I've seen a lot of talk about "ego death" and whatnot. Are you guys referring to the ego from a psychological stand point? As in the "Id" the "ego" and the "super ego"? What is ego death? My second experience with shrooms (5 grams) I knew my name, age, gender, where I lived, etc. But it all meant absolutely nothing to me. Was I experiencing ego death? Whatever It was, it was pretty scarey to be honest, lol.
What is the "ego"?
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Clocktower
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perpetualdawn
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^ I think that's a pretty condescending response Clocktower. Everyone who knows how to find bluelight has heard of wikipedia before.
Ego death is one of those topics that seems to stir up endless controversy because it's hard to define. To me, the ego is the sense of the self, the awareness of one's own being, the first person perspective seeing it's own first person perspective. On psychedelics it's possible for the categories to become so dissolved that one looses one's own sense of it being possible to draw a boundary around self/ego. I would say that your experience was something like ego death, or ego dissolution or something. But I would suggest that just like trying to categorize the self seems so absurd in these kinds of states, it's equally absurd to categorize that experience as ego death.
Ego death is one of those topics that seems to stir up endless controversy because it's hard to define. To me, the ego is the sense of the self, the awareness of one's own being, the first person perspective seeing it's own first person perspective. On psychedelics it's possible for the categories to become so dissolved that one looses one's own sense of it being possible to draw a boundary around self/ego. I would say that your experience was something like ego death, or ego dissolution or something. But I would suggest that just like trying to categorize the self seems so absurd in these kinds of states, it's equally absurd to categorize that experience as ego death.
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When I talk of the ego, I don't mean it in the Freudian sense. I (and most others I think when talking about this topic) mean it simply as the sense of self an organism has. The ego is the embodiment of subjective experience. To experience ego loss is for that subjective perspective (your "self" as a human) to diminish significantly or all but disappear, resulting, ideally, in a revelatory experience as you drop the illusion of separateness. Of course full ego death is probably not possible, as to bring anything back you (the subjective separate individual) must still retain some shred of awareness in order to witness the experience.
Clocktower
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Sorry for being short. The concept is foggy by nature, so chances are that in your research you've already learned most of what can be said concretely about it.
TheAppleCore
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Having had dozens upon dozens of fascinating trips myself, I'm still a little uncertain about "ego loss" myself.
I've certainly felt that self was continuous with other. I suppose I lost my sense of a separate self. But I always maintained a firm conviction that my self was a real thing.
I've certainly felt that self was continuous with other. I suppose I lost my sense of a separate self. But I always maintained a firm conviction that my self was a real thing.
Thorns Have Roses
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^Yeah, feeling that all is one on a metaphysical level does not change that fact the one's own awareness/experience is finite and exists within, or is a process of, the brain. I suppose it gets blurrier with those experiences where one perceives the sameness of awareness/experience in all sentient beings, or that whole macrocosm-microcosm thing.
And now I've confused myself as to what I think about this topic.
And now I've confused myself as to what I think about this topic.
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MedicinalHeroin
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You! Yes you! The person reading this right now. The person that is putting a voice to this text. The "soul" the person behind your eyes that seemingly is the one to say "think this" or "move your hand" or "i need to piss." Not you as in your body, or your brain, or even your thoughts. The person you think is thinking your thoughts. Thats the ego.
If you're trying to put it in Freud's Id/ego/superego, then the "ego" we talk about here is actually Freud's superego.
And yes, this sounds very much like ego loss to me. It's funny how people can have such a tangible experience of ego loss without even knowing what it is they lost! I remember when I first tripped people would say things like "Rick's bag" or "SWIM's vape" or "Lisa's bowl of weed" and it sounded very funny to me! A full-scale ego death felt even more intense than this for me, it was a physical understanding that the person I think is me isn't real.
great replies guys, I think I have a better understanding of this now, thanks 
Toltec
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This is and interesting read...
We live here on Earth, together with billions of fellow human beings. That we live is an irrefutable empirical fact. Similarly, the fact that other people live on Earth, too, is also an empirical fact.
