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The Big & Dandy Ego Death Thread

For me ego death has been achieved many time using different psychedelics,at first i didnt even know it was happening or what it was,it seemed very natural and only when coming back into the self did i realise that i had gone.

Then over time and in the wrong set and setting it became fearful,because i didn`t trust where or who i was with,losing the ego,losing ones self in these situations is almost impossible as a primal defensive instinct takes over.Unfortunatley with this happening more and more whilst using psychedelic it became for me very unpleasant and i stopped using them,even in my own environment i had become paranoid and ego loss was feared.

I would love to experience the unification to the whole of everything and nothing again,but i need to be able to let the part of myself that is there to protect go,he has served me well but is stopping me from moving forward in life,it has only been bad experience with people that has caused this part of me to manifest.

So i am thinking that in the future i may add a tranquilizer before taking the psychedelic so that my defenses are down when the peak takes hits and hopefully ego death will occur,then hopefully i can rewire my mind to accept these experiences to enrich my life once again.
 
Ismene said:
1. It's a dissolving of your understanding of yourself as a seperate entity from everything else that exists.

2. having no access to memory to let you put what you see into context causing you to be only an observer

3. You can still record memories while in a state of ego loss

So that's at least 3 completely contradicting ideas of what "ego-loss" is just within this short thread.
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I dont see why you say 1-3 are completely contradictory. Actually the three taken together seem a fine definition of what is being discussed.

Just because while you are in an ego-less state you are not identifying as your normal "self" and are not accessing your memories that make you a specific "you", this should not prevent the experience from being recorded by your memory, which can be thought of as a camcorder inside your mind, simply taping the stream if experience to some area of empty storage in your brain, that is separate from the pathways that your consciousness uses to access memories of your past experiences. So that once "you" come "back", you can remember the period of time during which you had no memory of who you were and felt unified with the cosmos. There is no contradiction.

Do we need to start making diagrams to explain how 1-3 can all be the case at the same time and differences between "ego-loss state" and "normal ego state", interfaces with past memory recall system, and interface with current experience recording system, etc.? Might be useful and interesting, though I do not have time right now. Seems pretty simple to conceive, IMO.
 
Ismene said:
1. It's a dissolving of your understanding of yourself as a seperate entity from everything else that exists.

2. having no access to memory to let you put what you see into context causing you to be only an observer

3. You can still record memories while in a state of ego loss

So that's at least 3 completely contradicting ideas of what "ego-loss" is just within this short thread. Until we can settle on a defintion that has some semblance of meaning then we're just pissing in the wind.

One thing I'm curious about Iamme90 - you say "I myself, on a 4th plateau DXM experience, perceived the area surrounding me as entirely devoid - black, spaceless, contentless". What part of you was perceiving this if you had no sense of self?

Have you ever experienced what is described as ego loss?

Seeing as I consider it a meaningless phrase then no, I havn't. It reminds me of someone who lived with Leary who said "After a trip everyone would come up and say "Did you see the white light?". I didn't know if I had or not but I'd say "Yes" just so I wouldn't be the odd one out".
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having no access to past memories is not equivalent to being unable to record present perception in memory
 
I believe I almost achieved ego loss my first time consuming an 8th of shrooms...

felt the "flow" of the world, felt like we could all do ANYTHING we wanted, and I kept trying to write down that I need to check my reality and not get caught back up in the "flow" of life, and for some reason wrote down "everything in life, is whats already in motion"

and then there is salvia, which makes me think my brain holds onto consciousness too hard, because I've only had good trips, and find it very difficult lose myself to it or other substances...
 
