LosTresOjos said:

  Also, i don't understand people taking 2-4 grams as their limit. It feels like a waste to me. There is soo much potential to high doses. You can transverse the stars.

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MrCraggles said:

My experience of infinity and endlessness feels like it shoots out in all directions forever and it's like I'm rolling around in endless oceans of colour and of endless reality in endless dimensions of space and time.

And with it is a feeling of total comfort. Like everything is going to be ok. Like the endless, colourful reality is wrapping me in a baby blanket and reassuring me. And with this is also such joy that I'm alternating between saying 'OMG it's just so, so beautiful!' and laughing hysterically with a giddy excitement. And there's so much clarity. Like it all makes sense. And there's such a feeling of life-affirmation and of love for everyone and everything.

But I'm totally aware of my surroundings at the same time, and aware of who I am. I'm able to hold conversations on these high doses and articulate complex responses when asked questions.

So surely that isn't ego death? Because people at the start of this thread said there is no 'I' and there is definitely always an 'I' with me. I know who I am and I know my identity.

It feels like the definition changes from person to person.

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MrCraggles said:

Do you think it's the frequency of my tripping that prevents me from experiencing ego death, or all of the crazy stuff you mention; aliens etc? Because I trip once every 1-2 weeks. I waited two weeks before I took 7 grams penis envy because I wanted to make sure my tolerance was down. But I've been tripping with this frequency for eight months. Even if I have some tolerance I know with certainty that most people wouldn't be able to handle the depth of tripping that I'm experiencing...so I'm tripping very strongly still.

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I've tripped full on for multiple days a week both while writing and while doing research into the alteration of physics (at different times of year).  My experience is that it doesn't depend on frequency, only effective dose.  If anything you may not be doing it often enough.  I know that sounds heretical (in a heretical subject anyway) and gets a lot of people aggravated (for no good reason) so I'll explain more before they just bust out a knee jerk reply.

When you take a long time off from tripping ego mind accretes layers much like an onion, some sort of insulation or something.  Both meditation and tripping allow you to peel this onion down to get to the core mind, AKA original consciousness, AKA many other names.  The "magic" of a good trip is this sort of successive realization that there's something in the core that you didn't actually construct, as the layers blow off.  A lot of people apparently are attached to that sort of tripping, but it's not really where it's at, if you want to go deeper.

By upping the dose for consecutive days (about 50% each time, like 4, 6, 9, 13 gms...) I get the same level of experience.  Tolerance peaks around 200g fresh weight for me, but it doesn't increase past that.  So if I have massive amounts grown, and prepared as tea, I can keep on tripping daily almost indefinitely.  There's a minor downside that when you finally stop you'll experience a flatted affect for a couple days but it passes rapidly enough and you return to normal baselines just like after tripping every 2 weeks or whatever.

The key though is that every day then you can go back in and work on whatever you're working on, without have to drill through the ego shell to do it - because it doesn't have time to regrow.  That's when the really cool stuff happens.

Of course you have to be your own guide if you do this.  But the experience of going directly to the original consciousness and skipping all the dancing about part in a normal "magical" type trip is something I can't recommend highly enough.

Obviously your life situation has to support this kind of approach so it surely isn't for everybody.  But since everything can be changed you can work towards establishing the freedom to do it if you're so inclined.  I fell into it partially by accident (experimentation) but since I'm self employed it was easy enough to make it happen for real.  And the benefits were substantial once I got past all the societal conditioning that says this kind of thing can't possibly be right.  That conditioning is bullshit in the end - your human birthright includes the necessary mental apparatus to set yourself free from your conditioning.  Uhm, just like the Buddha said. 

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Eventually reality broke down and I was dipping into moments of just visual input and I had lost myself completely. I didn't exist for brief moments. It was just blank...with visual hallucinations...patterns etc. But I didn't feel like I had connected to some great consciousness or feel like I had become everything in the universe or anything.

And I always seem to experience infinity. Like I'm part of something that is endless. Infinity seems to be a massive part of the high dose mushroom trip for me.

