LSD and ego death

[Ismene]

^^

You'd think so jt but several people in the thread have already claimed if you blackout then it's not an ego-death. The defintion changes every time unfortunately.

 

[jtcucla]

To each his own then.

 

[max_freakout]

blacking out or losing consciousness has nothing to do with ego death or tripping. Psychedelics make people trip, they do not cause people to black out (ie become unconscious).

Tripping is a colourful, vivid, fully conscious experience with beautiful visual patterns and crazy mental fireworks, this is the opposite of blacking out where you experience nothing and remember nothing. Tripping never causes people to black out and lose consciousness (but "withdrawing inside the mind" is not the same thing as blacking out).

If you took a drug you thought was a psychedelic and it only caused you to lose consciousness so you have no memory of the experience, then in all likelihood you were mis-sold something that wasnt actually a psychedelic drug. You would not find one trip report that claimed that a person simply lost consciousness and didnt experience anything psychedelic.

 

[Ismene]

No jammin, not even on a massive overdose of DMT I once took rectally with moclobemide. Within about 60 seconds I was at the peak of the heaviest DMT trip I've ever experienced, it made no difference whether my eyes were open or closed - I saw the same thing. Even then I was aware I'd just taken DMT.

So on your experience couldn't you remember that you were tripping on DMT?

 

[Xorkoth]

Here's what I know: I have had a couple of experiences, out of many hundreds, in which I experienced myself rising above my human self and awakening into oneness. One time my human self was still detectable but it was reduced to an infinitely small point along with every other experiencing lifeform. Another time I experienced dying as a human (subjectively, yes Ismene I realize it's probably not what death is really like but does it matter if I fully believed I was dying?), and then awoke into the vastness of the universe and collapsed into a single point of lonely consciousness. I was still aware, because awareness is not attached to the self. Of course there must have been some part of me the human still there because I now remember the experiences, but that's irrelevant, because the experiences I had did not involve me the human once they peaked. Both of these experiences caused me to shed my human ego (and by ego I mean sense of subjective self) for a time and were intensely revelatory for me for this reason.

So yes, I agree with you that a lot of people don't understand the term and throw it around to mean things that other people who have experienced it don't mean when they say it. Probably even most of the time the term is used it's being used by someone repeating the term when they read it from other peoples' stories but isn't really what their experience was. The term is quite difficult to understand and describe. Does that mean it's not a real experience? No, it doesn't. For whatever reason, you've never experienced this. Fine, but don't say I haven't. I know what I've experienced. So do other people. I don't know that I will ever experience it again, it seems that when I did everything was just aligning perfectly in my mind and body chemistry, set and setting, etc. It's a mysterious and intangible thing. I can see why you would find it hard to believe but I really do believe it's unwise to discount the words of everyone in the world who has tried to explain having this experience as delusion or weakness (which you repeatedly imply by making comments such as "If you have an extremely vivid imagination and can't handle your high then you may be able to convince yourself that you are somehow in the realm of death while tripping". I guess maybe I'm just a weak person, prone to delusion, and I can't handle my highs...

Or, maybe, there are people who have had legitimate experiences that you haven't personally had.

 

[bernax]

For me it feels like the barrier between me and everything disappears

 

[Ismene]

See it from my point of view tho Xorkoth - I've had a thousand trips and never felt death breathing down my neck, and yet every 15 year old who'se taken LSD with his mates at a party writes a trip report about "dying and coming back again". Something isn't adding up is it.

Perhaps there is this mysterious experience that only happens once a lifetime. If it ever happens to me I'll report back

 

[Xorkoth]

I get why you'd wonder for sure, the thing is, it's not just 15 year olds at parties trying to claim these sorts of experiences. Probably the 15 year olds at parties you are referring to have read trip reports and are trying to identify with them.

I do hope you experience such a thing one day.

 

[max_freakout]

While there might be some rare 15 year olds who take LSd at parties and experience ego death, i very much doubt that this is particularly common and i have never seen any evidence to suggest that is common, perhaps you could post some of these ego death trip reports from 15 year olds?

But among normal age trippers (ie over 18 ) ego death is fairly common, and there are many highly detailed and lucid descriptions of it on the internet that were certainly not written by 15-year-olds. Also many of the great psychedelic explorers like Alex Grey and Terence Mckenna experienced ego death and spoke publicly about their experiences. So ego death is definitely not an experience that is limited to 15 year olds at parties lying about their experiences

 

[max_freakout]

I've had a thousand trips and never felt death breathing down my neck,

But you are only one person, and you seem to be very different from the average person in terms of your drug metabolism, for example you said that you would "hardly feel" anything after eating 15 grams of mushrooms (which for most people would be staggeringly powerful) and you said that you find tripping "boring" unless you can keep yourself constantly occupied, whereas i think for most people tripping is anything but boring and doesnt necessarily require external distractions to avoid boredom during a trip.

 

[max_freakout]

For me it feels like the barrier between me and everything disappears

The crucial question seems to be, why would you call any particular experience "ego death"? ie what features does a particular experience have to have, in order for it to legitimately qualify as an "ego death experience"?

For me, an experience qualifies as "ego death" only if it explicitly involves the idea of death or dying, because otherwise why would you use a term to describe it that includes the word "death"? This seems to me like a logical way of distinguishing ego death experience from non-ego death experience, on the basis of whether the experience involves death in some way.

