Is falling asleep "ego death", or "ego loss", or "ego dissolution", or "falling asleep"?
This question rhetorically points at the problem those who have had a far range of many psychedelic experiences have in speaking of them without their own specialized and agreed on argot (def. "the special vocabulary and idiom of a particular profession or social group: sociologists' argot. "
To say that "ego death" is "just a psychecelic experience" and that the ego is a bullshit term is defensible from a certain perspective but impractical for discerning what those who have uncommon experiences in common are talking about when we say it. It's like one of us who has experienced a salvia "breakthrough" being told by someone from a time before sleep studies that, "what you experienced is just a dream where a drug induces the dream and your eyes are open." For those who have experienced a salvia breakthrough the term "salvia breakthrough" is a useful distinction, but it may seem like a made up word that's being given distinction in error to those who haven't experienced it and can only conceive of our description of the salvia breakthrough using what they've experienced.
I've had literally hundreds of psychedelic experiences, and even though I hate the term "ego death" because it's so loaded I appreciate that the four times I've experienced the distinct experience I did
better match up to the term "ego death" than the hundreds of other experiences that do not share the experiential
commonalities that those
four experiences did.
Like some here, I've had hundreds of psychedelic experiences encompassing an enormous subjective range, and I appreciate the differences among them as crucial to understanding. Just as those of us who have experienced salvia breakthroughs appreciate it misses the point to call a salvia experience "just dreaming in response to salvia with one's eyes open," those of you who have experienced ego death appreciate that it misses the point to call psychedelic ego death just a psychedelic experience. However, because there are so many uncommon yet distinct psychedelic experiences, and these psychedelic experience are so difficult to relate subjectively in a way that is recognized as distinct, and because the terms "ego" and "death" are so broad, what one person calls ego death may refer to a different distinct experience of their own than an experience another also calls ego death. But that just means we need more terms, more experiences, and more communication using those terms to speak of those experiences. We need a more specialized and "professional" community.
Sleeping and dreaming involves stages with distinct brain wave patterns and physiological changes. Though it has not been measured by instruments, my particular experience of psychedelic ego death is so jarring and distinct that I have little doubt that it would register as a distinct change of brain patterning relative to the pattern of "psychedelic ego dissolution" should it ever be measured and somewhat defined (forgetting the practicality of that for the moment). Likewise, when I experience the belief that I am not myself but some other identity on salvia, I don't doubt that would also register as sufficiently different enough of a brain pattern compared to what I experience during what I call psychedelic ego death as to warrant distinction by those measuring the change. Even though I forget myself and think I'm someone else on salvia, that is not ego death in the same way those four experiences were. This is because during the salvia breakthrough I maintain a sense of identity, it's just not the identity of my sober self. That is, an ego pattern is sensed, it's just a different one. It's "drug induced alternatively recognized identity"
Those four experiences I refer to as most closely matching up to the term ego death were of a jarring and near instantaneous disengagement with the ego pattern I recognized as my normal identity where that identity was subsequently experienced as a mere pattern of disengaged and indistinct perceptions and sense data rather than as an engaged identity that organizes and analyzes those perceptions as a referent. Further, their was awareness of being unable to reengage with self-identity. This makes it subjectively different from ego dissolution or alternatively recognized identity. Rather than ego death, it may be better described as something like "forceful and unwillfull division of awareness from recognized identity." Of course I'd need to use multiple paragraphs to describe what I mean by that every friggin time I brought it up because there's no one term for it nor am I embedded in a sufficiently large community of term users who share the experience.
I've also experienced extreme disorientation from anesthesia where I don't know my name, who I am, where I am, etc. This, too, is distinct from those four experiences. I've also experienced extreme bliss where I feel entirely in the moment, unaware of my body or external life, yet I can still return to my identity from those moments at any time, though I will find it in dissolution. This distinguishes what others and myself sometimes call "egoless bliss" from ego death. However, without experiencing all these things and understanding how the same terms I use to describe them refer to those experiences others can't recognize what I'm saying use those terms alone.
By this same token, someone out there may have experienced what I did during those four times I am calling ego death, yet they may additionally have had further distinct experiences that they appreciate.
Further, they can justify why those experiences match up better with the term than I can. They can justify because they've experienced a difference sufficiently distinct to recognize how the meaning of words can be used to describe the difference in many different ways. Such a person would recognize what I call ego death as something else, and if they did a good job explaining why, I would appreciate their distinction because it's clear that they personally recognize a difference by their ability to articulate it even though I can't match it to my own experience. Not being able to articulate a difference of course doesn't mean there isn't one, but in a very really way it does mean that a person doesn't understand their interpretation of what they experienced is as strongly as someone who can.
Of course, brain patterns are different from one moment to the next even though we feel much the same over long periods of time, but to say just because that's true it's also true that something like sleep stages are not distinct patterns whose distinct terms aid in understanding and communication would be ridiculous. At the same time it would be silly of me to say ego death or alternative identity experiences are "just" psychedelic experiences, because the majority of my psychedelic experiences are "just" psychedelic experiences that don't share the distinct commonalities the termed experiences do. There's a limit to how much distinction in terms is practical too of course, but we're nowhere near in danger of that when we suggest there should be new language to distinguish between types of psychedelic states. Unfortunately, until getting chemically high is legalized and the diversities of experience of those highs are recognized by those who add to the dictionary this ain't happening.
Hell, even the title of this thread is tangled up with these problems. Above, ruledbydirt has now had to clarify what he or she meant by their original post. They were referring to "ego dissolution" as becoming less egotistical through psychedelics as a lasting change in personality, when what most of us are referring to with the term "ego dissolution" has to do with psychedelic's effects on our sense of self as we experience them only.