We do not merely live, however, but we are also personalities. We are personalities who are similar to each other in various respects, and largely different from each other in other respects. That we are personalities, different from each other is also an empirical fact for us.
Out of these two experiences, however, only one is true, the other is deception. Only one is a fact, the other is an illusion, and the biggest illusion in the world at that.
The Beginnings of the Illusion
Let us take a closer look and examine which of the two experiences is true and which is a mere illusion.
Our life in this world begins when we are born. It is obvious that we are alive, but we are not yet a personality. At that time only the simplicity and greatness of the present moment, of existence, is known to us.
The society, and its culture, is what shapes us into personalities while we grow up. We become a personality when our Ego is born. This is an inevitable step in the evolution of the Consciousness, so there is nothing wrong with that. The Ego is born, the separate little Self, as a focus of the Consciousness. That little Self obtains experience about itself and the world. In the natural course of evolution and as a result of the experience gathered, the Ego withdraws to give way to the process as a result of which Consciousness awakens to its own existence through a human form.
The progress of this evolutionary process can, however, be impeded by an illusion: the illusion that the individual is becoming somebody, a personality. We begin to become somebody, a personality, when we start to identify with the Ego, with that separate little Self. Under that illusion we believe that the Ego is a reality, and we are identical with the Ego, and the development of the separate little Self is in fact the foundation of our personal development. Nowadays it is virtually impossible to avoid that kind of illusion, since mankind has lived in it for thousands of years. The deception has become independent, and the illusion of the Ego is now a reality for the entire mankind, including, naturally, us.
The Nature of the Illusion
And This:
Prerequisite to Oneness
The prerequisite to oneness is the total nonexistence of ego. By nature, ego is divided and separate from all, as its very creation is cast from the disconnection from oneness.
Oneness is beyond any attachment to 3D, and is only activated by the total non-existence of an ego that is subject to an illusion and the limited perception of a 5-sense reality.
There exists an axiom called “all is self”. This means you can only ever perceive yourself through all that exists, as everything is only a mirror reflecting yourself, so that you may experience self to the utmost extreme in order to measure this matrix experiment and, eventually, step out of it and build your own world with your own rules with a perfect reflection of yourself.
If there ever was a purpose to life, then this would be it
We live here on Earth, together with billions of fellow human beings. That we live is an irrefutable empirical fact. Similarly, the fact that other people live on Earth, too, is also an empirical fact.
We do not merely live, however, but we are also personalities. We are personalities who are similar to each other in various respects, and largely different from each other in other respects. That we are personalities, different from each other is also an empirical fact for us.
Out of these two experiences, however, only one is true, the other is deception. Only one is a fact, the other is an illusion, and the biggest illusion in the world at that.
The Beginnings of the Illusion
Let us take a closer look and examine which of the two experiences is true and which is a mere illusion.
Our life in this world begins when we are born. It is obvious that we are alive, but we are not yet a personality. At that time only the simplicity and greatness of the present moment, of existence, is known to us.
The society, and its culture, is what shapes us into personalities while we grow up. We become a personality when our Ego is born. This is an inevitable step in the evolution of the Consciousness, so there is nothing wrong with that. The Ego is born, the separate little Self, as a focus of the Consciousness. That little Self obtains experience about itself and the world. In the natural course of evolution and as a result of the experience gathered, the Ego withdraws to give way to the process as a result of which Consciousness awakens to its own existence through a human form.
The progress of this evolutionary process can, however, be impeded by an illusion: the illusion that the individual is becoming somebody, a personality. We begin to become somebody, a personality, when we start to identify with the Ego, with that separate little Self. Under that illusion we believe that the Ego is a reality, and we are identical with the Ego, and the development of the separate little Self is in fact the foundation of our personal development. Nowadays it is virtually impossible to avoid that kind of illusion, since mankind has lived in it for thousands of years. The deception has become independent, and the illusion of the Ego is now a reality for the entire mankind, including, naturally, us.
