If you're scared off by the idea of reading more than a couple of sentences you can scroll down to the section with hold text and just read that, that's where my definition of ego-loss lies in case you wish to take issue with and argue about it!
Ego-death doesn't really have any meaning. It's a 100 year old idea of Freud that's been discredited now but it lives on in psychdelic circles because back in the 60s Tim Leary wanted to talk to the authorities about drugs by using "respectable" language. So instead of saying "I got really stoned" he would say "I had an ego-death" or "I had a religious experience" because cops and judges prefer language like that. Then everyone for the next 40 years who wanted to sound deep would say "I had an ego-death" because it sounds heavier than saying "I tripped".
Come on man, I respect your posts a lot, but this position is just obtuse and contrarian for the sake of being obtuse and contrary. The term 'ego death' very well does mean something, and I'm pretty sure you know it. You may not like the phrase, and that's fine, but it does very well mean something and we have to recognize that. If there were a different, specific term in use that didn't reference the nutty ideas of an incest- and dick-obsessed coke fiend I would prefer it, but we don't have a distinct term for the concept represented by ego-loss, so the less desirable term that is in common use will have to do.
First, to understand ego-loss, it is helpful to understand the concepts that it references. Basically, Freud, the aforementioned incest-dick-obsessed coke fiend, developed a now-discredited theory to create a framework within which psychotherapy could be developed as a science. This was the end of the 19th century, and the gains made by science in every aspect of the average person's life were massive, and so there was a general movement to try and apply the concept of science and the scientific method to various things that had until then either been marginalized as nonsense or had been thought of as a philosophical thing that was a thought experiment but nothing more. Psychology, the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie conscious thought, had until then been for into both of those categories to one extent or another.
So Freud developed a model for understanding psychology through the lens of repressed feelings, urges, or desires, often due to some sort of mental trauma in early life (often during the period of extreme youth that we can't really remember, before the age of four perhaps in my case). He theorized that people's repressed feelings could become exposed during their dreams. By analyzing a patient's dreams, the therapist could then untangle what the true nature of the patient's latent, repressed feelings / desires / fears etc were, and then through talking with the patient those issues could be resolved.
It happens that models of the human mind are often based on the most advanced technologies of the time. Today it's thought that quantum effects may have some role to play in consciousness, in the '70s the brain was thought of as analogous to a computer, and in Freud's day the mind was thought of as comparable to a steam engine. Repressed feelings were like pressure building up in the system: release them and proper function could be restored, but should the pressure continue to build unabated there could ultimately be a damaging explosion.
Superimposed upon this model of the mind as steam engine was a veneer of Victorian morality. Generally Freud's theories have been discredited in thus time since he published, but one enduring concept that remains in use is the trinity of ego, superego, and id. It's worth mentioning that this trinity is not actually in use in a major way by psychologists, but rather has become subsumed into pop-science instead, and I'll get to that in a moment. But first we should define those terms:
The id is the unconscious animal, a mass of needs and wants with no moderating influences. The id then was the repository for all the fears of Victorian society, of uncontrolled urges, sins such as gluttony, and sexual content.
The superego was the sum of all of the moral and societal rules that dictate our sense of right and wrong. Whether those morals are built upon religious grounds or on a tit for tat sense of what is decent and what is abhorrent or unfair or unkind isn't that important, because regardless of the source and basis for these moralistic aspects they still are all part of the superego.
And finally, the ego was the practical, conscious part of the human mind. This is the negotiator between the animal urges and the moral sense of right and wrong, it brings these opposing influences into harmony with one another. Our everyday, waking consciousness was located in the ego as well. You can think of the ego as the valve in the steam engine that permits release of pressure from the id by taking those instinctual animalistic forces and mixing in a dose of propriety and moral decency, so that hedonistic indulgences can be experienced in the amounts proper to a lady or gentleman of the Victorian era without losing your shit and going on a rape-spree (the id did supposedly contain animal urges for food and drink, but the vast majority of its content was thought to be made of highly inappropriate sexual urges and desires).
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It happens that there has been a lot of give and take between popular culture and actual science over the course of the twentieth century. A cursory examination of the bestseller lists for nonfiction books will reveal a lot of what I would call pop-science, and pop-psychology is a sizable portion of the larger grouping of pop-science literature. What is pop-science? Well, at its best it consists of an author translating between the often highly technical world of scientific research and the level of understanding of the average American, so that even if we don't understand Lie groups or quantum chromodynamics we can still get a general picture of the state of the cutting edge of physics research.
Unfortunately, all too often pop-science doesn't meet that ideal, and instead consists of pseudoscientific material interspersed with bits and pieces of real scientific theory that has been dumbed down, misinterpreted, and generally placed into improper context. It's this type of writing that gives pop-science a bad name and leads to overly simplistic and completely unsupported conjecture, such as 'right- and left-brain thinking'. And one of the concepts that escaped its scientific confines and was transmuted into a pop-science buzzword was the idea of ego.
Instead of its original meaning as a sort of syncretic mechanism for mediating between animal impulses and moral, rational thought, the term 'ego' has come to represent in the popular imagination the whole parcel that is one's self. It has also attracted a negative connotation of narcissistic, alpha-male/female hierarchical dominance games. And this is the meaning of ego that we are referring to when we speak of ego loss.