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Thanks for the kind words MrCraggles

What you describe there does sound pretty much like ego death to me. You've got the heavy ego dissolution, for sure, and what you describe as 'infinity' I imagine is the the same thing people describe as 'oneness' or 'universal consciousness'. Maybe it doesn't give you the same feeling of deep significance, but it's obviously something meaningful to you.



When people say "I experienced ego death" I assume what they usually mean is that they experienced heavy ego dissolution at the peak of the trip and had some kind of experience of "oneness" or "infinity" or whatever, and it felt very meaningful or spiritual to them and they use the term 'ego death' as a quick way of trying to convey an experience which is difficult to describe.

Also people use it to refer to ego dissolution in general, or they are talking about the ultimate goal of a spiritual journey when your ego permanently 'dies' and you become some kind of buddha and head off into the mountains of Tibet, or they are talking in the buddhist sense of the ultimate state of mind aimed for during meditation. With the buddhist origins of this idea, to some extent the concept of ego death is a kind of perfect ideal; if you are hunting for a perfect state of nirvana in the middle of a trip you are unlikely to reach it; I think you have to be satisfied with a meaningful glimpse.

I suppose Bill had a point earlier when he complains that ego death is too broad a term. By the time you've got to page 7 of a thread about it, it would be simpler for people just to try and explain their own trips in their own words rather than everyone having to second-guess what other people mean when they talk about ego death.



In your own trips I think a difference to some of my experiences is that you are able to 'surrender' to the experience without too much difficulty, so it has less of the kind of harsh vibe that makes you feel as though you are under assault by God, aliens and so on. There's no reason why your trips should be the same as mine; when discussing this kind of thing, at best you are likely to go away thinking "well my trips aren't exactly like what that person is talking about, but I think I know what they mean and I've experienced something along the same lines."

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On the high mushroom doses I take I never, ever have feelings like I'm in a matrix, or that aliens are involved, or any of the other stuff you mentioned. Even when I'm tripping heavily I'm still very much aware of reality and I actually feel great clarity.... I know with certainty that most people wouldn't be able to handle the depth of tripping that I'm experiencing...so I'm tripping very strongly still.

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I was just trying to get a better sense of what was actually happening in your trips, which you expanded on in the bit I quoted earlier. Forgetting the topic of ego death for a minute, it doesn't often get mentioned but what I usually find with high dose trips is that there is a delusional mood that creeps up on me. Visually, the presence of glyphs or indistinct letters appearing the walls is usually a sign that the trip is strengthening, and white walls often shift towards a yellowy-green colour.

The hallmark of these delusions is the 'sudden revelation' that creeps up on you. Some crazy theory about reality materializes out of nowhere, or you have a gradually building sense of religious awe even though you started the trip as an athiest, or you find yourself thinking "of course.. all this time... it was the aliens!" It's a form of clarity.. the clarity of someone who is going slightly insane.



This can be quite amusing because to some extent you are aware that you are delusional, and it just makes the whole trip feel more magical and exciting. Now imagine the trip is still building in intensity, and you are reaching the point where the trip is so overwhelming that you get a feeling of absolute doom. This can take the form of whatever delusions were building earlier - you are going to die and face the wrath of God, or there is some kind of monstrous alien power about to break through. I have a trip journal somewhere that describe this moment as facing "a writhing inferno of fluorescent death" within my CEV.

Once you've given up and jumped, or been pushed, into this maelstrom and 'lose yourself' for a short period, you can imagine the surprise if the trip suddenly shifts into some totally unexpected state of serene infinity / transcendence / oneness or whatever else we are calling it. When you wake up again you are extremely fucking high, and perhaps this escalating mania is what rubs off on the sense of infinity and makes it seem so profoundly meaningful.

