What is Ego-death ???

[Guest]

e·go /?igo?, ??go?/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ee-goh, eg-oh] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural e·gos.
1. the “I

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

the ego doesn't go to sleep.

During a psychedelic experience the ego is said to be dissolved, weakened, pushed to the background, silenced, whatever it may be, but as the experience comes to an end, it will become more active again. If it died, how can it become more active again? That's why I say psychedelics put the ego into a temporary slumber.

it thinks it is dying. therefore the pain.

Awareness fears it's own death, for it has identified itself so much with the mental constructs of the ego that it thinks the death of the ego equals its own death. But awareness never dies, even when ego boundaries are dissolved. In fact awareness is opened up to more dynamic, more colourful worlds.

you are the ego. you are not a watcher.

So when the ego dies, I am dead as well? Then why do I still observe so many things during and after ego-death? The only thing I have always been and always will be is the witness of this show. The witness of the workings of my ego, witness of worlds beyond the ego, witness of my own death, and possibly/likely a rebirth as well. The nature of my ego changes through the course of time, but the sense of observing is the only steady, unchangeable principle.

if you are a watcher, why would you take psychedelics ?

To watch things I can't see without the aid of the psychedelics. The psychedelics help strip away the non-self (what I consider the ego) so the self can bathe in its own light, to delight in its own essence, i.e. awareness.

I've often wondered about this. Especially because DMT is such a strong overwhelming experience, but I almost never seem to come close to ego loss. I almost always seem to have myself (my ego) somewhere in the background still watching the whole thing, aware.

See? Awareness never dies, because the self never dies. To equate the self and the ego is a mistake. Be glad you are an individual, having a unique point of view, for eternity! Be glad awareness never ceases! This is who you are: awareness of the here and now.

 

[Brugmansia]

See? Awareness never dies, because the self never dies. To equate the self and the ego is a mistake. Be glad you are an individual, having a unique point of view, for eternity! Be glad awareness never ceases! This is who you are: awareness of the here and now.

I agree, Caduceus. But the self (awareness too) can die with Ketamine (although temporarly), and after a complete non-memorable dark part the awareness is transformed to O_O ..,, ò_O _____________

and it resumes with a complete empty brand-new universe where a substitute form of awareness is about to be born. At this point, the gained self in life so far is not present. But the on set of a new awareness is a fact.

This is actually a tricky point with Ket if it's abused, because you, the awareness can get concurrence from another born awareness that's checking in, in your body.

One never loses his awareness of being present when having an ego death on psychedelics, but with Ketamine one can.

Appearently, the awareness can be ereased out of a human if an extreme amount of a solanaceae plant is ingested by a Shaman with an experience that's on the edge of the actual death.
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Bij de overgang van kind naar volwassene vindt een totale hersenspoeling plaats, waarbij de puber vergeet wie hij of zij voordien was. Zelfs de naam, de taal, de familie worden uitgewist in het geheugen en de puber moet helemaal opnieuw de dingen leren die voor een volwassene belangrijk zijn.

To me, this can be marked as a total elimination of the awareness, inherent to the self.

http://www.drugsinfo.net/uitjebol/doornappel.htm

 

[Rymmen]

I've never had ego-death on regular psychedelics. But disassociation is pretty much ensured ego-deaths at the highest doses, and none of the two have been painful for me.

I am indeed the observer. I construct my identity as I see fit.

Where the desire, will and sentience to construct comes from I do not know, and is my latest question =/

 

[Guest]

regarding ego-death/ego-sleep:

you are right on this point. the ego goes to sleep/is knocked out. ego-death is an exagerated expression.


but there is something strange (to me) about your post. you say that when you have an ego-death (let's continue to call it like this) you continue to be the observer ? how can this be ? when i reach that stage, my body is completely uncounscious and i am estranged into new realms of being. i am not able to open my eyes and watch things, mainly because in that case, i don't exist as a physical being. i wouldn't know what "eyes" mean, so i can't begin to imagine how you could be the watcher and feel good about it.

the self is not the individual. you are incarnated into an individual, but you are part of the self, that we also call "cosmos", or "universe", or "god" or even other words which we correlate with religion/transcendency/eternity. ego is masked as the self in our brains. it is indeed not the same, but they are not very different from each other, as the virus is not very different from the host, or the colour from the eye. they form a single, symbiotic system/being. we just feel comfortable saying it is different, because it justifies our use of forbidden substances at last case-scenario. ego death is the end of all those dualities; it is beyond it. it is the most fundamental, basic and unique dimension, like the illusion that we call "time". beyond any duality, and more than a unity.

