[Debate] What is ego-death?

[swilow]

Freudian ego, or the philosophical ancient Greek definition postulated by MAX "I think therefore I am". I think BULLSHIT ARTIST. I guess the question is when you take psychedelics how do you explore your mind? Introspection, psychedelic overdose with loss of bodily control and possibly bowels and bladder, responsible doses for your health age etc. DO you combine dissociative drugs with psychedelics? Do you jack up 600 mg's of DMT in say 3 x 200 mg doses every hour over 3 hours like MAX_FREAKOUT??? Do you want to promote HR? I think ego death is a dangerous ideology if it is promoted as such "ego death occurs when stupid, sorry I mean "heroic", doses of drugs are taken. Is it possible to experience this at a lower dose or with other adjunct substances being co administered?? What did you experience OP CAUSE THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT; A SUBJECTIVE MOMENTARY EXPERIENCE. "Ego death" is a label nothing more. Could be nike death or lego death or penthouse death. Why not a label is only as relevant as the individual applying the label deems it to mean. "Ego Death" is not a HR strategy if anything it encourages stupid reckless dosing of drugs that often results in hospitalization.

I appreciate your passion, and am delighted to have heard the phrase "legodeath" but I'm not sure its necessary or productive to go on the attack straight out of the blocks. I think there is a general consensus that, whilst high doses of psychedelics are more likely to lead to an "ego-death" state, its not really a necessity, so its not anti-HR to try and aim for such a state- as Solipsis mentioned, one can achieve such a state through combining meditation/trance techniques with a psychedelic or a small dose of a psychedelic mixed with a small dose of a dissociative- and I don't think there is much proof that these sort of experiences "often" result in hospitalisation. In a safe setting with trusted people, an intense experience can be undergone quite safely with positive results.

It also depends on what drug you are referring to, a high dose of smoked DMT is relatively safe due to its duration and physical benignity- a high dose of the NBOME's is absolutely NOT safe at all for the obvious reasons.

As said, not trying to dismiss your concerns because they are completely valid and shared by MANY, but we should, perhaps, aim for a less emotive debate with more respect and understanding then sudden outbursts of dismissal and intolerance. Its not a black and white issue; what is?

 

[lovepsychadelics]

Fucking I died from salvia... Well you must have a pretty sheltered view of death. Dying usually is accompanied by organ failure like a heart attack. Seizures. Etc. Thing is I have had a MI, I have had micro CVA's (brain bleeds) caused by ODing on stims. thing is on stims YOUR WELL AWARE YOUR FUCKING GONNA DIE unless you get some IM/IV benzo's into you and your heart feels semi normal. Have an ECG after a stimulant OD and see if you didn't have some kind of MI. THAT IS FUCKING DYING/ALMOST DYING. Salvia and death? Fucking bollocks these people must have the tolerance of a church mouse and the experience to boot.

I can go on the net and gather a fucking truck load of bullshit from all kinds of sources. Thing is they are all SUBJECTIVE not OBJECTIVE. Some are just nuts "I saw a real mermaid" does that mean your sources are more or less valid seeing as they are all non peer reviewed non scientific publications usually posted by new age ideolists, idiots, nut bags and other delusional individuals. Sure what they experienced IN THEIR MINDS THEY CHOSE TO CALL "EGO DEATH" probably cause it sounds cool and validates them being mental health patients for the most part.

 

[lovepsychadelics]

I appreciate your passion, and am delighted to have heard the phrase "legodeath" but I'm not sure its necessary or productive to go on the attack straight out of the blocks. I think there is a general consensus that, whilst high doses of psychedelics are more likely to lead to an "ego-death" state, its not really a necessity, so its not anti-HR to try and aim for such a state- as Solipsis mentioned, one can achieve such a state through combining meditation/trance techniques with a psychedelic or a small dose of a psychedelic mixed with a small dose of a dissociative- and I don't think there is much proof that these sort of experiences "often" result in hospitalisation. In a safe setting with trusted people, an intense experience can be undergone quite safely with positive results.

