2 results for (book:nopr AND session:638 AND stemmed:death)
[... 21 paragraphs ...]
(9:29.) A discussion involving LSD, conscience, the “death and birth of the self,” mental health and spiritual illumination, may not seem applicable to those of you who have not taken drugs. But all of you do hope for illumination, greater vitality and understanding in one way or another, and wonder what methods might help you achieve these ends. Much of this book will be devoted to various techniques that will help you change your own reality for the better.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
[... 18 paragraphs ...]
Any event of your life is written in the memory of the universe, for example, as you think of it. (Pause.) So in a state of illumination private cellular memory may be animated, and beyond this, a deeper level of knowing in which your own birth and death may or may not be explained.
[... 7 paragraphs ...]
Now: Under such enforced conditions, you are literally facing egotistical consciousness with its own death in an encounter that need not occur — and while the physical body is fighting for its own life and vitality. You are bringing about a dilemma of great proportions.
The landscape of the psyche is indeed revealed, bringing good data to the psychiatrist. But the experiences undergone by the patients — and all of this applies to massive doses — represent the enactment, through terrible encounter, of the species’ birth into consciousness, and its death as consciousness falls back annihilated; followed by its rebirth as the individual patient struggles to emerge again from dimensions not native under those conditions.
The deepest biological and psychic structures are altered. I did not say they were damaged, though they may be according to the situation. Consciousness is assaulted at its roots. When periods of transcendence are felt under such conditions, they represent the psychic birth of a new personality from the sources of the old, and from the death, psychically, of the old. In some cases the genetic messages have changed, in that they are different. (Strongly:) This is psychic slaying in a technological framework.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
The new ego is quite aware of the conditions of its birth. It knows it was born out of the death of its predecessor, and for all its feelings of transcendent joy, natural enough at its birth, it fears that annihilation from which it sprang.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
You grow and live through deaths that happen in you constantly, and travel through births within your lifetime that you do not comprehend. (Jane leaned forward for emphasis:) Such massive doses of LSD chemically activate all levels of cellular memory to such an extent that in certain terms they are no longer in charge of themselves, and the memories can then emerge unpredictably when the system is under stress. The fine biological and psychological alliance is now weakened.
[... 17 paragraphs ...]
(“Yes. Thank you.” It was too late now; both of us were bleary. Seth had also mentioned the availability of the data about Rooney’s life and death in last Monday’s deleted session.)
[... 10 paragraphs ...]