Esoteric [Ego-Death Subthread] How to achieve it

[swilow]

How can 'ego death' be experienced?

Thats my query . . . I've experienced very out-of-body experiences, mainly with Salvia but also hypnagogic (falling asleep) experiences, but I don't understand how anyone can experience ego death? If the ego is gone, then there should be no way of confirming what is occuring. Unless the ego is still there?

I think this idea is Timothy Leary's stupidest legacy, as it lead people to think that chemically destroying their 'selves' was the key to self realisation.

Basically, how can YOU experience ego death? The whole nature of it, and what the term implies s a complete contradiction . . . .

 

[mountain]

Leary's contemporary and colleague Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) told about this at the same time. According to him, there is someone taking notice even when all your roles have vanished. He would call this faculty the witness. It's also a place in your mind that your can reach while sober, too. One that has no judgement or fear, as opposed to the identity or an ego.

That's something I have reliance in, too. And so, as experienced people will tell you, the Ego isn't all there is - it's a functional unit, and a useful one, but not perhaps the real you.

 

[swilow]

This 'entity' you mention I think is the self or 'ego'. To learn not to be chained and mancled to it may be the mystery of life?????

BUT------

I don't belive in God or god, as an actual entity.

I- and I empahise I- am my ego (well, according to the defintion) so maybe we need to think of a new term for tHis ego death mumbojumbo- perhaps 'selflessness"? Is that what we mean by ego death? Or even the word empathy comes to mind.

Or it is our animal sense taking priority, and for the egotistic human (and I am one, unfortunately- JUST LIKE YOU), the loss of this constituttes the loss of the self and therefore the feeling that YOU are special AND thus a confusion and conflict with the 'real world' whatever that fucking is. . ..

I am reading Terence Mckenna's book Food of the Gods ATM, and he is def. onto something- but how to apply it "as a Trojan Horse into straight society"? Do we try to sneak this in?

By the way, much respect to Ram Daas, he seemed to take the path of less 'personal' power them Timothy Leary.

Peace, love= MOSHKA

But good luck and love and peace to Timothy Leary's ashses marauding through space.

Peace

And it could well be "UNITY". Better then any reference to the inevitable closure of the mind/body contiuum IMO. "Death is certain, life is not".


And I think it is 'mind expansions' or, to coin a phrase,

 

[nuke]

"Ego death", as I see it, is the opposite of experience. Just raw existing. A lot of people call ego loss incorrectly ego death; the first removing yourself partially and the second completely.

Acknowledging the experience that there is more to reality than yourself and what goes on in your head is what's important, I think. Psychedelics and such help you to achieve some degree of ego loss, which you can use as a tool to reevaluate yourself and your environment.

 

[Dancan]

OK, i have to admit i'm not following everything discussed here, and i think in some respects, nor entirely is the author...

def:
1. The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.
2. In psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality.
3.1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit.
2. Appropriate pride in oneself; self-esteem.

I think you need to be working with the same definition to achieve any semblance of truth out of this discussion!

If your follow the first definition, then ego loss means realising you are connected with the world and not distinct from it, or anyone else. That's bullshit, not the first part, i believe we are connected to the world in that each one of us is helping to shape the future of much matter with everything we do in life. Of course everything that is, is shaping the future, so you might realise you are no different...Would this be ego loss?

However, everyone is uniquely different, we are distinct from every other living being on earth, humar or otherwise. We are all shaped entirely by our past (think about it, it's all encompassing) and all our pasts are different. So yes we are distinct, if ego loss means acknowleging that we are all the same, that's bullshit! we are only the same in that we all exist among common truths that effect us all, we all die, we all need to eat, sleep, we are all supposed to be fucking as many people as possible etc...This is bloody obvious! You shouldn't need an acid trip to realise you are both different and the same in some respects...

If you follow the second definition, it means a loss of consciousness...so are we dead here? asleep? in a coma? We lose all control of thought and behaviour while tripping out? Again, bullshit!

