Ego Death?

I have read alot about this, but never really understood it, can someone tell me exactly what it is and how it works?

 

Well, I'm not sure, but it sounds to me like the destruction of the ego, which I find happens to me under most psychoactive drugs. I become more or less unaware of me as an individual person. Left is the sense of a collective conciousness which I believe is the sum of every single ego that exists. I think this is what people refer to when they talk about 'near-death experience', when tripping.

 

When "you" cease to exist and your soul just exists passively in the ever-flowing hallucination that is life. Comprehension of things is difficult if possible at all, as is talking and moving. My most intense experiences are usually guided by music. Jerry knows where to take you during this type of thing.

 

Lots of people will take it as a metaphorical thing or something, but its not. Its just a normal reaction to the trip. You can give it whatever name .

Theres a minimum dose range that you have to take for you to start reaching it and going away a little bit.

It is like you are part of a long zipper and when you take lsd the zip goes up towards you and sometimes it wont reach ya sometimes yeah. You know its comin and if you lay down its gonna zip and stay closed. If At least thats how I see it.

It feels pretty good you could say.

 

I don't know about you guys but im pretty sure its happened to me. I was on some crazy mushrooms and a hit of acid and in the middle of a huge bowl, all of a sudden I forgot everything, where I lived and who i was with and what not, 10 minutes later I was inside my head like some kind of packman simulation in pitch black, and I got to the center and I was sent back out as soon as i seen it, it was like a blackhole type thing and at the time i thought i had literally lost my mind.

 

I haven't had ego death on LSD but I have had it on shrooms. First time to.
Basically you forget who/what/where you are. You don't remember whats reality, you know THIS isn't but you don't know WHAT is.
I was me one moment, the next I was an eyeball flying through a sandstorm, which sounds painful but wasn't.
The whole time though a part of my mind was saying "dont freak out wait for it to pass, time is your friend" so I just waited and watched.
Kinda scary, wasn't THAT bad though.

 

Take a good trip . Ego loss is being the eyeball in the sandstorm like you say. Wooosh . Stay in there ya wont freak out hehe

 

You only freak out when you try to hold on too much. I did that during my first LSD trip. Ended up me being on my friend's couch repeating "It's like I've been writting into the wrong story."
I think it's like this - everything just is, everything is chaotic and coincidental. Human minds, as well as all other living things, have created certain patterns to be able to cope with and working within this chaotic world. Reality is purely a banality, it just is, there's nothing else too it. Ego death is basically, I think, when your mind realises this fact, when all preconceived patterns disappear and left is reality and nothing else. Which can be a very frightening experience of course, but it all depends on how you take it really. I think you only go insane from it if you struggle and deny what is being shown.

 

i think i had it the last time i tripped.

i was in a dark room listinging to music when all of a sudden i couldnt feel my body anymore, just my mind. it was wierd

 

Although I would probably describe "ego death" a little differently, this is one of the best posts I've ever seen when it comes to describing the psychedelic experience. When I tripped on shrooms a couple of months ago, I kept muttering "patterns... it's [ie, human existence/reality] all just patterns" over and over. I'm intrigued that someone would describe it in almost the exact same way. Bravo.

 

Yep

Great song also, your username. It makes me think of the summer.

 

Aldous Huxely comes to pretty much the same conclusion in Doors Of Perception, Heaven and Hell, tripping on mescaline.....anyone read it? It's awe-inspiring!

Here's a luvely passage that puts it very eloquent but simple:

"Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large, But in as far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possbile, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system, What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of conciouness which will help us stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contends of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol.systems and implcit philosophies which we call language."

We live in a world of patterns which is only useful to us because we must survive as animals. Acid exposes this fact and makes us aware that the world we perceive around us is simply one of thousans, millions of worlds that exists.

 

^ This is why it's called "consciousness expansion" or "opening your mind" because it opens your mind until you are or almost are at the level of pure consciousness, which is ego death.