The Nature of the Illusion
And This:
Prerequisite to Oneness
The prerequisite to oneness is the total nonexistence of ego. By nature, ego is divided and separate from all, as its very creation is cast from the disconnection from oneness.
Oneness is beyond any attachment to 3D, and is only activated by the total non-existence of an ego that is subject to an illusion and the limited perception of a 5-sense reality.
There exists an axiom called “all is self”. This means you can only ever perceive yourself through all that exists, as everything is only a mirror reflecting yourself, so that you may experience self to the utmost extreme in order to measure this matrix experiment and, eventually, step out of it and build your own world with your own rules with a perfect reflection of yourself.
If there ever was a purpose to life, then this would be it
Foreigner
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Ego is a transient, holographic projection of mind, and a self-referent. Its nature, like everything else, is empty -- but unlike everything else, it asserts that "self" is responsible for what arises and dissolves, which leads to great suffering. It is a false persona layered upon present awareness, reinforced by stories of its own edification - "I think, therefore I am", and demands no interrogation or confirmation. It will in fact create mental bypasses to ensure its continued faux existence, and to prevent questioning of the circular logic responsible for its domination of the consciousness. It is, in essence, a program running in the foreground of consciousness which prevents the whole from being directly experienced. One litmus test of ego is that it cannot be an embodied experience. It's purely mind. Using the word "ego" makes the concept too abstract. We're basically talking about YOU. Anytime you talk about your SELF, or "I" or "me", then that's ego talking.
Basically, ego is the illusion of separateness that exists within oneness. Ego death tends to involve incredible suffering because ego does not want to die, or to bring it down to earth, you don't want to die. But what people don't realize is that it's just a concept that they don't want to die. They are present awareness that attached to SELF, and they don't realize that SELF can die without total oblivion, because SELF is tenacious like that. You are present awareness experiencing an ego, and are so attached to the story of the self that you think you are the self, when you're not the self at all. This can be easily proven, as there are many times in life when you're no longer a "you", but awareness continues: sleep, early infancy, near death, situations of blinding pain, intense bliss (the reason for drug use, in many cases, is people don't want to be themselves anymore), intense emotional experiences, etc. Ego is a really, really strong program that is determined to not be deleted at all costs, but interestingly, it only behaves this way when it's active. What you think of as "yourself" is not continuous. During your alone time where there is no outside engagement with others, there are easily moments where you're not thinking about "yourself", moments where you are just awareness. Then the persona activates for whatever reason, and acts like it has been there the whole time. Is that true though?
Real death voids all of that because "you" completely disappear as you get close to it. You will do anything to avoid being destroyed, including third-personing yourself so that you can pretend your ego (which is really you) was vanquished "over there" somewhere. If you want ego death, then all you are is an ego that wants to die. The true death of ego is pretty non-incidental because it just means sinking into present awareness, which is endless, and has no beginning and never ends; where this kind of semantic conversation is not only irrelevant, it's simply not happening anymore. But the process of getting there can be painful because you want to kick and scream and avoid death at all costs, and your body will even react to such non-sense with adrenaline and struggle. But once "you" are shut up for good, there's just silence, emptiness, the void. It's not non-existence, but it's totally still. It's in the body, not in the brain. The body will still experience all the transient states of being alive, but without the story, there is no pro-longed suffering. There's only stimulus without the narrative. Instead of getting angry and feeling guilty about it for days, there will be anger and then no anger. The reason why it's so hard for people to realize it is because they think of ego death as a state of attainment... if I do this number mantras every day, or meditate this many hours every day, or accumulate enough karmic merit, then my ego will subside. It's all just a trick. There's absolutely nowhere to go. You can't get more into present awareness if you tried. Right now is as good as it gets.
