Comment by Mo3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mo3 | Hacker News Reader

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Can confirm from personal experience. Even a lot of vipassana meditation by itself can send you into psychotic states when you're not ready for all the insight yet. I came very close to psychosis once, experienced ego death, broke down mentally and had to spend 2 months in a depression ward. Cannot recommend.

I don't regret the 2-3 months of active ego dissolution phase, life has never been more beautiful and strangely peaceful and jarring at the same time. However, I did lose my job, my apartment and almost permanently lost my sanity as well, but now in hindsight it looks like it was all for the better.

Nevertheless I don't think you should force something like this (like I very much did), the consequences to internal and external reality can be absolutely dramatic, I have gained insights I was not supposed to have and I've preferred to mostly live in peaceful ignorance since then... safe for the short moments of.. remembering. Everything and nothing at once. Becoming the observer. Observing the observer. Being everything...

It's all still there if I really wanted to, and my state of mind has changed permanently in drastic yet mostly unconscious ways. It took years to come to terms with all of this and since I've achieved stream entry back then there is no way back out now. It's either managing to get out of the cycle or repeating it over and over again. Meditation has become mandatory like drinking water. I‘ll soon be confronted with all of this again.

https://ibb.co/WtBR3FD

Tread carefully, reality is not as stable as you think.

I had a brief experience with what you're talking about induced by drugs. It's made me decide I have no appetite for either meditation (except for short, surface level sessions to help with anxiety) or mind altering drugs anymore. I had briefly waded into the depths of something I wasn't prepared for, and I don't want to go back.

> I have gained insights I was not supposed to have and I've preferred to mostly live in peaceful ignorance since then

Yes, one of my strongest emotions was "I just want to go back to the ignorance I had before. Being moderately unhappy and distracted all the time was much preferable to this." I'm mostly back there now, two years on. Something that helped me was an Alan Watts talk about those that are "far out" -- AKA, fully engaged in the part they are playing in this life, and not aware of the absurdity of existence. Trying to live life like that has actually helped me cope with that experience, but I do continue to see brief glimpses from time to time.

Hmm, I wonder if these experiences you and GP are describing are at all like my nightmarish Salvia trip--experiencing the collapse of the universe of experience and the certainty that everything I've ever known, been, and desired is an illusion that will all be pulled out from underneath me at any moment. Insanity.

Yet, somehow, I am glad I experienced that insanity--it showed me what direction I was headed in, "woke me up" to the inner world I was creating for myself, and changed my direction.

Still, wouldn't recommend the experience. It would be easier to just have a really open discussion with someone who cares about you and has some life experience, and have them tell you "you need to focus on what really matters--taking care of yourself, and appreciate life while you have it". I had to wrestle that lesson out of that incredibly frightening experience, which psychologically damaged me for almost 2 years.

I had something similar (for years) and I actually found zazen and mindfulness very helpful.

I think diving into ego death when via substances in uncontrolled settings isn't a great idea, because you can get bogged down in delusion and paranoia.

I found it helpful with zazen to realise that any judgement of whatever I was experiencing (whether good or bad / joy or fear / enlightenment or hell), was just as much a delusion in itself as much as anything else. I personally found this made it illogical to be scared by whatever is happening inside your head, because that fear is just line noise.

I'm sorry you've had such difficult experiences. Does the following excerpt resonate with you? If so, I'd be happy to share more.

"This comment is extremely important and should be borne in mind by all who feel tempted to dabble with the psychedelic experience without knowing what they are doing or why. He who enters the fifth state of consciousness without preparation may be spiritually paralyzed by his experience. He has seen too much too soon and, as a result, all games become meaningless. He cannot play the life games that satisfy men in the third state of consciousness. He cannot play the Master Game because he knows nothing about it and has no teacher. So he becomes, like Daumal's "leaf in the wind," an even more helpless plaything of external forces than he was before his rash experiment."

That resonates on a very deep level, yes. I've worked through most of it already.

I'm not sure exactly right now what this refers to as fifth state of consciousness, is it the eight circuit model of consciousness?

If so, as of the last dark night of the soul I seem to have reached permanent and stable access to sixth circuit now with glimpses of the seventh circuit, but I don't want to go there right now and proceeding further seems like it will take some time now anyway.

I hope to maintain the current state of mind until I have grown older, maybe even until I am able to stop working and focus on this path. I am quite happy with the current, fully integrated metaconsciousness.

>> I'm not sure exactly right now what this refers to as fifth state of consciousness, is it the eight circuit model of consciousness?

No, the fifth state here is an interpretation of the Gurdjieff system and the associated Fourth Way. Loosely the fifth state equivalent to enlightenment (satori). The specific quote is from a book by Robert de Ropp called "The Master Game."

I haven't looked into Leary's eight circuit model in years. Thank you for reminding me of it. By your description of your current state, sounds like you have found utility in that particular framework?

Well, it is a nice concept to contemplate for sure. I've found utility in all of them to various degrees. I'll have to look into the book you mentioned, thank you.

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