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So what then is ego loss? Well, I would argue that psychedelics do have the potential property of diminishing the self-importance and urge to be dominant that is inherent in nearly every human being. So if we take ego to contain the connotation of negative power-playing, then psychedelics can diminish this aspect of our personalities.
If we instead take ego to simply mean 'self', then we can speak of ego-loss as
a diminution or elimination of the conscious understanding of ourselves as living, breathing, sentient beings. I would also add to that definition a second meaning of
ceasing to exist as an independent observer that is self-contained and separate from the greater world at large. Finally, I think a third aspect to ego-loss could be stated as
the cessation of the internal dialogue – the steam of independent thoughts and ideas – that takes place inside a conscious human mind.
The distinction between humans and the vast majority of other animals is that we are not only aware of our surroundings, we are aware that we are aware of our surroundings. We are conscious of being conscious. It is true that other animals, such as cetaceans, elephants, and certain great apes also show a measure of self-awareness, but without language (and without the physiological structures like the human larynx that would enable the wide variety of phonemes necessary for language) to express abstract concepts this self-awareness hasn't been able to evolve further to the point that consciousness has reached in Homo sapiens.
I will henceforth refer to this idea of being conscious of our own consciousness as being doubly-conscious. Since we experience the world through the lens of this double-consciousness ever minute out of every day of our lives, and since we do not have memories of being in the womb or being a young infant – two possible states where we may lack double-consciousness – we literally know nothing else besides being doubly-aware. We understand the world in reference to our thinking, doubly- conscious selves. Thus it is no surprise that it can be very scary – terrifying even – to lose our double-consciousness.
Furthermore, the loss of the distinction of ourselves as independent beings when on a high dose of a powerful psychedelic is not instantaneous. And so as it begins to happen we are aware of our conscious selves dissolving, or perhaps better said as being ripped apart. This is probably at least somewhat akin to how it must feel in the moments before we die, and indeed we quite reasonably call the final state of no longer existing as a conscious being independent of the larger world 'ego-death'. This feeling is so alien to our normal state of existence that it often leads to inexperienced individuals trying to fight off this state. Sometimes they may be successful, but if they fail to prevent ego-death the experience may be more frightening still because of the obvious feelings of powerlessness in the face of our own destruction or dissolution that may arise once conscious thought returns.
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So it is true that the terms 'ego-loss' or 'ego-death' may be misnomers, in the sense that this is a misuse of the term ego should one adhere to the original definition of the concept. And it is also true that figures that loomed large in the field of psychedelic use – recreational or purposeful – in the 1960's counterculture did try to couch the terms of their experiences in the language of 'respectable' psychiatric or medical professions, 'psychomimetic' being an excellent example.
But words and concepts are not static in our culture – or any other culture for that matter. They change and evolve, and they gain new meanings or connotations while losing older forms of meaning. So we have to accept that while there are probably better ways to refer to the concept of the loss of individuality, consciousness, and a sense of distinction from our environment and the universe at large, the widely-used phrase is in fact ego-loss/death, and we have to make do with the limitations of our ability to express ourselves verbally and in writing.
Is is incorrect to try to reason that 'ego-loss' is synonymous with 'tripping'. You can be tripping ballsacks, bags of ballsacks at that, and still have a fully-intact ego. And to go back to the original post of this thread 2C-B is a compound that I feel is actually all about an intact – yet healthy – ego. It is very much directed inwards, with the self remaining a totally distinct thing independent of the environment. As such I don't believe that ego-loss is possible in the traditional sense on 2C-B even at the very high doses to which I have taken it, though unconventional forms of ego-loss are possible (closing your eyes and laying down on a massive dose with music will cause me to merge with that music, and the music and I become on, leading to cessation of any distinction between myself and the rest of the universe, while acknowledging that the universe at that time has been reduced to the music and nothing else. This isn't the same thing as traditional ego loss though, which I have also experienced when on high doses of tryptamines). Indeed, I would generalize that with some exceptions, PEAs are much less prone – inherently less capable even – of producing ego-loss/death. If that's what you seek, best to go with tryptamines.
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In conclusion, it's a relevant point that in my opinion ego-death has become sort of a false holy-grail in certain psychedelic circles. It is indubitably true that it is an incredibly powerful experience that I wager you will not soon – if ever – forget, but I think there is too much of an emphasis on ego-death being 'the point' or 'the goal'. Psychedelic states are intrinsically valuable in and of themselves. Holding ego-loss up as some sort of state that is 'better' than just plain tripping is a red herring, and worse still is the occasional superiority-complex displayed by those of us who have experienced ego-loss, as if you're not truly experienced with psychedelics or have somehow failed to reach the 'ultimate level' of psychedelia if you've yet to experience this phenomenon.
We all need to be wary of presenting things as being the ultimate purpose of tripping, whether the thing being talked-up is ego-loss or whether it is the oft-mentioned 'therapeutic healing experience due to deep, intense introspection'. There's nothing wrong with seeking these things out, but there is much more value in psychedelic states than can be easily captured with popular ideas like these.
Such is life.
