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Aldebaran
Psilo-Scribe



Registered: 11/26/09
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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Korean Jesus] 1
#26376358 - 12/12/19 12:35 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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I did 5g and I didn't even get close. How much would one have to take to have absolutely no perception of self?
I've just been reading your trip report:
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I really felt my mind losing control to the mushrooms. I could no longer deduce if what I was hearing and sometimes seeing was real or imaginary and my brain started fighting extremely hard to retain control even as I tried to give in my brain wouldn’t let me.
At this point I felt the most amount of terror I have ever felt in my life... I had no idea how to handle it.
Finally my brain succumbed to the mushrooms. At this point I felt the best I’ve ever felt in my life. Not just happiness, but every amazing emotion was amplified x10. Really every manifestation of what could be considered a positive emotion or thought was incredible...
...I was euphoric because I cared about literally nothing. I could have died right there and I wouldn’t mind. I was fully convinced I was developing schizophrenia and didn’t even mind one bit. Truly a unique experience.
The sense of self-worth I had was unreal. Think of the biggest accomplishment you've ever had, double the feeling of self-satisfaction you felt after that, and imagine feeling it for a couple hours straight.
I think you are in same kind of 'zone' as ego death - in fact the feelings leading up to the peak, and after the peak, sound similar to what I would expect - extreme fear before the peak and extreme euphoria after the peak.
The critical phrase here is "Finally my brain succumbed to the mushrooms". It's at this point of the trip you might lose your sense of self, but don't expect this to last for very long.
The "loss of self" aspect is really a means to an end (after all, you lose your sense of self when you go to sleep or blackout). If you are "aiming at ego death" presumably what you mean is that you want to succumb to the mushrooms in a way which feels like a powerful mystical / transcendent / revelatory experience. The "loss of self" is really a way of "opening the door" to this - the door is not the point of the experience, it is what is on the other side.

I think it ultimately depends on whether the dose is sufficient to overwhelm your sense of self. If you haven't already surrendered to the trip when this happens, it can make you think you are dying, it feels like your consciousness is being snuffed out by the trip. If you have already 'surrendered' to the trip, it intensifies to the point where 'you' are not in the trip, it's just the trip by itself, if that makes any sense...
Like I said, this state of "no self" might not last very long at all. It's a kind of background state of consciousness that rises up to fill the void, like a deep bliss, where your consciousness seems to expand outwards into the universe at large and encompass everything. It's not really a visual experience, but I sometimes picture it as staring at a sky full of stars and experiencing that as a unified conscious entity. It's a bit like your consciousness has collapsed in on itself and then suddenly expanded out to the size of the galaxy, or been plugged into the matrix, or whatever it feels like to you.
You wake up into this weird headspace as though your personality has literally popped back into existence, and the trip continues along the lines you describe above - a feeling of great euphoria and positivity, that everything is OK at some fundamental level.
I guess the 'ego death' aspect adds a more mystical / transcendent / revelatory feel to the experience. It can feel like you died and experienced something beyond, that you encountered God or have become God, that you have uncovered amazing secrets of the universe and so on, discovered the matrix or the fundamental nature of reality, awoken for the first time... it takes a while to come down.
So... I wouldn't get too tied up in knots about the absence of self, it's more about experiencing something deeply profound, some deep encounter with a reality you did not suspect existed, that makes you go "fucking hell, what was that!"
Once you are sufficiently amazed by a trip, the "ego death" label is not so important, sometimes it seems to fit, sometimes it doesn't, you are the only one who can really gauge what counts as a really profound or fulfilling experience.
Maybe you could try nudging up the dose a bit towards 7g. Don't go overboard - you can obliterate your sense of self without the "transcendent" element of the trip if you take too much. You don't need to focus on ego death specifically; when I was tripping at high doses I just had the feeling that there was something more within my trips I was edging towards; I didn't have any particular idea of what it was.
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Aldebaran
Psilo-Scribe



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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: footpath]
#26376378 - 12/12/19 01:10 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Just because it's common to feel like you've dissipated, it's quite inane to consider that anything close to dying or losing a part of yourself.
I tend to think of 'ego death' purely in terms of being a psychedelic experience, a trip, not something where it happens and you literally claim to no longer have an ego. Maybe some people have that as a spiritual goal, but if someone asks "how much mushrooms" I assume they are just after a particular type of trip.
As for the death thing, I've had a few mushroom trips that convinced me I was actually dying, and quite a few more where I thought I was dead once the peak was over. A common theme of my trips was to believe I was God, in fact "dying and becoming God" starts to wear a bit thin after a while.
I always thought it was a bit of a cruel joke that people throw the term "ego death" around, and then at some point, when it is far too late, you realize that they meant you would literally experience the trip as if it was your own death. Or at least that could be one meaning of the term, and one way to experience it...
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Loaded Shaman
Psychophysiologist



