Have you experimented with dimethyltryptamine before? I would be interested to know if a commitment to meditation could induce similar effects. What you have described sounds similar to common effects from chemicals such as N,N-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Alternatively, could those effects be reached more easily through sensory deprivation?

> "I" am the result of a conversation of a number of what you might call entities

Prior to attending a week-long ayahuasca retreat in Peru, a psychiatrist friend decided to use ketamine to induce a controlled state of dissociative identity in which one detached aspect of her psyche could observe the machinations of another. Curiously, after returning from Peru following a mentored DMT regimen she reported experiences similar to those reported by oceanghost. Buddhist mystic types contend that one's psychology is a function of 'atmanah' (some sort of co-minds) interacting with a individual's 'prajnatma' (one's self) [Dhammapada text]. Interesting. IF valid (BIG IF) then nobody would be what they seem.

I kitesurf, there are some tricks that I find very scary, I both want to try them and find them too scary to do.

Sometimes its easier to hand off control to my monkey brain, I'm not sure who it is inside me, but they find it easier to ignore the fear that holds human me back.

I feel like there is Mr Low-level (maybe lizard brain?) who takes over when I'm super sleepy or driving or walking and listening to podcasts. There is monkey brain who is reckless and doesn't mind what happens to the physical self. Then there is me, I'm usually in charge.

The interactions are more complex and nuanced than I can write here.

Fun. With kite-surfing you have to be two people at once, legs and upper body having co-operating minds of their own. If you get down to Oz you may want to try cloud-surfing. When you have an occluded weather front the leading edge clouds have a strong updraft, with a strong downdraft at the trailing end; effect is like a suspended horizontal wind tube. That was demonstrated to me during a private-IFR lesson where (under hood) I heard a loud whooshing sound and the vertical speed indicator shot up. Concerned, the CFI explained what was happening. Interesting! Wonder if you could cloud surf? Turned out that was an activity in Queensland, Australia where they have a spring phenomena called the 'Morning Glory' with long tubular cloud formations and lots of glider pilots. If you try it make sure you know where you want to land since the back country there is full of nasty bugs and snakes and the Gulf of Carpentaria has more than it's fair share of box jellyfish. Nice place to visit ...

Instead of lizard / monkey / the 'me' try physicalistic / vitalistic / mentalistic

I've taken high doses of LSD and definitely experienced very similar entities ... Normally there are many types of forces and drives that are each "speaking to us" constantly... we just never perceive them as personifiable or distinct -- it's just "our inner voice".

My thought is that the brain stores something analagous to a kind of a big fuzzy hierarchical hash table between sensory inputs and nervous system response (pleasure/pain). LSD/DMT allow us to traverse these hashtables in ways that are not usually possible. (DMT especially...)

I have but I don't like psychs in general. I've had the best luck personally with arylcyclohexylamines.

A friend of mine who did meditation seriously told me he had heard of this as an "advanced technique", but I really don't know. :)

if the body produces dmt (precursors or sumsuch), then yes.

Carl Jung has written extensively about these "parts" of the mind. His process of "individuation", which is modeled on the alchemical spagyric -- take apart and reintegrate -- process, can be used by people today in order to achieve similar results.

Moreover, what you describe can also be found in western mystery schools and traditions that go back hundreds of years. Terms such as "knowledge and conversation with the holy guardian angel", "crossing the abyss", "ego death", "ascending the Tree of Life" refer to profound, iconoclastic experiences that can forever shatter one's assumption of being a monad in space-time. Realizing that in one's mind exist various superintelligences, normally inaccessible, with their own motives and goals, can be quite distressing to say the least.

I've not read Jung, I will, thank you.

That sounds pretty scary, oceanghost. It sounds like you haven't actually confirmed yet what you come to know through your practice of meditation and how you are changed by it.

There is a huge, polar gap between the process and results of the meditation taught in modern spiritual practices (such as Zen Buddhism) and what Gautama Buddha taught to his students.

"Prayer is merely the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view" - Emerson.

I don't know why people experiment with bizarre techniques and experimental drugs. Western Europeans could just follow the Christian tradition to achieve better results more safely. People have been studying this stuff for millennia. Unfortunately we're so confused nowadays that people are gonna think of Jesus Camp and jumping around and shouting when they think of Christianity.

Because we assume we are objective observers. Which we aren't. Rom 1:18b

There is 0 reason not to experiment though. And Christianity is just one religion amongst 10 major other religions so there's no reason to think it has all the answers (especially considering the many mistakes it has done in the assessment of various scientific facts..)

Assuming that I'm speaking to someone of Western European descent, I see no reason to jettison the tradition that your ancestors (i.e. people with similar genetic, cultural, and temperamental factors) slowly developed over time in order to experiment with random things unless you are specifically anti-Christian. The truth is that spirituality can be quite dangerous if you do the wrong things, and if you're gonna start pulling things out of random traditions or the pharmacy with no cultural context for them, I think you're gonna be taking very unnecessary risks.

For whatever reason, foreign religious figures such as the Dalai Lama have more cachet than Christian figures in the minds of many modern people, and from what I understand he has stated the same thing:

"Whenever I give a large teaching, I always make clear that it is safer to follow your own traditions, rather than change to another tradition," he said. "There's less confusion. Here in the West, I do not think it advisable to follow Buddhism. Changing religions is not like changing professions. Excitement lessons over the years, and soon you are not excited, and then where are you? Homeless inside yourself."

Some folks get so tied up to their anti-Christian sentiment that they'll try to join foreign religions they have no understanding of instead of just reading what the doctors of the Church have to say about the interior life, and admitting that maybe they were a bit hasty in writing off such a complex and beautiful tradition.

Should your ancestors have stuck to their traditions, instead of adopting the foreign Christianity?

It's absolutely ok to be anti-Christian (i.e critical of Christian doctrine). I agree with you that the enthusiasm towards other traditions of spirituality is perplexing, but I would disagree that Christianity offers any sort of more valuable refuge.

Well, that's an interesting question, and it's helping me to realize that my arguments have been quite muddled and imprecise. In the case of my ancestors, there are a few points I think are relevant. One, Christianity was a split from a several thousand years old religion, and two, my ancestors presumably joined it under the regular supervision of teachers in this faith. So even though I mixed these two points together and lost sight of my middle argument, I would agree that joining Buddhism or Islam or something under the supervision of a competent and sane teacher (and you do have to be careful here, same goes for Christianity) would likely be safer than doing drugs and miscellaneous religious practices you read about from the internet. But I guess I'm worried about the number of crazy teachers in all religions now that we're discussing this. I guess I just think everyone should take this stuff with a bit of respect and stay safe.