Ego death
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Ego death is an experience[dubious ] that is said to reveal the illusory aspect of the ego, sometimes undergone by mystics, shamans, monks, psychonauts and others interested in exploring the depths of the mind.
The practice of ego death as a deliberately sought "mystical experience" in some ways is said to overlap with, but is nevertheless distinct from, traditional teachings concerning enlightenment/"Nirvana" (in Buddhism) or "Moksha" (in Hinduism and Jainism), which might perhaps be better understood as transcendence of the notion that one even has any actual, non-illusory "ego" with which to experience "death" in the first place.
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Definition [edit]
An ego death is said to be characterized as the perceived loss of boundaries between self and environment, a sense of the loss of "control", the loss of the accustomed feeling of existing as a "personal agent", and lose "cognitive-association binding".[1] This "perceived loss of boundaries between self and environment"[citation needed] is said to be experienced through a sensation that one is the whole universe (and therefore there is no need to differentiate the "I" from the "universe") or by simply acknowledging the "I" does not exist.
According to Stanislav Grof,
Ego death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego.[2]
Methods of inducing the experience [edit]
Many methods, practices, or experiences may induce this state, soul-searching, lucid dreaming, sleep deprivation, fasting, meditation practice, psychedelics, or the use of an isolation tank.
Modern claims of ego death [edit]
Some famous examples of people claiming to have had the experience are Ramana Maharshi and U. G. Krishnamurti. More recently Eckhart Tolle has claimed that he underwent the experience after having suffered from long periods of suicidal depression.[3] He says he woke up in the middle of that night and thought,
| “ | I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. | ” |
Tolle recalls going out for a walk in London the next morning, and finding that “everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic."[3]
Many users of psychedelics like psilocybin, DMT, LSD, DXM or Ketamine report experiences of ego death along with other mystical experiences common with psychedelic substances. This becomes apparent on study of psychedelic reports where themes relating to dying and mortality, transcendence, and expansion of consciousness are commonly observed.[citation needed]
See also [edit]
- Egolessness
- Altered states of consciousness
- Death, Brain death, and Near-death experience
- Depersonalization and derealization
- Gnosis and Kenosis
- Kensho
- Mystical psychosis
- Mysticism
- Night of Pan
- Nondualism
- Psychedelic experience and Entheogenic experience
- Ego (philosophy), Ego (spirituality), and Self (spirituality)
References [edit]
- ^ The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death
- ^ Grof 1988, p. 30.
- ^ a b 'Dialogues With Emerging Spiritual Teachers, by John W. Parker Sagewood Press, 2000.
Sources [edit]
- Grof, Stanislav (1988), The Adventure of Self-Discovery: I : Dimensions of Consciousness : II : New Perspectives in Psychotherapy, SUNY Press
