Circumvent The Ego: Terence McKenna’s Ideas and The Game Created by The Surrealists.
"Play is the highest form of research." (Sri Aurobindo).
Dudes, what if we’ve been chasing this whole enlightenment thing wrong? We get so hung up on transcending the world and escaping the mess of life that we forget the Absolute is right here, as the pulsating heartbeat of the universe.
The sages say Brahman shines as the essence of all forms, that tat tvam asi, thou art That. But we’re so hypnotized by Maya’s magical illusion that we see only multiplicity, totally missing the nondual Awareness behind it all.
So rather than denying the relative realm to merge with some distant absolute, we can infuse every experience with sacredness. Check it out: taste the tingling suchness of this moment just as it is. Groove with the cosmic dance as consciousness plays in infinite guises.
This was Krishna’s gig too. He didn’t renounce the world but celebrated the divine lila, the sportive play of existence. Dude was straight up splashing in the muddy river jamming on his flute, dig it.
Of course the ego trips on all this. It wants to control the flow, grasp enlightenment like some trophy, and achieve special states of consciousness. But the ego itself is just a temporary swirling form in the ocean of consciousness. We don’t need to annihilate it, just chill it out, and embrace the paradox.
"Play is the highest form of research because it is a natural expression of our joy and creativity. When we play, we are free to explore and experiment without fear of failure. We are free to be ourselves and to express our true potential."
Sri Aurobindo
The psyche exists in constant interplay with the world around it, engaging in complex dances of meaning-making, pattern recognition, metaphor and symbolism. Yet much of this activity occurs below the threshold of conscious awareness, in the mysterious depths of the unconscious. The ego, that part of our psyche most closely aligned with our sense of personal identity, occupies a privileged position in consciousness but has only limited access to these unconscious realms.
Certain thinkers, among them the philosopher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, have suggested that beyond the narrow lens of ego lies a vaster cosmos of intelligence, and that our psyches resonate sympathetically with its hidden harmonies. But these resonances largely escape our conscious notice, precisely because of the ego’s restricted purview. McKenna held that the ego acts as a kind of filter or barricade that blocks the greater portion of the mind from conscious apprehension.
To glimpse the richer resonances that reverberate through the psyche and world requires, in McKenna’s view, a disruption or circumvention of the ego. One effective way to achieve this is through engagement with chance operations, spontaneous and random activities that help short-circuit the ego’s stranglehold on awareness. Throwing dice, drawing cards, or other aleatory methods can open portals beyond ego-consciousness, providing access to the psyche’s native attunement to the cosmic web of correspondences.
Exquisite Corpse, a game invented by the Surrealists in the 1920s, exemplifies such an aleatory method. In the game, each player draws or writes a part of a body or phrase on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal their contribution before passing it to the next player for a further addition. The game produces surprising and creative combinations of words or images precisely because it circumvents ego control — the tendency to inhibit the expression of emotional and motivational impulses. Exquisite Corpse disruptively taps into the psyche’s deeper creativity.
The control of the ego is a characteristic of personality that varies from an excess of control to a lack of control of such impulses. Those with high ego control tend to be more rational, disciplined and adapted to reality, but also more rigid and less spontaneous. Those with low ego control tend to be more impulsive, emotional and creative, but also more irrational and maladjusted.
Surrealists were interested in exploring the subconscious and its creative potential, freeing themselves from conventions and logic imposed by the ego. For this, they used techniques such as the Exquisite Corpse game, dreaming, automatism and collage, to create original and unexpected works of art.
As aforementioned, the Exquisite Corpse game consists of creating a surreal sentence or image with the contribution of multiple people. Each person writes or draws a part on a sheet of paper, folding it to hide it from others. The sheet is then passed to the next player, who adds their part without seeing the previous ones. The game ends when the sheet is full or when everyone has participated. The sheet is then revealed and the resulting sentence or image is discovered.
The point of this game is to stimulate creativity and imagination, exploiting chance and unconsciousness. The Exquisite Corpse game allows you to create combinations of words that would never have come to mind otherwise, and that can have hidden or surprising meanings. The game is also fun and engaging because you can discover what the other players wrote and how their words connect with ours. The game is a way to express one’s personality and humour, but also to challenge conventions and logic. The game is, ultimately, an opportunity to explore the subconscious and its creative potential, which are often neglected or repressed by society and the ego.
Let’s imagine the words that emerged from the game are: 1) bust, 2) recipe, 3) dog, 4) adverse possession, 5) hammer, 6) fractal, 7) street, 8) cauliflower, 9) bolt, 10) surveyor. Then a possible sentence resulting from the Exquisite Corpse game is:
The recipe bust of the adverse possession dog of the fractal hammer of the cauliflower street of the surveyor bolt.
This sentence is an example of an unpredictable juxtaposition of words, which produces a creative and surreal configuration. The sentence has no logical sense but can stimulate imagination and curiosity. For example, one might think about what a recipe bust means, how an adverse possession dog is possible, or what a cauliflower has to do with a bolt. The sentence can also suggest bizarre or funny images, like a bust made of recipe sheets, a dog claiming ownership of land with a hammer, or a cauliflower screwing into a bolt. The sentence can also be interpreted in different ways, depending on the context and imagination of the reader. For example, the bust could be a sculpture, a body part, or a failure. Or the recipe could be a medical prescription, a magic formula, or advice. Or the dog could be an animal, an insult, or a nickname. And so on. Finally, the sentence can be used as an inspiration to create other works of art, like poems, stories, drawings, collages, etc.
This kind of unexpected juxtaposition of words exemplifies the surreal configurations that can emerge when ego control is loosened. As McKenna suggests, releasing the ego’s stranglehold unlocks access to multidimensional energies and profound forms of understanding. When rational filters are disabled, glimpses of a lively plenum beneath ordinary awareness may surface — much like the bizarre yet evocative imagery conjured by the phrase “recipe bust, adverse possession dog, cauliflower bolt.” Strange word combinations can stimulate imagination and curiosity, hinting at normally unperceived connections. The ego may serve an important function, but temporarily circumventing its gatekeeping allows more visions, synchronicities, and feelings of unity to arise. Like the puzzling phrase, what initially seems nonsensical may turn out to have a deeper meaning when viewed as askance.
Of course, for some this proposal elicits reasonable caution. Many have justifiable fears of psychic vulnerability associated with the dissolution of ego boundaries. Direct experience of expanded or visionary states occurs reliably only in prepared contexts. Wiser use of such technologies depends on a values shift from the ego’s tendency to control toward an ethic of conscious participation.
Perhaps the deepest invitation is to become creatively receptive to a participatory reality — to recognize both the fragility of mental constructs and the profound richness of direct perception. Beyond mechanical philosophies, the world comes alive with meaning. Consciousness partakes in the cosmos, seeded with the same generative powers that propagate galaxies, spread life and shape matter into sentience.
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