I think maybe I have a story about ego loss.. I'm not sure:
Once I ingested LSD with a good homie.. I was told they were mic'd at 150 originally but it's impossible for me to know... It was definitely the most potent I had ever done to that point. I took 10 and felt funny in 5 minutes and was really hallucinating in 11! I can't remember quite how it eased into it but my friend would ask me the exact same question that I was fearing in my head and when I told him the answer he'd freak out just the same... It was the exact question I was thinking about but was too afraid to ask because I thought he might be thinking about it too... and when I answered the exact same it further confirmed that we were the same person. This progressed and I felt as if we were thinking the exact same thoughts (I believed to be to the word even) and I realized we were actually the same person. I also realized all sorts of parallels between myself and two other kids I knew that lost it on LSD I also thought that I was them as well. I believed that everyone in the universe was me. I then realized (or thought I realized) that I had experienced the exact trip before (I thought many times actually.. and so has everyone). [this is unrelated to the ego loss part] I then thought that since I had figured out the universe I had the option to either forget the trip and chalk it up to just a crazy trip until it becomes more and more distant until I can experience it again and have my world destroyed just the same (Like had already happened)... or the right thing to do was to end the universe and break the cycle (I believed I had the power to end the universe if I willed it to happen) and I was trying to tell homeboy that we had to agree to end the universe right then but it never happened clearly haha!
After later analysis.. I think what I experienced may have been the effects of ego loss?

Another story about someone else:
I have a very dear friend that for some reason is extremely (i mean EXTREMELY) sensitive to chemicals... X, lsd, 2c, everything that he's done.. One of his first times doing LSD.. he completely temporarily lost his mind unfortunately... Hours and hours later when he is coming back to the point of talking... he walks out of the bathroom and points at a kid on the couch and says "that is me?" I know that it wasn't tied to a specific person because he later said it to me as well.

Judging from these two stories I have, I think that ego loss (if thats what this is) may include thinking you are what you see. (which is a loss of true ego) I hope my stories aren't out of place here :x
 
My ego-loss experiences would be quite hard to put in words but the best way to explain it was that I became the universe. All of it. All at once. Total awareness of everything there is. I couldn't distinguish myself from anything else cos everything was a part of "me" for a while. My normal sense of self was totally gone but I wasn't anything or anyone else cos I really was everywhere and everything. Omnipresence. Words really don't convey the experience very successfully but something like that anyway.

PS: There were no visuals during the periods of ego death - just velvety blackness in brilliant whiteness. Also kinda hard to explain. Normal visuals as expected before and after the periods of ego-loss.
 
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my experience was exactly like shambles.. I became the universe as well.. everything that ever was and ever will be. as far as visuals there was nothing but white light and a feeling best described as oneness but words could never ever come close to describing it -- the human mind can't even comprehend it without it happening..
 
thought I'd throw this in here as well

Ego death is not annhilation.
It is emancipation.

You do not cease to exist.
The boundaries that define you cease to exist.

Having no boundaries, 'you' become nothing.
Yet 'nothing' is still apart of 'everything', and thus 'everything' remains.

The experience: There is no You.
The revelation: There is only you.
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Shambles said:
My normal sense of self was totally gone but I wasn't anything or anyone else cos I really was everywhere and everything. Omnipresence. Words really don't convey the experience very successfully but something like that anyway.
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Do you think the brain really works like that tho Shammy? That it has two different states "the self" and this "other state" and they're mutually exclusive? There are people with massive brain damage in comas who still understand who they are. Can a bit of a psychedelic or a bit of meditation really have such an effect on the brain that it completely demolishes it's ability to know who it is?

having no access to past memories is not equivalent to being unable to record present perception in memory

What kind of memory are you referring to? Are you claiming both procedural memory - the ability to move your limbs etc and declarative memory are completely lost?

Can you think of any words while you are in this state? Or have you forgotten every word you have ever learned? Can you speak? Or have you forgotten how to speak?
 
It's not that I believe the brain can work that way - I know it does just as everybody else who's experienced ego-loss does. It's a state totally unlike any other. I wouldn't even classify it as tripping cos it's totally unlike that too. It's utterly unique and bears little or no relation to any other state I could imagine. Unless it happens, it's also completely incomprehensible. Even if it does happen it leaves you reeling. In a very good way indeed :)

And no, I wasn't capable of speech on either occasion. Wouldn't know what words were at the time, to be honest. If somebody had been with me and interrupted my lil revelations with speech I'd bet a ball I'd have come out of it instantly with power of speech intact though.

It's also a rather brief experience - at least it was for me. Hard to say cos time is also an incomprehensible concept for a while but maybe 10-20 minutes on both occcasions for me. Was tripping normally either side of that time.
 
