Quote:
DJ Ed wrote: But what I don’t understand, and I could be showing my ignorance here, is how the experience of being dead fits with being able to speak with your neighbour during it. I’m genuinely curious rather than questioning your experience, as I’m trying to understand how you experienced those two things together.
The way I read the original post, it sounds like the trip was turning into a bad experience, and a neighbour and family were contacted before reality broke down completely. I think it would be this period leading up to some sort of "ego death" experience where you might want some support, where it can feel like you are being dragged towards a black hole in your mind against your will.
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DJ Ed wrote: I did not come away with a feeling that I’d had a satori enlightenment or any of those blissful-sounding experiences. I came away with what’s been a lifelong fear of death.
Quote:
MrCraggles9 wrote: Ego death has previously been beautiful
It's interesting because I think there are two almost polar opposites at play seen here when talking about "ego death." Which got me thinking...
When Leary / Metzner / Alpert wrote The Psychedelic Experience it talks about "peaceful attainment of illumination ...ecstatic acceptance ...a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy" which makes it sound like something desirable, spiritual, beautiful.
Meanwhile when Stan Grof talks about ego death (in the admittedly odd context of re-living birth trauma), he makes it sound like a bad time, which only transforms into something beautiful after going through it:
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While only a small step separates us from the experience of radical liberation, 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. This fear is the reason that at this stage many people desperately resist the process if they can. As a result, they can remain psychologically stuck in this problematic territory for an indefinite period of time.
The encounter with the ego death is a stage of the spiritual journey when we might need much encouragement and psychological support. When we succeed in overcoming the metaphysical fear associated with this important juncture and decide to let things happen, 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.
Immediately following the experience of total annihilation — 'hitting cosmic bottom'— we are overwhelmed by visions of light that has a supernatural radiance and beauty and is usually perceived as sacred.
In both cases the underlying idea is death and rebirth.
Anyway, my point is that the experience can be both terrifying and traumatic, blissful and ecstatic. My experience has usually been that a very intense and overwhelming trip will give warning signs that it's going to collapse in on itself, which can include a feeling of imminent doom and a strong fear of death. If you can recognise what is actually happening at this point without fearing it, you are better off letting yourself sink into oblivion.
The Psychedelic Experience includes a more straightforward definition of the state of ego-death amongst the more flowerly spiritual stuff: "Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual activity."
I would describe this by saying your experience of conscious awareness becomes detached from the experience of being yourself, so that you experience a much more raw type of awareness without internal chatter, thoughts, ideas, sense of self. You lose that feeling of being a specific embodied person, so this awareness is experienced as coming from something more than yourself, with the associated feelings of oneness, unity and so on.
I could describe this as a type of dissociation, but in "non-dual" terms it's more like the artificial separation of "self" and "world" collapses. Nondualism is a tricky concept which I don't know that much about, but I like this short description on Wikipedia:
"a state of consciousness described in contemplative traditions as a background field of unified, immutable awareness that exists prior to conceptual thought."
That sounds very like the state of consciousness you briefly end up in during "ego death" once the trip collapses in on itself, before your brain "reboots" itself and you get the odd experience of "waking up into yourself" and coming back to your senses when you weren't asleep to begin with.
I think the reason why this brief period of being "gone" ends up being the springboard of a mystical experience during the trip, is that it feels like you've connected to some basic part of reality which was there before you were born and will be there after you die. It's like a peek behind the curtain which shows you that death is (in a sense) not real, that you are part of some giant universe-spanning matrix of consciousness which you can sometimes sink into during a trip.
"Liberation" is a good word because encountering this feels like an end to all your fears - whatever you thought you were seeking, you found infinitely more than you were expecting. I think this phase of the trip, when you come out of that heavy dissociation into a state of bliss and awe, is more central to the experience than any attempted definition of what happens during the "ego death" that caused it - by definition you can't say too much about a state of non-conceptual thought.
One problem is that you can be so out of your mind when this happens during a strong trip, that the mystical experience snowballs into something a lot more delusional, with manic overthinking that tangles you up in philosophical knots which are the complete opposite of the central experience.
Personally, in terms of dosing, these days I try to take sufficient for the type of trip I want, but not too much, and not usually enough for the type of ego death described here. "Pushing the envelope" is fine when you are actively exploring the psychedelic headspace, but it does take a psychological toll. Over time I found the limits where it felt like taking more didn't improve the trip. I might sound enthusiastic about the whole "ego death" experience, but in reality I don't dose with the intention of "ego death" (I never did but I found it was hard to avoid once you reach a certain dose level) and I don't feel that it's an experience that I need to keep repeating.
Going back to the original post, when you get used to tripping comfortably at high doses, there is always the possibility of getting overconfident and ending up in a traumatising trip that you don't know how to deal with. I think a healthy way to view the trauma of this experience is as a part of this "psychological death and rebirth" which underlies the idea of ego death.
I think the trauma of that type of trip comes from the experience being so strong that it no longer feels merely psychological - it feels like a genuine fear of death with an accompanying panic attack. The way to get around this is to recognise these fears as part of the trip, just as the best way to deal with a panic attack is to recognise that the symptoms that are making you panic are part of that panic attack and will go away. Ultimately, as much as possible you should try and let the trip take over, even when it feels like you are on the brink of dying, and trust your body and mind to bring you back.
When it feels like a trip is taking over, and you get that feeling of dread, go against your instincts and sink down into the trip. I find this is always helpful during strong trips. Instead of fighting against the trip as if it's something external that is coming at you and trying to take over, you can sink into it and merge with it as part of your own mind. I try to remember that strong negative feelings inside a trip always seem to lead to strong positive feelings later in the trip, and experience teaches me that the best strategy is to embrace whatever it is I fear at the center of the trip.
These things are easier said than done, but if you combine them with a dosing strategy of taking it easy for a while with a lower dose, maybe taking a break or spacing out your trips a bit more, you can try and ease yourself back into enjoyable tripping.
I think the best way to trip without fear is not to avoid fearful trips entirely (at some point your luck runs out) but to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, to accept it, and let yourself experience negative emotions as a normal part of the trip. Then when the trip becomes overwhelming it's easier to ride out that part of the experience until things calm down, or the fear gives way to enjoyment.
Over time you can break the cycle where the sensation of tripping brings back a flood of anxious memories, but it might require a bit of patience where you learn to enjoy it again. 
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I wrote that, but I meant something else
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