Ego Death: Rebirth or no? And other questions...

[ava1enzue1a]

I ran across a thread (here) where there was a discussion about ego death, which can obviously be induced through drug use. The description:

...total annihilation on all imaginable levels - physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and absolute damnation of transcendental proportions. This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.

(Stan Grof from "The Adventure of Self-Discovery")

The first two comments on the original post were:

Sounds really negative to me.

Indeed.

The rebirth is the good part.

But if ego death truly consisted of being "absolutely damned to transcendental proportions", then there would never be a rebirth, correct? As rebirth would not indicate absolute damnation. But if rebirth is the result of fully living out an ego death, then the aforementioned description wouldn't apply and there would be no such thing of it after all (absolute damnation)?

Thoughts?

Also, upon further reading into the thread, people have noted the concepts of "ego death" and "ego loss" commonly get confused with each other. Someone had described it as:

The difference is that with Ego loss you are so at peace that your ego falls asleep like a baby whereas with Ego death your Ego is chased through a field of broken glass by a gang of psychopath gremlins who will catch him and bludgeon it into a bloody pulp with claw hammers.

I would personally say that if there exists a rebirth, then this is what the "loss" is referring to; in other words ego loss is what results from death.

Thoughts?

 

[morpher001]

But if ego death truly consisted of being "absolutely damned to transcendental proportions", then there would never be a rebirth, correct? As rebirth would not indicate absolute damnation. But if rebirth is the result of fully living out an ego death, then the aforementioned description wouldn't apply and there would be no such thing of it after all (absolute damnation)?

Thoughts?

In hindsight maybe, but at the time the feeling is of being completely and abjectly forsaken whilst being utterly powerless in all ways; these is only doom, despair, fear and unspeakable loss. With absolute certaintly you know you are far beyond rebirth or redemption of any kind.

 

[Abject]

What in the fuck

 

[LotsOfDogs]

This isn't what I would take to mean ego death....Sounds more like a description of a really bad trip.

To me ego death / loss (which I take to mean the same thing) is when the notion of self, of the individual identity we have in our day to day life feels completely stripped away and all that is left is consciousness and observation. Some people find it liberating, others find it terrifying.

 

[GenerousTrods]

To me ego death / loss (which I take to mean the same thing) is when the notion of self, of the individual identity we have in our day to day life feels completely stripped away and all that is left is consciousness and observation. Some people find it liberating, others find it terrifying.

I agree with that and have experienced something similar.

to me the feeling of rebirth comes from the deep realisation that our ego is temporary and we have the power to change it

 

[Jabberwocky]

This isn't what I would take to mean ego death....Sounds more like a description of a really bad trip.

exactly

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Related reading

 

[illustrious junk]

absolutely damned to transcendental proportions

There's no such thing as absolute damnation, that's a pernicious invention of organised religions designed to scare people into behaving 'properly' and giving them money.

Also, upon further reading into the thread, people have noted the concepts of "ego death" and "ego loss" commonly get confused with each other. Someone had described it as:

The difference is that with Ego loss you are so at peace that your ego falls asleep like a baby whereas with Ego death your Ego is chased through a field of broken glass by a gang of psychopath gremlins who will catch him and bludgeon it into a bloody pulp with claw hammers.
I would personally say that if there exists a rebirth, then this is what the "loss" is referring to; in other words ego loss is what results from death.

I find this interesting; I've always used the terms interchangeably but agree that there are two distinct phenomena here. What you (and I) call 'ego loss' I've experienced on psychedelics (LSD especially), when the 'clothes' of my assumed personality & attributes melted away, leaving only naked, pure consciousness. 'Blissful' would be putting it mildly. I don't think this is a 'rebirth' though, just a realisation of what was always there.

This:

...total annihilation on all imaginable levels - physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and absolute damnation of transcendental proportions. This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.

which you call ego death sounds more like a spiritual crisis/Dark Night of the Soul scenario, i.e. a radical, terrifying breakdown of one's beliefs followed by a slow but more mature, inclusive restructuring of one's entire worldview. For me it was intensely painful & confusing at the time, yet ultimately liberating and ecstatic. Involved coming to terms with death, suffering, our essential aloneness and transcending the false dichotomy of joy/pain. Dissociatives both helped raise and answer these questions for me. After this (protracted) experience I really felt like I had died & been reborn. Not to say I'm finished by any means, of course.

