Ego Death [by DMT] with Alan Watts (A7x)

Alan Watts: Ego death will save the world

Whoa, look at all the colors and eyes of...Huh?

(Metamorphosis) Alan Watts -- the Westerner who made Eastern philosophy (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Mahayana, Theravada, Zen, Confucianism) intelligible to Westerners -- was one of the most important thinkers of all time. He introduced Eastern philosophies to the Western world and helped the constantly occupied Western mind to slow down and understand. This speech discusses "ego death" (realizing by means of mindfulness and attention that what we take to be "self" is not self, not personal, not ours or under our control, etc.) and how it constitutes a fundamental element in the attempt to re-institute a connection with the real world around us. #alanwatts #egodeath #savetheworld

Seeing no danger in an illusory ego, want an ego?

Here's an ego to cling to and take a flying leap.

Scary looking aluminum cauldron of jungle potion: vine, bark, and plant matter: Ayahuasca

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Ego death w/ M Shadows (Avenged Sevenfold)

Vocalist M Shadows (formerly Matt Sanders) talks about EGO death: Avenged Sevenfold's "Nobody"

i Was as God, All-Seeing One, alpha, omega

What does DMT (toad venom or 5-MeO-DMT, soma, LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, Syrian rue, harmaline, iboga, ibogaine, Special K, ergot, peyote, San Pedro cactus, etc.) have to do with anything?

There are powerful entheogens in the outside world that mimic things like DMT that our brains produce. A flood of them, particularly of the Spirit Molecule DMT, can for a moment give us a vision of reality.

If calm-and-insight meditation is the reliable way there, entheogens are the unreliable, irregular, "accidental tourist" way of traveling.

For the nonbeliever, they can make a believer out of one quite quickly. The path is just the same as it was, but now it becomes clearer to the one on the path that it is real and that this journey (to bliss, to the end of all suffering) is necessary without delay.

Drugs are not the Buddha's path

Colonic first then get to practicing, Krystle Cole

Drugs (somas, haomas, hallucinogens, psychedelics, etc.) are not the Buddha's path to enlightenment or nirvana, and one may wonder why. It is very easy to see why.

The problem is the ego, but the ego is only a construct and not actually real no matter how much we wish it were so that it could go on forever or be annihilated right now and release us from this interminable merry-go-round.

• It's crazy to think there's not a "self" since our whole experience of the world is through a self (personality, ego, POV, paradigm, set of memories, atman, soul). It is not correct to say there is NO self. There is a self in a conventional sense, of course. It is in the ultimate sense that there is no self. This is the distinction. So we may "find ourselves," "lose ourselves," store up karma (deeds), bear the result of our actions (deeds), and so on. What is there then? There are Five Aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) clung to as a self. AHA! Who or what clings? Form forms, feeling feels, perception perceives, mental formations form, and consciousness is conscious. This is not a speculation but rather an observable fact to a mind purified by samadhi (stillness, coherence) that systematically practices the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (satipatthana). It is not a joke, noy a philosophy, not a belief, not a paradox, not a mystic experience. It is verifiably true. And to be free, the Truth must be seen. The Truth sets one free of wrong views, delusions, and ignorance.

What about MAPS and Awake Project?

Drugs are not the answer because they do not promote coherent calm and insight-practices. The real more immediate problems are greed, hatred/fear, and delusion. This last one, a manifestation of ignorance (avidya, avijjha) is the root of all problems. The solution is enlightenment/awakening (bodhi).

There is no need to take a substance, a red pill to snap out of The Matrix. It may temporarily work, and we may see a world of spirits (Dracos, Archons, devas, ogres, ghouls, reptilians, Pleiadeans, asuras), but it won't last.

It is far better to systematically relax and still the mind, collect its faculties, concentrate its powers to the point of samadhi (a coherent state of superconsciousness, stillness, clarity). Then we can begin.

The Buddha's contribution to the world was going from this point (samadhi) to enlightenment/awakening (bodhi). Samadhi is not awakening; it is far from it.

The Three Poisons of greed (clinging), hatred (aversion), and delusion (ignorance) still exist, though temporarily suppressed or attenuated and made so subtle as to not be noticed. But they remain in a latent state. They must be rooted out, cut off at the root. We need not cut them; wisdom cuts them. Knowing-and-seeing cuts them. This is why it is not enough to theoretically understand and "get it." Direct experience is necessary -- or a great deal of saddha (confidence, conviction, faith).

• It's hard to imagine that faith alone, the path of the great many of the world's inhabitants, could ever do anything, but it does seem to be able to do one thing -- to put us on the Path and impel us. With faith we can go forward and come see for ourselves rather than remaining lost in doubt and perplexity, skepticism and endless questioning.

The Three Poisons (greed, hatred, delusion) must be cut off at the roots. Then knowledge-and-vision of the Truth arises. The "ego" (self or soul construct, these functionally integrated Five Aggregates, which are all processes not enduring realities) will be seen for what it is and what it is not.

This is a lasting and durable solution to letting go of all things clung to as a "self" that lead to suffering. And what again is clung to that leads to so much suffering? They are the Five Aggregates, Skandhas, Heaps: form (physical elements); feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and [the process of] consciousness(es).

Taking these to be an eternal soul, a self, the property of a self, something separate from a self, the constituents of an actual self, all such wrong views lead to pain (dukkhata) and suffering (dukkha), rebirth and more ignorance (confusion, misunderstanding, not knowing, uncertainty, not-seeing, etc.).

Has one ever met a stable and enlightened shaman or drug dependent person? No because the way of shamanism and drug abuse leads to oddity and imbalance, seeing so much of the invisible and not being able to integrate it or let it go.

For all one's progress in seeing all there is, the fundamental problems have not been addressed or solved.

But a wandering ascetic, a Buddhist monastic living in accordance with the Monastic Code of Discipline (Vinaya), the Patimokkha, practicing in accordance with the Buddha's Dharma for calm and insight, that person realizes what is real and what is not and is thereby liberated here and now in this very life.

There's no comparison between lifestyles, the route (maze) of drugs or the Middle Path to enlightenment.

If drugs were needed, the Buddha and subsequent arhats would have revealed that. What is needed is "clear seeing" (vipassana) built atop a stabile foundation of samadhi (absorbed stillness and concentration).

• Alan Watts via Metamorphosis (YouTube), Jan. 4, 2021; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Dharma Buddhist Meditation (meetup.com)