[Debate] What is ego-death?

[pmoseman]

I would say that "self-dissolution" is the more apt term here. Perhaps I'll start using that....

Memory is not a function of the self IMO. The self is the central point that receives information and judges/reacts according to arbitrarily set values (which could be defined further as our 'personality'). During an ego-loss/self-dissolution episode, the input remains but the reactor/experiencer/judger is repressed or appears to be not present. Hence we can form memories but they may feel extremely foreign and even unsettling upon sober reflection.

As an example; I can recall the major parts of a salvia experience, but it is akin to recalling a dream- it doesn't have much meaning as it is foreign to the point of being nonsensical. Thus it could be argued that these experiences have little value, though I treasure their outright weirdness in a 'who would have though' kinda way.

I'd also say that this self-dissolution doesn't mean complete loss of self, but follows a sine-wave like oscillation between more and less integration with the normal self.

This thread is a quintessential semantic internet discussion that doesn't seem to have progressed much in the last 8-9 pages, so I think I'm gonna give up- unless Ismene lays out one of his provocative statements that just demands I challenge it (futilely) :D

How about the word self-annihilation? Look that one up.

The self you just described sounds like the super-ego.

I think it is like a dream and we rarely form memories of those.

Self-abandonment is another interesting term, as is depersonalize and derealize.

During ego death you experience yourself dying and then being dead, so that the life that you previously had lived has now become just a memory. Your memory of your previous life remains intact during ego death, but you are no longer living that life because you have now died. Ego death is not the same thing as total amnesia, this is why people are typically able to fully remember and describe their ego death experience after it happens. If ego death was totally amnesic there would be no ego death trip reports, but as erowid clearly shows (and also bluelight and many other psychedelic websites), there are many verbal descriptions of ego death experience.

Ismene understands all that. He is saying ego death is not death because you are making memories, but Ismene frames that statement as a question.

Death is a state of the body when the brain stops giving signals. That is the way we determine death. Memory would produce a brain signal.

In the context of psychedelic ego death, the following terms are precisely synonymous with each other:

Ego/self/person/I/me/thinker/personal controller/personal subject/sense of self/feeling of personal continuity/time voyaging control agent/free-will agent/sense of self-identity/sense of separate identity/continuant identity/sense of personal separateness etc etc etc

There is no specific, meaningful, clearly definable difference between any of these ^ terms for the purpose of this discussion, they all point to exactly the same thing, although the term "ego" is by far the most commonly used in discussions about the psychedelic death and rebirth experience.

the relevant sense of "ego" in the context of "ego death" is given by the Oxford dictionary as: - "a conscious thinking subject" (from - www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ego)

ego is different from pure consciousness or pure experience, because experience remains even after ego has dissolved in ego death, which is why people can experience (be conscious of) the ego death experience

In the context of ego death those things are synonymous but traditionally they are not synonymous.

For the uninitiated this is confusing and they will reject it. Bad word choice forces unnecessary long winded explanations of how in the term ego death, ego means something different than it does in psychoanalysis, metaphysics, philosophy, Greek, Latin, German, and the dictionary.

....

"A conscious thinking subject."

You have taken something simple and well understood and distorted it simply because you want to believe your experience is so unique it requires a bending of the English language. Wrong.

Ego and self are different. One is 'I' the other is 'am' in what is surely one of the shortest and most profound sentences in English, "I am."

To confuse the two is illiterate, not to be rude. Ego is a simple concept. Let's say you get reincarnated as a donkey. You think like a donkey, you have the memories of a donkey, you smell like a donkey. The only thing about you that is the same is your ego. That is you in the sentence, "Ego sum asinus."

I say this is simple, but that is not to be condescending or saying it should be easy to get. I was confused on this subject for a long time but now that it is clear to me, "a conscious thinking subject", is not using the word conscious to indicate a person who is awake, it means conscious in any capacity, altered consciousness even.

People are not dumb, as literally unable to communicate. Humans have had these experiences and can relate anything. But it can be tricky, that is why we have poets. The difficulty with understanding at this point is largely the fault of those describing with this terminology error, those who had not yet grasped the term are now trying to force it to work.

I is the experiencer, the self is what is experienced, the mind/body connection and human soul and all that is debatable, I guess, but no matter, even if you are possessing three bodies simultaneously, looking into your own eyes, being God even, the whole point is that you have one ego. That is what makes it interesting and unusual. Not that your ego has dissolved, what false self is is the super-ego.

Use the term ego this way and your message will only strengthen. I hope this was made abundantly clear. Continue using the term incorrectly and you will continue having the same debates over and over again with everyone you talk to, and furthermore you will be wrong. You will tell people you lost your ego, they will assume you mean you pass out, you will have to say oh no no no you misunderstand me, but it is you that has misunderstood.