awareness is caused by our senses. i belive that in ego-death all our senses are shut, that's the main part of the experience.
are you saying that in ego death, you are aware of the whole thing, watching, and hearing and toching stuff ? what's the big difference, let's say, from normal-everyday-way of being ? or from getting drunk, or smoking a big joint ? and the ego dies while you can possibily, from what i understand, finish a cross-word ?
this is far too strange, man. the ego dies, you feel dead. there's no way you can tell you are alive, let alone open your eyes. you don't even are capable of thinking or knowing where you are. this is what happens to me. full-blown ego death, massive OEV's, completely distorted without telling what is real or what is hallucinations/visuals.

 

[Rymmen]

It is not during the period of ego-death that you are allowed to do some metaprogramming, I've interpreted. It's more when you're ego is being reformed that you can pick and choose what you leave behind and what you take on.

My emotional response to real life situations changed a lot after ego death, and even my senses have been heightened through disconnecting what I would once classify visually (I am able to see the chair as it is, instead of just recognizing it as a 'chair', for instance... I see it's colors, form, feel its textures... I classify and see it at the same time).

Indeed, this could be just an anomaly. But another interpretation is that I have changed this and made myself more mindful.

Ego death is black-out, though.

 

[magickmumu]

If you have good intentions ego death can help you change youself.
Like Rymmen said psychedelics can help us be more mindfull.
Good intentions: set and setting however are needed to intergrate the experience. I find LSA a good substance for methaprogramming.
It don't give you the ego death experience, but it makes your ego games very clear.

 

[Oracle]

I'll have an attempt:

Ego death is the moment you notice that you are not the programs you usually run in everyday life, that you as awareness are somehow separate from the habits and character you normally expose.

By that description I have had an ego death on 2 caps of e. most comfortable happy thing ever.

My friend was a bummer though "no don't dance in the streets you'll look like a crackhead" to which I responded "I am a fucking crackhead". That guy needs to chill the fuck out.

 

[Klaatu]

Stand in front of a mirror, staring deeply into your own eyes.

Repeat your own name aloud and in your head. Ask "What am I? Who am I? What is 'I'?" and other such things. Think about metaphysics.

Repeat until "I" loses meaning. Zang. Probably everything else around you loses meaning, too. Perceiving things but not knowing what they are, not being aware of being.

That's what I think is ego death. It was a lot easier when I was ten. Controlling the way one perceives things in general is easier when you're a kid. I can't say I agree with some of the posts here, but it might be that the thing I described isn't "ego death" but something else.

Edit. I do understand the feeling of "being one with the universe" some people get. You turn into a hive minded creature, an ant, a wasp. There's no "I" in a termite mound.

 

[Goran.Hrsak]

When the sense of autonomy ceases and one becomes aware of the overarching higher principle that factually creates and controls everything, including one's thoughts, the ego has died. In psychedelic trance ego-death is not dark and painful, as one would expect of a death, but colourful and ecstatic.

I remember a couple of times when the term ego-death made me anxious during the onset of my trip, because it created an image in my mind of a discomfortable transition. But when it happens, it's invariably a comfortable experience, a complete letting go.

Psychedelic trance with ego death at the end is LIE! Psydelic trance is "western" declaration of hallucinogenic substances or mother nature gifts. If you want to experience ego death, first you must throw away psychedelic look on explanation how and why some substances are producing "abnormal", "experience and talking with nature but not in civilizations aspects-acceptableness of life scheme and interpretations". If you use Ayahuasca in way for example as just psychedelic, it will not provide you with experience of true ego-death and reading-understanding of gifts and what this "media" ego-death truly is! Not so many people can say that they have experienced true EGO-DEATH.