A side effect of the third-personing is that a lot of people talk about ego and oneness, but they don't realize that they are merely ego being aware of its own non-existence. That's not ego death, that's just a further trick of ego. It's just ego trying to be still, in the presence of Stillness. In other words, if you want to die, then just die already, don't "try" to die. The absence of ego means the absence of anything other than this present moment, a totally embodied experience of the emptiness of reality, and the permanent death of all stories, narratives and supporting fictions of the persona. The truth means the death of all concepts, including who you think you are, the people you care about, all of it. It doesn't mean those people literally die, it means your story about them dies. It all disappears and reveals just One Thing. Or as Daoism might put it, you become aware that the Ten Thousand Things are all just the Dao doing itself. The irony about ego death is that you have to do nothing in order to experience it. It's not something you "try" to attain. Trying is an activity of the mind. That's why it often takes so much suffering before some people get it -- suffering is one thing that vanquishes all the mental masturbation and the "trying". It puts you squarely into the present with zero story. It silences ego.
Your pain is so great that it shows you the extent of the lie. It's why a lot of extremely ill people end up seeing this, or people who undergo harsh physical trials; it's because they are so exhausted that mind no longer has the resources to project all this bullshit. They were so resistant to what was happening because they were protecting their own narrative, they were protecting themselves; but eventually the pain is so severe that there's no choice but to surrender, and it brings you to a place of great fear because it means confronting your own death. Then you come out the other end of that, storyless, "youless", and all that's left, is presence. Yet somehow, there is still awareness happening -- so what's that about? Something caves in and all that's there is total silence, and in it, the freedom that there's no "you" making shit happen. There's no reason for anything, no meaning, no attachments. Things seemingly exist but you're not responsible for the oneness doing itself. It's all totally pointless, without meaning, and there's no "you" to feel devastated about it. You're just pure awareness, and whatever's happening is happening. You might be angry one minute or sad the next, but it all arises and dissolves of its own accord. No story required, no tricks, no prolonging. It's all gravy, and every fiber of your being, down to your pores and toes, knows what's going on -- and what's going on, is absolutely empty.
God... this is way too long. Look, forget everything I just said. All you have to do, is STOP. Just stop. Stop everything. Stop thinking, stop writing, stop conceptualizing. Just sit there and shut up. Quiet everything. Be still, look around at where you are because that's all that's happening or could ever happen. Be still, and you've got it.
Basically, ego is the illusion of separateness that exists within oneness. Ego death tends to involve incredible suffering because ego does not want to die, or to bring it down to earth, you don't want to die. But what people don't realize is that it's just a concept that they don't want to die. They are present awareness that attached to SELF, and they don't realize that SELF can die without total oblivion, because SELF is tenacious like that. You are present awareness experiencing an ego, and are so attached to the story of the self that you think you are the self, when you're not the self at all. This can be easily proven, as there are many times in life when you're no longer a "you", but awareness continues: sleep, early infancy, near death, situations of blinding pain, intense bliss (the reason for drug use, in many cases, is people don't want to be themselves anymore), intense emotional experiences, etc. Ego is a really, really strong program that is determined to not be deleted at all costs, but interestingly, it only behaves this way when it's active. What you think of as "yourself" is not continuous. During your alone time where there is no outside engagement with others, there are easily moments where you're not thinking about "yourself", moments where you are just awareness. Then the persona activates for whatever reason, and acts like it has been there the whole time. Is that true though?
Real death voids all of that because "you" completely disappear as you get close to it. You will do anything to avoid being destroyed, including third-personing yourself so that you can pretend your ego (which is really you) was vanquished "over there" somewhere. If you want ego death, then all you are is an ego that wants to die. The true death of ego is pretty non-incidental because it just means sinking into present awareness, which is endless, and has no beginning and never ends; where this kind of semantic conversation is not only irrelevant, it's simply not happening anymore. But the process of getting there can be painful because you want to kick and scream and avoid death at all costs, and your body will even react to such non-sense with adrenaline and struggle. But once "you" are shut up for good, there's just silence, emptiness, the void. It's not non-existence, but it's totally still. It's in the body, not in the brain. The body will still experience all the transient states of being alive, but without the story, there is no pro-longed suffering. There's only stimulus without the narrative. Instead of getting angry and feeling guilty about it for days, there will be anger and then no anger. The reason why it's so hard for people to realize it is because they think of ego death as a state of attainment... if I do this number mantras every day, or meditate this many hours every day, or accumulate enough karmic merit, then my ego will subside. It's all just a trick. There's absolutely nowhere to go. You can't get more into present awareness if you tried. Right now is as good as it gets.