And now you are still delusional, you can't stop thinking, your thoughts expand in concentric rings of madness but it feels like you are unlocking the secrets of the universe and becoming God, or you've seen beyond death, or you are submitting to the alien apocalypse. Depending on what day it is. It's a very cheerful high, a kind of ferocious, exhausting euphoria where everything is totally amazing and you can't stop thinking for long enough to realize how insane you are until later in the trip when you calm down and start to think "Maybe I'm not God. Maybe all this is because of the MASSIVE FUCKING DOSE OF HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS I took earlier". And now you have a backwards 'sudden realization' of just how insane you have been for the last couple of hours.



That's what I mean when I talk about that stuff - for me, heavy doses seem to involve a fair amount of insanity. I prefer to trip regularly at a level slightly below this, where the trip is decently strong but I don't have to "die" and I can stay lucid, with enough delusions creeping in to make the trip interesting without getting completely lost in the madness. Something that feels fun and creative where I can write stories in my trip journal.

Also I would point out that none of the really crazy stuff is a particularly visual phenomenon for me with shrooms, I don't mean to make it sound like a DMT trip - I can see perfecting well that I'm still sat in bed, it's more of a visionary trance where I'm zoned out and deeply absorbed in the interior world of the trip, interpreting the abstract CEV in a way that fits in with the theme of the trip.

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Do you think it's the frequency of my tripping that prevents me from experiencing ego death, or all of the crazy stuff you mention

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Possibly the frequency of the trips dulls the 'magic' and makes the headspace into something much more routine and familiar, but I don't think actual physical tolerance after a couple of weeks would be too much of a factor. Psychologically, I suspect if you took a break and came back, the doses you are taking would seem a lot heavier than they do now when you take them on a regular basis, just because you are retaining that familiarity with the headspace.

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I'm interested in your idea of splitting the dose in two and waiting an hour before taking the second half. It could certainly help my stomach. My only issue there is that I'd spend less time in the intense headspace

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Anyway I'm not actively chasing ego death anymore but it does interest me. If it happens it happens. I get so much out of these high doses that I'm really very happy with them anyway.

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I'll try to describe the trajectory of a strong trip the way I often experience them:

Let's say the trip has reached the cosy stage where there is a kind of alphabet soup within the walls and the room has taken on a subtle shape-shifting glow. Instead of leveling out, there is a pressure building-up within the trip, the feeling that this is going to be a big one. A bad one. Waves of nausea and hallucination and dread.



Elaborate scenarios and apocalyptic visions play out within your mind as you lose control of your thoughts. The open-eye visuals feel like staring out into raw madness, the closed-eye visuals form a horrifying kaleidoscopic abyss into which you are being drawn. You no longer care about the visuals. You are not seeing the visuals, they are invading your consciousness and taking over. Your existence seems to be coming to an end. You are going to die. This is a total fucking nightmare, but maybe you enjoy it in a twisted kind of way?

The paranoid delusions are escalating. If it's not the aliens again  it's the wrath of God. There is a feeling of overwhelming power, that the trip represents a manifestation of something unimaginably ancient and potent. The feeling of dread grows, or perhaps a grim knowledge descends that the way to get through the trip is to surrender. To die. You forgot the trip could be like this.

Vicious thought loops ensnare you as your ability to snap back to reality fades. In a web of elaborate delusions, the entire universe is being dragged down into an apocalypse at the center of your mind. You can barely stand the intensity. You panic, or perhaps you fade out knowing that there is no point fighting the intensity.

Supressing an unpleasant sensation of vertigo, you drop into the fractal whirlpools of light that are cascading across your inner vision. It's a feeling as though you can't stay awake, but it is not sleep you are entering, it's the writhing cauldron of your CEV which are pounding away at your sense of reality, at your sense of self.

You drown within the trip - the trip is there but you are not. The conscious mind sleeps. The unconscious mind overflows into its own warped forms of consciousness. The trip becomes everything. The trip is everything. There is a sense of raw infinity, of filling the skies, of spanning galaxies, of aeons of time compressed into a singularity. The trip surges through the void in the emptiness of your mind and draws itself onward.



