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13:17

(In »Participatory culture, religious rituals and psychedelic practices«)

The syntheist community differs radically from the socialist idea of the collective that oppresses the dividual and forces her into submission. Here there is no talk of false consciousness. Rather, it is about the following: the less self-interest the dividual brings to the religious ceremony, the more powerful the spiritual experience. The spiritual work focuses on training the participants in a process that moves from the dissolution of the ego to a climb up the syntheological pyramid. Through this direct participation, the dividual becomes an active agent in and for the syntheist community, where the congregation is somewhat larger and more important than the separate dividual: the network of relations that gives the dividual context, meaning and existential weight in relation to herself. It is a matter of letting go of the ego fixation and allowing oneself to dissolve into the hierarchically higher collective emergence, where the community stands out as something greater than the sum of its constituent parts, as the most powerful agent. This is the infinite now, the immanent transcendence, the point where the connection to time and space disappears, where the dividual dissolves into something larger than herself, where Syntheos appears and completes the syntheological pyramid. The symbol for the infinite now is of course the lone photon, the light in eternity.