Now I have come to realization that I was looking at this last leap idea incorrectly. For you see there can never be any kind of final leap, there are only leaps where you don't know for certain if you, as an identity, will continue processing anymore, in any meaningful way.
Now, that might seem like a small distinction, but it turns out it has a quite significant logical consequence. And to understand that you first have to understand what happens, at least as I understand the process, when one lets go of conscious organization long enough (either meditatively, or chemically, so that there is no filtering; and therefor no reaffirmation of the separation of inner and outer meaning space interaction; precisely because there is no objectifying by the identity matrix; the very matrix that is your ability to function as a meaning processor, created from the frame of reference of the unique experience association path that formed that matrix), a big part of which we refer to as your inner dialogue, one takes something of a risk. This is something that is called Ego Death. And one of the reasons great meditation required significant training and discipline, quite apart from being able to meditate properly in the first place, challenging though that can be, was that one had to be first given the confidence in self to allow for the leap of faith it takes to let go of one's self at all, in the first place. And it takes a leap of faith because what you are doing is quite simply not existing for a while as an operating, organized meaning matrix I just mentioned a moment ago. That matrix, in a sense, is allowed to float in, a supposed, better infusion of both you and whatever bigger experience one is now floating in, without organizational identity.
Setting aside for the moment consideration of why that combining is a "supposed, better infusion," I think we're better served in our effort to understand "letting go" in this sense by finishing how the process is supposed to work. Eventually, and this is the tricky part, it is assumed that the confident self will have the ever present residual holding power, of its own organization, to allow it to find a way, some how, to re integrate itself with an inclusion of what was fused with, so that you return to you, but in a variable degree of new, for that new way to be you. And in that variable new degree of new you, it is hoped, is a new enough frame of reference with which to see important new connections; so as to create important new ideas.
As you might imagine, then, the risk here is really two fold:
1. Not being a confident self, it panics on approach to this "merging," and in fighting it in panic mode, the new sensory state, half in or half out hardly matters, might create fear born, desperate attempts to create old meaning where it cannot be found now, setting up a mental, experience feedback loop, that simply breaks the person's psyche. And I can tell you honestly folks, having had to talk friends down from bad LSD trips, if you don't "love bomb" them (which, as I recall, was what Ken Kesey, and the merry pranksters, resorted to when they'd encountered a bad trip during one of their LSD happenings as explained in "The Electric Kool Aid Test", by Tom Wolfe) or "calm bomb" them or "chill bomb" them, or whatever other groove cliche you might want to use, to not exactly explain it right; if you don't do that whatever bomb it takes, to break up the bad looping, they will likely have a psychotic break.
2. Though confident enough to not panic on entry, the self still finds itself caught up short by whatever magical process is involved to allow one, currently idling, identity matrix to merge, in what the SQL language would be called either a "UNION ALL," or a "UNION UNIQUE" command. Of course, what the magic does with these, if anything, since it is conjecture, I have no idea (yet), but I will tell you this. I have been to idling as a meaning processor, and I have come back. And the results can be everything from only nice, to amazing, to terrifying.
I have to say at the beginning for me, it never really occurred to me to fear letting go, I just did it because it was, as in posts before have indicated, something that just clicked. Somehow, ahead of time, I had already built the discipline of self (whatever exact qualities that requires because I don't think I could list very many), and I already felt, deep down, that I would come back, somehow. As I did, and as I have always done since. And to this day I still can't tell you where exactly I go, or how I come back, but I do.
The thing is, you do this enough, you come to a point where having it happen only via great meditative effort is no longer required. You can, in fact, slip in out, quite at every little whim, and nuance, all around you, because everything around you now can trigger connections; and this can easily go too far if you're not careful. Because eventually the merging process itself can simply take over as a quite unhealthy constant state of constant rebirth. Intoxicating in one sense, but quite without the memory to hold anything long enough for loving, and thoughtful, structure to continue, in another. And for reasons and feelings I'm still not sure of yet, the entirety really needs realities to try and do just that; keeping loving, and thoughtful structure continuing (just as it wants you to let go from time to time, but also to come back and still be significantly you), and growing. Because somehow, we are going to find larger frames of reference with which to grow into.
