Before I start, I'd like to say that I'm an atheist, I don't like religions, I think they are bad for people and worse for the world as a place to live in peace. I don't know much about any of the major ones and I'm happy for it. However, after my ketamine and MXE experiences, I was looking for similar reports, found some, but strangely, the wording of my query returned several Buddhist resources and texts! Since then, I've read something about the original Theravada Buddhism and the origins of this old teaching (some may label it a "religion", but the fact is that it's not, at least in its original form; it's a suggestion for a way of life and mental practices that should help attain the state of enlightenment and/or lead a worthwhile life; there is no deity (Buddha was a regular person), no typical worship, no fairytales; it's a collection of guidelines, philosophical texts, "interviews" with enlightened people and edifying stories from the life of Buddha and his followers). Sure, the concept of rebirth can be thought of as religious mythology, but it's actually an integral part of how Buddhists believe the cycle of life to work, as revealed by enlightened individuals. Anyway, I'm not a Buddhist either, I just find it alarming how my personal experiences with MXE brought me to similar conclusions/discoveries that Buddha used to teach/share after his awakening. I've had my ego collapsed many times on MXE, sometimes partially, sometimes completely, and what that does to you is so profound, so view-of-reality altering that words can't really express it. You literally look under the veil of reality. You see that we are not mere bodies, that we are perhaps not even some "entities". Under our ego's rigorous control and filtration of the reality as perceived by our senses, we are just observers with memory to tie the pieces of "ourselves" together into an "I". When your ego dissolves, all of who you are, who you've been and what you think "life", universe, love, the whole language along with what words represent, everything is blown away and "the observer", you, becomes a pure energy - singularity, if you will - that simply acts and reacts in an never-ending loop and interacts with other energies - uncontrolled, unrestrained, unhindered by bodily senses. Those are are cut off, shut down, which puts you into a state similar to extremely deep meditation. It is only in this void that our true nature can reveal itself. Any action or thought on your part instantly muddles the void and the possibility of the ultimate revelation of the origin of nothingness and non-self collapses. I believe the eternal energy (or consciousness) that is everything and everybody and maybe even gives birth to the physical (i.e. reality) permeates some endless, almost "looped", continuum. This energy is what is fuelling our body and mind. This energy has no memory or explicit identity and it manifests only when there is no body, no memory, no "you". That's why when you sober up, you only feel remnants of the partial state of some level of enlightenment, which I truly believe is what Buddhists refer to with this word (or Nirvana). But it's quickly slipping away from you, as your ego is reconstructing and forcing your ideas, language and life experiences upon the experience, destroying the true awareness in the process. It is very hard to manage to bring something with you. Intuitively, "you" doesn't want you to know, it wants to live and continue it's existence. Being just a sham, just an illusion of your brain's neural pathways comprising everything you think and are, slowly built from nothing when (or some time before) you were born up to this very moment, ego cannot cope with it's non-existence, as it was constructed precisely to prevent you from accessing the death-like stillness of the singular consciousness ("continuum") and your true non-self and to reinforce itself as to be indestructible. "You" are a record of the inner image of "yourself" and the outer image of reality as perceived by your senses. That is what EGO is. You are not born with ego, you carefully build it around you when you reach a certain age in order to be able to control your body and ensure continuity of your current physical manifestation. It is a defensive reflex, facilitated by your physical capabilities and the incongruity between physical reality - your incarnation, if you will - and the force that is fueling it. It must be sometime before or just after birth, when our completely blank brain starts to react to the impulses brought on by the senses. That point is like striking a match - from then on, the basis for ego starts to build up by storing every new sensation and a piece of knowledge in the brain's neural network. This goes on until the momentous event of the emergence of self-awareness. That is the true birth of ego. Forced to be bootstrapped from nothing by the nature of reality and our bodies. From this perspective, the human is indeed a higher form of being, or rather consciousness, than animals. Animal consciousness never attains the self-awareness, and that surely is a required step on the path to enlightenment, as one can hardly discover one's nature without first being aware of one's existence. The goal (our goal) is then to transcend the self, and realize there is no self after all. It's like when you don't see the forest, because of the trees. From my glimpses I suspect there are no trees, only the forest. A single, endless consciousness. Our sense of separation, loneliness, self is the big sham reality plays on us. After so many voyages behind the veil of my reality, I'm not sure there is any such thing. I now believe it is just a manifestation the life energy is somehow forced or inclined to create to avoid the emptiness, the stillness and endlessness of its real nature. For this reason, the inherently final, ever changing concept of what we call reality is created and parts of the continuum, the greater consciousness, are mere projections trapped inside. Within its bounds, it's easy to exist, because it's firm and real and you are something you can define and hold on to like an old man's cane. It allows us to easily interact, albeit on the most superficial level - through language - with other manifestation of the same single energy. We (the single great consciousness) may well be ultimately lone creators of the whole reality, gods in the true sense of the word, playing out this schizophrenic game until everything and everybody grows mentally enough to rejoin the singularity at which point reality ceases to exist. The ultimate goal of all this is not to believe or suspect, but to know there is no "I" for a fact, which in turn bursts this great bubble, allowing escape from the almost endless loop of rebirth and death. To be able and strong enough to exists in the true form, facing the eternity and embracing the freedom of our single nature instead of hiding from it. Never to be afraid and feel the need to be grounded within the safe and firm confines of our "realities" - forever aware of the true nature of our origin. A person who reaches enlightenment