 

[Xorkoth]

In the context of psychedelic ego death, the following terms are precisely synonymous with each other:

Ego/self/person/I/me/thinker/personal controller/personal subject/sense of self/feeling of personal continuity/time voyaging control agent/free-will agent/sense of self-identity/sense of separate identity/continuant identity/sense of personal separateness etc etc etc

There is no specific, meaningful, clearly definable difference between any of these ^ terms for the purpose of this discussion, they all point to exactly the same thing, although the term "ego" is by far the most commonly used in discussions about the psychedelic death and rebirth experience.

the relevant sense of "ego" in the context of "ego death" is given by the Oxford dictionary as: - "a conscious thinking subject" (from - www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ego)

ego is different from pure consciousness or pure experience, because experience remains even after ego has dissolved in ego death, which is why people can experience (be conscious of) the ego death experience

This is indeed what I meant.

Perhaps that means there are no ego-deaths happening at all and people are simply using the term to describe any intense psychedelic experience.

But they're not. They're using it to describe a very specific type of experience. The vast majority of my trips have not been ego deaths, or even had a very strong component of ego-dissolution. Even many of my strongest experiences haven't had this component. There are a few specific, special experiences I have had that were different.

 

[pmoseman]

But they're not. They're using it to describe a very specific type of experience. The vast majority of my trips have not been ego deaths, or even had a very strong component of ego-dissolution. Even many of my strongest experiences haven't had this component. There are a few specific, special experiences I have had that were different.

And they are using a word wrong and have taken the ensuing confusion as an issue normals have with understanding the deeper meaning about the profundity of their experience, the mystical quality of their ideas.

Any detailed descriptions of "ego death" confirms this all the way.

To say you experienced something without your ego is ridiculous, not profound.

To try and correct that error by saying you mean the other form of the word ego, the one that means pride or false self, is equally off the mark by describing something mundane, not ecstatic, and this also is not true to the experience.

 

[Xorkoth]

Then what is it that you call the individual self?

EDIT: I have to agree regardless that there is a lot of lack of understanding of the terminology going on in the population, for example here.

 

[pmoseman]

Perception itself? Sentience.
The experiencer? Observer.

 

[Xorkoth]

But that just seems opposite to me.

 

[pmoseman]

Then what is it that you call the individual self?

EDIT: I have to agree regardless that there is a lot of lack of understanding of the terminology going on in the population, for example here.

We may say the self is many things, our body, our mind, even the ego, but even as you lay asleep the ego goes and your body remains. But we do not keep our self forever, our minds and bodies eventually die. We have a false sense of the self, a permanent self. The self is temporary, we naturally cling to it, to the thought of being. But the true self, at least I think, is material.

"I be." Whatever the self is we have no choice to destroy or create, only to be.

 

[pmoseman]

To be sentience itself. Is that ego death?
As opposed to the unspirited death of a materialist.

 

[Xorkoth]

Interesting. I believe that the same force of awareness, sentience, that fills me is the one that fills you and everything else too, and that by "plugging in" to a physical form that raw perception is shaped into an individual's perception, what I would call an "ego".

To be sentience itself. Is that ego death?

Yes, precisely.

 

[max_freakout]

Perhaps that means there are no ego-deaths happening at all and people are simply using the term to describe any intense psychedelic experience.

ego death is not simply "any intense psychedelic experience", rather it is a specific highly circumscribed kind of experience that is encountered in the intense psychedelic altered state. It is specifically the experience of mentally dying during a trip.

People do not use the term ego death, then just describe "any intense psychedelic experience", rather people use the term "ego death" then describe the experience of mentally dying (ie reaching the end/termination point of personal existence)

 

[phuckingnutz]

Interesting. I believe that the same force of awareness, sentience, that fills me is the one that fills you and everything else too, and that by "plugging in" to a physical form that raw perception is shaped into an individual's perception, what I would call an "ego".

Interesting. I believe that the same force of awareness, sentience, that fills me is the one that fills you and everything else too, and that by "plugging in" to a physical form that raw perception is shaped into an individual's perception, what I would call [a shell].

I don't about ego death, but I do believe in deja vu.

 

[Xorkoth]

As opposed to the unspirited death of a materialist.

That's the reason I feel so strongly about this subject, because the experience for me transformed my life fundamentally, with the awareness of what we are... that's spirituality to me. So call it what you will but I'm glad we can agree that it's a real experience at least.

 

[pmoseman]

Interesting. I believe that the same force of awareness, sentience, that fills me is the one that fills you and everything else too, and that by "plugging in" to a physical form that raw perception is shaped into an individual's perception, what I would call an "ego".

The body is like a shell and the spirit fills the shell making a form out of it, that form is inherently shapeless.

 

[max_freakout]

Some more typical examples of ego death trip reports:

Near ego-death on ayahuasca:
https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=91566
"I knew that out-of-body experiences are common on ayahausca, but I never thought it would feel this real. The realization that I had become some sort of hyperdimensional entity freaked me out. What if I never returned to my body? Was I dead?"

In this example, the tripper sees the edge of ego death but doesnt really experience full ego death, he questions if he might be dead, but in full ego death ego can become totally convinced that it has dead.


On Salvia:
https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=57297
"Funny how our priorities shift - the questions we feel MUST be answered before what we truly believe to be our last precious seconds of life are extinguished.

