General question regarding Ego Death

[IJesusChrist]

nothing is a structure until you give it some.

you consciously create the structures that ultimately design your reality.

whhoa dewt!

 

[Crimzen]

this thread is as fruitless as a piece of driftwood
it seems anytime 'ego death' is brought up every single person has a different interpretation of what it actually is and whether or not its truly obtainable or whatever

its more about the journey than the destination so just travel and when you're 'there' you'll know and then you can keep travelling

i feel like people end up fumbling around in the dark wondering if they can walk rather than just walking

 

[BrainEater]

to me ego-death means that what/who you think you are dies.. as i see it, it is most probably the case, that what/who you think you are, is not your "real identity" or so... but well many people have more than one personality anyway... so maybe it's also about integration of possibly multiple personalities or many different aspect of one personality into one form???
only god knows... hehe 8)

peace

 

[Crimzen]

I think IJC really hit the nail on the head when he wrote "The problem with anything pertaining to ego death is it is completely subjective, and people are always trying to objectify it."

+1

 

[Light]

All I'm saying is that the non-egoic state is WAAAAAAAAY more accessible than most people seem to think.

it depends what you mean by 'non-egoic state', if you mean 'ego death' (ie total dissolution of cognitive structures leading to radical worldmodel revision, a life-changing transcendent experience), that can be practically accessed by taking entheogens. That experience is entirely different from anything that ever happens in the ordinary state of consciousness, and it is highly unlikely to happen without the ingestion of entheogens.

Defying the valid points just above, I'd like to add that you don't seem to recognize that real life has life changing experience embedded in them. Whenever someone close to you dies, you have a deep relationship or break one up, whenever you fight off a serious illness. These have the seeds of life changing experiences in them.

Sure, entheogens can bring these experience out. So can meditation or other spiritual techniques with reasonably high rates of predictability. Sometimes people even have these experience without any of these. It is all based in day to day experience. Transformation is possible without entheogens, something entheogen-enthusiasts tend to forget.

here's my question to you. What is the value of ego-death when people don't do anything to change their live afterwards and slowly revert to their old ways of being? This happens far too often when you focus too much on the ego-death experience instead of on the ego-life that caused the ego in the first place. An ego-death experience can be used to reinforce the ego.

 

[maxfreakout]

you don't seem to recognize that real life has life changing experience embedded in them. Whenever someone close to you dies, you have a deep relationship or break one up, whenever you fight off a serious illness. These have the seeds of life changing experiences in them.

Ego death is a specific transformation in a person's thinking (it is not just 'any' experience which changes a person's life), it is the stage in a person's life when they go from being a naive, unenlightened, pre-psychedelic thinker to an enlightened 'psychedelic thinker' as a result of becoming familiar with (and acquainted to) the psychedelic altered state of consciousness.

There are other kinds of experiences that can be called 'life changing' such as the ones you mention, but they are not the same thing as ego death. Ego death involves exposure to transcendental cognitive dynamics (ie the kinds of phenomena that occur during psychedelic trips, cognitive dissociation) leading to a radical transformation (a 'transcendent rebirth') of understanding.

Sure, entheogens can bring these experience out.

What entheogens provide, specifically, is immediate, on-tap, repeatable, reliable, safe access to temporary states of intense cognitive dissociation. Entheogens are ergonomic 'tools' for which reliably trigger incredibly powerful, mind-bending, profound altered-state experiences which readily lead to major, permanent mental transformations

There are no other tools or techniques, besides entheogens, which trigger these mind-blowing experiences on tap, controllably and reliably.

So can meditation or other spiritual techniques with reasonably high rates of predictability.

Any technique that does not involve ingesting entheogens has a predictability of next to zero for triggering the kinds of intense, temporary altered states of consciousness that entheogens deliver as standard whenever you take them.

Drug free techniques practically guarantee that you wont ever experience intense psychedelic altered states, and therefore that you wont ever achieve the kind of permanent mental transformations that follow from psychedelic altered states. - This is clearly evident simply by attending a meditation class of 30 people, then comparing what you see to an ayahuasca ceremony of 30 people. In the meditation class, it is pretty much certain that nobody is having a 'life-changing experience', nobody is having a mind-blowing altered state experience etc. Whereas in an ayahuasca ceremony, pretty much everybody there is having a mindblowing inner journey into psychedelia, and there is a good chance that multiple people will be having experiences that permanently transform their lives.

Drug free techniques do not trigger psychedelic altered states of consciousness (except very rarely in some very rare people), entheogens by contrast guarantee psychedelic altered states of consciousness.