has successfully defeated his ego, which once unravelled through the revelation of its ultimate non-existence (as opposed to a mere glimpse through artificial medium like MXE which just temporarily suspends the brain's self-protecting safeguards) cannot, by definition, emerge back again. Buddhists reach enlightenment by suspending thought and in that emptiness a revelation/discovery is made about the ultimate nature of "self", i.e. that there is no self, and after the final death, perhaps about the nature and reason for the transience of reality. It might sound like babbling, but perhaps somebody who had similar experiences will recognize some of the concepts I'm trying to convey. Most will just say TL;DR or "well, he's off his rocker," but to me this now makes a lot of sense and the fact that thousands years of Buddhist teachings seem to agree with this concept on some level. I don't know how to express all of this in a couple of sentences, sorry for such a novel, but I write this in hopes it will help somebody somehow. I honestly believe this could be the ultimate answer to those questions that nobody - except a relatively few enlightened people - found an answer to in he whole history of human race: - Why are we here? - What is the point and meaning of life? - What is the origin of the universe that literally gave birth to reality, i.e. matter, energy, time and space - the single (for a lack of a better word) "medium" known to man, comprising absolutely everything in us, of us and around us? - If there was a big bang, what put it into motion, what was the primordial spark and how come we still know nothing about it's nature? The nature of universe itself? - Before that, was there nothing - which I find unlikely - or some previous iteration of the whole gigantic cycle, sparking a new beginning of an endless loop with its own demise? Perhaps a birth of a new super-consciousness? Fact is, something definitely did give birth to our reality (I'm avoiding the word "created" intentionally, because it was not created; apart from the initial spark, the nature of this medium perpetuated its own existence and genesis). I believe theoretical physics can give us many answers about the building blocks of the reality - matter, energy, perhaps even space and ultimately time, but that's all. It could take hundreds or thousands of years, but we could get there. However, what actually happened in the beginning, how this will end and what - if anything - will be next, are concepts from outside of the reality and thus are with absolute certainty unknowable to us in present form. The idea that the ultimate answers are actually within us, within the reach of every person on the planet by means of our minds transcending into the super-consciousness by attaining enlightenment is simply staggering. I have formed some conclusions with non-zero probability: - There is no death, just a temporary detachment from reality. As such, it is not to be feared, but welcome. It's an important culmination of our visit to the physical reality, in line with its purpose - state of finiteness, anti-endlessness, an ever-changing in every way, including me (or us) as its (co-)creator. - There is no god in the sense some people believe. The closest thing to this "god" is us - creators of our realities. - Reality is unknowable, it is limited and ending in every way just like us, from tiniest organism to the universe as a whole. There are rules we can observe and must obey, which is the nature of reality for serving its purpose. However, it cannot be understood or "decoded" completely by some grand unifying principle/theory, as our physical minds are subject the the same limits. It's like when a color-blind person would blind himself and closed himself in a room painted with a palette of colors and then try to find out what "blue" is. Even with fancy theories and technical equipment, his understanding will be useless. - Dissociatives, by their nature, superbly emulate the perfect meditation states attained only after years of self-control and mental training, disconnecting everything from your brain and leaving you in absolute mental vacuum. I believe they are by far the best category of drugs to spiritually further your development and allow for glimpses under the veil of "reality". Other psychoactives, esp. those reinforcing ego are useless in this regard. High doses of some hallucinogens (like LSD, etc.) that can also shatter ego can be just as helpful and spiritually enlightening. I found one report with which I can mostly identify, that guy could express himself better with the distance and time for thinking about it. I'm not so eloquent. Granted, he only scratched the surface and later, post-trip, his ego fused his actual experience with his Buddhist beliefs, but some of his perceptions are spot-on with mine: http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/w...ienced_this-t31835.0.html;msg260984#msg260984 Nice Wiki articles for quick orientation in Buddhist ideology I'm beginning to find extremely interesting as a result of feelings/discoveries in deep sub-conscious states after K/MXE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_%28spiritual%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana
You got it. I had a very strong LSD experience in which my ego was dissolved and I came to these same realizations. I think that people have been figuring this out all throughout history, and trying to pass it on, but its a very difficult idea to pass on. My thought is that all religion and philosophy originated as a means of passing this knowledge on, and most of them just went horribly wrong. Wonderful post. It's really amazing to see other people who've figured all this out on their own.
Mavey, great post. I have also been ushered into the direction of Buddhist thought by mind altering substances. I'm glad you have such profound experiences on MXE, it is a wonderful substance. My own research brought me not to Theravada Buddhism, but Zen Buddhism and Taoism. I think you should look into those if you really want your mind blown, particularly Zen
wow, mavey. GREAT first post! i've never really figured any of this stuff out, but somehow it resonates with me. i've had low to medium doses of LSD and other psychedelics, but next to no experience with dissociatives. this is by far the most interesting aspect of them that i've ever heard. i'm sure i have enough LSD to "learn" this on my own. am i brave enough to take it? i dunno. haha, notice how i just said "i've, i've, i'm"
one time I dosed over a hundred milligrams and felt like I was chemicals passing through a seperatory funnel
High dose snorted 1 gram, I.M.ed 400-450mg(loaded 4 rigs, did one after another), I.V. I would say 250-300mg
I regularly do high dose ketamine (250-750mg or so) and normally I won't do it unless it's a trusted source, but one day I stepped a little outside of that rule and bought "ketamine" off someone I had just met at a rave. Big fucking mistake. Try railing 350mgish (a bit more than half of a 500mg K-vial) of MXE when expecting a nice floaty k-hole. Not fucking fun.