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OfflineAldebaran
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: allseeingike] * 1
    #19111234 - 11/09/13 05:17 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

allseeinglike wrote: Ego death in my opinion is when you

- forget who you are

- forget what you are

- forget you are

- die

- realize that you never existed and you are nothing more than a thought or a point of view eternally floating through and endless void and creating the universe out of boredom




That sounds like what I understand by an "ego death" trip.

I did make the effort to read through both Timothy Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience" and the Tibetan Book of the Dead which it is based on. Neither are particularly easy to get your head around, but the basic idea is that Leary is saying that the Tibetans' descriptions of the mental states at the time of death are comparable to mental states that occur during the psychedelic experience.

For example, this is quoted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, explaining the "Intermediate State of Reality"

Quote:

It is during this third phase that the bewildering apparations, which are the result of past actions, emerge....

"Alas now, as the intermediate state of reality arises before me, renouncing the merest thought of awe, terror or fear, I will recognize all that arises to be awareness, manifesting naturally of itself. Knowing such [sounds, lights and rays] to be visionary phenomena of the intermediate state, at this moment, having reached this critical point, I must not fear the assembly of peaceful and wrathful deities, which manifest naturally."




What the Tibetan's say about navigating the states after death is actually fairly useful advice about how to handle a heavy trip. Part of their understanding is that all the things produced by the mind during these states are illusory, and that whatever weirdness is conjured up is just visionary phenomena. They constantly try and advise the dying person to be aware that they are experiencing an illusory state, and to let themselves be liberated by sinking into the mind's natural state of "pristine cognition" (or various other terms for the kind of ultimate state of mind that will allow the dead person to reach nirvana and 'get off the wheel' of death and rebirth).

Quote:

At this moment, abandon your fear, and recognize the red light, bright and dazzling, radiant and clear, to be pristine cognition. Let your awareness relax and abide directly within it, resting in a state of non-actuality




This "state of non-actuality" would be the ideal state that people try and achieve through meditation, a state of perfect awareness of the ultimate nature of mind, without any thoughts related to the self. To the Tibetans, being able to achieve this state of consciousness during the time between dying and being reborn (when all this weird illusory shit is happening) was critical for achieving "nirvana" and a release from the cycle of death and rebirth. In effect, it's about as close as the Buddhist's seem to get to the idea of going to heaven.

This is all getting to sound a bit airy fairy, but it's close to the idea mentioned earlier that was given earlier as an explanation of ego death: 

Quote:

allseeinglike wrote: - realize that you never existed and you are nothing more than a thought or a point of view eternally floating through and endless void and creating the universe out of boredom




The Buddhist idea is that once you achieve the full realization of this emptiness, there is no longer the attachment to the pain and grind of daily life, there is an end to suffering because the mind is freed from the limits of the self, of the body, of attachments to things and people.

:feelsshroomyman:

As for an actual trip, for me the classic ego-death experience is where something approaching this state of transcendence is reached (perhaps briefly and incompletely). The effects of the drug are sufficiently strong to pulverize your awareness of self to the point where you almost seem to be flitting in and out of existence. The trip is experienced in a detached way where it just flows through the emptiness of your mind, almost as though you are no longer around to experience it, but the brain is still aware and consciousness continues beyond the cessation of your internal train of thought. The self is submerged but the trip continues.

There is a gradual shift of awareness from the me / myself / I perspective to the underlying flow of the trip, something oceanic, as though you are now part of the universe itself. There is a feeling of release, of transcendence. As someone mentioned at the beginning of the thread:

Quote:

mutantmushroom wrote: Ego death is like eternal bliss and oneness with the universe.




At this point you are about as close as you are going to get to the buddhist ideal of transcendence, a state of "non-actuality" or "pristine cognition" or whatever. The contrast between this feeling of rapture, release, revelation, transcendence, compared to the absolute meat grinder of a trip that may have brought you here, is astonishing.