It also depends on what drug you are referring to, a high dose of smoked DMT is relatively safe due to its duration and physical benignity- a high dose of the NBOME's is absolutely NOT safe at all for the obvious reasons.

As said, not trying to dismiss your concerns because they are completely valid and shared by MANY, but we should, perhaps, aim for a less emotive debate with more respect and understanding then sudden outbursts of dismissal and intolerance. Its not a black and white issue; what is?

I think you missed the point Is it possible to experience this at a lower dose or with other adjunct substances being co administered. Or meditation. Whatever you chose to achieve it as long as it's not going to cause hospitalization and the definition is subjective not objective. You call it ego death,. someone else calls it enlightenment others give it another label depending on what they experienced, their background and religious ideology or lack there off. Dismissal and intolerance? Check max out and read his posts. Passive aggressive is the terminology. I'm just up front and blunt. BTW how do you know someone won't stroke out from Iving 600 mg's of DMT for the first time, spaced over 3 hours, in order to achieve Max's ego death dosage. That is why BL has such major flaws: HR on the one hand but encouraging reckless doses... contradiction... maybe more than a little. BTW obviously you missed my previous posts on this thread willow11.

 

[swilow]

^I'm not agreeing with what Max is saying, I'm just not agreeing with the way your saying what you are....

 

[lovepsychadelics]

It's a rough, world shit happens and people die in real life not some bullshit philosophic "I took a drug and shit happened and man I died and I know what death is all about". Somehow I doubt it. Ever handled a recently deceased individual, pushed a gurney to the morgue, had someone bleed out etc, etc. About to bail from BL. In a moment just to come back to this thread and read the garbage posted all over the place. It is insulting IMO. Real death as in the type I deal with in my line of work IS death. If I come across as hot tempered that is why. Wake up get your head out your ass and realize life is so much more than arguing about some stupid label applied to a subjective experience that no two individuals ever experience in the same way. BTW RIP Dr A. Shulgin a genius mind of our time.

 

[swilow]

If these topics don't interest you, you have an odd way of showing it :D People having discussions should never be insulting; I'm sorry you feel insulted, but I can't say I understand why you would. Obviously, there is more to life then internet discussions; what a sad view you must have of the entire internet-using subset of humanity if you thought otherwise! I'm not sure what the connection between this discussion and your line of work is or why it would make you angry, but- you are right- its not worth it. We should all just relax and breathe- there is enough negativity around and no need to add to it- quite the opposite

 

[max_freakout]

you utilize Freudian definition on the next page after righting it off saying it's all greek philosophy.

The Cartesian ego has nothing to do with ancient Greek philosophy OR Freud, Descartes was a 16th century French philosopher. Descartes' concept of ego as "i think therefore I exist" is the ego that pertains to the ego death experience.

Do you jack up 600 mg's of DMT in say 3 x 200 mg doses every hour over 3 hours like MAX_FREAKOUT??

Please dont misquote me, ego death is not about taking stupidly high doses of drugs, i never said anything about taking stupidly high doses of DMT, there is very little point overdosing, you are unlikely to have a valuable experience at that kind of dose level, and will just be wasting good drugs.

Insisting that ego death requires overdosing on drugs just indicates a lack of intelligence and misunderstanding what ego death is really all about. Ego death just refers to the feeling of mentally dying in the altered state, as innumerable trip reports clearly demonstrate

 

[Solipsis]

It seems some people take the 'death' part very literally since there is no actual risk of not surviving the experience. Apparently like lovepsy they perhaps feel that others saying that it felt like they died from salvia or other psychedelics invalidates people's experiences with having been in an actual life-threatening situation. But that also works the other way around: experience is experience, and the fact that you have been in a life-threatening situation should not invalidate people's experiences of having felt as though they died or were about to die. In both cases a person fears for his life.

For the human mind, imagining something or remembering doing something is virtually indistinguishable from it actually happening, this is also shown in brain scans. There is no fundamental difference made by the fact of actually being in a life-threatening situation, because in all cases your mind is giving you the prospect of the end of you. I admit that there are milder cases of ego-loss where there is not a feeling of apparently certain and unavoidable impending death, but still somewhat of a threat.