So for the experience that is described here ^^ as " the barrier between me and everything disappears", why would you call that an "ego death"?

 

[Kl519]

I was going to leave this thread alone (still reading it though), but I definitely think the term should be ego loss, or ego dissolution. Mainly because I'd rather call it that than a death -> rebirth.

It seems to be a matter of preference though, so I'll shut up again.

 

[Xorkoth]

I actually agree. I like ego dissolution, but the fact that in some of these experiences there is a subjective experience of dying physically, it seems appropriate to describe those. Since, of course, you aren't actually dying physically, you're able to experience it and remember it, but you do not know you're not dying at the time so the process is very intense. I actually had that experience a second time, but never reached that final breakthrough moment like I did with 2C-E, instead I emerged from it before that final moment of subjective death... it was with synthetic 4-HO-DMT (this is the report). Ego dissolution is how I would describe my first trip, I never thought I was dying but the net effect was the same sort of breakthrough, an awakening into the whole, my human self reduced to a speck of dust. It was more impactful for me than either of my ego death experiences, but it's probably largely because it was my first trip.

I found the spiritual result of both types of experiences, extreme ego dissolution and a full death experience, to be similar in nature, just that the pathways there were quite different. One involved sublime peace, and the other involved mortal terror.

 

[Ismene]

But you are only one person, and you seem to be very different from the average person in terms of your drug metabolism, for example you said that you would "hardly feel" anything after eating 15 grams of mushrooms (which for most people would be staggeringly powerful)

That was tolerance after tripping so much on mushrooms tho max.

and you said that you find tripping "boring" unless you can keep yourself constantly occupied

Perhaps if all that happened when I tripped was I laid still thinking I was dead I would find it boring - fortunately I've never felt that.

 

[Xorkoth]

Perhaps if all that happened when I tripped was I laid still thinking I was dead I would find it boring - fortunately I've never felt that.

Well once you die (or dissolve) it is anything but boring, it's transcendent.

 

[Ismene]

On one of them, no. I'm not sure how long it lasted but it seemed like a long time. It was on around 200 mg smoked. It kinda freaked me out when I realized I did that to my self and came back to my body. Had no concept of being human or anything like that. Hard to describe. Cool while it was happening, but got scared when I came back. Didn't realize drugs were that powerful. Haven't had many of those and I won't be repeating the experience. lol

Even if I'd walked in stark naked and started dancing the watusi you still wouldn'tve been able to notice jammin? Must admit I've never been that far gone.

Well once you die (or dissolve) it is anything but boring, it's transcendent.

So you can still feel things then - you're not entirely gone, you're euphoric as you experience the transcendence?

 

[max_freakout]

So you can still feel things then - you're not entirely gone

Yes exactly, ego death is the most insanely trippy, profound and powerful experience. You "feel" as if you are tripping so hard that the basic underlying fabric of the cosmos is dissolving into eternity.

Nobody ever blacks out or loses consciousness entirely on psychedelics, the only sense in which you are "gone" during ego death is that you are not experiencing yourself as an individual person (ego), the personal identity that you once had dies by thinking itself into nonexistence. In ego death you retain full memory and full consciousness as is typical of psychedelic tripping in general, .

But you can lose the sense of being an individual person if you trip hard enough and experience ego death, the sense of individual personal identity merges with something infinitely bigger, like a single raindrop hitting the ocean. Ego death is the highest religious/mystical experience, the ultimate threshold of human consciousness, total mystical transcendence, perceiving the mind of God.

you're euphoric as you experience the transcendence?

The word "euphoric" isnt exactly accurate because ego death is often a painful and difficult experience (ego is unwilling to relinquish its attachment to reality), "ecstatic" might be a better choice of word to accurately characterise ego death

 

[max_freakout]

Ego death isnt a completely different kind of trip from normal tripping, it is just the extreme end of the psychedelic spectrum of effects, the most intense transformation that the mind can undergo.

 

[Xorkoth]

So you can still feel things then - you're not entirely gone, you're euphoric as you experience the transcendence?

Yes - as you've pointed out you don't literally die or lose complete connection with your brain, the experience just feels as if this has happened. So awareness is retained. Perception is reality. If everything is telling you you've transcended or died, it doesn't matter to you in that moment whether it's true or not, it's your reality, and you must deal with your perceived reality. Even if you lose awareness entirely of your human self, your brain is still experiencing it and thus memories happen.

As for euphoric, maybe, depends. One time I was euphoric as I approached the breakthrough and the other time(s) I was not, I was terrified and felt guilty. In the one during which I was euphoric coming to it, I wouldn't say I was euphoric during the breakthrough... it just was. Dimly my human self that time (which I never lost full awareness of, only lost perspective and importance on) was incredulous and excited, but the way my collective self felt was calm and matter-of-fact. I was certainly euphoric afterwards in all cases, when I had returned to normal, simply from being able to experience something like that.

 

[Toltec]

The concept of you is forgotten you are still you but without definition, caught between the breath and an exhale.... seem im part of a universal mind for just a moment in time... then you come back, you always come back slowly yet temporally shattered .. concepts of things just become undefined while i'm in that euphoric state of being ... this is not easy to describe my own experience of what i think it is..