In any case, though, in this kind of letting go and falling away, even though there is risk, there is still a good chance of "you" coming back; it just might not be exactly the same you as before. In contemplating death, the situation is much the same. The identity matrix that is the self goes away. And in this instance, of course, the going away is certainly of a fundamentally different sort of causality; as in complete bio chemical, and electrical, systems failure. The physical meaning system that supports it stops functioning because of either a specific disease pathology, or accumulated replication errors in the translation of kernel functionality from one complete cell state, to the existence of an original, and a new copy. That being said, however, does not change the fact the process of falling away into a new perceptual environment, even if it is objectively brief, is still going to be one where there is a, what I think must be, a great similarity with the subjective experience of ego death meditation; increasingly not filtered, though, also possibly limited as the body functions less than normal, as the self falls away with the dimming, immense physical space stimuli that is normally always there for us to be immersed in.
The obvious expectation here, of course, and for good reason, is that the self is absolutely not coming back. But here's the thing. In that last mingling. In that last (and of course last only from the perspective of this identity matrix), infusion who's to say what happens as a rebirth integration into something that is something else, but is also a big part of you. Just because you don't get to continue being you from your current perspective doesn't mean that a good portion of you isn't now beginning a new continuation of identity; and who knows what it might remember of the you here. And that, of course is on top of the people here who will have you in them in ways that neither party will ever fully understand.
And now I can refer back to the cliche about death that I have the feeling most people are probably sick to death of by now and that is the one that Keanu Reeves spoke as the main, alien cloned human, character in the remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Trying to comfort the young boy, stepchild, of the main female character, whose father died as a soldier, he says: "Nothing ever really dies, it just transforms." Indicating, of course, that some fool, little bit of essence, or spirit, carries forward. And maybe a little is all it takes after all, but, I'm still here to tell you that it is probably a lot more than that, and then some to boot.
You do continue. It's just, I think, altered enough that it has to associate in its own new reality; creating yet another new branching of similar such paths, of such vastly complex, experience association. And you, as an identity, never stop, I think. Never completely anyway. You may never really have started anywhere either for that matter, for the beginning, and the continuation, all started at the same time, in that odd, cause and effect, duality that things of a "cosmos" sort of orientation sort of just aggregate to. Which is just more stuff to "bake your noodle" as the Oracle used to say; whether Neo, or Morpheus, were around or not. Of course she was only trying to provide contrast too. Not to tell you what would be but to give you a way of looking at things that might allow you to find your own best choices. Which I always thought was pretty cool for an oracle.
Anyways... That's the bottom line as far as I can see now. You do continue. It just depends on how you look at it, as always.
The question then becomes should everybody try this falling away to a release of ego, and the hoped for return? And the answer is an unequivocal Absolutely Not! This is just too risky (just in case having already talked about psychotic breaks wasn't enough to make that clear), despite what possible reward might be attainable. And even if it did work you really have to understand that the revised you might not be anything you were either hoping for, or expected. And because of that your life from that moment forward could never be the same at all; putting you on a new life path the former you would have never have wanted, or even contemplated. I know because that's what happened to me. And let me just say that, no matter what few upsides there may be here, and however amazing a particular one might be, the downsides are many; the most prominent one perhaps being the loneliness inherent in now becoming the only person who can see things a certain way. A way that might not be any better than the old way, and in fact, might actually be worse in the long run. And even if it is better you may never be able to get anybody to understand it, let alone want to try it.
My hope is that, in the decriminalization of psychoactive drugs, our society will open itself to the careful investigation of the beneficial properties these drugs might provide; and perhaps as a part of that we can also investigate the intricacies of letting go of the ego. There have already been new reports that these drugs may have surprising benefits in a variety of therapeutic settings. We really need to look into this a lot deeper.
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