So that's my take on it. Dunno if the OP or anyone can relate, I'm just rambling now.

This isn't what I would take to mean ego death....Sounds more like a description of a really bad trip.

Ehhh...bad trips, good trips, there are really only just trips, it's how you interpret them that counts. Sometimes life's most unpleasant experiences are the most
instructive.

 

[LotsOfDogs]

Ehhh...bad trips, good trips, there are really only just trips, it's how you interpret them that counts. Sometimes life's most unpleasant experiences are the most
instructive.

I agree, seasoned users of psychedelics would tend to take this view. On reflection, perhaps "bad trip" was a lazy expression to use.

I remember once when much younger, tripping ridiculously heavily with a friend and not being able to understand why on earth I wasn't freaking out since mentally I was completely off my tits. As an adult, I learned to enjoy that feeling of utter loss of self and what even the meaning of ego actually is. It's an experience thing, just like managing the inner monologue of the mind, and steering it away from negative things and towards more pleasant directions....trusting that everything will be ok.

 

[ava1enzue1a]

Interesting points. Thanks for the replies, especially @illustrious junk; I concur with much (if not all) of the post.

Thanks @Never Knows Best for the link. I'll check it out some time.

 

[-=SS=-]

It's so difficult to corrrelate people's experiences together, let alone ones had under the influence of psychedelics! We all speak a different language anyway, and not everyone who's experienced "ego death" has actually done so (mistaken experience).. so forming a correlation is pretty difficult.

For me the closest thing to ego death i think i've experiened is when smoking NN-DMT - the part after you've inhaled all you can/no longer feel your breath, colours shifting slightly, and then this sinking feeling. Unfortunately it happens so damn quickly you don't get a good experience of it, but I have this intuition that is what death is like.. the mind is in a state of absolute terror as it is being stripped down to nothing. Again it happens so quickly it's easy to miss it/forget it.. unless you don't smoke enough and you don't trip at all and are stuck in the room.. that is fucking eery as hell.

One never really loses the ego totally..if you did you simply would not function and would rot on your feet. People throw the idea around that you can but it's just a carrot on a stick to sell you an idea. People who've experienced Enlightenment still come back and regain ego to function, the difference being that they are still present in the Absolute and never forget who they really are (God).

 

[malakaix]

...total annihilation on all imaginable levels - physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and absolute damnation of transcendental proportions. This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.

Sounds like the initial shock-phase of gazing into the void, and then as illustrious junk pointed out; the long systematic breakdown of self known as the dark night of the soul.

 

[juicioso]

It's the old pisser, "Life sucks and then you die": so revealed, it's a tough row to hoe. Me, I wish I had never taken LSD. I did the one time only, more than two decades ago. Its ill effect yet lingers. It was what it was.

 

[Furanku_]

Ego death is a funny subject and debatable as to whether or not it's real. People say ego death is the scariest thing in life, but then I always argue, well who the fuck is it that's afraid if you just had an ego death?. Most of the time it's just heavy ego softening, you start to see the falseness that surrounds your life and THAT is what's scary. I was watching a youtube video where this guy explained it very eloquently, he called it ego transparency. It's just a seeing through of the ego and all of its falseness. Eliminating the ego is irrelevant, it's the simple understanding that your whole mental construct of who you are is based off illusory thoughts. This simple understanding is always with you but masked with thoughts, thoughts that THIS moment isn't it. But it is and it's all there ever was and all there ever will be.

 

[psood0nym]

I was watching a youtube video where this guy explained it very eloquently, he called it ego transparency. It's just a seeing through of the ego and all of its falseness. Eliminating the ego is irrelevant, it's the simple understanding that your whole mental construct of who you are is based off illusory thoughts. This simple understanding is always with you but masked with thoughts, thoughts that THIS moment isn't it. But it is and it's all there ever was and all there ever will be.

That sounds about right. Link?