It is very important to recognise what entheogens do, that other techniques dont do (ie give you guaranteed access to psychedelic altered state experiences), instead of trying to pretend that meditation/yoga etc etc are somehow 'substitutes' for entheogens. They are not substitutes, at best, these techniques can be used to augment, intensify and facilitate entheogen-triggered altered state sessions.

Scientific research into psilocybin also confirms this point, it was found in a study that psilocybin triggers full-blown mystical experiences in a majority of people who take it, no other technique that does not involve taking drugs can make this kind of claim.

It is all based in day to day experience.

Psychedelic altered state experiences are entirely, profoundly different from anything that is ever encountered in 'day to day experience' (ie in the ordinary state of consciousness)

here's my question to you. What is the value of ego-death when people don't do anything to change their live afterwards and slowly revert to their old ways of being? This happens far too often when you focus too much on the ego-death experience instead of on the ego-life that caused the ego in the first place.

i would never talk of the 'value' of ego death experience, it just is what it is

if it has any 'value', it lies in the fact that the enlightened mind of an ego-death initiate no longer believes in a falsehood (ie the falsehood that ego is fully, literally 'real'), and it is 'better' to know the truth, rather than believing in falsehoods

An ego-death experience can be used to reinforce the ego.

[/quote]

No, after the full ego-death transformation, the mind never again identifies with ego, because the memory of the ego death experience serves as a constant corrective reminder that the ego is essentially an illusion.

 

[Light]

HAHAHA

Jesus, you talk a lot and say little while doing so.

Sure, everything makes sense in your own structured definition, but look at what happens when you give 200 people a high dose of a psychedelic. Not all of them will experience ego death. Some of them will manage to stay in their own personal hell. Same holds for the same person given 200 trips on high doses. Sometimes he experiences it, sometimes he does not. Reliable you say?

No, after the full ego-death transformation, the mind never again identifies with ego, because the memory of the ego death experience serves as a constant corrective reminder that the ego is essentially an illusion.

Don't bullshit yourself. Either you never had this experience and don't know what you are talking about or you are blind to your own ego.

@Aemilius

Have you experienced what you consider to be a form of ego death Light? If so, how did it change your life (if not too personal a question)? Did the resulting changes last?

Yes, many times. Both on drugs and without them. The ones without had more longlasting changes. How it changed my life? Well, it's hard to put in words, but it showed me my own insignificance, helped me identify with something bigger than myself and just relax with a smile on my face most of the time.

 

[maxfreakout]

look at what happens when you give 200 people a high dose of a psychedelic.

All 200 of them will have a psychedelic trip, ie they will all temporarily experience the psychedelic altered state of consciousness

The important point is, you could not possibly recreate that ^ scenario (ie 200 people, all having intense mind-bending experiences at the same time) by any other means. Drug-free meditating, yoga, drumming etc could never do that, because those techniques are far too unreliable at triggering intense altered (non-ordinary) states of consciousness.

Not all of them will experience ego death.

if you dont think of ego death as just 'some trip where you experience dying', and instead think of it as the point in a person's life when they stop thinking egoically and start to think transcendently, then doesnt make any sense to talk of how many of our hypothesised 200 trippers would experience ego death, because we don't have enough information about them, - we don't know how many of them are not ALREADY transcendent thinkers, whose egos have not ALREADY died. Ego death (in the specific way in which i have just defined it, the beginning of transcendent thinking) can only happen once, in exactly the same way that you can only experience your 'first orgasm' once.

Some of them will manage to stay in their own personal hell. Same holds for the same person given 200 trips on high doses. Sometimes he experiences it, sometimes he does not. Reliable you say?

yes psychedelic drugs are 100% reliable for triggering intense psychedelic states of consciousness, no other technique that doesnt involve taking drugs could even claim 1% reliability, that is why people do not typically experience powerful, paradigm-shattering altered states when they just sit and meditate, for example.

 

[maxfreakout]

LOL :lol: , all im doing is perpetually clarifying this concept of 'ego death' (and more generally the whole concept of 'psychedelia')for anyone who cares enough to read what im saying. I understand ego death and i'm very keen to communicate my understanding to other people, and very often psychonauts are fascinated by the whole concept, threads regularly come up on forums with people asking about ego death.

 

[IJesusChrist]

He just doesn't die.

 

[maxfreakout]

He just doesn't die.

the enlightened mind has ceased to identify itself with the mortal ego (one of the core characteristics of ego, is the belief in the inevitability of eventual demise), it is in this sense 'immortal', ie it stops *literally* believing in its own mortality

 

[Light]

I've been to lifechanging meditation sessions where everybody (~80 people) had a wonderful experience. It just took us 10 days of silent meditation to get there.

