But you can read countless accounts of people who've never been christians who suddenly have an experience of God. Then read back and find things that reinforce what they experienced. That tends to happen with most things in life doesn't it. Especially with language as vague as the ego-death. Even the people who claim to have had one can't agree on what it was - so where does that leave any sensible discussion on the subject?
I don't think it is that bad. That it is a complex matter (and how many of those are there in say the field of philosophy? Does that render all sensible discussion on philosophy impossible?) cannot and does not prove that there no base or core to it... you put yourself on the sidelines but as someone who has experienced it and has read plenty of accounts, definitions and descriptions of others I am quite comfortable with the common denominator I find reading those and discussing it.
You have the disadvantage of either not having experienced ego-death and/or you seem to want to resist to try and make sense of it. But that should not make it overwhelmingly difficult to accept the premise of the term.
I think that your bias has a cognitive effect on you that causes you to focus on the apparent inconsistencies (and sure enough on parts of it people are in disagreement, but not all by a long shot) and be rather insensitive on the consistencies. I actually feel confident in saying that because there are some very sound arguments made and important clues given, but somehow - excuse me for saying so - you constantly need to be reminded of them, it feels quite clear that you are not invested in making it work. Granted, it is a complex matter so I kind of understand, but it has not gone unnoticed.
It still is derived from direct experience, how it feels, what it does to you...
Mmm..sort of..but it's like people who claim to have seen Elvis after he died. They are convinced it was a direct experience of seeing Elvis. People have different levels of what constitutes a "direct experience" don't they. I've had the feeling I was talking to a "higher being" when I was tripping but I don't think I actually was - I'm sure many people would.
We have the term entity contact for seeing or meeting beings, discussion on whether they are truly and 'objectively' there and if the answer to that should invalidate any and all use of the term entity contact is a separate discussion from discussion of just having experienced beings, which many people do on DMT and other psychedelics.
This point has come up before and again it seems like you have forgotten about the subjectivity that makes little of this about the truth, much less at least than you seem to be focused on. (Yes some people in this thread are drawing conclusions based on their beliefs and experiences but that should not distract you from the main point which is about subjective experience of a phenomenon). If you are talking about never having experienced ego-death and that you probably never will, that does not somehow make it okay for you to equate with random other things you consider as unfit for your world of experiences. You have at that point given up on it and seem to be careless in the way you make claims about it, because your remarks constantly compare and associate experiences like ego-death with things that have little credibility.
Though as is said before, it is weird to do that if you never had the experience yourself
What about if I experienced the exact same feelings that made you believe it was an ego death but I didn't believe it was an ego-death? That's pretty likely isn't it? Seeing as we're both taking the same drug?
Like max said - when he thinks he's dying and is laying there panic-stricken and disintegreating into psychotic madness I'd experience exactly the same feeling and just think "Hmm, I'll just lay down for 20 minutes and calm down".
Putting it like that makes it sound like you would be affected by ego loss, although if you actually have felt the pull of having your sense of coherent self, who and what you perceive yourself to be, being pulled gradually into oblivion... then I don't understand why it is so hard to acknowledge that and just say that maybe you have a different name for it and you understand that there may be a further experience waiting to happen if you didn't resist it every time you have felt it.
There are different factors though that make it not as easy as you make it out to be, your resistance (ability and willingness to resist) could be explained in various ways, at least I could attempt to explain it and would not at all be certain about any of them.
Sometimes it just does not seem as avoidable to go all the way, for example being caught completely off guard once was a trigger for me, and being overwhelmed and being desperate past the point of calming down was another time, that second time I have repeatedly mentioned in this thread.
Seeking it out (e.g. by meditating), or being okay with letting go at that point can of course make a difference... but still utter and complete sustained ego-death, that would be beyond the ego loss you described, can be a relatively rare thing even when you are talking about years of tripping... just like ++++ experiences (which I am not saying is just the same as ego-death, no!) are arguably very rare but that is again a difficult and controversial term.
Maybe you never really needed the term ego-death if you never went all the way like that, and you may dislike the term ego loss... but if you have had experiences that are hard to convey or share without using the word, then it becomes like a necessity. You can of course insist on using another word, but the rest would be the same: you would have a subjective experience and parts of how you would describe it may match in an uncanny way with other people's description.
Dude, no.
It is a keyword there because surely people with a religious background (and there are of course tons of christians in the US) who participated in the John's Hopkins psilocybin study will have interpreted their experiences using that background, and the psychedelic effects may fill the molds of those religious beliefs. But there are so many other sorts of 'molds' psychedelic effects can fill!! It does not have to be religious, some people have virtually no religious background at all, but they still have ideas, convictions, desires, passions, etc... and those can manifest via psychedelic effects.
Some psychedelic experiences may be religious to a certain individual, but not all of them in every individual, therefore you cannot consider them synonymous.
