I don't know if any of you are fans of Kurt Vonnegut, but in his book Slaughterhouse V, there are aliens called "Tralfamadorians" which exist in all moments of time. They are "unstuck" in time and time, for them, is not linear. Their universe is deterministic, so they do not have free will in the way that us humans do (or think we do). In the story, the main character (Billy Pilgrim) becomes unstuck in time and manages to exist on the aliens' plane (what does this say about him?) If existing in all moments of time (deterministic existence) means that you don't have free will, then maybe having free will just means that you exist only in one point in (linear) time. I mean when you lose your ego (say on DMT or something like that), you don't really have free will, and time is certainly not linear. You just have to relinquish yourself. Your ego is what gives you free will, so maybe your ego is also what keeps your perception stuck in one moment of linear time then: If you loose your ego (and your free will, too, probably) when you die, maybe death means that your consciousness exists in all of time simultaneously. The Jewish god gave humans free will, and he also gave them life, but maybe they are one in and of the same. And then at that point, what is happening when you go through ego death while your physical body remains alive? Are you getting a taste of death? Is a little part of you dying? Was Billy Pilgrim dead? Truly then: The Temple of the True Inner Light must have something to its doctrine. When you eat from the plants that open your doors of perception to the infinite simultaneity of time (that reduce your ego's influence), you must be going through the ritual of preparedness for death (eternity). I mean isn't that what religion is all about? Isn't that what communion is supposed to be? Yes the Temple People must be right. The cactus, the mushroom, the forbidden apple; It's all the flesh of God. Truly is it a sacrament.
Before I took L, I realized neither much of spirituality, nor alternative ways of "seeing." I had a fragile and societally layered ego--a manifested ignorance-- which is probably what most feel when beginning a psychedelic journey. In hindsight, of course. I'm not really addressing your main point. For me, the loss of ego opened up vistas of existence I had been theretofore locked out of. I wasn't getting a taste of death upon the loss of ego. I was getting a taste of life. And none too soon, I might add. I was 28.
I think that ego loss may be the result of lower level functioning of the brain, such as the paleomammalian brain, on hyper alert that the body may be in a sense of imminent mortal danger and is not relaying messages to the higher level functioning of the brain properly, by properly I mean sending neural messages in the way it has adapted to in homeostatic functioning throughout one's life. In a sense, I do think this is a taste of death. Beyond the relaying static I'll call it, I believe there may be some neurological action which directly alters one's sense of self as well. I think some of the perception of time on psychedelics can be explained similarly. The brain has various processes which give the person a sense of time. Some of the processes likely get altered/upset and I believe there has been research which shows psychedelics elicit brain wave patterns which resemble that of the early stages of sleep wave patterns, if that is accurate I can see how time can be distorted as it can be with sleep as well. The brain has not developed entirely uniform, (although in some respects it's incredibly uniform) and I think psychedelics expose this aspect.
Hedge you say 'must' a lot for something so theoretical. In death i would agree you would become 'unstuck' but if there isnt a conciousness after death then what would that mean? Remember i think therefore i am. As for the parts of me dying....is there any parts besides dead skin and hair cells that you can be talking about...do they have a consiousness?
I have written about this extensively in the philosophy threads (though I did not realize Vonnegut wrote this---I confess that while I had the book, I saw the movie so I never read it---but that was years ago). First of all let me define ego in Jungian terms. The ego has the purpose of maintaining a consistent concept of self, therefore it is through ego that we try to define ourselves within physical reality. Because of this the ego acts as a filter---filtering out all stimulus, perception, impression, sensory phenomena, and anything else that is not pertinent to our physical reality, and our ego definition of who we are. I think that we are individuals at a deeper level than our ego lets on---therefore I disagree with the spiritual implications of the term ego-death----at least in terms of its reference to death of the self. Death of the physical self---yes there is ego-death, but death of the self, I don't think so. (And therefore our perception of now is a series of NOWs for how can we perceive an infinitely small point of now, even though our perception of now, by the time we perceive it, is already gone). Now a Hindu or Buddhist might say---that's right---the true self---absolute self continues----No that is not what I mean. We are still individuals at a higher dimension--so when I say self, I am referring to who we are as individuals that lives on. The Theory of Relativity demonstrates that light does not truly exist in physical time and space. In fact---at the speed of light, all time and space drops to zero---or actually an infinitely small instantaneous moment. If we traveled at the speed of light--all of time and all of space would only exist at an infinitely small moment of time. Time and space only come into existence when we slow down below the speed of light. The physical dimensions therefore only in exist in the three dimensions that we exist within by moving at sub-light speed, not in the 4th dimension of light. I call the 4th dimension light instead of time because we only perceive time from our perspective, and light travels at the speed of time. All of physical reality exists at sub-light speed---in the 4th dimension only energy exists--and somewhere there, or possibly in a higher dimension, mind exists. We can move through space and not time. Light moves through time, not space---therefore from our perspective we could perceive light as if it was in a deterministic universe because it cannot move through space (---yes we perceive light as moving through space, but that is because from our perspective, that is the only way we can perceive it, or understand it). This means that in reality, there is nothing more than the ever-present 'NOW' This NOW is not exactly the now we perceive as now---because our mind transcends time, and therefore transcends the moments of NOW. Rather the moment of NOW is a single matrix of photons/light waves that exists clear accross the physical universe in a single inifinitely small moment of space-time. All that rruly exists in physical reality is the now. After death I believe we return to this higher dimension in which, like light, transcends time. We have a hard time comprehending this transcendent individual self, because our ego traps us into only seeing from a physical perspective.
This raises the question that I have not thought about---if light from our perspective exists in a deterministic universe as suggested by Vonnegut, does that mean that from the other side, where we as physical beings move through space and not time, are in fact the ones in the deterministic universe---at least from that higher 4th Dimension perspective?????????
Read my post-----I think Vonnegut had a good handle of the theory of relativity and used it to create this alternate reality. There are very few people that have taken the implications of the theory of relativity to its conclusion in this way as I have and as Vonnegut may have. At best it is just an oddity touched upon in a quantum physics class or advanced class on relativity...