And why do you think Stan Grof is working with holotropic breathing? Would he do it if he knew it wouldn't work?

Anyway, keep restricting the definition of ego and egodeath even further and you might end up saying nothing at all.

 

[Light]

In light of what you said about psychedelics being a reliable way to get into this state. Why are so many people who take psychedelics such big idiots then? Why are there so many of them talking about theories that only make sense to themselves?

[e]I can see your response coming, by the way: "Well they obviously didn't experience real ego death." :roll:

 

[maxfreakout]

In light of what you said about psychedelics being a reliable way to get into this state. Why are so many people who take psychedelics such big idiots then?

Psychedelics give reliable, repeatable, controllable access to the intense psychedelic state of consciousness, that has nothing to do with intelligence, tripping doesnt make you more intelligent, - stupid people can take drugs and trip just as smart people can take drugs and trip

 

[Light]

*facepalm* - please read again what I wrote, I didn't say only intelligent people should take them or that stupid people shouldn't.

Reliable - NO
Repeatable - yes
Controllable - maybe, not with everybody.

Don't you know people that wrecked their lives through the use of psychedelics?!? Jeez.

Biggest part of the equation is set/setting = the way people use them.

an 'intense psychedelic state' can go both ways, some will experience hell, others heaven.

To go through hell, or soar angelic,
just take a pinch of psychedelic.

 

[maxfreakout]

And why do you think Stan Grof is working with holotropic breathing? Would he do it if he knew it wouldn't work?

A more relevant question is:
Would he continue using LSD after it was made illegal, if he knew it would completely destroy his career and his life to do so?

Grof is very open and honest about this in his more recent books, the only reason he stopped openly using LSD in his research was because it was made illegal in 1967, he fully acknowledges that holotropic breathing never delivers full blown psychedelic states like LSD does. Holotropic breathing is really just a fancy word for 'hyperventilating' (breathing too fast and overloading the bloodstream with oxygen),

 

[maxfreakout]

*facepalm* - please read again what I wrote, I didn't say only intelligent people should take them or that stupid people shouldn't.

i didnt attribute that claim to you either

You suggested that psychedelic tripping ought to make people more intelligent, and that therefore because some 'idiots' take psychedelics, that therefore taking psychedelics doesnt really make people trip reliably, - at least that is what i understood by your question:

""Why are so many people who take psychedelics such big idiots then?""

ie you are asking why are lots of people who take psychedelics such big idiots, given that taking psychedelics should make you smarter

and i disagree with your assumption that tripping should make you smarter, stupid people can trip and in all likelihood they will still be stupid after the trip finishes.

Reliable - NO
Repeatable - yes
Controllable - maybe, not with everybody.

drugs are 100% reliable, repeatable and controllable. If i want to have an intense trip right now, i can take a tab of LSD and that guarantees that it will happen, no other method besides taking drugs can offer this kind of repeatable, guaranteed access to intense, mind-warping psychedelic trips

Don't you know people that wrecked their lives through the use of psychedelics?!? Jeez.

no ive only ever seen psychedelics heal and improve people's lives, but even so i think psychedelics are exactly like knives, or fire, in this respect - they are irreplaceable tools, but incredibly dangerous in some people's hands. The danger posed by psychedelics is precisely a reflection of the fact that they actually work, they actually deliver the goods (intense mystical experiences), drug-free methods like sitting meditating are completely safe, but they completely fail to deliver intense mystical experiences,-just compare what happens in your mind when you sit and meditate, with what happens when you take a big dose of LSD, do you see any difference?

an 'intense psychedelic state' can go both ways, some will experience hell, others heaven.

yes exactly, hell and heaven are the kinds of extreme mystical experiences which are associated with ego death and transcendence

 

[ararat]

light, so that you know, this isn't leading anywhere. we've had this exact same scenario quite often actually.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Max is in a box, constantly jerking to Stan G.

hey max, hey buddy. we're hoping u come out of there eventually!

 

[Light]

Of course there is a difference between meditation and LSD. That doesn't mean that they are not both transformative in a way.

Have you ever tried meditating for 10 hours on one day? (the length of an LSD trip)

I have.

It is not the same, but I experienced similar results in my daily life.

Let me put it this way: what is the result of proper use of psychedelics? I'd say wisdom.

Same holds for meditation. As any serious practitioner can ascertain.

Wisdom changes your life (the transformation you talk about), but there are many roads to wisdom.

I hope you will see that one day too.