Questioner: How might one relinquish his or her individual sense of power?

Questioner: [Paraphrasing a line from the teaching, "Transpersonal Psychology":] "When you get transpersonal you are transpsychological" -- nah. That is true of the psychology you talk about, but it's not true of all psychology. Many psychologies do teach disidentification, which is why they call themselves transpersonal. Transpersonal psychologists would agree with what you say about identification with a construct. It's pretty easy to say "psychology has nothing to do with spirituality" if you then ignore all the psychology that contradicts what you're saying.

Questioner: Isn't there a philosophical contradiction in being concerned for this world (others) whilst at the same time being aware it simply isn't real, a mere projection from our minds which should evaporate once we are absorbed by the Real?

There comes a point in the journey of the unfoldment of consciousness when every narrative appears ridiculous. This includes so-called scientific, philosophic, and psychoanalytic discourses. It includes, therefore, even this sort of discourse about the inanity of all discourse. The symbolic veil over the Real shreds itself like an oppressed monk setting himself on fire.

In one of the late Terence McKenna's most famous discourses about a DMT trip he took, he emphasizes how elvish voices kept telling him, "don't abandon yourself to amazement." I found that amazing, in fact utterly astonishing. He goes on to say that they commanded him to pay close attention. But one can both pay attention and be in a state of full-on astonishment at the same time. Some have taken literally his advice not to give way to amazement. But that is more often the command of the superego. How can we not be in amazement, astonishment, at every moment? Astonishment is what creates natural DMT in the brain. In fact, there is a lovely book that emerged from the Kashmir Shaiva yoga tradition, probably a thousand years ago, recently translated into English, and given the title The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment. In this teaching, otherwise known as The Vigyana Bhairava, it is revealed that the most direct path to Liberation is precisely through surrendering to astonishment.

The value of studying ufology and extraterrestrials is often questioned. Why is it relevant to the spiritual path? This question is even more pointed when asked in the context of Advaita, which asserts that phenomenal “reality” as a whole is unreal. So why devote time to investigating aspects of unreality rather than simply focusing completely on the Supreme Real?