with both for a while. Sometimes I will mix it with just DMT, but it seems way easier if I first dip my toes into DMT and then introduce a bit of cannabis into the session once I'm already feeling in tune.

Usually though I prefer to just smoke cannabis the night before a psychedelic session instead of mixing the two. It seems to help get a lot of the resistant/anxiety/kinks worked out ahead of time for me

I recommend extreme caution to people when mixing cannabis with psychedelics because it can lead to temporary psychosis/delusions of an extremely convincing nature (paranoid or delusions of grandeur) in a pretty significant number of people it seems. Especially if you aren't a heavy smoker with tolerance. This has wrecked some people's lives. If you're prone to that then you very well might get into some profoundly interesting states rather easily but it can also be harder to navigate the path to that if delusions arise.

 

[northape]

Very cool to see McGilchrist and Ramana Maharshi mentioned in the same vein. It is always Interesting to hear Ramana talk about the ego in quite harsh terms at times and it reminds me of Tony Wright's work that really bridges those two areas. Seems pretty obvious Ramana was addressing the left hemisphere as the ego/individual sense of self (I'm not saying we ARE our brain in a reductionist sense but it seems like a lens or instrument of sorts). From its fear driven perspective, significant shifts towards the right hemisphere can feel like dying. When given enough time at the helm, it seems like the right hemisphere is capable of an increasingly integrated level of non-dual/cosmic sense of self, where the left hemisphere ego takes an increasingly relegated back seat (or possibly even falls asleep at times) Hemispheric annealing and lateralization under psychedelics (HEALS): A novel hypothesis of psychedelic action in the brain - PubMed

Thanks for your insight. I think bringing them together is very relevant for the Western psyche. We culturally hold science and reason in high regard, so explaining the ego from that perspective carries more weight. Sri Ramana's explanations, in contrast, are very intimate and work well for individual internal exploration. I feel these two understandings complement each other well.

 

[Jamie01]

THC definitely has an effect on how 5-ht2a receptors function.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324803446_Chronic_cannabis_promotes_pro-hallucinogenic_signaling_of_5-HT2A_receptors_through_AktmTOR_pathway

I think some people just vibe more with a life eternally baked than others.

Personally I use cannabis on all psychedelics I take. It activates everything…psychedelics, other medications etc…thankfully I have a tolerance. Weed is probably among the best ego death drugs without tolerance. It’s also a good way to feel what it’s like to go totally insane.

Go figure it also makes just watching television better.

 

[Voidmatrix]

My conclusion is that people focus on the wrong target. Ego death is easy, but being fully aware of it is not. As you pointed out, when it happens, we don't notice and are just left with doubts or concepts. Little by little, we train in recognizing what's happening. The secret is to relax into it and not resist. It's like the first and biggest lesson of psychedelics, which can lead you all the way. Who is experiencing ego death?

Ego-death is something that sounds fantastical... until it happens, most of the time.

I may be an exception to certain observations and it's why I have some of the view that I have. We have certain expectations for certain experiences, in this case, ego-death, that might show up in different ways for different people.

However, it doesn't detract from the conundrum that people actively seek it and this is somewhat odd. A simple way I come to think of it is the ego is the part of self that cares there is a self. More than an experiencer, it is preserver, a preserver of the thread of consciousness that is "you." That said, the stripping of the ego, as the preserver also in many ways the controller, is always fraught and a fight... unless one has perhaps a well-trained ego

My third DMT experience lasted around 55 minutes. How? I don't know, that's beside the point. The point is that this was maybe my second "ego-death" experience (first was on 7g in a theater watching Avatar in 3D). I can actually recall it (which feels "triggering:" my heart is racing, I have goosebumps, my hair is standing, etc). I can see parts of it in my memory. During the come-up, very early on in the experience, I was convinced I had died. From that point everything that made "me" me was viciously stripped away. "I" ended up in a "place" surrounded by other "souls." There was still thought here, but not really identity. For example, there wasn't a "how did I get here," but a "what is this place" there was an aspect of my being that could reflect on itself, but would quickly be removed from it. It "didn't care," for lack of better words. As I think about it, that's why this is so hard to describe; it was beyond words.

But every time, there is a shock in "coming back." It hurts, sometimes to the point it makes you puke...

One love

 

[Voidmatrix]

I should probably add... the third experience I speak about was sandwich in cannabis...

One love

 

[fink]

Hey Ape, I didnt take anything you said as arrogance.

I want to encourage all and anyone who communicates towards me to use brutal and concise honesty. I respond best to this style.

Say it like you believe it! Never going to take offence.

 

[CosmicRiver]

Reading your descriptions and experiences i wish we could use telepathy because so much gets lost in translation
It's always hard to say if people are describing the same thing or not or from different perspectives or from different stages.

Once i smoked Changa and it was like a quote i read here from northape "Be like a hollow bamboo. Wind flows through. There is a melody, but no one is playing." The melody has no identity, and yet it resonates. It's doesn't exist and yet it exists. And that melody is made of everything except itself because it doesn't really exist, it's a just a product of other things. But even these other things are made of everything except themselves. So nothing really exists and yet, by everything not existing, everything exists. But everything exists only because nothing exists. And so on. And every individual thing is born from this interaction, so there really is no individual, just the interaction, but if there really were no individuals then there would be no interaction. And so on.
When i came down i forgot how to think, i had no words in my mind, but i was so free and fearless. Then after some hours i tried to describe it to a friend and i lost it

 

[fink]

Like an unbelievable moment of clarity about the truth of your personal existence? A moment that makes so much sense as to be euphoric.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I think some people just vibe more with a life eternally baked than others.

I feel like this is the case as well. It's just helpful, and I feel like it may be an act of control to posit that each and every person need be sober more often than not otherwise there's something wrong with them, they haven't healed enough, they're not on the path, they're weak, etc. They just live life differently.

A bowl of cannabis stays at the ready when psychedelic play is at hand and steady.

One love