So, sorry that that happened to you on stims but it does not give you the right to say that people with ego-death experiences on psychedelics are not entitled to feeling about it the way they do.

Can people just please be entitled to feeling the way they do? It's not like they are making a mockery of what happened to people who actually died or almost died. Anything like that is a projection of your own mind.

People who have been technically dead for short time may have gone through something that we don't know if it can be 'simulated'. Unless someone tragically dies while undergoing a brain scan I am not sure we will be able to say much about that. Though it would be very interesting for example to hear about people who have momentarily died taking ketamine and comparing the experiences.

 

[GreenMachine]

certainly DXM has the ability to dissolve the ego, but what you experienced sounds more like a "hole" as in "K-hole". this is how i would describe my experience "K-holing" on ketamine.

 

[Ismene]

I'm not at all convinced about this idea that there's an "ego" that represents a "sense of self" and that it can either be "lost" or "found". I think human beings have an awareness of being alive that can vary depending on the activity they're carrying out at the moment. When you're really busy you often lose track of time and can't remember what you were thinking about - it even happens when you on a long drive. Have you had an "ego-death" during these periods too?

 

[max_freakout]

I'm not at all convinced about this idea that there's an "ego" that represents a "sense of self" and that it can either be "lost" or "found".

Everybody has a distinct "sense of self", it is the feeling/experience of "being a person" in a world full of other people and physical objects, this sense of self is essentially the same for every normal person, and it accompanies each person throughout the entirety of their waking life, as soon as you wake up in the morning right through the day until you fall asleep at night, you have the distinct impression that you are a person separate from other people, that is your sense of self or your "ego". Descartes summed up this sense of self with the expression "i think, therefore i exist". The ego or sense of self is your separate identity, ie you identify yourself as being an individual entity that is separate from the rest of the universe.

When you're really busy you often lose track of time and can't remember what you were thinking about - it even happens when you on a long drive. Have you had an "ego-death" during these periods too?

No you haven't, losing focus/concentration as you describe here ^ is competely unrelated to ego death; ego death isnt something that you can just snap out of at will like a daydream. Ego death only happens in the intense altered state of consciousness when you become dissociated from ordinary reality

 

[swilow]

I'm not at all convinced about this idea that there's an "ego" that represents a "sense of self" and that it can either be "lost" or "found". I think human beings have an awareness of being alive that can vary depending on the activity they're carrying out at the moment. When you're really busy you often lose track of time and can't remember what you were thinking about - it even happens when you on a long drive. Have you had an "ego-death" during these periods too?

That's quite a good point Issy I think using the term 'death' is inappropriate because death implies a certain finality- you can't come back from death. So it makes more sense to say ego-loss, or to be more precise, ego-diminishment. What we are talking about is a qualitative diminishment in the binding sense of individuality and all the subjectivity that that implies.. Its not always a complete loss of this sense either; there are gradations of it. Many mystic religions seem to believe that intense concentration and focus (often call 'mindfullness' in that context) can bring a sense of tranquillity which may be connected to the idea of ego-loss. Buddhism suggests that we should try and attain a sharp focus always on the present, whether you are washing the dishes or driving your car... Its a way to try and defeat the ceaseless struggle against the non-existent past and non-existent future, to live in the present.

For me, for better or worse, I have a certain interpretation of the world which blends scientific objectivity with spiritual 'freestyling'. I'm inclined to interpret things in either a vast cosmic sense or a mystical sense, so I am predisposed towards experiencing mystical states; I seek them out, through meditation and psychedelics. Perhaps some people simply aren't interested in such things and therefore don't interpret their experiences in such a way. There is no right way to trip or live anyhow, and I find myself increasingly being drawn to more rational and REAL interpretations of events. My recent experience, on hashish, DMT and ketamine was extremely immersive, and I emerged from it realising I had stopped with what feels like my ordinary subjectivity, and had a sort of self-less experience. However, it wasn't the same as my previous ego-death experiences because I analysed it (later) from more of a sensory perspective, instead of linking it to a mystical state. As my sober reality has changed, so has my tripping perspective...My point here is that our normal, waking perceptions and opinions must influence the quality of our psychedelic trips, and if you don't believe in the ego, you won't experience ego-loss or ego-death.