There is a feeling of 'coming back', the feelings of oneness and transcendence remain but there are more and more thoughts, and an attempt to understand and categorize what has happened.

As Leary describes:

Quote:

The first ecstasy usually ends with a momentary flashback to the ego condition. This return can be happy or sad, loving or suspicious, fearful or courageous, depending on the personality, the preparation, and the setting.
This flashback to the ego-game is accompanied by a concern with identity. "Who am I now? Am I dead or not dead? What is happening?" You cannot determine. You see the surroundings and your companions as you had been used to seeing them before. There is a penetrating sensitivity. But you are on a different level. Your ego grasp is not quite as sure as it was.




I find that a decent dose often produces a feeling at this point that I have in fact died and that the trip is the continuation of life beyond death. Someone mentioned above:

Quote:

rikuni wrote: You die!, its for real!, you will be scared!




Maybe that was a joke, but the trip can feel that way. A journey into death and beyond death.

Somewhere in my notes on all this stuff I wrote down a few points of what the experience boils down to:

1) Collapse of self
2) Awareness of pure mind (not the self) as true form of reality
3) Shift to a universal perspective (oneness, oceanic feeling)
4) Bliss, release from suffering
5) Journey into death and beyond
Feeling of RAPTURE, REVELATION, TRANSCENDENCE

And if that's too complicated, I think the underlying thing is the theme of death. It's a death trip where you part company with yourself and journey beyond death. It's the realization that the conscious awareness you have of "yourself" is only a small part of what is going on in your brain, and the vertigo and rapture produced when your sense of self slips away and is replaced by another awareness underlying it, something that seems to be the size of the sun in comparison. It's not the loss of self that is important here, it's what it reveals by its absence.

Quote:


When you understand that you are dead.
When you believe that you are dead.
When you believe that you are God.
Then you took too many drugs




:trippinbawelz:


--------------------
I wrote that, but I meant something else


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OfflineChiefKeef
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Aldebaran]
    #19114025 - 11/10/13 09:58 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Thank you so much


--------------------
I now understand what the meaning of the band "The Doors" mean... Opening the doors of reality




my dad used to be a doorman or something i don’t know
but when children would hang on doors he would say “Don’t play with the doors, Jim Morrison played with the doors and he’s dead.”
and parents would lose their shit.


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InvisibleBill_Oreilly
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Registered: 11/12/11
Posts: 26,370
Loc: Boston
Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: ChiefKeef]
    #19114036 - 11/10/13 10:01 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

So if we are nothing how can we be a point of view floating through the universe, aldebaran33, ithat sounds like something to me


--------------------
Something there is mysteriously formed,
Existing before Heaven and Earth,
Silent, still, standing alone, unchanging,
All-pervading, unfailing,
I do not know its name; I call it tao.
If forced to give it a name, I call it
Great (ta). Being great, it flows out;
Flowing out means far-reaching;
Being far-reaching, it is said to return.


It's just a shot away..


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OfflineYogi1
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: ChiefKeef]
    #19114047 - 11/10/13 10:02 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I am sorry to inform you that upon realising emptiness and accepting it I wasn't freed from the daily grind because I have to survive, and the mere fact that this forces me in to work that is not all that beneficial to mankind is a new source of suffering.


--------------------


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OfflineAldebaran
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Bill_Oreilly] * 1
    #19117311 - 11/10/13 09:10 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

So if we are nothing how can we be a point of view floating through the universe, aldebaran33, ithat sounds like something to me




Good point. :peace:

The Tibetans' talk about 3 different stages of "inner radiance" (also referred to as the "clear light"). Not all of them are a state of nothingness / emptiness. I didn't particularly try and distinguish between them because the subject is pretty complicated already. Also I'd forgotten some of this stuff since I read the book. Anyway, here goes:

Quote:

From the Glossary to the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' Sometimes also translated as 'clear light'...'inner radiance' refers in the context of the perfection stage of meditation to the sublest level of mind, i.e the fundamental, essential nature of all our cognitive events. Though ever present within all sentient beings, this inner radiance becomes manifest only when the gross mind has ceased to function. Such a dissolution is experienced by ordinary beings,, naturally, at the time of death, but it can also be experientially cultivated through the practices of unsurpassed yogatantra.