THIS DOESN'T HAVE ANY OFFENDING MEANING FROM ME TO YOU. I AM JUST BEGINNING WITH MY INTERPRETATIONS OF EGO-DEATH AND JOINING TO THIS TOPIC
8)

 

[maxfreakout]

ego death means to me, the transcendent ability of the human mind to reboot itself in the event of a crisis

it is most reliably triggered by psychedelic drugs, and it is the peak religious/mystical experience

the ego, feeling its precious boundaries dissolving, reports something like "i have died/gone insane/come to the end of time/end of the world etc etc" as a last desperate attempt to keep control

ego death is characterised by the suspension of ordinary egoic habits, and the consequent release of the radically autonomous, completely insane, furious imagination

 

[maxfreakout]

this website contains everything you need to know about ego death

www.egodeath.com

i interviewed the author of ego death theory which you can download here (about 60MBs):
http://media.libsyn.com/media/dopecast/ ... ica013.mp3

Ego is the controller homunculus. Above all, I perceive myself as a controller, a cybernetic steersman of my thoughts and actions. Normally, we feel ourselves to be free entities wielding the power of control. But in the mystic altered state, this ordinary sense of freedom and power is cancelled out. Our freedom expands into insanely unrestrained freedom, but this freedom no longer is perceived as being in my control. My loss of the feeling of being a controller is the loss of the ego's power: ego death. Rationality also keeps pace with the experience of suspension of ego's control.

In the intense mystic altered state, rationality combines with a radically freed and innovative imagination to form what transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber calls 'vision-logic' -- a powerful concept and powerful mode of cognitive processing. Vision-logic enables you to feel, comprehend, and see that the ego's power to control might not really be its own source, but rather, a result of a deeper level of control that entirely precedes your control. Not that this deeper control happens prior to your control along the time-axis, but rather, it thusts forth your control from a hidden place that is beyond your control. Ego death is not only a feeling of cancellation of ego's power-to-control, but a rational understanding of the way in which ego's control can never be powerful in the way we usually assume and feel.

These perceptions of feelings of the cancellation of the ego as a controller are integrated with the feeling of cosmic unity. This unity is largely the unity of controllership. Everything I think and do, and all the choices I make, do not ultimately originate from me, but rather originate from "the great Tao that flows everywhere", from "God's act of Creation", or from "the ground of being". If there is no separate me as controller, then there is just everything that is. Control there is, but no separate entity who controls.

 

[Guest]

what can you tell us about egodeath, GOD? perhaps we are missing something ?

 

[buffachino]

Ah yes, free will.
A will that choses its freedom by enslaving itself to its own machinations.

In actuality, we do not retain free will at all.
We only exercise the ability to abandon our will (our awareness, attention) to a systemic construct of perception that has projected limits and contradictions, enabling our minds to come to some arbitrary closure, giving the illusion that we are somewhat in charge of our existence.

Yet all we really do is relinquish the essence of our existence to our ego games, in order for them to play out to their congruent conclusions.
Basically, were all hitchhikers of our own minds.

Our characteristics, forms, order and so on are simply temporal mirages.
Dependant on the power of mind and will in order to exist, and we keep them as such.

A symbiosis of mind subject to matter that is itself subject to mind.

Ego death, is a falling away of these illusory constructs that we depend on to form the world to which we have become accustomed. As these recede, our unbidden will returns, an essence of such pure unrestrained awareness that it can be terrifying to some, and truly liberating to others.

In this we discover our true nature; the one mind.
The single thought that through a fractal coalescence of its own perception manifests a vast universe of enacted possibility.
A systemic rediscovery of our own incomprehensible nature.
A being entrapped within its own imagination.

Peace.

 

[jj]

I don't like the term ego death so much. First, it sounds morbid, but secondly, it seems false to me.

Ego is self awareness. Ego is "I am."

Now, we have so many constructed notions about what we are, and these are subject to destruction in the experience called ego death, but the awareness that "I am" is what survives when these things are shed like clothes and the reality that I am becomes nakedly clear.

To me, it is more a shedding of illusions than a dying. The ego is taught, re-educated, not destroyed. What I might have thought I was has died, but I have not. I am.

This is a great experience. I think it needs a better name.

I would be fine with the term "Docetic Ego Death." The c is pronounced k. Docetic means "seeming" or "apparent." It appears that the ego dies, but it really doesn't. Its immortal nature is revealed. To me, this is more a birth than a death.

 

[Goran.Hrsak]

I don't like the term ego death so much. First, it sounds morbid, but secondly, it seems false to me.

Ego is self awareness. Ego is "I am."

Now, we have so many constructed notions about what we are, and these are subject to destruction in the experience called ego death, but the awareness that "I am" is what survives when these things are shed like clothes and the reality that I am becomes nakedly clear.

