subiazim said:
entheogenic-gnosis said:
Doc Buxin said:
DiMiTreeZ said:
...if it is death, why is death so colorful and beautiful patterns and fractals and all that? Doesnt that seem a little strange? I dont know why that seems strange to me, but it does...
That is exactly why I am recommending the book "The Psychedelic Experience" by Leary, Metzner & Alpert. It is a version of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
According to The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, the after-death/bardo states are quite overwhelming, both beautifully & horrifically, to the uninitiated & the unpracticed. The whole gist being that, when you die, the visions you react to emotionally determine your next incarnation.
The ultimate goal being to not react to any of the visions, whether beautiful or horrifying, keeping calm & serene & therefore ultimately passing into total mergance with our Source or The Void or The White Light or whatever one would like to label the utmost transcendant state of being/non-being.
(*The followong is disconnected from actual buddhist teachings and philosophy, though it uses many of the same languages and concepts*)
I've thought about this, while in the flash, your present incarnation, your life as "you" seems like a dream you had just awoken from, it quickly fades from memory, you cling to it, you remember you family, your friends, your "life", and realize your not even in the same universe as any of them, you want help, you think "call the fire department" or "call an ambulance", then you realize it's futile, it's just you and the after death and you have to face it on your own, you want a return to the "stability" of physical incarnation, this massive and seemingly instantaneous loss of everything you had ever known in your present incarnation is overwhelming,
....and at the same time you have entered this flashing, buzzing, moving, colorful intense continuum, where nothing is familiar, there's no time, no physics, it's completely alien to a formerly physical being...
now, at death, if you enter an identical state, when you panic, when you feel all the things listed above, it may cause you to hastily jump into a physical incarnation, rebirth...
Now, if you learned to not react to the disorienting and overwhelming nature of the after death, you will find nirvana, you don't need to reincarnate, you won't jump into rebirth...whether you stay in the bardo, and your perceptions simply turn the bardo into nirvana, or whether you transition into another area that is nirvana, is unclear from using DMT...
So maybe by tolerating the state's between death and reincarnation, it will lead to nirvana or heaven, and eventually to a mindful incarnation, while if you panic, it's possible to jump into an unfavorable incarnation...Though I'm sure karma determines a good deal here...if you panic, and are unable to reincarnate it could be hell...
Any way, this is all just fun speculation off the top of my head, though I'm sure learning to be calm and mindful in the flash will ultimately lead to the same result when you enter the after death...
...Though those who are able to attain nirvana will ultimately return to samsara to aide other sentient beings on their path, out of selflessness and compassion you reincarnate...so it seems even attaining nirvana is an impermanent act, for out of selflessness you can not stay.
-eg
First off I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post your Experiences and thoughts.
I've often wondered, though meditation and psychedelic experiences can we actually learn to stay calm within the other reality or bardo? Can we be totally unafraid of anything and just embrace the dive down the infinitely deep rabbit hole? How far can we travel through eternity before we must get out and back to something somewhere else?
If reincarnation exists, do you think it's possible to reincarnate not only in the future, but also in the past as well? Surely that would create parallel existence and worlds one off from this one?
Very interesting thoughts, keep them coming!
Cheers
I've often wondered, though meditation and psychedelic experiences can we actually learn to stay calm within the other reality or bardo? Can we be totally unafraid of anything and just embrace the dive down the infinitely deep rabbit hole? How far can we travel through eternity before we must get out and back to something somewhere else?
I'm not sure, though I feel learning to stay calm and even enjoy these after death states may in fact be a key in reaching nirvana. What causes these states to be overwhelming? Well, there's the disorientation involved with the transition out of physical existance, the lack of physical surroundings and a physical body, the feeling your entire ontology has been pulled out from under you, the lack of physics and time, and so on, can all be sources of discomfort, disorientation, and panic.
Then there's the aspects involving attachment, you remember your life as "you", you remember your friends, your family, everybody you had known and loved, as well as your favorite places and activities, and you realize your in a separate dimension from all of it, an uncrossable barrier has been placed between you and your former existance (similar to the barrier between you and the after death in life) as you remember these things, you cling to them, you see them fading and just as a dream quickly fades after waking, they begin to slip away, and this is traumatic, like sand slipping through fingercracks everything you had ever known in your previous incarnation is slipping away.
...but just as attachment, clinging, and desire cause suffering in life, the same is true in the after death, most suffering is self inflicted, and when you identify and deal with the sources of this self inflicted suffering, you are able to realize how easy it is to find happiness or at least comfort in any situation...
...so suffering in the bardo could just as easily turn to ecstasy in the bardo, it's your view of the situation that makes a good deal of the difference...
Though I'm not sure that a simple rearrangement in perspective in the bardo is the key to nirvana, well, if panic in the bardo will cause one to jump into an incarnation, then remaining calm in the bardo would prevent jumping into an incarnation, and if you remained in the bardo, and found a way to interpret the bardo as ecstasy, this could, in a sense, be attaining nirvana or reaching heaven.
...Though this is easier said than done, you can encounter unimaginable horror or beauty in the bardo, and you will find you have very little control over what's going on around you, I'm sure karma plays a huge role as well...
DMT allows me to reach the after death, the bardo, a state/place after death but before reincarnation, but offers no insight on what comes next, do you transition into an eternal paradise or hell? Do you jump into another incarnation? With DMT it's as if you have a bungee-cord connecting your conscious-being to your physical body, your thrown into the bardo, but before you can make it any further than this after death "between", you are pulled back into the physical incarnation which your conscious-being initially departed.
If reincarnation exists, do you think it's possible to reincarnate not only in the future, but also in the past as well? Surely that would create parallel existence and worlds one off from this one?
This has drove me crazy for quite some time...
Say there's an infinite amount of places to reincarnate into, like, every living species on earth could be a potential incarnation, then all the species on all the planets and places in this universe become options for incarnation, then every type of conscious being in every other dimension outside of this universe becomes an option...it seems unlikely that you would ever incarnate in the same place twice...
Which may be why it's hard to remember past lives, if in one incarnation you were a squid on earth, and in the next you were a human on earth, it would be near impossible for memory transfer, you would have to regain the conscious state afforded by a squid brain to correctly process and recover the memory...
Now think if you reincarnated from this universe into a different dimension, memory transfer then seems impossible...
I actually have a good deal of speculation in this area, and I apologize that I was unable to really even scratch the surface or go into any real depth, but I've been incredibly tied down by other research, and only have a minimal amount of time that I'm able to spend freely...
Seriously though, next time I get a good amount of free time, I'm going to sit down, smoke some hasheesh, and write a well written and well thought response, I have all these concepts in my head already, but articulating them in a way that is readable for others can be a challenge, so.Again I apologize for the brief and quickly written reply, but I can assure you I'm going to return to this topic in the near future.
(Was unable to edit before I posted, please excuse any typos)
-eg
