[Debate] What is ego-death?

[Obsidius]

There are many experiences like this ^

Eating marzipan for instance, some people eat marzipan and experience a delicious taste, some people eat marzipan and experience a disgusting taste. Same action (eating marzipan) yields two very different experiences.

benzaldehyde is not for everyone

 

[max_freakout]

you do the same thing hundreds of times but one time it happens completely differently.

this ^ is also commonplace, for example you go jogging every day and have a good exersise, then one day you go jogging and have a heart attack. There is nothing inherently impossible or improbable about that. So again same action leads to different outcome.

Similarly, you can trip many times and have pleasant experiences, then one time you can trip and have a bad one. Same action leads to different outcome

 

[GreenMachine]

No. Albert Hoffman had just taken an unknown drug and had every reason to suppose he might die. That's an entirely different situation from taking it 70 years later knowing no-one in the history of it's use has ever come close to dying.

There is ample evidence to prove this ^ assertion, in the form of verbal trip reports

I think we need to clarify that this is an experience only open to a certain kind of person tho. A scientologist will experience and believe things that other people can't.

pretty sure that if you feel someone enough L, they will eventually not understand who or what they are. i really, really doubt that anyone in this case would be able to articulate or understand what the fuck is going on, if you feed them milligrams+ of LSD. sounds like you are trolling, playing devils advocate, or straight up havent tripped that much.

 

[max_freakout]

But no-one has ever suggested a valid reason why we don't all experience the ego-death.

the reason is quite simple, as Leary noted, it all comes down to the combination of three factors: dosage/drug, set and setting. Those three factors determine the outcome of any trip session

 

[max_freakout]

sounds like you are trolling, playing devils advocate, or straight up haven't tripped that much.

it's difficult to tell. I somehow doubt that he is trolling (although some other posters on this thread clearly are), he might be playing devil's advocate but it seems more like he just has a strong complex about his own inexperience that leads him to obsessively doubt and obfuscate about ego death. He claims to have tripped many times, but with a strong external focus of attention which can serve to avoid the deeper dynamics like ego death. If you look back in his old posts on previous threads he has been playing this game of denying the obvious about ego death many times, on many threads for years, it's clearly a big ongoing issue for him.

 

[swilow]

^I would propose mindset as the single most important factor in catalysing a subjective ego-death experience.

Max, do you think the ego-dissolution experience is desireable or useful? If so, how?

 

[max_freakout]

^I would propose mindset as the single most important factor in catalysing a subjective ego-death experience.

i dont think id agree that it is the "most" important, but i certainly think it is crucially important, at least as important as dosage and setting. Psychedelic experiences are significantly dependant on the personal context of drug usage, ie what the tripper hopes and expects to get out of the trip.

Max, do you think the ego-dissolution experience is desireable or useful? If so, how?

concepts like usefulness and desirability are distinctly egoic, ie they are generally about what is desirable for *me* and what use *I* can derive from the experience, so because of that i think the answer is no.

However in a more transcendent sense of usefulness and desirability, i think the answer is yes, ie ego death experiences are desirable and useful for God and for the transcendent part of the human mind.

 

[pmoseman]

the reason is quite simple, as Leary noted, it all comes down to the combination of three factors: dosage/drug, set and setting. Those three factors determine the outcome of any trip session

Set is completely unreproducible.

 

[pmoseman]

...transcendent part of the human mind.

Transcendent -
...
c in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge
2 : being beyond comprehension
(This would be purely a concept. Knowing anything transcendent removes it from this definition.)
...
Transcendent -
4 : universally applicable or significant
(This seems to be what you are using for transcendent, but I am not sure if you intended to give this impression. Transcendence is universally useful, and if that is not desirable knowledge, what is?)

Supernatural -
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature

This is the word I chose to describe the experience. I also chose a "figurative" death as that it was it was, a figure that represented the part of me that died.

The disparate assortment of experiences we have here proves we need a more general term with a loose definition. Not a specific term that tries to encompass all these non-specific experiences. Ego death demands a more restrictive definition because the term is so specific, it truly fits so few of these experiences.

 

[Xorkoth]

But it's the same thing isn't it. A born again christian will tell me that one day I'll find God. I'm old enough and experienced in life enough to know I won't. Similarly my experience with psychedelics is vast and there are people advising me that one day I'll have an ego death. I know I won't.