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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Korean Jesus]
#26376379 - 12/12/19 01:10 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Korean Jesus said: I did 5g and I didn't even get close. How much would one have to take to have absolutely no perception of self?
5g of what, cubes?
Pan Cyans would have knocked you into 2022 lol.
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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Korean Jesus



Registered: 11/13/19
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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Bill_Oreilly]
#26376385 - 12/12/19 01:17 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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you think that when you hear a perfectly valid word that describes an aspect of pychedelics? odd.
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Aldebaran
Psilo-Scribe



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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Bill_Oreilly]
#26376442 - 12/12/19 02:42 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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what psychs teach you is that there is no ego in the end...so how can something die if it never existed?
How can something die if it never existed? asked the monk...
You are starting to talk like a Buddhist! I am half expecting a story about a fox or a turtle or something which will illuminate this paradox 
Actually wouldn't that be an explanation of the term "ego death" - i.e. it 'dies' (in a metaphorical sense) when you have an experience that makes you understand it didn't really exist to start with?
The Buddhists would use the term 'self' rather than 'ego' which introduces a confusing Freudian slant on things, and they would regard the self as something illusory, not as an autonomous entity in the mind.
Your comment led me to start browsing through my Penguin edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as you do (every good home should have one).

In the introduction the Dalai Lama explains the Buddhist idea of self -
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Our sense of self can, upon examination, be seen as a complex flow of mental and physical events ... this sense of self is simply a mental construct
Which is not a million miles away from how contemporary science views it.
The ultimate point of all this is not really the "loss of the sense of self" which is a vague term that could apply in various ways to any trip, or stages of sleep, or unconsciousness caused by excessive alcohol and so on.
Going back to the TBOTD, the key term and the real goal is the "inner radiance", the subtlest, most fundamental level of mind in this scheme - the same thing as the "clear light" Leary talks about in "The Psychedelic Experience". I think "inner radiance" is a better term because it sounds a bit more down to earth and expresses it better as something which is always there. From the glossary:
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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
The idea is that both meditation (yogatantra) and death are types of "intermediate states" of consciousness where this inner radiance can be experienced. There is also an "intermediate state of dreams" and it would not be too much of a stretch to think of a psychedelic experience as an "intermediate state" of consciousness, even if the Buddhists themselves would not approve.
The experience of the inner radiance in its fullest sense is tied up with the idea of dying, and the TBOTD is really a set of meditation exercises designed to practice for this and enable the meditator to recognize this inner radiance, and not fear it or resist it (sounds like familiar advice). So a trip is perhaps comparable to a type of meditation exercise which allows you to experience this "inner radiance" at some level, and if the trip makes you think you are dying, the comparison is even stronger.

I don't pretend to be a Buddhist or to understand any of this stuff in detail, but from my experience of tripping I do think there is a type of consciousness 'behind' your normal sense of self which in some sense underlies it, and describing it as an 'inner radiance' seems reasonable when it matches so closely with some of the descriptions from Buddhism. Meditation and Psychedelics are both ways of exploring your consciousness, so I don't suppose it should be too surprising if they overlap.
I don't take all this too literally - I think the whole exercise of comparing psychedelics to esoteric versions of Buddhism has to be taken with a pinch of salt - it's fun as an intellectual 'game' but I can understand why it annoys people (not that it stops me posting about it) 
Ultimately, the trips speak for themselves and if you delve into the mushroom experience you will find all kinds of things down there...
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Let us dwell feeding on joy like the Radiant Gods
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That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die
Wait, that last quote is not from the Tibetan Book of the Dead! It's from the Necronomicon! Let me out of here!
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Socrateshroom
сталкер


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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Aldebaran]
#26376743 - 12/12/19 08:25 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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The idea of ego-death seems to arise from our subconscious (and for some conscious) fear of our own mortality. Although some have reservations about Wikipedia, I think the wikipedia page on ego-death is pretty fantastic.
Here's a quote found on that page:
"Repeated experience of the death crisis and its confrontation with the idea of physical death leads finally to an acceptance of personal mortality, without further illusions. The death crisis is then greeted with equanimity."
Thus I think the term ego-death, as many have pointed out here, is a broad term used to describe either a "type" of experience or, for some, a destination (I believe in the latter). Thus, every experience brings one closer to "ego-death" if that is what they seek and intend to gain from their experiences. This feeling of "dying" is just one type of experience that can occur. I don't believe I've ever had that experience on the intensity level sought when people seek an "ego-death" but I've had experiences where my sense of self had completely disappeared. Those experiences opened up my eyes to the fact that we create borders between objects, experiences etc to better manage our modern lifestyle but that the world is a symbiotic whole of complex interconnectedness.
Anyway, as many have stated, there is no number that will get you there (because of potency, set & setting, your own mindset, etc). So if something doesn't reach the experience you want, take more next time. Eventually you'll get the experience you want (maybe even more intense than you expected).
Good luck!
--------------------
Edited by Socrateshroom (12/12/19 08:26 AM)
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Bill_Oreilly
ANIMALS (the RAINBOW SERPENT)


