No and I think most people who use the phrase "ego death" to describe their experiences are just throwing it around without any understanding of what it might mean or what it might have meant to the people who popularized the term. Most people who I've heard use the term have not been very intelligent, and have used it casually like it's just something that happens whenever you take a normal dose of whatever kind of psychedelic. I think it's also unhelpful that the word ego has very different meanings, both of which could apply to some aspect of psychedelic experience. Ego can mean an arrogant, self absorbed characteristic of the personality, or, as the people who popularized "ego death" probably meant by it, the first person, self-identified perspective.
I've experienced some states that were so bizarre and inconceivable and of a completely other kind from the mundane state of mind that it's completely impossible to communicate anything about them (if you want to get some idea of a state like that, a very easy, low risk, low cost way is nitrous oxide, i.e. whippets, from a cartridge, with a cracker. You can easily get completely out of your body and unable to process information or understand your own perspective in any kind of normal way with a single whippet. That being said, I don't encourage anyone to do drugs. If you want to do them, do them, if you don't, don't. Make your own decisions.) but even in the most confusing states, and even in states with an explicit sense of identification with things outside myself, including sober meditation experiences, the fact that I am having a first person oriented experience always remains there at some level. I'm sure people end up in states where that's not the case but I think it's probably pretty rare and/or accompanied by an inability to remember the event.
I took somewhere between a quarter-to-a-half ounce of mushrooms, once, have an IQ of ~140 depending on who's test you ask, and am decently well-read in psychological theory: yes, I've experienced 100%, unfiltered, unabashed, undeniable ego death. I became the universe. I became existence itself. "I" was not "myself". There was no "I". The concept of "I" became a silly joke, laughable, a stupid idea. My past, my current "life" revealed themselves to be a childish mental construct. I was all things: my surroundings where obviously an extension of an ever-present mind, "the mind", and the perspective that I was witnessing it under was nothing more than a piece of the puzzle. Everyone I encountered were "obviously" extensions of myself, different aspects of my psyche ("the mind's" psyche), divided— in an attempt to learn from "each-other", from myself (which is all things), because it is the only thing that's real. All of existence was "obviously" the meditative-introspection of an infinite mind, like a dream, and it became apparent that I was simply taking the time to view it from a single angle, like a camera mounted to an individual gear of a mental framework. I remember the whole experience vividly, and fondly.
At one point, the ceiling parted in to clouds, and I saw all the deities in a circle, happily beckoning me. And I "knew" that it was all me; that they were me. That it was myself, trying to wake this other-self from a dream that went on for longer than it should. I started to float upwards, but then fear took over and I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing my wife and daughter again; even though it was understood that I couldn't possibly lose them because they were "me" anyways.
Personally, I've made it my life-goal to obtain that state of mind again, but without the aid of psychedelics. Just lots of meditation.
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superesper ago
No and I think most people who use the phrase "ego death" to describe their experiences are just throwing it around without any understanding of what it might mean or what it might have meant to the people who popularized the term. Most people who I've heard use the term have not been very intelligent, and have used it casually like it's just something that happens whenever you take a normal dose of whatever kind of psychedelic. I think it's also unhelpful that the word ego has very different meanings, both of which could apply to some aspect of psychedelic experience. Ego can mean an arrogant, self absorbed characteristic of the personality, or, as the people who popularized "ego death" probably meant by it, the first person, self-identified perspective.
I've experienced some states that were so bizarre and inconceivable and of a completely other kind from the mundane state of mind that it's completely impossible to communicate anything about them (if you want to get some idea of a state like that, a very easy, low risk, low cost way is nitrous oxide, i.e. whippets, from a cartridge, with a cracker. You can easily get completely out of your body and unable to process information or understand your own perspective in any kind of normal way with a single whippet. That being said, I don't encourage anyone to do drugs. If you want to do them, do them, if you don't, don't. Make your own decisions.) but even in the most confusing states, and even in states with an explicit sense of identification with things outside myself, including sober meditation experiences, the fact that I am having a first person oriented experience always remains there at some level. I'm sure people end up in states where that's not the case but I think it's probably pretty rare and/or accompanied by an inability to remember the event.
TheTrigger ago
I took somewhere between a quarter-to-a-half ounce of mushrooms, once, have an IQ of ~140 depending on who's test you ask, and am decently well-read in psychological theory: yes, I've experienced 100%, unfiltered, unabashed, undeniable ego death. I became the universe. I became existence itself. "I" was not "myself". There was no "I". The concept of "I" became a silly joke, laughable, a stupid idea. My past, my current "life" revealed themselves to be a childish mental construct. I was all things: my surroundings where obviously an extension of an ever-present mind, "the mind", and the perspective that I was witnessing it under was nothing more than a piece of the puzzle. Everyone I encountered were "obviously" extensions of myself, different aspects of my psyche ("the mind's" psyche), divided— in an attempt to learn from "each-other", from myself (which is all things), because it is the only thing that's real. All of existence was "obviously" the meditative-introspection of an infinite mind, like a dream, and it became apparent that I was simply taking the time to view it from a single angle, like a camera mounted to an individual gear of a mental framework. I remember the whole experience vividly, and fondly.
At one point, the ceiling parted in to clouds, and I saw all the deities in a circle, happily beckoning me. And I "knew" that it was all me; that they were me. That it was myself, trying to wake this other-self from a dream that went on for longer than it should. I started to float upwards, but then fear took over and I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing my wife and daughter again; even though it was understood that I couldn't possibly lose them because they were "me" anyways.
Personally, I've made it my life-goal to obtain that state of mind again, but without the aid of psychedelics. Just lots of meditation.
Interpret that information however you'd like.