I cannot believe in a comment supposedly devoted to rationality, you appear to be seriously dismissing someone based on the fact that they fact that they took drugs. Are you seriously suggesting we never look for any ideas that don't originate in whatever in-group we've declared ourselves a part of? Forgive me, but crazytalk, are you recruiting for Evangelical Christians here? This is crazytalk. I mean, seriously reading a lot into one reference to a pretty reasonable essay. You are NOT accurately describing what Yvain said or what he advocates.

Hrm... Interesting, though having read this I find myself actually a bit scared of such states.

What I mean is this: I have this vague suspicion from reading Crowley's essay that it basically all these exercises, among other things, effectively hack both our goal systems and the part of ourselves that, well, keeps track of what's "us" vs something else. While messing with that a bit may be a potentially interesting experience, I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to end up in a state where some earlier selected arbitrary object is then identified with me... That is, to the point that I think of that object as myself just as much as, well, any other part of me.

Or maybe I'm being stupid here?

How much has the traffic at OB changed since the establishment of Less Wrong?