You gradually come back to a waking state, filled with this wonderful sense of release, of power, of having the universe inside your mind. The mania escalates. You are completely insane. Thoughts and visions drum through your consciousness like torrential rain.

You don't get the sense that you are continuing a trip. You get the sense that you have spent your entire life asleep and have just woken up to reality. That you are returning from the dead. That beyond death lies a return to a true reality where everything exists within the mind. Your life has been some kind of elaborate game. You have been here before. You have been everyone before. You have died many times. You are God.

Or perhaps you come back with visions of silent spacecraft filled with the dead, gliding through infinite darkness in a dead universe. Visions of being returned to consciousness billions of years in the future by a mysterious alien civilization. Of a universe that recycles itself endlessly. Of dimensions opening up inside your mind.

You lose yourself in reveries and return to your senses at intervals.

You are God. You have the power to create worlds, but there is no need. Everything is as it should be. As the trip calms down, it occurs to you that you are still really, really fucking high. You grin to yourself. The delusions unwind and you let them go.  You laugh. You dance. You have done this before and you do not take it too seriously.

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MrCraggles said:

Do you think it's the frequency of my tripping that prevents me from experiencing ego death, or all of the crazy stuff you mention; aliens etc? Because I trip once every 1-2 weeks.

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MrCraggles said:

It feels like the definition changes from person to person.

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Bill_Oreilly said:

IMO ego death doesn't exist. It's way too broad of a word. I never seen myself die, but I felt like I killed myself when I shot 4-aco-dmt

I just think people are shooting for this asoect that doesn't actually come with the psychedelic experience. For instance, a dmt breakthrough is a real thing. If you smoke enough of it, you will feel as if you ripped your mind and that you brokenthrough something real

But with ego death...there is just no way to achieve it unless you interpret an intense trip as that. Ego death isn't built in the psychedelic experience.

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MrCraggles wrote: My experience of infinity and endlessness feels like it shoots out in all directions forever and it's like I'm rolling around in endless oceans of colour and of endless reality in endless dimensions of space and time.

And with it is a feeling of total comfort. Like everything is going to be ok. Like the endless, colourful reality is wrapping me in a baby blanket and reassuring me. And with this is also such joy that I'm alternating between saying 'OMG it's just so, so beautiful!' and laughing hysterically with a giddy excitement. And there's so much clarity. Like it all makes sense. And there's such a feeling of life-affirmation and of love for everyone and everything.

But I'm totally aware of my surroundings at the same time, and aware of who I am. I'm able to hold conversations on these high doses and articulate complex responses when asked questions.

So surely that isn't ego death? Because people at the start of this thread said there is no 'I' and there is definitely always an 'I' with me. I know who I am and I know my identity.

It feels like the definition changes from person to person.

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I wrote something about this already but I just realized it was actually in a different thread:

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25774353#25774353

I think the process of ego dissolution acts like a catalyst for this state of 'oneness' or 'infinity'. People sometimes talk as though they are aiming specifically for the state of 'non-being' itself, but the main reason to want to get to this point would be to achieve this oceanic state of wellbeing and infinity and so on, rather than to experience oblivion for the sake of it.

I think the simple reason you can have awareness of yourself in the state of 'infinity' you describe, is that although it might begin in a state of 'no ego', the feelings of bliss, infinity and oneness continue once you have 'come back' to your senses and make the rest of the trip very pleasurable. If there is a 'point' to ego death it would be to reach the kind of state you describe. If you simply wanted to experience a 'complete dissolution of the ego', being whacked around the head with a baseball bat would do the trick.



So... I would argue that 'ego death' is really about the kind of wonderment you describe, and that the process of ego dissolution in the peak of a strong trip is a means for getting there.

In the brief period between the ego dissolution and the return to your senses, yes in theory there should be some grandiose state of perfect nirvana and non-being, but I think this is basically the emergence of the state you are describing, experienced during the ego dissolution itself.