 

Only reason I had a bad time during it was because I ate far too many mushrooms and I was SO FUCKING SICK during that whole part, though later I was still experiencing depersonalization and not so sick anymore. I would estimate that I ate at least 10 grams, probably closer to 13 or 14.

For me, the concept of time was GONE completely, friendship was a really strange concept, I didn't recognize me, my legs looked as though they were someone else's, when someone said my name I'd go "....people call me that....wait they're trying to get my attention", I had to think very, very hard to recall my friends names that were sitting around me. Certain things stayed with me, but my thought patterns were so fractured that it was hard to think about things. I knew what school I was at, that I was in a dorm room of someone I knew, that I had taken mushrooms (though when I said that out loud it sounded real strange), and I kept repeating "Well, I can see why the government would not want people to do this...this shit is dangerous man"

At one point when I was in the bathroom trying to throw up, and trying to figure out if I had to poop as well, hoping that I wasn't actually sitting in the room pissin my pants, and the radio was playing. Songs would seem to last half a minute and then the commercials came on and I started hearing German. I take German here at school, and it definitely wasn't a German commercial, I was just hearing German. Some of it was nonsense, some of it was actual words and phrases, though I don't remember them. When I looked in the toilet bowl water, where there should have been the reflection of my head was an image that split down the middle and not anywhere near symetrical. I would close my eyes and not totally be able to tell if they were closed or not because everything made the same amount of sense.

However, I was really suprised at the (low) level of visuals during the whole experience. For a while it was crazy, at one point I saw some monster/aliens on my friends computer, but during the part that I would consider "ego death" it was like all of that was being covered up by the constant shimmering shifting that was going on. The closed eye shit is way to complex to even think about, I'm not sure that even in such a fucked up state it's impossible for the brain to visualize what my brain was trying to make me see. At one point I remember thinking, getting slightly frustrated, "I can't SEE it, what's going on"


I would like to take this time to say that I really don't like the term "consciousness expansion" or any similar concept. To me, it implies a sense of superiority. I don't think that anything is necessarily expanded, because especially when talking about pure consciouness you're talking about going deep inside yourself. I see it both ways - I like Huxleys view that the mind is a reducing filter and in that sense yes consciousness is expanded. But I also don't like the idea that you're expanding consciousness, to me that just doesn't make sense. Maybe I don't like it because it's such a pop culture term that sounds silly and I associate with Leary, whom I really don't like at all.

 

You could call it "opening the doors of perception" if you want. Either way, it's about finding the nature of reality, cope with it, love it and eventually go beyond it. There's strange stuff beyond reality.

 

over the summer i was getting mad shrooms because i kid i know got like 3ibs. for $800 from a good freind who lives on the other side of the country. Anyways me in this kidd got together and i ate a quarter and he fucking downed 10 grams along with a gel cap full of 2cb this kid ended up wanting to lay in the backseat of a car so he gets to my friends car and lays in the back seat we all start walking away and all the sudden I start hearring really loud screaming and kicking, i go over to the car and this kid is trying to kick the windows out because he thinks he was locked in ccar and he dosent remeber how he got there (this entire time the doors were unlocked) The next day he was strait but it was fucking crazy.

 

I've had that same experience where life just seemed to be a bunch of patterns occuring over and over again.
In fact today I was looking at an intersection, and there was always 2 cars moving in the intersection, no more no less, it was insane.
It gets crazier when you can predict whats going to happen by the patterns you see around you.
But no ego death is when you can't remember who or what you are, thats what your ego is, when you lose your ego thats ego death.

 

I thought you just forget where you are during ego death thus giving the feeling that you are merging with the enviroment. Can be really scary for someone who doesn't know what they are seeing.

 

A transition, when it happens now you know what it is. Its obvious when you come back that is what happened if you know about it. You dont ask yourself question like where you are, or who you are , thats ego business. If you still have those you are still you. Then you can relate the experience with anything and make a movie or something

*The bus came by and I got on , that's when it all began , there was cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land*

 

Just a random question, doesn't deserve it's own thread. Anyone know if Leary smoked weed?