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The Big & Dandy Ego Death Thread

Hehe. I mentioned ketamine and posted a link to a documentary that features studies of subjects whilst on ketamine (amongst other fascinating tidbits). Both of my ego-death experiences involved ketamine - one with ket alone and the other with an LSD/ket kombo.
 
the outsider said:
We are all one

Ego loss is when you realise that fact.



You clearly have no understanding of the psychedelic experience.
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...

I was taking Ismene's reasoning and turning it on himself. I clearly do not think that and if you had read any of the thread you'd see that I've been extensively arguing in favor of the ego loss experience.

Jeez, some people...
 
Jesusgreen said:
You ever hear people referring to how psychedelics "remove the filters of the mind" - they don't really do that in a scientific sense, they bind to 5ht2a receptors and produce an altered perception.

Ego loss however, whether achieved via psychedelics, dissociatives, meditation, or whatever - does do exactly that.

Imagine you are a farmer, you have a plot of land, next to it, Bob has a plot of land, and on the other side, Jack also has a plot of land. This is like the ego, your land is different from Bob's land which is different from Jack's land. When you lose your ego, it's just land, and they're just people, there's no Bob, or Jack, or you, there are just three humans, and some land.

First as you start to break away from your ego you experience duality, black and white, yin and yang, good and evil, dark and light, everything has an equal opposite, all in balance. Then as you delve further you will experience the source, the one truth that is beyond our regular perception that all who experience it can agree on - we are all one, there is no you, no me, no him, no her, no that, no this, no there, no here - just one, the separation is an illusion produced by the ego. Now we can all argue what this means for us - many will agree that if we are all one, we are "God", and God is not some guy sitting in the clouds, but all of everything, and that one - us, you, me, everything, created the ego and the world as an experience for us to go through, the ego allowing us to experience it as if it was real and not just a game conjured up by us, and that after death we either indulge in another same or different experience, or return to the source.

The ego frees us from problems or worries, as there is no us in the first place, just one, and we are filled with the purest of love and happiness. The best part of all is speaking to someone else who has also experienced ego loss, both of you realise you are one and the same, and you can both be much more compassionate, accepting, and truthful people because of this.

If you're religious, the best way to look at ego loss is as the return to the Garden of Eden. I believe the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for this. Eve takes the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, eats it, and is thrown out of the Garden of Eden - I see this as the creation of the ego, Adam and Eve have been given ego and now cannot see or experience the Garden of Eden any more. But when one dissolves the ego, the beautiful garden can be experienced again.

:)
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To be honest, you can't really say anything about reality beyond the mind's perception of it - in regular mental states you're imposing your own structures/constructs onto it, and in psychedelic states you have no way to test the veracity of what you're seeing.

No one can really say with any sort of certainty that ego loss really correlates to reality.
 
OK sorry mate. I can't be bothered to read the whole debate frankly, it looks pretty dull and semantical. Hopefully you can see how what you wrote could have been taken the wrong way out of context <3
 
Nice post, Ponti. I would disagree somewhat with your final sentence though - whether you believe in ego death or not can only be a matter of opinion until you experience it when you know it is very real indeed. There's just no way to explain the experience to somebody who hasn't had it that can come close to getting it across to them due to the nature of it, in my opinion.
 
Once you experience full blown ego loss, you will know it. It's a truely terrifying and somehow fascinating experience... almost like a fight for your life giving you motivation to make the most of it.
 
I'm still really not understanding what people are talking about when they say they find ego-death to be a terrifying experience. Can anybody who feels that way try to explain what actually happened to them please? I just don't see how it's possible to feel fear when you are unaware of even existing as an entity. If you're not aware of your own existence how can you be afraid? There's no "you" to feel fear.
 
Terrifying - oh trust me on this - it is... you become " all that there is" You become frightened by what YOu gain, but you had lost something, too, and it was the most imporant thing... all the little people were ONE with YOU and when YOU turn to THEM - all you see is YOU
 
I honestly feel please don't flame me guys!!

That only certain tryptamines specifically the DMT family will cause a full blown ego loss leaving one shattered about the whole concept if you can call it that of life threw yours eyes while never figureing out the anwsers to the universe tho
they are revealed only more questions will be generated as you witness a liveing void with complete ass kicking potential of the what who you where when why how!!

a true ego loss will change your outlook on life forever i still ain't the same but im in a better place =]

PEACE !!


DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
 
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^ Still working on a true DMT breakthough. Never quite got There on DMT but have done with ketamine and LSD/ketamine. Both were at relatively low doses too. Have taken way higher doses of both many times and far more extravagent, high-dose combos and not reached that place. This is why I firmly believe dose and substance are irrelevant - it just doesn't seem related to whether or not you can put that pesky ego into submission for a while.

netcrusher said:
Terrifying - oh trust me on this - it is... you become " all that there is" You become frightened by what YOu gain, but you had lost something, too, and it was the most imporant thing... all the little people were ONE with YOU and when YOU turn to THEM - all you see is YOU
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Exactly. Have had it happen twice and I literally found tears rolling down my face at the majestic beauty of it all when I returned to myself. Was the most euphoric, uplifting and truly spiritual experiences of my life. I suppose it's maybe down to how you interpret it. Or perhaps how readily you give up the ego/sense of individual self. It felt to me like that is the state we all come from and will return to once this lil jaunt called life comes to an end. I used to be morbidly afraid of death (despite a lifetime of extremely self-destructive behaviour and regular bouts with suicidal thoughts). I no longer fear death at all and have also lost any desire to hasten its arrival since those egp-shattering experiences.
 
