I highly recommend the book _The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience_ for those interested in serious scholarly research about Ayahuasca and its subjective effects.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't feel like you provide enough sample content to convince me that this is worth paying money for.
What does this book say that hasn't already been said by various mainstream self help authors, Steve Pavlina, people in the human potential movement, etc. ?
I know a lot of trans people in my local community - but I'm trans myself so that's only logical. Still, intuitively, it can't be anywhere near as rare as 1:10,000
Thank you very, very much! Promoting these sorts of ideas is my main contribution to HN (since I am not a professional programmer, but merely a techie dabbler and lover of mathematics)
However, the real credit should go to people like Jonathan Ott, Charles Grob, Stanislav Groff, James Fadiman and Benny Shanon. Terence McKenna too, of course, but I find his views are less appealing and less convincing to the typical HN demographic. There are far more academically credible authors who write deeply about these things than TM.
Good point on Cicero's political affiliations. I'm sure that must have greatly influenced much of his writing.
I'm curious if you are at all familiar with the theories Micheal Hoffman discusses at his website egodeath.com
His ideas are extremely difficult to summarize, but they are of great relevance to the issues we are discussing (Eleusis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman state religion, Plato, myths, mysticism, etc)
He would probably answer your question "Why did they keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them?" by saying that, while political control was, of course, a real thing in those times, the original function of mystery cults was actually to initiate participants into true knowledge of the transcendent through the use of ritual and entheogenic drugs.
I've seen some of these claims before and find them interesting.
The TM quote is pretty hilarious/strange - "they" either means the government or whatever tryptamine fueled fantasies he encountered in South America.
Could you cite something regarding the Eleusian Mysteries ushering in the Greek Dark Age?
Cicero supposedly said:
"Among the many excellent and divine institutions that your Athens has developed and contributed to human life, there is none, in my opinion, better than these mysteries, by which we have been brought forth from our rustic and savage mode of existence, cultivated and refined to a state of civilization; and as these rites are called "initiations" so, in truth, we have learned from them the first principles of life and have gained the understanding, not only to live happily, but also to die with better hope.
"
Of course, since I can't read Latin or Greek, I can't really verify that this quote truly was written by Cicero.
Regarding the strain of opinion that thinks modern entheogen advocates are being systematically manipulated by government agents - there might be some truth to it, but I feel like it must be an inadequate explanation.
Entheogens have been used well before modern USA governments. Governments in general seem to expend much more energy trying to prohibit them than they do covertly advocating their use. I just find the whole thing to be very implausible.
It's true that there were contingent circumstances that led to the modern prohibition of psychedelics back in the 60s.
However, you seem to be overlooking the overarching theme of prohibition that goes back many, many centuries in Western culture. There is a lot more to this than simply a modern governmental overreaction.
Jonathan Ott, in his Proemium, says it far better than I can:
" Despite overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, human beings are conceived of as a special creation apart from other animals, and we are enjoined to subdue the world, which is matter. This horrible superstition has led to the despoiling and ruin of our biosphere, and to the crippling neurosis and guilt of modern people (Hofmann 1980). I call this a superstition because when people have direct, personal access to entheogenic, religious experiences, they never conceive of humankind as a separate creation, apart from the rest of the universe. "Every thing that lives is Holy," us included, and the divine infuses all the creation of which we are an integral part. As the dualistic superstition took root in our ancestors' minds, their first task was to destroy all aspects of ecstatic, experiential religion from the archaic ("pagan") world. The destruction of the sanctuary of Eleusis at the end of the fourth century of our era (Mylonas 1961) marked the final downfall of the ancient world in Europe, and for the next millennium the theocratic Catholic Church vigorously persecuted every vestige of ecstatic religion which survived, including revival movements. By the time of the "discovery" of the New World, Europe had been beaten into submission, the "witches" and "heretics" mostly burned, and ecstasy was virtually expunged from the memory of the survivors. For the Catholics, and for the Protestants after them, to experience ecstasy, to have religious experiences, was the most heinous heresy, justifying torture and being burned alive. Is it any wonder that today we have no place for ecstasy?