A side effect of the third-personing is that a lot of people talk about ego and oneness, but they don't realize that they are merely ego being aware of its own non-existence. That's not ego death, that's just a further trick of ego. It's just ego trying to be still, in the presence of Stillness. In other words, if you want to die, then just die already, don't "try" to die. The absence of ego means the absence of anything other than this present moment, a totally embodied experience of the emptiness of reality, and the permanent death of all stories, narratives and supporting fictions of the persona. The truth means the death of all concepts, including who you think you are, the people you care about, all of it. It doesn't mean those people literally die, it means your story about them dies. It all disappears and reveals just One Thing. Or as Daoism might put it, you become aware that the Ten Thousand Things are all just the Dao doing itself. The irony about ego death is that you have to do nothing in order to experience it. It's not something you "try" to attain. Trying is an activity of the mind. That's why it often takes so much suffering before some people get it -- suffering is one thing that vanquishes all the mental masturbation and the "trying". It puts you squarely into the present with zero story. It silences ego.
Your pain is so great that it shows you the extent of the lie. It's why a lot of extremely ill people end up seeing this, or people who undergo harsh physical trials; it's because they are so exhausted that mind no longer has the resources to project all this bullshit. They were so resistant to what was happening because they were protecting their own narrative, they were protecting themselves; but eventually the pain is so severe that there's no choice but to surrender, and it brings you to a place of great fear because it means confronting your own death. Then you come out the other end of that, storyless, "youless", and all that's left, is presence. Yet somehow, there is still awareness happening -- so what's that about? Something caves in and all that's there is total silence, and in it, the freedom that there's no "you" making shit happen. There's no reason for anything, no meaning, no attachments. Things seemingly exist but you're not responsible for the oneness doing itself. It's all totally pointless, without meaning, and there's no "you" to feel devastated about it. You're just pure awareness, and whatever's happening is happening. You might be angry one minute or sad the next, but it all arises and dissolves of its own accord. No story required, no tricks, no prolonging. It's all gravy, and every fiber of your being, down to your pores and toes, knows what's going on -- and what's going on, is absolutely empty.
God... this is way too long. Look, forget everything I just said. All you have to do, is STOP. Just stop. Stop everything. Stop thinking, stop writing, stop conceptualizing. Just sit there and shut up. Quiet everything. Be still, look around at where you are because that's all that's happening or could ever happen. Be still, and you've got it.
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Very interesting. From what I gather, the general consensus seems to be that the ego is not a desirable, well, "thing", for lack of a better word. That to rid ones self of the ego is desirable. From what I've read the loss of ego seems very comparable to the state of mind in which an animal experiences. Like how my dog doesn't know that she has a name, she doesn't know her age, or anything else that makes her different from me, another dog, or anything else.
She simply lives in the present reacting to the various stimuli in her environment. If I am correct in the conclusion that I have come to, then for me personally, I don't see what is so undesirable about the ego. Then again, according to what some of you have said that's just my ego talking because it doesn't want to "die". Idk this is all very complicated and I am still quite young and inexperienced (20 years old). Maybe in time I will be able to understand where you guys are coming from.
She simply lives in the present reacting to the various stimuli in her environment. If I am correct in the conclusion that I have come to, then for me personally, I don't see what is so undesirable about the ego. Then again, according to what some of you have said that's just my ego talking because it doesn't want to "die". Idk this is all very complicated and I am still quite young and inexperienced (20 years old). Maybe in time I will be able to understand where you guys are coming from.
Eveleivibe
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Look up Wayne Dyer n The Power of Intention. It's a good book n discusses ego n how to let go of it. Very interesting stuff
Evey
Evey
StoneHappyMonday
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Ego is indeed the separateness that exists within oneness.