1)The first of these 3 stages is the "inner radiance of the ground" (primary inner radiance):

Quote:

The essence of your own conscious awareness is emptiness. Yet, this is not a vacuous or nihilistic emptiness; this, your very own conscious awareness, is unimpededly radiant, brilliant and vibrant.




Another interesting statement is that

Quote:

Ordinary people describe this state as 'loss of consciousness'




2) The secondary inner radiance is the "inner radiance of the ground"

Quote:

consciousness achieves an instant of clarity, even though the deceased may not know whether or not they are dead.




The glossary at the back of the book explains that this secondary inner radiance consists of an awareness of the primary inner radiance, which is the 'ultimate nature of mind'. Combining the two states is the way to achieve buddhahood; the 'ultimate state of mind' on its own may not be accompanied by an awareness of its nature; the secondary inner radiance allows some level of reflection and understanding of the first.

3) The tertiary inner radiance (intermediate state of reality) is where the famous 'peaceful and wrathful deities' appear.

Quote:

The pure luminous apparitions of reality itself, will arise: subtle and clear, radiant and dazzling, naturally bright and awesome, shimmering like a mirage on a plain in summer. Do not fear them! Do not be terrified! Do not be awed! They are the natural luminosities of your own actual reality. Therefore recognize them as they are...

You will be overwhelmed by fear, by awe and by terror at the sight of all the blood-drinking deities; and you will faint. Those visionary appearances, which are natural manifestations of actual reality, will seem to have become demons, and you will continue to roam in cyclic existence.




:dragon:

The point I am trying to make is that there is a graduation from a fairly hardcore state of emptiness / non-conceptual awareness (which is sought during some types of meditation), down through a level of clarity that allows some understanding of this state, and further down into visionary states, luminous apparations and so on. The whole point of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is to cultivate a thorough understanding of all this stuff during life, so that when these states occur during death the person is able to recognize what is happening. "Recognition and liberation will occur simultaneously." Once these states are realized to be something to be embraced rather than resisted, the dying person can achieve buddhahood and be freed from 'cyclic existence' (i.e they won't be reborn into another life of suffering). They won't have to work on Maggies' farm no more :wink:

Personally I wouldn't get too hung up on the concept of whether ego death is something or nothing, experience or non-experience, consciousness or unconsciousness. Even if the primary inner radiance is supposed to be something close to unconsciousness, it is only one of the three states we are talking about. Unless you are experienced in meditation (I'm not), it's unlikely you would spend long in this state anyway. To me, it seems clear that they cannot be talking about a complete state of blackout, otherwise we would all be drinking cheap vodka instead of using psychedelics in order to achieve ego death. The term "inner radiance" sounds to me to be the opposite of "blackout". Ego death is not about waking up in a ditch with no memory of how you got there, or taking such a huge quantity of drugs that you become totally unconscious of anything. What's the point of that?

It's also worth remembering that the Tibetan Book of the Dead is based on a very "esoteric" version of Buddhism, which is a polite way of saying that it contains a lot of mad stuff. Reading out passages of the book to dead people. Trying to extract energies through their head. Blood-drinking deities. It's not something to be taken completely literally, even by most buddhists. If parts of it seem inconsistent, confusing, contradictory or improbable, that's because they are.

What is interesting about the book, and about Leary's interpretation of it in relation to psychedelics, is the concept of the "intermediate state" and its relation to the nature of mind. The Tibetans' believed that there is an intermediate state at the time of death (intermediate between death and rebirth) in the same way that dreams are an intermediate state between wakefulness and deep sleep.