Now maybe the third definition makes the most sense in this context. If we lose an exaggerated sense of self-importance, then all the more power to us, we aren't as dellusional as we used to be. There is of course more to reality than our own consciousness, most of us already know this, but i guess acid helps some people think about it in greater detail. We are each just a drop in the ocean, but nonetheless, each of us is shaping the future together, and each of us is distinctly different. Therefore, one could argue we are all important! discuss...

I doubt it means lossing pride, pride is perfectly healthy, depending on context of course. More often than not, if someone does something worthy of a boast to self-respect, they would probably be mentally ill if they didn't give it to themselves.

My attitute is cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of what this 'ego loss' really means. I would argue it's the third definition, discuss...

 

[slippy sleeveen]

Ego death is rare, this is true. To me, ego is directly correlated with your realization of self. If you ever get to that transcendental stage of having lost sense of self, then that is essentially an ego death. This is not just losing sense of yourself as who you are but also in the sense of what you are. You no longer have any basis of judgement, because you have lost your sense of self and no longer have anything to compare anything to.

There is much more to it and I have to prep for the day but I'll outline some occurances that happened previous to my last trial with 2C-E 3 nights ago which gave me a severe sense of ego loss, and peaking an ego death.
*I had to lay down because everything seemed to be happening all too quickly.
*The body began to go numb.
*Severe case of deja vu...this has all happened before??
*Everthing appears to be alligning up to some grand moment.
*It feels as though the entire universe was manifested to create this moment.
then...

it happens

I don't believe there are any real words that can be used to describe an ego death. I'm still coming to terms with what happened and such, so I still am in the afterglow/confusion state,as it were.

 

[slippy sleeveen]

Dancan, when I think of ego I tend to think in terms of the second defintion. The ego is whatever you percieve yourself as. Ego loss would be the total 'letting go' of this. Perhaps ego death is similar to being a newborn, where you have no schemata developed to code new experiences into?

 

[Xorkoth]

I make the distinction between ego death (full ego loss) and ego, hmm, diminishing, or shrinking. My first mushroom experience was the most profound of my life, and I experienced what I generally used to say was ego death. However, in actuality a tiny part of my mind was still aware of "myself" - it's just that my concept of self and the memories of my life and all that goes with it had shrunk down into an insignificant little speck in the massive stream of god-energy I had joined/become/awoken into. Thus, I have strong memories of this time period, although of course I can't even begin to conceive of how it was to actually be there other than some weak impressions. This is what I have come to call "ego reduction", rather than complete death. Also, this process is much, much gentler and easier than total annihlation, which the ego fights valiantly to stop despite everything we know.

On the other hand, the other ego loss experience I have had was with 2C-E more recently, and during that experience, I was slowly (and painfully) losing my ego. it was dying little by little, step by step. At some point I grew too weary to continue fighting it and I relented for a moment, and the next 25 minutes passed in an absolute blink of an eye - I literally seemed to blink and the clock jumped ahead 25 minutes and I was significantly down from where I had been. I think in this case I DID experience true and complete ego loss (felt more like death actually), and "I" didn't experience it at all once it finally culminated totally.

Fortunately, the process leading up to the death was experienced by "me". so I took something useful from it. Fascinating stuff... the ramifications should be studied rather than demonized.

I've linked to these before on these boards, but for anyone wanting some reference to what I'm saying, the mushroom experience I refer to is here:

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=46265

And the 2C-E experience is here:

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=48983

Without the ego, we would realize we are all one and we are all "god". But living a physical existence, having an ego is necessary. This is why I consider experiencing ego reduction, at least, to be a very important part of being a human that would be a real shame to miss out on.

EDIT: Slippy, the same happened with my 2C-E experience. EXACTLY the same as you described. 2C-E seems to have a propensity for violent ego death, as opposed to some others (like mushrooms) that are a little gentler about it. 2C-E probablyt fascinates and frightens me more than anything else at this point because it seems to deconstruct reality in a way that nothing else has come close to for me. I get chills just thinking about it...