Shambles said:
I'm still really not understanding what people are talking about when they say they find ego-death to be a terrifying experience. Can anybody who feels that way try to explain what actually happened to them please? I just don't see how it's possible to feel fear when you are unaware of even existing as an entity. If you're not aware of your own existence how can you be afraid? There's no "you" to feel fear.
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I think this is coming from people who haven't actually had ego loss or who have only had partial ego dissolution. I'm sure you'll agree the first (and often subsequent) time(s) you experience ego loss, the run up to losing your ego can be very terrifying indeed as your ego would like to hold on very much.
 
For me it wasn't at all scary either time cos it came from nowhere - was no particular sudden escalation I noticed, just went from standard effects to Gone like flicking a light switch and returned some unknown period of time later and settled right back into standard effects. I suspect the substance(s) that get you There may make a big difference to how that works out. Ketamine was involved on both occasions for me and I find it's impossible to feel fear with ketamine in your system. Again, that's just my experience though.

I agree that those who experience or interpret their own experience as being characterised predominantly by fear were maybe teetering on the brink rather than fallen through the rabbit hole and found themselves on the other side. To use ketamine as a comparison again, I'd think it may be similar to when you take just slightly less than a hole dose and are in that confused state when you retain just slightly too much consciousness to give up the last bit and dive deep enough into the Ketavoid to get past the confusion and reach the clarity within. Of course, I cannot know what those who found fear in ego-diminished territories really experienced but as I cannot comprehend feeling fear if you have no ego left to feel fear that is how it seems to me.
 
Shambles said:
Exactly. Have had it happen twice and I literally found tears rolling down my face at the majestic beauty of it all when I returned to myself. Was the most euphoric, uplifting and truly spiritual experiences of my life. I suppose it's maybe down to how you interpret it. Or perhaps how readily you give up the ego/sense of individual self. It felt to me like that is the state we all come from and will return to once this lil jaunt called life comes to an end. I used to be morbidly afraid of death (despite a lifetime of extremely self-destructive behaviour and regular bouts with suicidal thoughts). I no longer fear death at all and have also lost any desire to hasten its arrival since those egp-shattering experiences.
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this. couldn't be said better. when i returned i could do nothing but sit there laughing, feeling a massive sense of relief, shaking and shivering, whispering to myself "oh my god. what the FUCK!" and i had this indescribable enlightened feeling. it was the most amazing thing ever

everybody needs to experience it. it was a slap around the face
 
l0gz said:
Shrooms for me just give me nasty mood swings and don't really make me trip. So I tend to avoid em, LOL. But that's a bit OT. ha :)
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really? NOTHING and i mean NOTHING can beat taking an 1/16 of dried caps and watching 8oAVATAR8o ...haha your life will change forever<3


also OT...sry mods
 
villian said:
excellent book I'm reading related that is related

http://www.leary.ru/download/watts/Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.pdf

Alan Watts - The taboo against know who you are
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^ EVERYONE HERE READ THIS SMALL EASY FRIENDLY BOOK!!! I INSIST!!! MANDATORY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT!!! :D

Opening sentence:

"THIS BOOK explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit
conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is
that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a
bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western
science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in
particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism."​

After doing my first trips, even reading a number classic texts I was still like "well I still wonder what the fuck I am really feeling at a deep level when I trip."

After reading this I KNEW... and then I KNEW again when I did 5-meo-dmt + syrian rue seeds: WE ARE ALL LITTLE REFLECTIONS OF ONE SINGLE AWARENESS THAT CONTAINS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE... i.e., we are all God at our deepest base level.

It's VERY obvious on the right drugs or meditations.

And that book is BRILLIANT at leading you carefully step by step through thought little thought experiments that essentially PROVE that point beyond any doubt to anyone who reads it with a little care and thought and pauses to think through the things he asks you to.

He was a genius of the highest order and that book should be the new Bible of the 21st century!

Interestingly enough, Mark Twain wrote out the same idea in much shorter form in the last sentences of his last novel before he died... under Halley's comet's return just as he had predicted 60 years earlier... the end of "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug":

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier."

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
 
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Alan Watts really set off some serious realizations inside of me from dedicating a bit of my time to his publishings!
 
DwayneHoover said:

^ EVERYONE HERE READ THIS SMALL EASY FRIENDLY BOOK!!! I INSIST!!! MANDATORY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT!!! :D

Opening sentence:

"THIS BOOK explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit
conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is
that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a
bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western
science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in
particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism."​

After doing my first trips, even reading a number classic texts I was still like "well I still wonder what the fuck I am really feeling at a deep level when I trip."

After reading this I KNEW... and then I KNEW again when I did 5-meo-dmt + syrian rue seeds: WE ARE ALL LITTLE REFLECTIONS OF ONE SINGLE AWARENESS THAT CONTAINS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE... i.e., we are all God at our deepest base level.

It's VERY obvious on the right drugs or meditations.

And that book is BRILLIANT at leading you carefully step by step through thought little thought experiments that essentially PROVE that point beyond any doubt to anyone who reads it with a little care and thought and pauses to think through the things he asks you to.

He was a genius of the highest order and that book should be the new Bible of the 21st century!

Interestingly enough, Mark Twain wrote out the same idea in much shorter form in the last sentences of his last novel before he died... under Halley's comet's return just as he had predicted 60 years earlier... the end of "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug":

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier."

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
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I caution you and everyone else to remember that there is a sharp distinction between certainty and intuition - and not to forget this.

It is simply wrong to assert that psychedelic experiences can teach us anything concrete about reality in-itself (when we consider reality in an objective manner), other than a negative sort of claim, which is that we can know nothing about reality in-itself.

Essentially, what psychedelics can teach us is that what we take for granted - time, space, causality, objectivity, the like - are created by the subject (us). What we cannot be taught is anything we see or experience beyond the dissolution of those constructs. We cannot know that the universe is a conscious collective, that it exists, that we exist autonomously or integrally.
 
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