In the New World, however, the Age of Entheogens and ecstasy lived on, and although in 1620 the Inquisition in Mexico formally declared the use of entheogenic plants like peyotl (see Chapter 1) to be heresy and the Church vigorously extirpated this use and tortured and executed Indian shamans, ecstasy survives there even now. It bears witness to the integrity of the New World Indians that they braved torture and death to continue with their ecstatic religion- they must have been bitterly disappointed in the "placebo sacrament" of the Christian Eucharist, which is a placebo entheogen (Ott 1979b)- and it is largely as a result of the modern rediscovery of the shamanic cult of teonanacatl (see Chapter 5) by R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico in 1955 that the modern use of entheogens, in many respects a revival of ecstatic religion, began. Even though myriad justifications for the modern laws against the entheogens have been offered up, the problem modern societies have with these drugs is fundamentally the same problem the Inquisition had with them, the same problem the early Christians had with the Eleusinian Mysteries- religious rivalry. Since these drugs tend to open people's eyes and hearts to an experience of the holiness of the universe... yes, enable people to have personal religious experiences without the intercession of a priesthood of the preconditioning of a liturgy, some psychonauts or epoptes will perceive the emptiness and shallowness of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; even begin to see through the secular governments which use religious symbols to manipulate people; begin to see that by so ruthlessly subduing the earth we are killing the planet and destroying ourselves. A "counterculture" having ecstatic experiences in California is quite as subversive (Einhorn 1970) and threatens the power structures in Sacramento or Washington just as much as the rebellious Albigensians or Cathars, Bogomiles, Fraticelli "de opinione," Knights Templar and Waldenisians threatened the power structure in Rome and Mediaeval times (Cohn 1975)."
Edi/Disclaimer: I do feel like I benefited intellectually by reading the original Sequences on LessWrong. The general idea that strong AI might represent a risk to humanity seems plausible, although I'm not sure how credible the specifics are.
Well, I don't feel intelligent or well educated enough to critique most of what they (EY and supporters) say point by point. However, one thing I recall seems indicative of some of the systemic problems with how he/they think about the world:
EY once wrote that he tried "exercise" (unspecified but presumably steady cardio) and found that it "didn't work". His conclusion was that he....inherently was unable to improve his physical fitness due to some genetic trait that a minority of the population was cursed by.
That is so breathtakingly arrogant and foolish that I was taken aback and it was one of the many small things that led me to question his 'rationality'.
Presumably, EY was a baby, and like all other babies, gradually developed increased muscular strength and coordination during the process of learning to walk. Thus, his muscles are capable of responding to stress and adapt to that stress by getting stronger. If EY had the grit to actually try rigorous training such as progressively loaded barbell squats I'm quite sure he would experience at least a modest, but measurable, increase in physical fitness. Instead, he rationalized his physical weakness and chose the easy road. Plenty of people do this, but they're not so 'rational' as to try and intellectually justify it on their own website publicly!
* I don't feel like searching LW to try and find a citation for this - but does anyone really doubt it? Just look at a picture of the guy.
I was a lot happier when I stopped reading LessWrong. I'm not even trying to be (overly) snarky - I really did used to read LW and I'm very glad I stopped as it was one of the many small things dragging down my well being.
I'm a trans woman and I do agree that anyone who was demanding that all previous written instances of using "he" for Manning be altered is going too far.
On the other hand, once she informed people about her true gender and pronoun preferences then there ought to be no use of "he" in media to refer to Manning. At most, I'd support using "nee" and a reference to her old name for the sake of continuity.
Make no mistake about it, pronoun issues may seem trivial to those not affected, but it's often a deeply distressing and systemic problem for many trans people.
Overall, I like your post. You might be interested in reading about Spivack pronouns - yes, the same Spivack that wrote the well regarded calculus text.
Carrying a loaded gun in your car is perfectly legal in Virginia without a permit. Many other states allow for car carry of loaded handguns - it's really not a big deal.
Your list of phylogenetically familiar things could include DMT and psilocin. These chemicals are biosynthesized in many plants and animals and quite structurally similar to serotonin.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Antipodes-Mind-Phenomenology-Exper...