Perhaps.

 

[Ismene]

Everybody has a distinct "sense of self"

You arn't equally aware of it at all times tho are you? Perhaps what you call an "ego-death" is simply the same experience you get when your mind drifts on a long journey but on psychedelics.

No you haven't, losing focus/concentration as you describe here

Even tho you can lose a couple of hours and not have the slightest idea what you were thinking about? That doesn't sound like losing focus or concentration to me. That sounds like your sense of self and your awareness of your surroundings has been fundamentally altered.

 

[Ismene]

That's quite a good point Issy

You're not so bad yourself willow

I've been getting into the mindfulness technique for the last couple of months and it's helped me to cope with a few upheavals in my life.

Yeah I certainly can't see me having an ego-death now after all the trips and all the years. I'm going to trip with max_freakout at the weekend so I'll report back if I do

 

[pmoseman]

By choosing the words ego death you are choosing words that are too close to describing without being correct.

 

[max_freakout]

You arn't equally aware of it at all times tho are you?

The sense of self in ordinary consciousness is so familiar to the mind that it is usually taken for granted and not noticed, but it is always completely present, so that at any time if someone asked you “do you exist?” the answer would always be “yes”. By contrast in ego death, ego reports to itself that it doesn't exist.

Perhaps what you call an "ego-death" is simply the same experience you get when your mind drifts on a long journey but on psychedelics.

No it is completely unrelated. So there are two experiences being talked about here:

1. Losing focus/concentration/mindfulness in ordinary consciousness
2. Mystical ego death in psychedelic consciousness

These experiences (1) and (2) have nothing in common with each other, they are 2 completely different experiences, and they occur in 2 completely different states of consciousness.

 

[lovepsychadelics]

That's quite a good point Issy I think using the term 'death' is inappropriate because death implies a certain finality- you can't come back from death. So it makes more sense to say ego-loss, or to be more precise, ego-diminishment. What we are talking about is a qualitative diminishment in the binding sense of individuality and all the subjectivity that that implies.. Its not always a complete loss of this sense either; there are gradations of it. Many mystic religions seem to believe that intense concentration and focus (often call 'mindfullness' in that context) can bring a sense of tranquillity which may be connected to the idea of ego-loss. Buddhism suggests that we should try and attain a sharp focus always on the present, whether you are washing the dishes or driving your car... Its a way to try and defeat the ceaseless struggle against the non-existent past and non-existent future, to live in the present.

For me, for better or worse, I have a certain interpretation of the world which blends scientific objectivity with spiritual 'freestyling'. I'm inclined to interpret things in either a vast cosmic sense or a mystical sense, so I am predisposed towards experiencing mystical states; I seek them out, through meditation and psychedelics. Perhaps some people simply aren't interested in such things and therefore don't interpret their experiences in such a way. There is no right way to trip or live anyhow, and I find myself increasingly being drawn to more rational and REAL interpretations of events. My recent experience, on hashish, DMT and ketamine was extremely immersive, and I emerged from it realising I had stopped with what feels like my ordinary subjectivity, and had a sort of self-less experience. However, it wasn't the same as my previous ego-death experiences because I analysed it (later) from more of a sensory perspective, instead of linking it to a mystical state. As my sober reality has changed, so has my tripping perspective...My point here is that our normal, waking perceptions and opinions must influence the quality of our psychedelic trips, and if you don't believe in the ego, you won't experience ego-loss or ego-death.