 

[Dancan]

During my first mushroom trip, which was by the way, still the best i've had, i experienced many profound changes. I became very relaxed, calm, happy, sedated and slightly buzzed. But to delve deeper, i finally felt like i was truely certain who i was, i could see with great clarity everything i had been through, how this had affected me, how it had shaped who i am. I became very introverted, but in a positive way, fairly profoundly, i realised that every significant mistake i've ever made could be totally justified. I am not just saying this now to alleviate guilt, i really went away from that experience feeling less guilty and with good reason. Another profound discovery, was the realisation that my opinion of myself had been so tainted in such a negative way, that it had resulted in inaccurate deductions regarding my own circumstances. In other words, i had been blaming myself for far more than i was responsible for, and this had been very heavily linked to my extreme cannabis abuse around the same time. I will document this in a trip report soon, suffice to say that it will be one of the worst incidents of cannabis abuse you've ever read. By the end of the ordeal i was hearing the voices of my parents arguing about me in my head while 'high' and was contemplating the two possible, and both very negative realities concerning this issue: Either i was hearing voices, or my parents were literally arguing about me in the next room. I was a borderline schizophrenic, and i can't even describe to you how far the paranoia went...it's beyond words. I could hardly breath. Let's just say, you know your losing your mind when part of you trys to convince the rest that the sound of your fathers snoring could in fact be a tape recording they created to make me believe they are both asleep, while they argued over you. Now i never truely believed this, but because it was within the realm of possibility, i could never go back to my room and deduct that the voices had to be in my head, one part of me would always be saying it could be a recording, they are all against you, they are trying to decieve you, the bastards, while they carve up your future!

yes, i believe i know what insanity feels like.

Anyway, my overridding point is this, i don't believe i experienced ego death on mushrooms in the sense of losing my own identity, quite the opposite, i think i was more in touch with who i essentially was than ever before. I had been operating under personas and had a host of other psychological problems that masked who i was. Psilocybin revealed who i was in vivid colours, i discovered that beneath all my problems i was much more mature, intelligent, calm, friendly, kind, loving etc...than i ever realised.

Most importantly of all, i realised that once i finally put this plethora of problems to rest, i can focus my mind outwards, focus on my position in the rest of the world, and try and improve it within my own guidelines. I realised resolution is what is required to direct my focus and abilities outwards

 

[slippy sleeveen]

Interesting points Dancan. I have A LOT I want to say about this but sadly I have classes I need to attend so I'll post more later...

Also I was thinking in the shower that we go through different ego crises, given the substance. Such as on disassociatives people tend to go through a more egocentric crisis where as on something like mushrooms, mescaline or 2C-E one goes through the opposite.... just a thought... sorry, i'll expand on this later.

I'm glad someone had a similar experience as mine on 2C-E.... it was a pretty lonely, dark place that it took me....

 

[Xorkoth]

Man, I could talk about this forever. I, too, am very glad to hear of others arriving at the same place as me with 2C-E. Did you also experience 2C-E as pure, relentless logic? For me, the hardest part was that my logical mind was telling me that what I was experiencing was so logically sound that I could not possibly deny it. It was like I was waking up further every second from the delusion that had been my life, to realize that, oh, that's right, I didn't exist at all. My mind recoiled continually in horror, trying to deny, only to be coldly refuted. I felt sure that if I gave in, I'd be swept away forever, never to experience "myself" again. Visions of my brain-dead husk of a body sitting there drooling for the rest of its natural life... hey, it's certainly happened to epople before, whatever the cause was.

Another thing that fascinates me about it was the immense level of structure and the sense that everything led up to that point in time. Destiny in other words.

 

[Dancan]

Please don't tell me you believe in destiny! I've never used 2C-E, but if it makes you feel you were ordained to experience what you did, then your dellusional. Everything that has ever happened is happening one of a nigh infinite number of ways, that number is growing all the time as matter keeps bouncing off each other and shaping the future. The reality is that everything that is and has been could have occured so very differently, even the smallest actions have a massive shaping effect in the long run. The future is therefore uncertain, we do not know how matter will effect itself, other matter and so forth. We can only roughly estimate certain aspects of what the future might hold based on inference from the past and present. We cannot predict what will happen with any degree of certainty, we defintely can't predict exactly when it will happen.

The future is uncertain, however, it is certain that it will only unfold one way, out of a possibility of nigh infinite ways. I implore you to consider this, consider the extent to which we can shape our own futures, and consider all that has never, and potentially will never occur.