Registered: 11/12/11
Posts: 26,370
Loc: Boston
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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Aldebaran]
#26376882 - 12/12/19 09:58 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Aldebaran said:
Quote:
what psychs teach you is that there is no ego in the end...so how can something die if it never existed?
How can something die if it never existed? asked the monk...
You are starting to talk like a Buddhist! I am half expecting a story about a fox or a turtle or something which will illuminate this paradox 
Actually wouldn't that be an explanation of the term "ego death" - i.e. it 'dies' (in a metaphorical sense) when you have an experience that makes you understand it didn't really exist to start with?
The Buddhists would use the term 'self' rather than 'ego' which introduces a confusing Freudian slant on things, and they would regard the self as something illusory, not as an autonomous entity in the mind.
Your comment led me to start browsing through my Penguin edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as you do (every good home should have one).

In the introduction the Dalai Lama explains the Buddhist idea of self -
Quote:
Our sense of self can, upon examination, be seen as a complex flow of mental and physical events ... this sense of self is simply a mental construct
Which is not a million miles away from how contemporary science views it.
The ultimate point of all this is not really the "loss of the sense of self" which is a vague term that could apply in various ways to any trip, or stages of sleep, or unconsciousness caused by excessive alcohol and so on.
Going back to the TBOTD, the key term and the real goal is the "inner radiance", the subtlest, most fundamental level of mind in this scheme - the same thing as the "clear light" Leary talks about in "The Psychedelic Experience". I think "inner radiance" is a better term because it sounds a bit more down to earth and expresses it better as something which is always there. From the glossary:
Quote:
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
The idea is that both meditation (yogatantra) and death are types of "intermediate states" of consciousness where this inner radiance can be experienced. There is also an "intermediate state of dreams" and it would not be too much of a stretch to think of a psychedelic experience as an "intermediate state" of consciousness, even if the Buddhists themselves would not approve.
The experience of the inner radiance in its fullest sense is tied up with the idea of dying, and the TBOTD is really a set of meditation exercises designed to practice for this and enable the meditator to recognize this inner radiance, and not fear it or resist it (sounds like familiar advice). So a trip is perhaps comparable to a type of meditation exercise which allows you to experience this "inner radiance" at some level, and if the trip makes you think you are dying, the comparison is even stronger.

I don't pretend to be a Buddhist or to understand any of this stuff in detail, but from my experience of tripping I do think there is a type of consciousness 'behind' your normal sense of self which in some sense underlies it, and describing it as an 'inner radiance' seems reasonable when it matches so closely with some of the descriptions from Buddhism. Meditation and Psychedelics are both ways of exploring your consciousness, so I don't suppose it should be too surprising if they overlap.
I don't take all this too literally - I think the whole exercise of comparing psychedelics to esoteric versions of Buddhism has to be taken with a pinch of salt - it's fun as an intellectual 'game' but I can understand why it annoys people (not that it stops me posting about it) 
Ultimately, the trips speak for themselves and if you delve into the mushroom experience you will find all kinds of things down there...
Quote:
Let us dwell feeding on joy like the Radiant Gods
Quote:
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die
Wait, that last quote is not from the Tibetan Book of the Dead! It's from the Necronomicon! Let me out of here!

funny, i want to become a Buddhist and but i struggle with the labeling. i dont want it to come off "oh so you think youre mr.knowitall ay?" i think ill just stick to being a psychedelic Christian/agnostic. Christians nowadays take a lot of shit and I'm good at that so it's a nice fit.
Fox/turtle story coming soon
-------------------- 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..
Edited by Bill_Oreilly (12/12/19 10:10 AM)
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footpath
ὕδωρχοίρος

Registered: 07/16/19
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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Bill_Oreilly] 1
#26377302 - 12/12/19 02:05 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Just keep submitting to BillOtheism, I think it suits you well.
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LosTresOjos
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Re: How much mushrooms to ego death? [Re: Bill_Oreilly]
#26377325 - 12/12/19 02:09 PM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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The ego is very helpful. When eating for example, you feed your self and not the other person. And it doesn't die during ego death it's just your reasoning brain is able to see the fears concerns anxiety that you carry and their not that big of a deal but the ego likes to worry, for survival but not all is logical.
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