Whatever the psychedelic experience is, it does seem to be a kind of "intermediate state" somewhere between waking, dreaming, sleeping. The Tibetan's description of the contents of the mind as being essentially illusory is also highly applicable to a trip. Experiencing "luminosities" which are manifestations of your own "actual reality". The constant warnings not to be fooled by the illusions of the intermediate state. The instruction to not fear the visions but to embrace them as manifestations of your own mind, the recognition that reality itself is in some way a creation of your own mind. All very trippy stuff, which Leary obviously realized.

:feelsshroomyman:

If anyone is still reading, I'd like to forget all the buddhist stuff and go back to trying to describe an actual trip. My previous post was maybe a bit too theoretical in terms of trying to describe an ego death trip. Actual trips are messy and weird, they don't conform neatly to any high-flying concepts of transcendence. It's also difficult to fully recall what happens.

I was thinking about this, and trying to remember what made some of my trips so revelatory. It wasn't the drifting out of consciousness so much or losing the sense of self, that just seems to be a part of tripping hard. It was partly the sensation that I was actually dying. The core thing, when I think about it carefully, is that the suppression of the sense of self, the state of tripping hard and becoming dissociated to the point of feeling barely connected to reality, of drifting into death, allowed a very powerful dawning awareness that my entire existence had been illusory.

I do wonder if this initial flash of "insight" is partly what the Tibetans' were on about. If I had to sum up their message in modern terms, they almost seem to be saying that we are living in some kind of virtual reality which we need to wake up from.

There was something massive and all-encompassing present in the trip, and I began to identify more with this entity than as a self, or a person with a life. It was as if my previous existence was just a fragment of a new whole. The feeling of becoming everyone and everything, of being the universe itself. Of being Godlike. Waves of euphoria, rapture, a feeling of release, that there would be no need to return to my former existence, that all that is could just be accepted as it is, that from the point of view of the universe everything was perfect, creating something out of nothing for its own amusement, the unreality at the heart of everything. The experience of uncovering the mystery at the heart of reality. Complete revelation. Drowning in the turmoil of a heavy trip and coming back from a state of nothingness into this revelatory wonderland. The feeling of power in the universe, that reality is contained in the mind, that matter is a form of mind and not vice versa. A feeling that I had been dead for centuries and that this was my new existence, that I was no longer an individual but part of some fantastical machine that could create its own reality and exist within it. Mania. Euphoria. Madness. Life beyond death....


If anyone asks what kind of trip I mean when I talk about "ego death" - that is what I mean. You can argue about which part of that constitutes the actual "ego death" but for pure awesomeness I think it's the combination of tripping so hard that you seem to "die" within your trip, and sinking into an oblivion which then has this kind of revelatory experience as you come out of it.

My only caution is that I would say you don't come out of it with the clarity you experienced in the middle of the trip. Like the Tibetans, you are doomed to end up back in cyclic existence, mired in everyday life. As the trip continues, the nature of a psychedelic trip means that you over-think the whole thing and come up with elaborate nonsense that makes no sense when you think about it later. Like the Tibetans' advised, it is better to try and recognize that whatever the fuck is happening is part of how your mind functions, that the experience itself is largely illusory. Chill out. Experience the rapture as a new reality unfolds before your closed eyes, and smile.

:owl:


--------------------
I wrote that, but I meant something else


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Offlinethormaxim
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Aldebaran]
    #19117800 - 11/10/13 10:35 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Aldebaran said:
Quote:

My question is, the whole "I'm going to hell" mindset, is that the "ego death"?




It might be part of an ego death experience, I've certainly had trips which started out with that kind of feeling and then intensified into some kind of ego-death type trip. There is a quote by Stan Grof where he describes this kind of scenario:

Quote:

Sometimes, we not only experience the sense of personal annihilation, but also the destruction of the world as we know it.....we have a sense of all-pervading anxiety and impending catastrophe of enormous proportions. The impression of imminent doom can be very convincing and overwhelming. The predominant feeling is that we are losing all that we know and that we are. At the same time, we have no idea what is on the other side, or even if there is anything there at all. ....we experience total annihilation on all imaginable levels. It involves physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and even spiritual damnation. During this experience, all reference points, everything that is important and meaningful in our life, seems to be mercilessly destroyed.