 

[Ximot]

I believe there is a reason for everything. With sufficient understanding (and yes, our understanding is limited... hence the trouble...) we can definitely shape our own future, or at the very least, significantly take part in shaping it. We can achieve this through our own feelings, thoughts, and actions. I know it sounds new-agey-blah-blah, but that's what I truly believe. (sorry for thread-hijacking, my ego just felt like sharing this )

 

[psilocybe]

Basically, how can YOU experience ego death

Mineaswell take a stab at this.

As we're journeying towards the Truth in holotropic states, there comes a point when it's time to die and be re-born. A time when the old concepts just finally are outdated and the situation has reached a point where it's time to transcend to a higher realm of existence.

This requires a death of our old VERY STRONG believes of ourselves and our strong beliefs of what reality is.

The death of these very ingrained beliefs is so intense that it actually feels like the subject is approaching true biological death. It really feels like the biological demise is approaching. But this is only because our current concepts of reality are so ingrained and strong that when we start to lose them, it feels as big of a crisis as death.

The actual moment of EGO DEATH. Your guess is as good as mine, for I have not been there- Hopefully soon, but who knows. From what I've gathered it seems to entail a complete and merciless destruction of all reference points and complete annahalation on all imaginable levels.

Physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and even spiritual damnation. Obviously the resistances to experiencing EGO DEATH are huge and I do not beleive it can be done without a trip sitter.

The experience of EGO death, again from what i've read, seems to be a subjective sense of an impending explosion, an imminant loss of consciousness (black-out), true biological death, or even the destruction of the world. Once the person surrenders 100% and lets' it happen...

That's what we call healing- The death of the old concept of ones self and the world, leads way to Transcendence and a new way of the subject viewing themselves and thier world.

As far as the actual seconds of pure annahalation and death... Perhaps the person actually does not exist... they have a blackout, their memory is gone. One thing is for sure. They really, do NOT exist for those seconds of surrender

 

[Dancan]

Hey that's the best explanation yet! It also serves to highlight how unsure we all are about what ego death is, as many people have suggested different aspects to it. Which serves to highlight what a complex and subjective experience it really is.

I think your bang on the money when you say to transfer to higher realm of existence we often have to reject our previous opinion of who we were and often what reality itself is.

BUT, i managed to do this with psilocybin WITHOUT experienceing ego death. I realised the reality of who i was had been tainted by my problems, and my self-image became far more positive, and i was confident i had really found myself this time. I also realised i had been viewing everything beyond myself too negatively and again, the same profound realisation infact...

My mental state had been tainting my reality for a very long time, if i could truely acheive resolution on all my problems, this reality would change considerably for the better, and provide a more accurate suggestion of the truth. We cannot ever really know what the truth is, there could always be factors beyond our comprehension that could disprove what we believe, if only we knew them. We can only aspire to find as accurate a representation of the truth as possible, and to do this, it is CRITICAL that we overcome our mental problems, be they latent or active.

Consider that, i think i'm speaking wisdom here...But then i don't know that, there could be factors beyond my comprehension i haven't even considered, maybe you will be the one to suggest them.

 

[Xorkoth]

Please don't tell me you believe in destiny!

I never said I believed in destiny

I believe what I was seeing was the deconstruction of our "slice" of reality, so to speak. As humans, we are positioned in a particular, infinitely thin slice, or point, of reality (as well as time and whatever other dimensions exist beyond), much like a 2-dimensional creation would be stuck in one slice of the third dimension (to borrow from Flatland). As this slice of reality deconstructed, I was able to see all of its component parts, and I literally saw how everything, every tiny little aspect, had led up to exactly what was happening. If you think about it, of course that's true. I mean, that's not destiny, that's just reality. Everything that was happening did lead up to what I was experiencing, simply because I ended up experiencing it, rather than not experiencing it. I COULD have not experienced it, but I chose to, so I did, and reality as a result of this DID lead up to the event. It definitely raises questions about the nature of our reality, especially since more people than I have seemed to experience on 2C-E a sort of "expanded point of time" which you seem to be able to see into other, similar but different slices of reality, as in, seeing into the realm of possibility or probability.