And it rolled forward, not by bending straight over but by a kind of undulant, snake-like downward advance. I feel almost at peace…a relieved resignation. Finally I’m dead. "


On 2-CE:
https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=36560
"Once I passed out of the source, I remembered that I was a human being and that I had a name. I also remembered that the source experience must have been the peak, and I was happy and relieved to think that this would end eventually. During the source experience I felt as if I were in a vibrating stasis - as if my soul was being frozen for safe keeping for a while. I thought this was death, or ego-death. I could feel my ego kicking and screaming to exert control and it could not, it was afraid that giving up control would mean I would be dead. It was trying to protect me from what it perceived of as harm, and it was scaring the shit out of me with all of its screaming and fussing."


This trip report captures the fear and panic survival mode ("kicking and screaming") that the ego adopts during a bad trip. When a person feels that they are in mortal danger, the innate survival instinct comes into play, the kind of adrenalin fuelled terror that any normal person would experience if a hungry lion was in the room with them (ie a physical threat) - in ego death the mind perceives life threatening danger, but of a mental rather than a physical nature.


from - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_trip
"feelings of vague anxiety and alienation to profoundly disturbing states of unrelieved terror, ultimate entrapment, or cosmic annihilation."

 

[max_freakout]

That's the reason I feel so strongly about this subject, because the experience for me transformed my life fundamentally, with the awareness of what we are... that's spirituality to me. So call it what you will but I'm glad we can agree that it's a real experience at least.

Are you aware of Michael Hoffman's ego death theory? He has created a very precise model of how this profound mental transformation all works. Self control (ego) meets timeless fatedness/determinism in the death/rebirth experience, and is fundamentally transformed by the experience. The transformation is the upgrade from the egoic (ego-based) mental worldmodel to the transcendent mental worldmodel. All religion and mythology centres around this mental upgrade, egoc --> transcendent. Dying to one level of consciousness, being reborn into a new higher level of consciousness

 

[pmoseman]

Ego
1 : the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world

The self may be annihilated too far, from all sense and the presence is lost, as is common in sleep and drunkenness.

Just following some last that knocks us completely out of sorts, like a deep meditation or sleep or a psychedelic cacophony. We find in that brief instant (the pause of a coma) just before returning to consciousness! that familiar outside world and inner world of thoughts and notions, for that brief moment of confusion and uncertainty when we only know that we are awake.

Imagine now you are staying in that moment, before the eyes are open, before the tingling senses return, and instead of finding only emptiness and darkness there is a soft hum of light, just enough to be sensed but nothing certain. Is it the inner and outer world returning? It is another.

Without the humming thoughts or buzzing sensations, nothing to overwhelm, that sense of "something must be there" begins to grow and become brighter and drown out the noise around it. This is not the coming on of the thoughts and sensations you hope to avoid, it is sensation itself giving into feedback. Then you will kick and rise to the surface just before drowning in it, before your ears explode.

But at times something, unknown, blocks us from experiencing this. Other days we seem to find it easy to explore. We are swimming from it and it can be very difficult to realize this and to stop ourselves. Difficult as say... controlling your heart beat our regulating your body temp. And there is a dark half and a light half, depending on how we approach it.

 

[Xorkoth]

Beautiful imagery.

Are you aware of Michael Hoffman's ego death theory? He has created a very precise model of how this profound mental transformation all works. Self control (ego) meets timeless fatedness/determinism in the death/rebirth experience, and is fundamentally transformed by the experience. The transformation is the upgrade from the egoic (ego-based) mental worldmodel to the transcendent mental worldmodel. All religion and mythology centres around this mental upgrade, egoc --> transcendent. Dying to one level of consciousness, being reborn into a new higher level of consciousness

Only in passing. But yeah, that's what happened to me, it really was a fundamental transformation, from sort of the opposite state up until then.

 

[Xorkoth]

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...rst-time-experience-Both-horrible-and-amazing

 

[max_freakout]

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...rst-time-experience-Both-horrible-and-amazing

"Accept it, it will never be over, you're stuck in a loop, some people get stuck, it's ok. "No" I replied, "I will get out". And then the terror started: "you can't get out, you are dead, and don't you understand? This is how it is now, it won't ever end, you died." -"How can it be, I am not dead this stuff can't kill me". - "You took too much, after you took the second pill you just passed out and died, You are lying in bed, and I am lying next to you Dead also." "How come you are dead? You never took anything" - "I took some after you, this is the only reason you can see me and communicate with me"

I didn't believe I was dead, and was sure this was all just my sanity driving out of control, I kept fighting his words, No, I am alive! I AM alive! My name is X and I am Y years old, I am alive this is just a bad trip!, I tried everything to cling on to my Ego and reality. However the loop was endless, it went on for what felt like many many hours, My cousin would keep convincing me I am dead, "


This ^ is classic ego death dynamics, out of control thought looping

 

[Xorkoth]

Yep, I saw it in there and thought of this thread immediately.