Ego death is a complicated topic because it's based on Buddhist ideas which are not always easy to comprehend. In terms of an actual ego death trip, I think one characteristic is that the intensity of the trip gets to the point where there just isn't room for you to exist within the trip, as though the trip is sweeping everything away within your mind.

It's the feeling that if you 'let go' you won't exist anymore; imagine that instead of fighting to stay awake you are fighting to continue your existence. There is an abyss in the middle of the trip, and you feel that if you fall into it you won't come back. You are resisting your own death, and the trip can feel like hell.

The "ego death" itself is when you drop into this abyss and discover that there is something beyond it. You continue to exist as a form of awareness even without any real awareness of yourself. You might actually start to believe that you've reached the state beyond death. You gradually become more aware and return to something closer to normal, just tripping very hard. The moment of ego death can be a kind of ecstatic realization that your consciousness is not something individual that you needed to cling on to, but something oceanic that is part of the universe itself. All the details of your life seem trivial in comparison; for a moment your perspective shifts and you feel as though you have become the entire universe.

Or something like that, anyway....





This. A great description.


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OfflineEywa_devotee
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: thormaxim]
    #19117995 - 11/10/13 11:25 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Read my last trip report for an idea of what ego death is like. In short, you experience ego death, you cannot explain it. It is absolutely ineffable, and is the epitome of surrender, the great let go of everything. It isn't physical death, but might as well be.


--------------------
"Love one another." "To Love is to know me." "Love is the Law, Love under Will." "In Compassion, all sorrows end." Regardless of the Master, the message is the same- Choose love and you shall live, Choose Fear and you shall die. Help bring peace to this Earth: Love one another, and serve others before yourself.


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InvisibleBill_Oreilly
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Eywa_devotee]
    #19119234 - 11/11/13 06:50 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

aldebaran, thank you tons for sacrificing your time in order to help a fellow shroomerite understand a concept. Im going to get stoned and read your argument. im excited :grin:


--------------------
Something there is mysteriously formed,
Existing before Heaven and Earth,
Silent, still, standing alone, unchanging,
All-pervading, unfailing,
I do not know its name; I call it tao.
If forced to give it a name, I call it
Great (ta). Being great, it flows out;
Flowing out means far-reaching;
Being far-reaching, it is said to return.


It's just a shot away..


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OfflineAldebaran
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Eywa_devotee]
    #19119599 - 11/11/13 09:37 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Eywa_devotee wrote: Read my last trip report for an idea of what ego death is like.




OK, this is part of that trip report:

Quote:

Eywa_devotee wrote: After this revelation, i started tripping Balls. At once i was abruptly being sent, without warning, into DMT hyperspace as if i hit the pipe hard! It felt like I died over, and over, and over, again and again being tortured like Prometheus and somehow didn't care this torture was happening to me. I felt, in a word, DAMNED. Imprisoned, inside a prison without bars or walls, alone, helpless. Forever lost without even a hope of a possibility to ever be free from it. No release, no parole, or second chance ever, or ever again for me. Then I thought- So what if I am now dead, it's just this body, and the illusion of physical death that died with it. Quite a strange feeling of knowing you are dead and damned.

