Can somebody explain death to the ego to me?

Almost everyone talks about it with high doses of acid, but i don't really get it. just gimme the basic jist.

 

It means you are not you anymore, you are everthing.

 

Ego death describes the moment that a perspective ('I') can no longer comprehend itself as an entity within their reality. At any one moment, everyone experiences reality, and part of that reality is identified as a 'self', or 'ego'. However, when your 'ego dies', all you experience is your reality, without seperating it into individual parts.

 

^ well said

It's harder to describe to someone who hasnt experienced it than love. when you're there, you'll know. Afterwards at least. It is the removal of the false division between "me" and "not me", between traveler and landscape. All of reality translates into a single indivisible process. The words "experiencer" and "experienced" no longer refer to different things. It is both the absolute vanishing of the "I" and at the same time the application of "I" to the entire universe. It's a state of paradox that language can only stumble over.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what ego death is.

"Camera, zoom back"

 

I have always felt that in this interview Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) really captures the experience of ego dissolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryE2Agrooh8

Ego dissolution or dissolving is actually a better more accurate description of the phenomenon than ego death. The different things, concepts or descriptions that have been built up over your life to define "you" slowly dissolve into irrelevance to a point where there no longer is any point of reference or definition of what comprises "you".
All that is left to your awareness is just that, awareness without any trappings, definitions, or filters to define and interpret that awareness. It just is and you just are.

In some instances, but not guaranteed nor experienced by everyone this dissolving of self leads to another more rare occurrence of what I refer to as Cosmic Consciousness.
A state where ones awareness is no longer differentiated between I and Thou, but rather is melded with all. This state is actually very rare and does not occur as often as one might think.

It is what Shulgin refers to as a +4 experience;
"PLUS FOUR (++++)
A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a 'peak experience', a 'religious experience,' 'divine transformation,' a 'state of Samadhi' and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end of, the human experiment. "

As Shulgin states, this is a rare occurrence that isn't necessarily predicated by a psychedelic. I'm sure a lot of people mistake ego dissolution for this Cosmic Consciousness experience.
Ego dissolution is a necessary prerequisite for this Level 4 experience during a psychedelic journey, but it is not that state itself.

Ego dissolution occurs as almost a function of high dose psychedelic experiences and I feel it has more to do with how psychedelics effect brain function and information processing, rather than being some mystical spiritual experience such as the one described above by Shulgin.

I'm sorting out my thoughts on these functions and how they relate to the experience and will post it soon.

 

I would not describe the dissolution of ego as a samhadi like experience. Ego dissolution is the recognition that the ego does not speak for the true self. You see that none of the distinctions you had made about the world and yourself represented any real substance. It is the recognition that the ego is incapable of apprehending the truth because it exists by virtue of arbitrary evaluations. The way it surmises the world is suspicious at best to down right vicious in the end.
However the dissolution of the ego leads not to the death of ego but to the resolution of it. You need ego, or sense of self, to operate in this world. Recognizing the truth the ego no longer seeks to distinguish itself but to assert itself. This is the beginning of the exercise of your true or free will. The first ego is a fearful thought, the awakened self shares the confidence of creation.

 

That is not what I said or what Shulgin described. Actually if you re-read my post I specifically made the distinction between the two, and only stated that during a psychedelic experience ego dissolution is a prerequisite for what Shulgin describes as the rare +4 experience. But they most definitely are not one in same.

Very well worded.:cheers2:
That is the main reason I personally prefer the term ego dissolution rather than ego death.
Psychologically the process may present itself to the experiencer as death because everything that had been used to define oneself falls away and is no longer important or relevant to experience or existence.

 

An intensity so great is experienced, that functions like defining self and ego are dissolved.

When these things are gone, convergance with nature occurs.

When things resolve, rebirth occurs.

 

I didn't quote you friend. I recognize from your statement that we share the same space.
My post is simply my own independent statement as regards to the question can anyone explain the ego death experience.

 

It's all good. It just appeared that you were considering your reference to the Samhadi experience which is one of the terms Shulgin used in the quote I used from him. An understandable mistake on my part.

 

I appreciate your commitment to honesty and your willingness to call me to it. I don't know if you noticed but I don't mind returning the favor, all in the good spirit of truth.

 

Now touch his nipple.

 

Not until after a nice dinner and a few glasses of wine.:blush5:

 

Sometimes it seems easier to say I hate you.

 

I think many, if not most psychiatrists would say that you cannot experience nothing. They have a point in that "you" involves an experiencer. But there can be awareness and void or nothing. Or awareness/void, i.e., all one. There is no I and no thing.

This is my attempt to add more thoughts on ego death. Obviously I continue having a hard time putting it into words.

 

most psychiatrists don't trip on acid. ego death to me seems like the world is one thing. it seems like I am having a shocking realization that the world has and has only ever had one process and I am just starting to see it. its a beautiful thing.

 

"most psychiatrists don't trip on acid." Right, unfortunately. But there is some knowledge of mind. Kind of like an intelligent and sophisticated, but incompletely informed guess at things (like reality). If I said, "What you think of as 'I' has experience in nothing through LSD," most people, including psychiatrists would discount the statement and the experience as drug-induced mumbo-jumbo.

Back to the OP's question: regardless of some diffs in how people define ego death, the consensus seems to be YES! Or maybe, HOOOOooorrraaaayyyyyyyy

 

Wa wa what was your sampling rate to come to these conclusions?

 

That's what I try and discourage everywhere I go

 

that's true, but "ego" doesn't refer to you. nothing can ever change or disrupt the fact that you exist as a being. ego is just the term given to the idea that you are you. it is the "thought" of yourself. when the thought of a separate self is gone, your ego has died.