For sure, descriptions of ego death change from person to person, and it's quite easy to contradict yourself if you attempt to explain it. One reason I like to comment in these threads in so much detail is to try and de-mystify the concept a little bit (also it's a way of thinking through my own ideas on the subject). Leary named his small book on the subject "The Psychedelic Experience" which gives you a clue that he was talking about something fairly fundamental to the psychedelic experience, not something totally 'out there'.



One problem with the whole idea of ego death is that it is to some extent an ideal within the buddhist tradition itself - you are never going to reach a pure state of nirvana in a trip because you are not actually becoming a buddha.

Possibly you might have other trips in the future that seem to fit other people's descriptions of ego death better, or feel more profound, but I wouldn't waste too much time overthinking it. My own descriptions are obviously colored by my own personal experiences; yours are going to be different. There is such a variety and depth to the psychedelic experience that it seems a waste of time to fixate too much on the exact definition of ego death.

I find the concept of ego death interesting to discuss partly because it's such a fiendishly difficult idea to pin down. Although it's a useful shorthand to describe something ineffable, I think the term ultimately ends up creating more confusion than it dispels. Either you knew what it meant already or you get an explanation which is so  cryptic that it leaves you none the wiser...

A good rule is to never resort to using the term 'ego death' unless someone else has already brought up the subject in the thread.....

To be, or not to be, that is the question....

MrCraggles said:

There are wayyyyy too many contradictions and logical discrepancies in this thread and I'm unsure some of the people know what they're talking about...

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MrCraggles said:

It's just difficult for me to understand why so many are saying 'there is no I' during ego death and that 'you're not there to experience it. You have completely dissolved' and then simultaneously telling me that forgetting who you are isn't a part of it.

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Simply because that's from the outside looking in and you're way overthinking it.  It's impossible to "understand" it in any rational way - it's an experience not an idea. 

And oh yeah, seeing letters as visuals is common, though often they are glyphs (Aztec/Mayan) or Sanskrit characters.  All of these things have deep representations in the human visual system.

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I honestly never go anywhere! I never lose myself not even briefly

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I'm incredibly satisfied and happy with the headspaces I go to when I take high doses of mushrooms. They're just magnificent.

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Well that's the important thing. I think a lot of people would be very happy to be able to take high doses and have these kind of very positive experiences without too much anxiety. One drawback of the classic 'ego death' trip is that it can sometimes be absolutely terrifying, and the positivity only comes rushing in at the peak after a very difficult ordeal. If you can cut straight to the positive vibes without "experiencing your own death" first then to a lot of people it would sound immensely preferable!

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It's just difficult for me to understand why so many are saying 'there is no I' during ego death and that 'you're not there to experience it. You have completely dissolved' and then simultaneously telling me that forgetting who you are isn't a part of it.

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I would try to explain it by saying that there is a more fundamental level of consciousness than the one that produces your sense of self - the self that relates to reality along the lines that you are a person with a body, a life, a personality, an identity, a history, hopes and dreams, an internal 'voice' narrating your thoughts.

You can obliterate this sense of self, the 'I' that experiences your life, with a strong dose of psychedelics - but instead of just blacking out there is a background sense of infinity, peace and wellbeing which fills your consciousness. A feeling of vastness inside your mind, as though you have expanded into infinity or infinity has expanded into you.

So although 'you' might not be there experiencing this, another part of your conscious mind is still active (unlike, say, during deep sleep), and when 'you' come back the feelings of oneness and infinity dissipate only slowly which enables you to experience them in a more normal state of consciousness and think 'wow!" A way of thinking about this is that it can feel as though parts of the brain which are normally unconscious, become available to consciousness during the process of ego dissolution.



Due to the very nature of the state in which the "ego-less"  part of the trip occurs, anything you say about it can only be an attempt to express something ineffable, as Primal says. It's a sort of raw conscious experience.

When you come back to your senses (fairly quickly in my own experiences, as though your mind is a rebooting Windows computer that has noticed its BIOS for the first time and now starts to think that Windows is not its fundamental level of programming) you get a 'Holy Shit!' feeling of general amazement, but from this point on the feelings of the trip, the vibes of positivity and the continuing sense of bliss, infinity and so on, would be very similar to how you have described your own trips.