So be it- I OD'd due to the Syrian rue causing a serotonin crisis that blew out a vessel in my head. My God, i'm having a stroke! I can't move anymore, and my whole body feels numb. Not this way, what have I done to deserve this! Family, friends, everything GONE, no turning back I am dead. No, worse, I am in Hell! I saw beings that looked a lot like very colorful Chinese dragons. They kept telling me i'm having a stroke and am dying, just let go and accept your fate. I knew if i somehow survived, i would be a vegetable at best. I'd rather die completely, let go of my body, and simply cease to exist entirely than have this fate. I just let them devour me. During this, the heat was incredible. It felt like I was on fire being burned as if crucified upon a detonating atomic bomb, yet just didn't care what happened to me anymore. It felt as if i was watching it happen in a movie observing it, yet at the same time something inside was screaming in unspeakable agony. It finally stopped screaming.  No longer in my body, i noticed i was one of them, I am a Dragon, a very colorful, beautiful dragon. What else i saw, I cannot describe. It is as it is, all that is is so.




:dragon:

That's a very vivid description, I like it :thumbup:

It reminds me of a trip I had where I wrote:

Quote:

There are dragons in here, crawling their way up the insides of everything




Another thing you mention:

Quote:

Eywa_devotee wrote:It is absolutely ineffable, and is the epitome of surrender, the great let go of everything.




Yes, I think this concept of surrender is very important, I didn't mention that at all in my previous posts. Your trip report describes the experience of being damned, trapped in the trip, dying, with strange dragonlike beings. It's when you are able (or forced) to surrender to this that you experience this incredible feeling of letting go, almost of dying, of being devoured by the trip, but still retaining some level of awareness (or inner radiance or whatever) and then becoming part of the inferno that is destroying you - becoming one of the dragons.

Like I say, I think ego death is the transition between the kind of hell or dissolution you describe, and the kind of revelatory experience I was trying to describe earlier. From being devoured by dragons, to becoming the dragons.

There's a limit to what can be described, and just because I describe it one way doesn't mean that other people would necessarily see things in those terms, use the terms in exactly the same way, or experience an ego death trip in the same way. As you say, it's a rather ineffable experience, a good word to sum everything up.:peace:


--------------------
I wrote that, but I meant something else


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InvisibleGlobal_Roaming
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Aldebaran]
    #19123947 - 11/11/13 10:54 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

My own understanding of ego death is the loss of sense of self - who I am, what I am etc. Basically shedding all your history, memories etc and just existing as a stream of unsullied consciousness. Like the moment before birth but with a developed intellect.

The worst thing is partial-ego loss. I've had a DMT trip where I was stuck on the brink of breaking through - could feel my ego trying to detach itself and lost some elements of my ego but not the whole thing. Eg. I knew my girlfriend was laying in bed beside me, but couldn't remember who she was; couldn't figure out if my eyes were open or closed, lost my proprioception etc. That one was nasty.


--------------------
/peace out brothers and sisters
:aweyeah:


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OfflineGodfather1376
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Global_Roaming]
    #19124124 - 11/11/13 11:42 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

OP, the sad fact is that you can never fully describe a moment of ego-dissolution. There are many generalizations that happen. Before having a large experience of my own, I always would think introspectively about how everything isn't as it seems, how we as people aren't necessarily as we actually are. As a physics student (changing to chemistry:sad:, but it's still fun) I was well versed in information about quantum mechanics and such and I'd try to incorporate all of this into my experience. Trying to do this, I came upon many personal revelations, but nothing known as the general ego-dissolution.

Basically what brought such an experience for me was my first time tripping in the dark. I have a trip report on this in the forum. In short, using an 8th of shrooms and complete darkness, I had the most intense experience. During this, my entire sense of time and existence were dissolved. There was no difference between my eyes open or shut, and I was completely without thought or cares. Then I had a sudden flash of light, almost enlightening, then came back and opened my eyes,  coming down back to my bed. I could not explain what I had experienced, but after quite some research, I think it might have been an out-of-body experience.

The best description of ego-dissolution I can give is the simple disappearance of bodily/mental cares. Every judgement you have, every thing you see as reality is questioned by yourself, and the mind has to make sense of all the irrationality. In my opinion, this causes a "reset", reorganizing your perception (hopefully in a positive way) so that you can learn from your past ego, and generated a refined one.


