What is Ego-death ???

[jj]

Crysalis.

Study the biology of the butterfly.

Caterpillars do not become butterflies.

The caterpillar is like the tadpole's tail, a food storage sack that stuffs itself, a sleeping bag, a changing room. Useful.

Caterpillars look like worms, but they are not worms. Worms will never fly, and neither will caterpillars, but there is a difference between caterpillars and worms.

It's hard to accept, but it's true.

Empty, cracked crysalis, hanging from dead wood.

Just a sneak preview.

Did Chuang Tse dream he was a butterfly, or did a butterfly dream he was Chuang Tse?

 

[Rymmen]

Man, this thread turned into a shit fight of terminology pretty darn quick.
Anyone noticing a pattern between this and anything else pertinent to our studies of consciousness??
Ill leave it to you.

I told you man, it's all about the language and what people take as implied by the words. 'Tis fucked.

 

[jj]

Ok, here's an interesting thing.

If I may call it my docetic ego death experience, I'd say this about it:

The dose was not especially large. I've had much larger doses that didn't produce nearly as profound an experience.

It was two hits of blotter. This was back when they were stronger than the average blotters of today, but it was just a decent dose. I walked and talked fine for over 12 hrs. until I settled into a chair and let myself drift into a visionary trance that was quite amazing.

It included many things including a point where it seemed to me that if I merged with a light I might lose individual identity or cease to exist. I thought about it and went for it. I went through transformations of consciousness including its location, but I certainly didn't die.

So, it was because of that moment that I consider my experience to be within the class called "ego death" experiences.

I see that some people's experiences are very different from mine. I also see other people here who define ego death in terms that resonate with my experience. I have described mine very briefly. Much took place.

After that, I was trying to get back to that sort of place with larger doses. I got plenty of dramatic effects, but not at all the same.

Reminds me of that Zeppelin song, Kashmir.

That was a pretty outstanding trip. However, something I've noticed is that these days I take for granted the sorts of things that would have amazed me back then. That was not my first trip, but it was a huge breakthrough.

 

[BrainEater]

hey i had a similar feeling yesterday jj.

i had stopped smokin weed for like 5 days until yesterday and smoked some weed and i became really high. then when i went to bed i had hallucinations and the feeling that you sometimes have before you trip and then i don't know the stuff with light that surrounds you ... it was crazy :shock:

 

[nicosimone]

you guys are all amazing. it is truly wonderful to know that other people experience these things in their own personal way. this thread, and the loving, apologetic, non-agressive ways in which opinions are posted are all testament to the reality of the topic being discussed. thanks for being a part of 'we'.

 

[Bastiaan]

the immutable one in oneself is all that remains

Beautifully described


To me, I think it's realizing and coming so very aware of the fact there's a part in all of us that connects with eachother.
The part that is actually just one consciousness (wich can only be there if you realize it's there, if only we could always!), the positive energy that connects us and has brought forth everything in ultimate greatness.
It makes you respect it and love it so very much.
It makes you realize that the material world that we value so much today (I think it's fear and denial) is actually totally completely worthless, read an illusion, in the light of the complete liberation and enlightenment of the spirit.
It dissolves all the blockings that were made by our lies, fear and paranoia and living like this together, uncovering the truth, something far far away of the collective average reality, strangely being something that can only be experienced.
That's why any descriptions of it can never make one even get close to realizing what it is and that's why everyone has a somewhat different description of it I suppose.

 

[druglessdouglas]

Man, this thread turned into a shit fight of terminology pretty darn quick.
Anyone noticing a pattern between this and anything else pertinent to our studies of consciousness??
Ill leave
it to you.

ironic that people argue about ego death EGO DEATH IS WHEN YOU STOP THINKING IN WORDS and all that implys. the ego is the internal dialogue. Castanedas parrot in the tree. The I ilusion. thereality construct we retroengineer to quell our cognitive dissonance because I am not who i would thinki am .you and i know were bullshitting ourselves, but try not to. thats what being a psychonaut is all about. the problem is we know the answers allready, but need reminders- aya lsd sillysimon MEDITATION, whatever, cutting through the bullshit. if you can argue about ego loss you dont know what it mean.MY DEFINITION OF EGO LOSS IS THIS:



















?




















































.
THATS EGO LOSS

 

[Maru]

the ego is the internal dialogue

Recently discovered that theses are independant 'tools'. Ego may be active while internal dialogue which I call 'mental' can be disabled. Ego take care about fear and desires, mental is a good slave of ego. The opposite is true, beeing a ego in a head without beeing able to think is quite disturbiing !

 

[Subtle_Nod]

I think I will join the conversation here.

After reading through the ~6 pages there are definitely some legitimate questions I would like to answer, some questions I believe need further discussion and some things I subjects on which I can't offer anything at all.

What is "Ego"?