You can't possibly know that, the rest of your life hasn't happened yet. There is such a thing as being too open, but I think it's the best idea to remain open in life. Understand that you don't and never will know everything. None of us do.

 

[swilow]

concepts like usefulness and desirability are distinctly egoic, ie they are generally about what is desirable for *me* and what use *I* can derive from the experience, so because of that i think the answer is no.

This anti-ego trope within psychedelic culture is distinctly un-useful. The ego could be considered innate, a structure as natural as our eyeballs, our sense of touch, our opposable thumbs. It is beyond futile looking at it as something to deny or repress, when it should really be understood and nurtured and exploited. Given the fact that we are individuals and that, for better or worse, the individual 'I' appears to be real (or is so close to appearing real that it makes no difference), there is no harm in trying to do things which are desireable or useful to the 'I'. Its perfectly natural. The great paradox is that the 'I' can choose to obliterate itself.

I am assuming from your post that you feel a certain negativity towards the ego; I could very well be wrong...

However in a more transcendent sense of usefulness and desirability, i think the answer is yes, ie ego death experiences are desirable and useful for God and for the transcendent part of the human mind.

The transcendent part of the human mind is the human mind.... But you've again lost me a bit; what does the unsubstantiatable deity have to do with this? As a line of argument, appealing to potentially (likely?) non-existent, hyperspatial deities is as full of holes as Blackburn Lancashire.

 

[Ismene]

pretty sure that if you feel someone enough L, they will eventually not understand who or what they are.

No green, all the people who've had an "ego-death" have already stated catagorically that it is not the same thing as taking an overdose. Try again.

You can't possibly know that, the rest of your life hasn't happened yet.

Is there any other example where this might happen? Where you do something a thousand times and it's the same and then one time it's completely different? I can't think of any.

for example you go jogging every day and have a good exersise, then one day you go jogging and have a heart attack.

No max, you can't get away with "having a heart attack". That would be called "having a heart attack" not "going jogging". Two very different experiences.

 

[phuckingnutz]

the reason is quite simple, as Leary noted, it all comes down to the combination of three factors: dosage/drug, set and setting. Those three factors determine the outcome of any trip session

that is bullshit...i've tripped dozens of times with same dose same drug and as nearly the same set and setting as possible and gotten totally different outcomes for virtually the same input...and quoting leary like he actually had a handle on all this psychedelic psychobabble is laughable...leary, mckenna, hoffman, strassman...they all get waaay more credit for their psychedelic insight than they're due...imho.

 

[Ismene]

Sounds like bullshit to me too phuck. The idea that set/setting/dosage can alter an experience so vastly from knowing you're on a drug to having no idea you've taken a drug is garbage.

 

[swilow]

^You realise phuckingnutz said pretty much the opposite to that yeah? Totally at odds with your previous statements...

 

[max_freakout]

The idea that set/setting/dosage can alter an experience so vastly from knowing you're on a drug to having no idea you've taken a drug

ego death doesnt mean "not knowing you are on a drug" as you seem to think (you have said this multiple times)

It isnt difficult to understand what ego death is, it is strange that you find it so difficult to understand. It doesnt (necessarily) mean not knowing that you took a drug, the central aspect of ego death is thinking that you have died in the altered state experience

 

[max_freakout]

No green, all the people who've had an "ego-death" have already stated catagorically that it is not the same thing as taking an overdose.

Nobody has stated this ^, quite the opposite, the feeling of ego death is closely related to the feeling of having taken too much drugs. As you increase the dose, the intensity of the trip increases, if you take enough you will reach a level of intensity beyond your comfort zone, and there lies the potential for instability, control loss and ultimately ego death

in post #227 i explicitly characterised ego death as: "I've taken too much".

Dosage isnt the only relevant factor, but it is a crucially important factor. However it is also possible to literally take too much and this can cause such extreme dissociation that the experience cannot be remembered and becomes pointless. The appropriate dosage for the kind of experiences that make ego death likely to happen are probably best characterised as "medium/high", as opposed to "stupidly high"

 

[Ismene]

Totally at odds with your previous statements...