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Offlinekneesocks
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: Yogi1]
    #19124128 - 11/11/13 11:44 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Yogi1 said:I always feared I would never return to reality, like I experienced the end of existence.


But with actual ego death, that fear isn't there. It doesn't even matter, because...


--------------------
"An ignorant man is lost, faithless, and filled with self-doubt;
A soul that harbors doubt has no joy, not in this world or the next."
-Bhagavad-gita 4:40


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Invisiblelessismore
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Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: kneesocks]
    #19124160 - 11/11/13 11:55 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

nothing can describe the state

except it will probably change your life, cant imagine coming back the same as before

if you are ready to be changed, take the red pill

changed more for me than 100 LSD trips, in one trip

it made me believe :-) before I was atheist for a few years, now I got a buddhistic/shamanistic/christian/hinduistic view on everything - funny how they can all be brought together somehow, they all fit the experience and the integration part to some degree

also all my problems vanished since the death


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Offlinekneesocks
Divineress
Female User Gallery


Registered: 12/25/11
Posts: 870
Loc: Puget Sound/PNW Flag
Last seen: 1 year, 10 months
Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: lessismore]
    #19124353 - 11/12/13 12:52 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

mio said:
it made me believe :-) before I was atheist for a few years, now I got a buddhistic/shamanistic/christian/hinduistic view on everything - funny how they can all be brought together somehow, they all fit the experience and the integration part to some degree

also all my problems vanished since the death



I just believe in nature. It's always been there, unlike 'holy books' or silly names given to benevolent heavenly deities.

And yay for you!


--------------------
"An ignorant man is lost, faithless, and filled with self-doubt;
A soul that harbors doubt has no joy, not in this world or the next."
-Bhagavad-gita 4:40


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OfflineLysergicX7
Lunatic
Male


Registered: 11/11/12
Posts: 1,206
Loc: Montana, USA
Last seen: 1 month, 17 days
Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: kneesocks]
    #19124367 - 11/12/13 12:57 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Straight from wikipedia. This is the most accurate defintion of ego death:

Ego death is an experience that makes known the illusory aspect of the ego, undergone by mystics, shamans, monks, psychonauts and other adepts of the mind.
The occultic practice of ego death as "mystical experience" variously overlap with, but is distinct from, traditions concerning Buddhist enlightenment and Nirvana (in Buddhism); Or, Moksha (in Hinduism and Jainism). These latter concepts are understood as transcendence of the notion of non-illusory ego with which to experience death.

edit: ill add another definition. Ego death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego.


--------------------
“Everybody is fundamentally, the ultimate reality. Not god in the political kingly sense, but god in the sense of being the self – the deep down basic whatever there is. And you’re all that… only you’re pretending you’re not.” -Alan Watts

I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.”
― Albert Hofmann


Edited by LysergicX7 (11/12/13 01:13 AM)


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Invisiblelessismore
Registered: 02/10/13
Posts: 6,268
Re: Can someone explain the "ego death" to me? [Re: kneesocks]
    #19125334 - 11/12/13 08:10 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

kneesocks said:
Quote:

mio said:
it made me believe :-) before I was atheist for a few years, now I got a buddhistic/shamanistic/christian/hinduistic view on everything - funny how they can all be brought together somehow, they all fit the experience and the integration part to some degree

also all my problems vanished since the death



I just believe in nature. It's always been there, unlike 'holy books' or silly names given to benevolent heavenly deities.

And yay for you!




Reconnect with nature, myself and everyone I meet

and the realization that there is more than matter to this reality
I dont read holy books, I just fell over it by "coincidence", they all have some value as stories

the buddhist story, the jesus story etc. :-)
they all have something in common which is the interesting part... and it was interesting they did fit my experience well

and often nature too, nature is sacred

its natural to be happy most of the time, else we must not be ourselves/living against ourselves somehow


Edited by lessismore (11/12/13 08:27 AM)


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