Ego can be a very desirable thing. Try crossing the road safely without one. However, most psychonauts fall into the trap of thinking (hey I could stop that sentence there) that ego is 'wrong' or 'bad'. Ego is just another perspective, and quite a useful, if sometimes annoying concept for our minds. Our minds are full of complexities and contradictions. Nothing illustrates this more than the ego.
Detachment from ego (cue argument from Ismene) is a many debated concept. Even it's possibility is debated. I stand on the "yes it is possible to dissolve the ego into practical nothingness" which brings what may be known as enlightenment and detachment from normal waking reality. LSD does this to some extent, but not wholly. I still think when you are hallucinating looking at a flower you are still aware it's a flower you are hallucinating. The pink elephants (which nobody sees anyway) do not arise from nothing.
However, I contend powerful dissociatives are different and take the absolute destruction of ego into the biggest realms possible. I believe it's possible to be up a tree on ketamine and not know you are up a tree. I believe it's possible to blast off into hyperspace and be completely unaware where you are in that hyperspace (like laying on your kitchen floor maybe).
But most importantly the definition, for me, as for Foreigner, comes back to the philosophy of separateness and oneness. Ego dissolve will lead us towards the latter. With our ego, we tend to see ourselves as separate from nature - which we are not. It's just that ego is the God complex where we feel the centre of the world resolves around us rather than us being just another part of the whole (world). The ego separateness takes us away from the oneness. But it's a bloody good tool for not getting run down by an SUV at a green light.
Ego can be a very desirable thing. Try crossing the road safely without one. However, most psychonauts fall into the trap of thinking (hey I could stop that sentence there) that ego is 'wrong' or 'bad'. Ego is just another perspective, and quite a useful, if sometimes annoying concept for our minds. Our minds are full of complexities and contradictions. Nothing illustrates this more than the ego.
Detachment from ego (cue argument from Ismene) is a many debated concept. Even it's possibility is debated. I stand on the "yes it is possible to dissolve the ego into practical nothingness" which brings what may be known as enlightenment and detachment from normal waking reality. LSD does this to some extent, but not wholly. I still think when you are hallucinating looking at a flower you are still aware it's a flower you are hallucinating. The pink elephants (which nobody sees anyway) do not arise from nothing.
However, I contend powerful dissociatives are different and take the absolute destruction of ego into the biggest realms possible. I believe it's possible to be up a tree on ketamine and not know you are up a tree. I believe it's possible to blast off into hyperspace and be completely unaware where you are in that hyperspace (like laying on your kitchen floor maybe).
But most importantly the definition, for me, as for Foreigner, comes back to the philosophy of separateness and oneness. Ego dissolve will lead us towards the latter. With our ego, we tend to see ourselves as separate from nature - which we are not. It's just that ego is the God complex where we feel the centre of the world resolves around us rather than us being just another part of the whole (world). The ego separateness takes us away from the oneness. But it's a bloody good tool for not getting run down by an SUV at a green light.
there is nothing wrong with ego of course, you need it to be able to exist a survive. Without you are pretty close to vegetable, ok there is nothing wrong with vegetable once you are a salad, but it make things complicated when you are a human... Or are you able in state of "ego death" to make a dinner, interact with other people, walk out and don't get killed by car...for me the answer is certainly no.
Seems to me that all this "ego death" thing is result of complete sensorial overload (or possibly overload of neurons in general) when brain loose ability to distinguish discrete signals and everything melts into one soup..
Just for the record I'm absolutely not disputing that its really interesting and powerful experience.
edit: meh while thinking about it, Mr. Stone formulated a some of it in better way..
Seems to me that all this "ego death" thing is result of complete sensorial overload (or possibly overload of neurons in general) when brain loose ability to distinguish discrete signals and everything melts into one soup..
Just for the record I'm absolutely not disputing that its really interesting and powerful experience.
edit: meh while thinking about it, Mr. Stone formulated a some of it in better way..
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Help?!?!
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Holy shit! Thanks for the laughs old friend!
both of you!