No, no, back up a minute will. Don't try and make out I'm saying every trip has to be exactly the same in every emotional regard. Trips have a vast range of effects - but they don't have the effect of not knowing you have taken a drug.

ego death doesnt mean "not knowing you are on a drug" as you seem to think (you have said this multiple times)

Come again? How can you know you have taken a drug when you have no concept of self?

Nobody has stated this ^, quite the opposite

Yes they have - solipsis has said he didn't need to take a massive overdose to experience ego-death.

Dosage isnt the only relevant factor, but it is a crucially important factor.

Are you ever going to state which dose you get ego-death from? I asked you this about 10 pages and I'm still waiting. I've got a feeling it's 1.5g of cubensis fresh.

 

[phuckingnutz]

Today 10:48

Originally Posted by ParappaTheRapper
Does anybody feel as if after many trips, that they feel an interconnectedness with objects and or they merge with their surroundings from time to time?

can't say it always happens to me. Maybe its just anxiety from time to time. Or a flashback?

Originally Posted by ChipTrippyFox
I've only ever really felt that while on a substance. Maybe a select few occasions when not but nothing too extreme.

The most memorable time was when I used some salvia and became the couch I was sitting on. I think I also told my friends that they were sitting on me.

Originally Posted by CaseFace
^^ Interesting, I also became a couch on salvia once. Though it was towards the end of stupidly intense breakthrough hit, I emerge from the void into a dream world, after some dream/memeory merged world nonsense I opened up a moving truck and crawled inside to find it was the basement where I originally took the hit of salvia (back in reality, though probably wasn't totally aware of that at the time) I sat back on the couch once entering the back of the truck, then all of a sudden sunk into it and became stuck in it's shape paralyzed as the walls of the truck folded down into a flat void before instantly my real basement rematerialized and I un-merged from the couch. Jumped up and ran over to the stairs to look up them and see if I was really in my house, took a breath and only then did I realize "Oh, I just smoked some fucking salvia. *facepalm*."

Originally Posted by lovepsychadelics
Did some MXE and 2ci once and was no longer aware of anything other than geometric patterns and colors. I refuse to call it "ego death" I just dislike the term as it has dangerous implications. Maybe "Royally fucked off my head" or "far fucking beyond twisted" is a better and more accurate terminology.



Yes, those are apt descriptions...IMO.

Originally Posted by pupnik
salvia takes me there a lot - it is a common occurrence at the level-5 or Immaterial state of inebriation.
If I take a lot of acid or other psychedelic, this can happen as well: loss of sense of time and space, loss of familiar body definition, merging with objects in the surroundings, seeing or engaging with visitors that are not there in real life.

Originally Posted by Tralen
Not really when I'm not on anything, but a good dose of lsd will make me forget that I even have a body to come back to.

Originally Posted by any major dude
They definitely mess with the self-not self boundaries & can induce feelings of "oceanic oneness" or "absolute unitary being" depending on your preferred terminology

Originally Posted by pupnik
at the same "intensity of effect", I also get visitors, or my self can have conversations with another self both of which are astonished that there could be autonomous beings using my brain or body, as easily as I can "inhabit" a couch or the floor or a glass. as if consciousness arises in the trails left by sensations.



All these experiences have been be posted in the "ego-death" debate thread as all of these experiences are. i think, what "ego-death" actually is.

Although i don't care for the term or even subscribe to it, per se', "oneness", merging with surroundings", "becoming" an object all describe "ego-death"...NOT "feeling as though you are dead".

"Feeling as though you are dead" is just that...YOU ("I") feel it, so technically, your sense of self is still intact...ergo NOT ego-death!​

 

[GreenMachine]

No green, all the people who've had an "ego-death" have already stated catagorically that it is not the same thing as taking an overdose. Try again.



Is there any other example where this might happen? Where you do something a thousand times and it's the same and then one time it's completely different? I can't think of any.



No max, you can't get away with "having a heart attack". That would be called "having a heart attack" not "going jogging". Two very different experiences.

i see what youre getting at. i admittedly dont know much about the nomenclature but ego-death seems to me like when you completely have lost your sense of self--there is no "i"/"me". it seems like people automatically categorize it as a magical ++++ on the shulgin scale, which i dont.

i see a ego-loss/death as a direct result of a psychedelic. given enough psychedelic, the ego can be gone. ego-death is a pretty loaded term anyways, but it comes from a real thing.