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Can an ego dissolving dose be a bad trip?

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DwayneHoover said:
The "you" was from the perspective of later when "you" reconstitutes, and you remember having an experience in which "you" were not there. But you have the memory nonetheless. Yes it is a paradox. That is what makes it interesting and why we are talking about it. DUH!
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No, nice try but I'm afraid that doesn't work. If you have no sense of self then obviously you cannot experience anything. If you are sufficiently conscious for your memory to be taking it all in then your sense of self is functioning perfectly. Y'follow?

Apparently you just cannot grok the idea of paradoxes

No, it's not a paradox. Your sense of self is functioning perfectly - that's why you can remember it all.

And obviously there is a huge difference, being LUCIDITY as was mentioned, between psychedelic "ego-loss" and alcoholic-generated unconsciousness.

No, I wasn't talking aboout being unconscious on alcohol. People can be perfectly conscious on alcohol while not knowing who they are. And several people have said when they are in this state on psychedelics they would not be lucid.
 
DwayneHoover said:
Sorry IAmMe, decided to edit out some of my "language" as unnecessary distraction before I saw your post... yes I did mention something with those terms, just to be clear.
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Easier way might be for both of you just to grow up and stop taking disagreements about drugs personally?

Merely a suggestion Dwayne, tho you are usually a little more mature than Iamme.
 
Ismene said:
No, nice try but I'm afraid that doesn't work. If you have no sense of self then obviously you cannot experience anything. If you are sufficiently conscious for your memory to be taking it all in then your sense of self is functioning perfectly. Y'follow?
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This is pretty weak reasoning. A self is not the same thing as a sense of self. Why should it be impossible to have conscious experiences without a sense of self? Do you believe that animals that don't show signs of self-awareness do not have conscious experiences?

And what does it mean for a sense of self to be "functioning perfectly"? If your sense of self has expanded to include objects beyond the boundary of your physical body, is your sense of self still functioning perfectly? What if your sense of self has shrunk so that unconscious mental and bodily processes are perceived as alien and not your own? These are experiences that people can have.

The interesting question here is whether these different permutations of the concept of "self" actually refer to any real thing in the world, or whether they are just different ways that the brain has of organizing information.

People can be perfectly conscious on alcohol while not knowing who they are.
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You must have a very loose definition of consciousness to say this.
 
Ismene said:
No, I wasn't talking aboout being unconscious on alcohol. People can be perfectly conscious on alcohol while not knowing who they are. And several people have said when they are in this state on psychedelics they would not be lucid.
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"Unconscious" doesn't mean "passed out on the couch". People drunk on alcohol can experience periods of unconsciousness while being totally awake and moving around...hell, you can even have full conversations with them, but that doesn't mean that their nervous system is functioning at anything more than a base level.
 
Ismene said:
No, nice try but I'm afraid that doesn't work. If you have no sense of self then obviously you cannot experience anything. If you are sufficiently conscious for your memory to be taking it all in then your sense of self is functioning perfectly. Y'follow?
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No I don't follow. "If you have no sense of self then obviously you cannot experience anything." That is totally unsupported by either logic or evidence. If my "sense of self" has become expanded to include aspects of reality that are normally beyond my usual self, then this "expanded self" is absolutely a "receptor" onto which experiences can be mapped and thus "experienced." It is not my normal prosaic name&address "self" that is "having" the experience... but rather this expanded, beyond-"me" "Uber-Self" that has mysteriously replaced the normal "me" construct in my mental circuitry that is "having" the experience. Y'follow?
 
So is your memory part of your "sense of self" or not? I'd tend to think it was an essential part of it wouldn't you?
 
When you are in the middle of a roller coaster ride, how many of your "past memory" parts are you accessing. I bet exactly 0. So do you die then? Do you stop forming memories?

Who says that access to memory (reading from the disk) is required to write to it? Are you a neuroscientist? Is that what they believe?

If you unplug the OUTPUT wires from you Video Tape / DVR you can no longer access its "memories". But you can still record nonetheless and make new ones that can later be seen, once the wiring is back in working order.

Unless you have some research showing that memories cannot be formed in a state of inability to access already stored memories... then your theoretical rebuttal is dismissed completely. There is simply no logical or scientific reason to give any credence whatsoever to your 100% speculative construct.

You are pre-supposing out of ignorance or obstinance that a complete copy of "self" constructed from all past memories is a required part of every formed memory. This is bollocks. Nothing in science has ever suggested that this is so. And as a software engineer I would say that would be the WORST most inefficient way to store memories... and nature is usually alot more resourceful than that.
 
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DwayneHoover said:
When you are in the middle of a roller coaster ride, how many of your "past memory" parts are you accessing. I bet exactly 0.
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When I'm riding a rollercoaster I'm thinking of a dozen things. The weather, if the kid in front of me is going to let that bag of popcorn go, whether the ride is worth the money compared to other rides I've been on earlier in the day etc

Unless you have some brain research showing that memories cannot be formed in a state of inability to access already stored memories

So it's a little bit more nuanced than "loss of self"? It's "loss of self but with your memory functioning perfectly"?