I definitely don't believe I was ordained to have the experience, nor did I mean to suggest it.

 

[Dancan]

ah ok, but remember that it is impossible to predict the extreme number of events that have led to you using a certain drug. It's just baffling, you take one incident that's occured anywhere in the universe, and if you could break it down into every single incident before it that led to it happening you could write an essay that could potentially go on forever...after all, it bring to mind the age old question, has time existed forever? Just imagine if you could go back and back from any event, the web of events leading to that one would get ever larger, the furthur back you go. It's just mind blowing...so much in life is decided by pure timing, and the timing is decided by soooo many factors...by all matter, and it's interaction.

 

[Xorkoth]

It would be impossible to predict, since the variable are literally infinite. Not necessarily impossible to see, though.

2C-E seems to ask the question of whether or not we are capable of switching tracks, so to speak, or that we are not, perhaps, stuck in this one reality but that it is malleable to some extent. I'm not going to try to venture a guess, but it definitely makes me wonder.

 

[psilocybe]

Hey that's the best explanation yet! It also serves to highlight how unsure we all are about what ego death is, as many people have suggested different aspects to it. Which serves to highlight what a complex and subjective experience it really is.

I think your bang on the money when you say to transfer to higher realm of existence we often have to reject our previous opinion of who we were and often what reality itself is.

BUT, i managed to do this with psilocybin WITHOUT experienceing ego death. I realised the reality of who i was had been tainted by my problems, and my self-image became far more positive, and i was confident i had really found myself this time. I also realised i had been viewing everything beyond myself too negatively and again, the same profound realisation infact...

My mental state had been tainting my reality for a very long time, if i could truely acheive resolution on all my problems, this reality would change considerably for the better, and provide a more accurate suggestion of the truth. We cannot ever really know what the truth is, there could always be factors beyond our comprehension that could disprove what we believe, if only we knew them. We can only aspire to find as accurate a representation of the truth as possible, and to do this, it is CRITICAL that we overcome our mental problems, be they latent or active.

Consider that, i think i'm speaking wisdom here...But then i don't know that, there could be factors beyond my comprehension i haven't even considered, maybe you will be the one to suggest them.

Are you currently active in Psychedelic Psychotherapy (psilocybin)?

During systematic exploration using psychedelics and intense introspection theres bound to be many ego deaths through the process. I've been through a few myself, but they were so small - still alarming- but nothing earth shattering. As the process deepens, and long held beliefs start to get torn away and destroyed... That's when the Ego-deaths start to pack much more punch. The more intense the ego-death, the more intense the liberation afterwards.

It's interesting that you've found a "good place" mentally from what I've read without going through an ego death. I too found a nice place myself- but I made the mistake of not being satisfied. So I kept going -- and I lost that oasis of cosmic unity, to a mental world that I would much like to escape through death. Definitely be careful with continued tripping... Falling from a spiritual oasis into deep - confusing - and emotionally agonizing territory is no fun at all. Although neccessary to "know yourself" and undo the "brainwashing" to find your true self

As you say, it is critical to overcome the mental "noise" thats in the way blocking the pure spiritual energy.

This topic is important to me because my sessions have been leading up to an ego-death. I'm scared shitless of it, but I must die- there is really no other option now. I dug myself in a grave too deep- I travelled too far with psychedelic psychotherapy. I was too niave to the possible pain of un-integrated trips, and difficulties along the way. Now there's no turning back.

 

[novumorganum]

Ego death is a terminology borrowed from mystic/hermetic traditions.
I can't give a full description of the Eastern take, but in the Western mystery/hermetic tradition it refers to a state often called "crossing the abyss". This is a state where everything one thinks oneself to be, every achievment, personality trait, sense of self one has acquired is stripped away, is seen to be nothing more than a socail construct layered over the self. Eventually, even the concept of self is questioned and discarded. This can be a very painful or frightening experience, which is why it is also termed "dark night of the soul". The ultimate realization would be that the thing we have always carried around and believed to be "ourselves" really isn't...it's just a construct of environment, genetics, society, education etc etc. One is left in a state of pure being, just existence without any sense of what one previously thought it to be.