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Natures medicine
Stranger


Registered: 02/01/15
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Last seen: 8 years, 10 months
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Obe vs ego death
#21210686 - 02/01/15 11:51 AM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
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Hey guys,
I have recently been interested in psychedelics after my 3 year break from all substances. I have realized that I have done them for all the wrong reasons, and have been thinking about all of my different experiences I had. I remember going into a trance like state while listening to my favorite trance music, and had a white gentle light envelope my senses. I don't remember having a single thought or when this happened. Can any of you guys relate to this experience?
What is the difference between ego death, and obe? What did I experience if it wasn't one of these?
Thanks!
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Aldebaran
Psilo-Scribe



Registered: 11/26/09
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Quote:
I remember going into a trance like state while listening to my favorite trance music, and had a white gentle light envelope my senses. I don't remember having a single thought or when this happened. Can any of you guys relate to this experience?
Sounds like a "meditative trance experienced while tripping" leading towards ego loss. Or something like that.
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What is the difference between ego death, and obe?
The classic out-of-body-experience I would take to mean the kind of thing that people report where "I was floating on the ceiling looking down at myself on the operating table". In the context of a trip I would guess it's something more common from DMT or salvia than from shrooms. It really depends how you define it (I'll leave that to someone who has had one).
With shrooms you can get all sorts of weird experiences where your consciousness seems to be slipping off the physical plain entirely, or there are multiple realities that you seem to be occupying, or you are journeying "beyond", but I wouldn't really call any of this an "out of body experience" as such. It seems more like journeying inside the mind, and forgetting about the body, not being "outside" the body as such.

As for ego death, there is a problem with the terms "ego death" (and "ego loss") because people use them in different ways and argue about what it means. It can be used to refer to a type of transcendent mystical or "enlightened" state that might be reached calmly through meditation or moderate doses of psychedelics. It can also be used to describe the kind of pulverizingly intense trip (with high levels of dissociation) that is so extreme that your awareness of self systematically disintegrates to the point of being barely conscious of anything.
Then there is the classic death/rebirth kind of experience where "ego death" refers to a psychologically violent trip where you feel as though you are dying, then you think you are actually dead (existing in some kind of limbo/afterlife) then you "come back." You can get all 3 things happening in the same trip, so that you end up in this kind of mystical, transcendent headspace via different routes.
As an analogy, I think of "ego loss" to refer to a calm walk up the mountain where you survey the world in a mystical state of ecstatic oneness. I'd use the term "ego death" for when you do the same thing after clambering out of the wreckage of a trip which has plunged burning from the sky into the side of the same mountain.
I think the key idea about "ego death" is that it's not some kind of complete blackout, it's something transcendent that takes place when your core sense of self (your internal train of thought, your sense of being a particular person) is obliterated within the trip and replaced by something else. From a couple of other posts I made on this topic:
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The experience of 'ego death' is not just about having your sense of self obliterated, it's the 'realization' that your day-to-day self is a small part of something much larger, something that feels like an underlying reality, an afterlife, something of immense significance. So you are tuning out of channel "me" and tuning into, becoming aware of .... something else. It's a bit like spending your entire life inside a room and realizing that there is an outside, or plugging yourself into the matrix. "Consciousness expansion" if you like. Your point of view is shifting away from yourself, as you realize that consciousness goes beyond (transcends) anything you would normally think of as "myself."
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There seems to be a core of consciousness that can survive anything. You are heading into an oblivion that is something conscious and alive, and you get the sense that although you might die, there is a world beyond death where your consciousness will be transformed and combined into something greater, something unfathomably powerful, the true engine of creation at the heart of the multiverse. And it's this realisation, or something like it, which hits you as you go under, not as a verbal construction but as something you directly experience at a very deep level below the everyday thoughts which have shut down on you.
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What did I experience if it wasn't one of these?
A trip? Sometimes it's more helpful to just describe trips in your own words rather than give the experiences a particular label.
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Natures medicine
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Re: Obe vs ego death [Re: Aldebaran]
#21211516 - 02/01/15 03:18 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
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Well now I know the difference between the two terms. Thanks!  I have thought I was dying on two difference Robo trips. I felt like I couldn't breath, and my vision was going white as well. I did everything I could to fight it, and stay awake. It was pretty terrifying, and the only bad trips that I have ever had. Maybe I would have had a loss of ego then....
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Astral Pain
Strange

Registered: 11/10/14
Posts: 2,923
Loc: Chicago
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I can see how an obe can be confusing and quite alarming for someone who is not familiar with them, or even more so to someone who is in total disbelief or denial of the possibility of one. The latter of the two would most definitely think they have died or are dying.
I have had obe's but I was aware of what was happening because I was studying and practicing to do it at the time of my first one, and I was not confused as to what was happening. This would be an ego loss vs. a confirmation of duality. My ego was intact and all I was observing was the fact that I was still conscious of my ego while being out of my physical body.
I think people think they are dying during an ego loss from a shroom trip is due to the unfamiliar objective perspective they find themselves in. It's like the notion of seeing your life flash before your eyes.
It's from this perspective that would give someone the impression they are dying. When you're so comfortable in the ego you have created and find yourself stripped naked and away from it's warmth, this is a horrific feeling for many people. It's fear of the unknown, and nobody knows for sure what life after death is really like.
Feeling like you dying from a robo trip is totally different. You may well have been dying if you were having severe respiratory problems.
-------------------- "I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out" -Bill Hicks-
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Natures medicine
Stranger


Registered: 02/01/15
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It's been many years since I had those experiences. I am pretty sure it was just an over exaggerated panic attack with pain in the chest, and shortness of breath. I thought my fading vision was me dying. I have read a lot of reports on this site about not fighting the light, and just going with it. Seems a lot easier said than done based on the different feelings, and emotions you feel.
I wonder what would have happened if I just went along with it...
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qweqaz
Break-through


Registered: 01/10/14
Posts: 447
Loc: Sweden
Last seen: 5 years, 1 month
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OBE = Egodeath with awareness of your true self. Mushroom egodeath = You go beyond and change into something unknown to you.. DMT egodeath = beyond OBE
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