The main way it changed me - and it happened over a series of mushroom trips many years ago - is that I came to realize that everything I once thought was real was in fact an illusion. I think it's sometimes known as "derealization" and "depersonalization" but I prefer the term "realization" or "re-realization" because it's something you have known many times before, like coming home. It let me to study eastern religion and yoga, and I believe that I have led lifetime after lifetime of delusion, probably not all on planet earth but travelling throughout the Cosmos. I want this to end - this deluded and unsatisfying form of experience - it can be so much more - well that it beside the point - the point is to not want anything at all. The point is to die before your life comes to an end. But I believe it is possible for the cycle of death and rebirth in the form of Sentient Beings to come to an end, when you're ready to give up the madness and merge with the everything that exists as a whole. However I don't believe there is a soul, "you" are not travelling from body to body but it's the cosmos manifesting itself in a continuous stream of consciousness.
Not to be judgemental, but I see that humans are very much asleep. They are denying themselves the experience of the true nature of reality, and they have created a whole facade - a whole mirage to hide themselves from what's real. For example everyone thinks they have a name. Everyone thinks they have a bank account. Everyone likes to compare themselves to other people and they strive for success. Everyone likes different styles of music. Everyone thinks they are unique and different. Everyone dresses up in different ways to make desired impressions on other beings they encounter, it's like a peacock's feathers. Everyone is all caught up in making money, politics, current affairs, being "good" vs being "evil." Nice cars, aircraft, big houses... the whole idea of property, that "you" own something over other people. People go to war and kill each other of the dumbest nonsense imaginable, just because they are bored and like to fight to stand up for differences in opinion that fundamentally don't even exist. It's all bullshit, and I am guilty of it too.
This has led me to a path in which I am seeking deeper states of awareness. It is like the unfolding of an onion and as you go deeper it's like viewing reality on different levels. I came to realize that I didn't exist as separate from the world around me and that my identity is more in touch with my experience. So other Sentient Beings I interact with are as much a part of who I am as myself, and there is no difference, I don't like to use the word "ego" too much because I feel that it is overused, and that part of me is still there. It will always be there and I'll never deny that I have an ego because it is a fundamental part of being a human being. It's just a part that you can become aware of and transcend to become a more compassionate human being. Why be competitive, why judge yourself compared to other people if you know that you're basically comparing yourself to yourself and it's all the same? Why give yourself preferential treatment over the rest of the universe - reaping the planet for all it's worth and just hiding your pollution somewhere, for example. It's one thing to know, and another thing to practice what you preach. That is why I trip once a month, as a constant refresher and reminder.
A lot of this is difficult to communicate with the human language because it's not really what language was designed for. It's more intuitive.