So even if you don't experience the 'ego dissolution' of ego death you are still ending up in a very similar headspace where you are able to experience the related feelings of infinity and so on. Ego dissolution itself can be compared to sleeping and waking; I wouldn't make too much of this process itself beyond its ability to reveal a level of consciousness beyond the usual one; the source of all the feelings of infinity and so on.

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And confused by people saying to me you can get full ego death from 3g, and saying it isn't dose dependent.

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There are wayyyyy too many contradictions and logical discrepancies in this thread

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I think buddhist ideas do often have a character of being subtle to the point of apparent contradiction; I think part of the idea is to fuck with your mind and really get you to think!

Also.... if you ask people on the internet to explain quasi-mystical experiences that occurred during the peak of heavy trips on psychedelics, you can expect the responses to be somewhat vague, nonsensical or contradictory. There is precious little sense or logic to go around when you are being obliterated by a high dose of mushrooms.

I do think there is something genuinely fascinating going on during these kind of trips, and the whole concept of ego death is interesting, but I don't personally subscribe to 'ego death' as a helpful way of describing a trip. The whole concept of 'ego' is problematic even before you start trying to kill it, and although I have gained a lot of appreciation for some of the Buddhist ideas related to all this, I don't really belong to that tradition (and maybe Buddhists would say psychedelics don't belong in the Buddhist tradition anyway).

It's too easy to get caught up in 'word games' when discussing all this, which ultimately leads you away from the goal of appreciating and enjoying your own trips. Like a shroom trip itself, trying to find terms to describe bizarre states of mind is itself a kind of mindfuck.

It's fun to have these discussions; I try to engage positively with what people are saying and take different points of view on board, but you have to take all these ideas (my ideas, your ideas, other people's ideas) with a 'pinch of salt' and not take anything too literally or too seriously. Overthinking psychedelics is rarely helpful.

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I'm extremely satisfied with my personal journey and I'll continue to update in this thread as I continue to increase the dose. I guess I was wanting to feel that sense of becoming the universe and not existing as me. That 'oneness' sounds quite different to 'infinity'. I'll let you know if it happens as I increase the doses and meditate etc.

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Yeah.. I'm sure you will get to experience further adventures as you continue to trip. You might well get a trip which feels like a real breakthrough into a whole new level of tripping, but it won't fit the template of 'ego death' described here, it will be a personal revelation and it won't have a name, it will be something you experience for yourself in your own way.

I think the only limit to tripping is when you reach states that are so insane that taking more either seems like a bad idea or simply redundant and unnecessary, or when the trip is so dissociative that it feels like there was a party in your head which you missed, and you want to trip again at a lower dose to actually take part in it in a meaningful way.... when you reach the point at which 'less is more' or the idea of taking more seems terrifying. When the comeup is a ferocious onslaught of supernatural horror, the peak is oblivion and the comedown is a God-like state of revelation and euphoria. When all you want is a cup of tea and a good book and for the insanity to calm down...

Until then..... the journey continues, deeper and deeper into the mind.....

Aldebaran said:

Yeah.. I'm sure you will get to experience further adventures as you continue to trip. You might well get a trip which feels like a real breakthrough into a whole new level of tripping, but it won't fit the template of 'ego death' described here, it will be a personal revelation and it won't have a name, it will be something you experience for yourself in your own way.

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this

But whatever happens - or seems to happen - remember to enjoy the trip! 

PrimalSoup said:

Aldebaran said:

Yeah.. I'm sure you will get to experience further adventures as you continue to trip. You might well get a trip which feels like a real breakthrough into a whole new level of tripping, but it won't fit the template of 'ego death' described here, it will be a personal revelation and it won't have a name, it will be something you experience for yourself in your own way.

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this

But whatever happens - or seems to happen - remember to enjoy the trip! 

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