Are you trying to say a peak experience and "losing your memory banks" are the same thing?
 
No. I am only saying your claims that "ego-loss" does not exist (and that ALL such reports are some sort of idiotic befuddlement or excessive stoned-ness) because it is impossible to form memories without your ego (sorry, "memory and sense of self") , is speculative hogwash just pulled outa thin air, total argumentative hoo-haw.
 
And you're absolutely positive "ego-loss" does exist are you? On the basis of what evidence? Something you feel when you're stoned?

How many of the things you think when you're stoned turn out to have much basis in reality?
 
Are you trying to say that peaking on a psychedelic is nothing more than merely "being stoned?"

If that's all you think of them I don't even know why you're here.

In fact if that's the extent of your understanding of them then I would say you've never actually even done them and are just a precocious 14 year old posting from under his bedcovers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
 
Why do you think "being stoned" is a negative term? Being stoned on psychedelics is a pretty powerful experience.

I'm trying to get at how you decide which things you experience while high have any basis in reality and which ones don't.
 
Ismene said:
How many of the things you think when you're stoned turn out to have much basis in reality?
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Are you really just here to denigrate our drug experiences any way you can?

If fact, there have been numerous epiphanies and realizations I have had while stoned, and also even more so while tripping, which is very different than being stoned, you for some weird reason seem not to realize.

Maybe 85% of the things I think when stoned have a total basis in reality. Maybe down to 50% when tripping. I don't know about you but there's alot more interesting things going on in my mind when I am either stoned or tripping than just some I dunno cartoon fantasies about fairies or something.
 
"Being stoned" is vague. There are many qualitiatively different experiences you can have on drugs. One type of experience that you can have is a transformation of the sense of self. This experience is not like euphoria, or confusion, or an alteration of a sensory modality. To lump all these things together and call them all "being stoned" is just sloppy.

As to whether it has any basis in reality, this is just a misunderstanding. This is not like, some theory that you arrive at by thinking under the influence that may be true or false. This is a class of experience that you've either had or you haven't. There's nothing more to ego-death "in reality" than what it feels like.
 
Sure seemed to me like you are using "stoned" in a negative implication. You are twisting my words as if I was the one doing that not you. Hmmm....

I decide after the fact, when I have come down, which things I thought had any veracity in reality. I can remember things I experienced after coming down. And if something I thought high, once sober, seems worthless or stupid to me then I will figure "boy I was really out there, how silly a thing to think". And if something I thought high, remembered after coming down, seems to have some point or useful content I will conclude "How interesting." I don't get why this all seems so bizarre and mysterious to you.
 
The thing is you're claiming this "ego-loss" has some basis in reality, it's not just a consequence of being stoned - it's something "more" than that. You sense a lot of things when you're stoned - I'm sure you occasionaly think you can hear your parents whispering "I think Dwaynes been at the drugs again dear.." in the next room when you are on acid. But when you come down you realise it was just an effect of being stoned on a drug. You seem to be convinced this "ego-loss" is something more than just a feeling you get when you're stoned. I'm trying to find out why you think that. But I've a feeling it's probably not worth the effort.
 
<face/palm> Sweetheart, everything about "ego-loss" or whatever is "just a feeling you get." I have zero idea wtf you think you are "debunking" here. Where did I or anyone else ever claim there was some mystical magical transformation of reality going on... all the interest is just about THE REMARKABLE WAY YOU FEEL when it happens, and the fascinating thoughts and memories you bring back when your "Little Self (me at my address)" remembers the things it experienced when it thought it was "Big Self (higher level processes containing Little Self)". Notice I said "when it thought it was"... perhaps this resolves the conflict between our understandings? Are you deliberately being dense and pretending not to "get" what the interest is about?

Oh and BTW, this "being alive" thing? It's "just a feeling you get" when you open your eyes.
 
Well we're all agreed then. Ego-loss is a feeling people get when they've read Leary talking about ego-loss and they're stoned. I'll certainly go along with that. But lets not try and link it to Buddha-hood or whatever else eh?
 
Ismene said:
Well we're all agreed then. Ego-loss is a feeling people get when they've read Leary talking about ego-loss and they're stoned. I'll certainly go along with that. But lets not try and link it to Buddha-hood or whatever else eh?
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Let's not link it to Leary or the word "stoned" either. So that's your entire conceptualization of what psychedelics do is make you "stoned"??? I think you need to change your vocabulary. Why do you insist on calling it "stoned" and not by the more standard "tripping"? Seems to me you are trying to "knock psychedelics down a step" and deny that they do anything different than weed or alcohol, and that is just utterly flagrantly inaccurate.

And I never once thought I had remembered that I was really some meta-being whose thoughts had generated the entire universe while stoned (on weed that is, that classic "stoning" drug)... but I did end up thinking this a few times on really strong trips. And while in that state I had not a clue what my name was and did not have any memories of my life. But I remembered being in that state when I came down from the trip. So put that in your pipe and smoke it :)
 
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