Perhaps.

sorry to come across as a prick willow11 and ismene. Just max has really pissed me off with his blindsiding mumbo-jumbo, which at the end of the day sounds like an argument with a philosophy major. My response is your an arts and humanities major dude and in no way does this qualify you as a scientific professional. Philosophy and science are not exactly the same thing, far from it. The only truly valid branch of philosophy is ethics. Like a dog with a bone I think max needs to let this one rest. He has his opinion we have our own and basically I think most agree doing stupid amounts of drugs to achieve ego death is pppffffttt.... I got some 5 meo pcp, 4 aco dmt, 4 ho mipt, 2ce, 2cb, mxe handy. Max what would you prescribe for an ego death experience with these substances in terms of mg doses and ROA's. I have 3 ml syringes, normal saline for injection in plastic 10 ml vials, 21 gauge cannulas, micron filters, alco swabs. I have IV 2 mg in 1 ml loraz ampules ready and etizolams for oral administration if shit goes south. I can dose up to 100 mgs or more of each substance... What are your suggestions oh learned one?
s

 

[Beavesmx44]

sorry to come across as a prick willow11 and ismene. Just max has really pissed me off with his blindsiding mumbo-jumbo, which at the end of the day sounds like an argument with a philosophy major. My response is your an arts and humanities major dude and in no way does this qualify you as a scientific professional. Philosophy and science are not exactly the same thing, far from it. The only truly valid branch of philosophy is ethics. Like a dog with a bone I think max needs to let this one rest. He has his opinion we have our own and basically I think most agree doing stupid amounts of drugs to achieve ego death is pppffffttt.... I got some 5 meo pcp, 4 aco dmt, 4 ho mipt, 2ce, 2cb, mxe handy. Max what would you prescribe for an ego death experience with these substances in terms of mg doses and ROA's. I have 3 ml syringes, normal saline for injection in plastic 10 ml vials, 21 gauge cannulas, micron filters, alco swabs. I have IV 2 mg in 1 ml loraz ampules ready and etizolams for oral administration if shit goes south. I can dose up to 100 mgs or more of each substance... What are your suggestions oh learned one?
s

Just based off this singular thread it reads as though you are not looking to intelligently further the discussion and this max guy slept with your girlfriend. The argument for "it just means your really fucked up" is comical. I could get drunk to the point of vomiting, spins, zero short term memory etc. but nobody in their right mind would attempt to claim it as ego death. If it only occurs on psychs their must be something to it. It always amazes me when individuals who claim to have such extensive psych experience come off so close minded. Are you under 21 by chance?

 

[max_freakout]

it requires intelligence and articulacy to be able to fully intellectually grasp what ego death is all about, and you need Michael Hoffman's theory of ego death, which is actually two theories:

1. the 'phase one' theory = the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence – models psychedelic ego death experience in terms of self control cybernetics and block-universe determinism
2. the 'phase two' theory = the maximal entheogen theory of religion – explains how religion is metaphorical description of psychedelic ego death cognitive dynamics

Ego death is the central point about psychedelia, the most powerful and transformational experience that the mind can undergo, total psychedelic dis-integration and re-integration, upgrading the mental world-model to the higher level.

If you haven't experienced ego death then you havent made full use of the sacred psychedelic tools, you are an amateur, unable to fully comprehend ego death. You dont find ego death outside of yourself, it's on the inside in the realm of thoughts and emotions and beliefs, ie subjective experiencing.

 

[swilow]

^If what you are saying is true, then that troubles me a bit, that there would be such an exclusionary aspect to psychedelic drug use. Again, you seem to be saying that there exists a right and a wrong way to take psychedelics; and your way is the right way! But this doesn't exist- there is no objective reason to take psychedelics; there is only subjective reasoning; people will use these drugs according to their own personal motivations and seeking their own ends.

I think psychedelic drug users need to exhibit true, productive scepticism when confronted by relatively extreme theories of consciousness and reality, especially ones which were likely developed under influence of altered states of consciousness. As many of us would be aware, concepts and ideas that seem profound and potentially earth-shattering can turn out to be nothing more then figurative, synaesthetic white noise upon sobriety. I'm sorry, but I think the more widely accepted understanding of ego death, the same understanding I too hold, is way more likely to represent something real as opposed to the opinion of a very obscure psychedelic drug user like Michael Hoffman. Saying that I need to understand this one humans OPINION to grasp the sacred meaning of ego-death is utterly untrue.

We are all amateurs- there is no other type of user...