• First and foremost, it is a sound, nothing more than a construct of language. It does not exist, except in the thoughts we have about it.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• It is created by our languages and our own views about ourselves.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• When we have an experience, we say "I experienced X". Eventually, we only ever talk about ourselves in this way and I becomes a barrier in our minds, separating ourselves from ourself.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• After talking about "Ego" for long enough, people start mistaking this language construct, this word, for themselves. They stop seeing Ego as a word describing the way the experience and relate to external events and start seeing the "Ego" as themselves.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]

The Ego can't DIE because it comes back

I think that because the Ego is just an idea people have, to stop having that idea is the actual death of the Ego as much as an idea can die.

Of course, new ideas are always being born and reborn, every time we think them.

There is a period when we are unable to think of Ego in any sense, during this time, it is dead. As it is just an idea, once we are able to think it again, it is reborn.

I would like to think that as infants, when we had not had the idea of Ego yet, we are left with something almost exactly the same as when we experience Ego death.

During Ego death, I experienced...

I find this could almost be paradoxical. If your Ego was dead or even sleeping and if your Ego was your true self, you could not experience anything without it.

As it stands, even people with a sleeping Ego can still experience life without it. I think this goes some way to acknowledging that the Ego is something we construct and is not ourselves, but merely a way we think of ourselves.

What then is Ego?

As best as the language I use allows me to describe it and as much as the meanings I have for words overlap with those who will read this, I would describe it as:

• What we think we are.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• How we think we relate to the things around us.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• In our own minds the Ego is how we have constructed an image of what we truly are but this image is but a cartoon - we do not think deeply on each vein, each cell, each enzyme or each muscle, only those which need further manipulation - this leads us to think of the parts we don't control as slightly separate.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]
• It is how we think of ourselves to separate us from the things around us: some good examples here are "I came into this world", although I understand this to be a cultural thing as well, it is quite clearly wrong: We did not come into this world, we came out of it because we are as much a part of it as anything else, just like my arm roughly comes out of my shoulder and is part of me, I came out of this world and we are the same.[/*:m:1c4mj5g8]

*-*-*-*

I understand not everything I said can apply to everyone, I also understand that as I grow and my understanding of things change, my opinions here will likely change.

I gather then that the things I think and understand are not me, even though 100% of my experiences are things I have thought or felt and could most likely be considered "Ego".

Also, this was quite lengthy. More than I meant it to be.

 

[druglessdouglas]

sobtle nod. amen, thats what i was trying to illustrate.thats why i said EGO LOSS :thumbsup:

 

[zezt]

HI

I saw this the other day. it is a VERY powerful real life story. he explains 'ego' really well.....Anyway, please see it ...

 

[tryptonaut]

ironic that people argue about ego death EGO DEATH IS WHEN YOU STOP THINKING IN WORDS and all that implys

Man, that is some fucking good explanation! Although some might still argue if this is enough to call "ego-death", but I think you come very close to it with just that one statement. Very good! 8)

 

[buffachino]

Ego seems to be the symbolic barrier placed between one and their experiences.
Only for one to realise that they are experience.
We are an experience.

Self is the definition of experience.
Yet all experience is essentially the same.

Just as a word is the symbology of its meaning, it is only the symbol which defines it as individual, only the manner of delineation which pertains entity, just as our vindication of experience defines the self.

Symbols are the filters for will, although all symbols are essentially the same, because they represent the same meaning; the essence of will, of awareness.

We are as beings, the fulfilment of concomitant processes, cryptograms of information that all, no matter their perceptual differentiation, signify a ubiquitous mean.

 

[Oracle]

We are all a part of an epic series of events.

 

[Subtle_Nod]

We are all a part of an epic series of events.

I can't really be sure of this.

Most religions would have you believe that the consequences of this life are the most important factors into whatever happens afterwards. Outside of religion, we can prove what happens and discover the rules that act on things and the patterns that are likely to be true, but we cannot prove that it is serious. That it matters at all.

 

[st.bot.32]

Ego seems to be the symbolic barrier placed between one and their experiences.

I tend to see ego as that which builds at least partially from accumulated experiences. As ego becomes a barrier or filter between experience and the self, it becomes part of the experience itself. Causing it to build on itself. Hence it is self-reinforcing.

 

[Forkbender]

Well put, st.bot.32, very well.

I finally can see how you could see the ego as a movement, a willful act out of fear or hate or pain, but a movement nevertheless that can be stopped by turning it on itself.

 

[buffachino]

The self substantiating criterion of experiential accretion.
An existential nexus; a self reflective arbiter.
A cryptogram of one.

(may as well throw a few more terms out there.)

 

[mutant]

Forkbender, man you really hate ago, right ?

 

[Psychoid]

Couldn't ego "death" occur at the moment most of your sensory perceptions are hallucinutions, so much that there is more hallucination than reality? Then the more you up the dose, the deeper you go in the trance and the more you hallucinate, experiencing an even stronger ego "death". A complete ego death would then be acheived when you perceive absolutely no external stimuli, and are left for only perceptions... the hallucinations.