Ismene said:
Do you think the brain really works like that tho Shammy? That it has two different states "the self" and this "other state" and they're mutually exclusive? There are people with massive brain damage in comas who still understand who they are. Can a bit of a psychedelic or a bit of meditation really have such an effect on the brain that it completely demolishes it's ability to know who it is?

having no access to past memories is not equivalent to being unable to record present perception in memory

What kind of memory are you referring to? Are you claiming both procedural memory - the ability to move your limbs etc and declarative memory are completely lost?

Can you think of any words while you are in this state? Or have you forgotten every word you have ever learned? Can you speak? Or have you forgotten how to speak?
Click to expand...

No, procedural memory does not have to be lost - obviously you can still move your body, even if you're unaware of it - but that's irrelevant.

Look, I'm simply saying that we can be put into a place by psychedelia where we lose our sense of self - there is nothing about that that is mutually exclusive with memory. You are part of a collective consciousness - which means that all those processes of subjective consciousness - memory, movement, speech - still apply to this collective entity. You aren't necessarily a nonsentient, dead "thing" - in fact, this is not the case at all. It's simply an extension of your consciousness with the exclusion of the subjective aspect of it. You are everything and everything is you - minus the egocentric terms.

Think of it like this - I'm having an ego loss experience. I move my arm. A translation of this at the time would be "it moves its arms," because "my arm" is an essentially, integrated part of the entire universe. There is no "me" anymore, and thus no "my arm" - there is only "it," the universe, and thus its arm. You are equivocating a loss of subjectivity for a loss of autonomy, consciousness, whatever you want to call it - all of the me's, you's, objects, subjects, simply become "it" - one entity - that still retain those characteristics with which you've confused subjectivity.

Look, I don't know how else to put it to you, because you're fundamentally misunderstanding the concept, probably by reading too much into ambiguously conveyed experience posted in this thread (precisely because it is so hard to convey through standard language). Believe me, there is nothing about my conception of ego loss that is at odds with consciousness, memory, or the like. I think the biggest problem here is that you aren't probably understanding the implications of subjectivity and losing that subjectivity - you're extending them into areas that they don't reach.
 
Shambles said:
And no, I wasn't capable of speech on either occasion. Wouldn't know what words were at the time, to be honest. If somebody had been with me and interrupted my lil revelations with speech I'd bet a ball I'd have come out of it instantly with power of speech intact though.
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So if I had come in and asked you for your wallet you would have shouted "No"? :D

Look, I'm simply saying that we can be put into a place by psychedelia where we lose our sense of self

Sure, there's a lot of religions that claim similar things. The question is how accurate they are or whether it's simply delusion. I've seen buddhists and Hindus claiming their masters could levitate or that their bodies didn't decompose after they died. They swear blind this happened - I don't think they're always flat out lying, their just under a delusion.

because you're fundamentally misunderstanding the concept

I understand the concept - for years I read books about psychedelics, buddhism etc and "ego-loss" and accepted it at face value. Then I started reading a little about brain science and the more you learn about the brain the less likely stories about the "ego" become.

I suppose the question is whether ego-loss has any basis in reality or whether it's simply a delusion - something you've read about and your brain providing the experience you want it to provide.
 
Wait, you're trying to argue if ego loss is ontologically real? Of course not! Do you think that when I feel ego loss, after the experience I truly believe that I was somehow physically integrated into the entire universe? No! "Losing your subjectivity" isn't delusion, per se, but it's psychological. It's not physical. Sense of self - "I" - is a psychological construct of the mind - a way of identifying yourself. To erase that for a period of time or not says nothing about physical reality - that is confusion you're coming upon here. Ego loss is a personal, psychological experience where a day-to-day natural construct of the mind is dissolved for a few hours. Nothing else.
 
So you think your brain really and completely loses any sense of who it is? It's not simply providing the delusion you want to see?
 
Ismene said:
So you think your brain really and completely loses any sense of who it is? It's not simply providing the delusion you want to see?
Click to expand...

I'm 100% positive. I'd bet my life on it any day of the week because I've experienced it. I wasn't even familiar with the concept of ego death before it happened, it is not something I was searching for.
 
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