To me, it is more a shedding of illusions than a dying. The ego is taught, re-educated, not destroyed. What I might have thought I was has died, but I have not. I am.

This is a great experience. I think it needs a better name.

I would be fine with the term "Docetic Ego Death." The c is pronounced k. Docetic means "seeming" or "apparent." It appears that the ego dies, but it really doesn't. Its immortal nature is revealed. To me, this is more a birth than a death.

YOU ARE SO WRONG MAN!!!
Ego-Death is in some way morbid declaration of perceptive existence where subjects wittingly merges with macro-essential aspects of life-being or what we call "divine". OK, Ego-Death can and should have name like ego-sweep, ego-dispersion, ego-all look merging but Death word gives you hard and effective description what is that kind of existence when person is in "Ego-Death".
JJ, you haven't (maybe) experienced true "hallucination"! Without that you can't experience "Ego-Death"! Everything what I heard as "Ego-Death" is only description of emptiness of I AM (ego) or ego's "tabula rasa" produced by drugs but you still have connection with yourself or with I AM in bout side link with this world or thoughts and perception of Earth! IT IS COMPLICATE FOR ME TO EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN ON ENGLISH!! ALSO ON MY OWN LANGUAGE!

JJ, I would like to hear yours description what is Ego-Death?

PEACE
LIGHT
BLESS

 

[poisoninthestain]

my definition of ego death is...


...to forget one's identity by leaving behind labels and definitions that would apply to that concept of selfhood(i apologize for all the words as i cannot describe it much better in any other way)...

also...

IMO ego death can be very painful or very pleasurable...often more painful than pleasurable. It's often incredibly hard to do(ego death) but ironically easy if you're honest and willing/couragous/brave.

Ego death can only help...never hurt.

E.D. can happen in layers(ego "dying") or all at once(ego "death").

usually most people only go through ego dying phases as opposed to ego death which happens once and only rarely happens in extreme circumstances(such as the classic cases of Indian "Yogis"[Nirsargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Ramesh Balsekar], Taoists, Buddhists, and all that sort of spiritual shit)

...yep.

 

[Goran.Hrsak]

True ego death is when you are not you any more! Something has wipe you out from existence. TABULA RASA! You are not aware any more that you are hallucinating. You live and record the hallucinations! You see worlds as they are in many ways.
Depends on which world you have gone.
Jeremy Narby in his book describes something bout ego-death but in ,ore suptile way.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Psychedelic trance with ego death at the end is LIE!

I didn't write "at the end". I'd say they are one and the same. The deeper the trance, the more your ego is going to dissolve. In that sense ego-death is experienced most intensely during the peak, i.e. the first hour(s) of the trip.

If you use Ayahuasca in way for example as just psychedelic, it will not provide you with experience of true ego-death and reading-understanding of gifts and what this "media" ego-death truly is!

What do you mean with "just psychedelic"? You probably don't like the word psychedelic for some reason. But to me the words psychedelic, hallucinogenic, entheogenic and mystical all mean the same thing. Ayahuasca doesn't need a different term than LSD for example. It's not that LSD is a psychedelic drug but Ayahuasca is an entheogenic sacrament. They are both a psychedelic drug and an entheogenic sacrament. Call them a trip or sacred medicine, it doesn't make much difference when you're peaking.

 

[Psychoid]

Ego-death is for me when one truly becomes himself, when all the external influences on your mind vanish, and you are left with you, and only YOU.

Hard for me to explain in english, I will add my explanation in french:

Pour moi, l'"ego-death", c'est quand l'on devient réellement nous-même. Tous notre bagage culturel, toutes nos valeurs qui nous proviennent de nos expérience dans la vie, tout facteur externe qui influence d'une manière ou une autre notre façon de penser et agir, est temporairement paralysé, souvent partiellement, mais probablement totalement dans le cas de dosages héroïques. Tout ce qui reste, c'est le vrai moi, celui qui depuis ta naissance n'a pas changé, l'immuable en soi. Cette partie de nous-même qui est normalement trop homogène avec le reste pour pouvoir entrer en contact avec. Bref, le MOI, pur et simple.

Bref, selon ma conception de l'égo, cette expérience ne devrais non pas être appelée la mort de l'égo, mais plutôt un mise en évidence de ce dernier, comme s'il s'élevait au dessus-du reste et captait toute l'attention.