David Thomas joins me for a discussion on consciousness, the ego and entheogens.
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9 thoughts on “Entheogens, Ego, Consciousness and the Self”
Wow, you guys really blew my mind.
Many thought provoking concepts to ponder on. Doug, you expressed some very interesting views of time and reality. “Pure consciousness having an experience” that’s something to think about e.g. how does that relates to death.
David, you mentioned that some “Theoretical” Physicists have claim that the universe may not exist without the filter of human consciousness or something to that effect. I remember something like that. The Schrödinger equation and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. There is a thought experiment to explain it, it’s called, Schrödinger’s Box. Allot of info out there but basically, the cat is neither dead nor alive until the box is opened. That morphed into many new age ideas e.g. “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to here it did it make a sound?
In my opinion, mainstream “Theoretical” physics denies the existence of any objective truth or any reality at all to speak of.
Is there any objective truth or any reality?
Thank you Cal! It’s so difficult putting some of these ideas into words. We appreciate you taking the time to listen! All the best brother!
Thanks for the comment Cal.
One way that human awareness filters reality that is easier for me to understand than quantum physics is the anthropic principle that says that the only universe we can ever observe is a universe that allows for conscious life capable of making such an observation. On one level, it seems like a cop-out to me but on another level I think it’s pretty ingenious. Physicists and biologists can give all of the specific conditions that had to be present for intelligent, self aware life to arise on the earth. When you add them all up, it looks like a long shot. You could also call it survivor bias. Someone who goes to church and later survives an airplane crash might say it’s evidence that God spared them because they went to church. However, the person sitting two rows up who also went to church but did not survive is not there to tell you that church didn’t help them. Survivor bias can be applied to a lot of other situations, especially when you think of it as selection bias. People who benefited from a given product might have their testimonials of success included in future advertisements for the product. The company that made the product wouldn’t include the experiences of people who did not benefit. Some people even take the example of Schradinger’s cat to some extremes. They argue that if you played Russian roulette with a revolver that had only one chamber empty, every time you spun the cylinder and squeezed the trigger, you would get the empty chamber. They argue that every time you squeeze the trigger, the universe quantumly splits into every possibility. Every version of yourself that got a bullet is dead so the only version of yourself that survives is also the only one that can attest to quantum physics making suicide impossible.
Having said all that, I personally don’t like to think of the universe as completely random. I tend to prefer any evidence that suggests there is purpose and meaning in the universe. But then again, maybe there was a version of myself who was hit by a falling piano while I was writing this so I would never get to finish this senta
I love your insights and your sense of humor! 🙂
Doug, David, their are only a few things better than a good intellectual discussion so thank you both.
Survivor bias, that is an excellent concept.
I agree, some what, with the anthropic principle.
It is imperative that the human factor is included in ALL theories. And clear and logical thinking is the second most important thing to all theories.
Thought experiments are a good starting place but nothing should be stated as fact unless a series of practical and real experiment pointing to a conformation of that theory and the results can be verified by many different independent experimenters. Even then it is not a 100% true. This is where Theoretical physic falls short. New mathematical symbols are conquered up that have no basses in reality, only in theory. And that, in my opinion, is nothing more than a thought experiment.
Wolfgang Pauli, a Swiss and American theoretical physicist, one of the pioneers of quantum physics makes this statement:
There is a “cosmic order independent of our choice and distinct from the world of phenomena”.
This sounds good and it is coming from an “Expert” so it must be correct.
Well, I ask myself, does this come from a process of clear and logical thinking or does it come from a belief system. In my humble opinion it is based in Gnosticism. But I am not an “Expert” so what do I know.
Their is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory called Renormalization:
“The statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, that are used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities by altering values of quantities to compensate for effects of their self-interactions.”
Sounds very scientific, right. But when the language is untwisted (the removing of sheep’s clothing) it simply means that when quantum calculations fail, i.e. resulting in infinity, instead of allowing for the validity of the theory to be reexamined, Renormalization permits the result to be ignored and replaced with a real number of some statistical quantity. It also permits multiplication and division by zero. And there are may flavors of infinity. The reasoning is that some quantity of geometry can be added to infinity resulting in a different class of infinity.
What is obvious to me here, is that infinity has been promoted from a unreachable concept to an imaginary physical thing that can be categorized, moved, squashed and stretched without any reasonable explanation of how that is possible. Must be magic. But I am not an expert so what do I know.
The first thing I thought about when I learned of Schrödinger’s cat was how long has the cat been in that box without food or water.
So many “experts” are reductionists, even within the seemingly open minded sciences, and leave consciousness out of the equation and seek to place everything into a nice, neat little box.
I totally agree with you,
I would like to share an analogy that give substance to consciousness., it goes like this.
“Imagine that reality is like a stream of water where water represents consciousness. Each of us is like a whirlpool in that broader stream. Meaning we are each having our own localized individuated experiences but we are fundamentally connected as part of that same stream of water or same stream of consciousness. Now what would happen if that whirlpool dissolved into the broader stream. In other words what happens when a persons physical body dies. The water hasn’t left the stream. The water just transitions into a new form but stays in the stream.”
I would replace “a stream of water” with “an ocean of neutrinos” then you get a living breathing electric Cosmos teeming with life where death is only a transition.
I don’t know how I could possibly have said it better my friend! Damn! I love that!
I meant conjured up not conquered up.