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Ego death is an experience that purportedly reveals the illusory aspect of the ego, sometimes undergone by psychonauts, mystics, shamans, monks, psychologists, and others interested in exploring the depths of the mind.
The practice of ego death as a deliberately sought "mystical experience" in some ways overlaps, but is nevertheless distinct from, traditional teachings concerning enlightenment/"Nirvana" (in Buddhism) or "Moksha" (in 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.
Sometimes the ego death is triggered without the subject's desire. This can be a very traumatic and psychologically damaging event for some, and should be approached with caution.
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Methods of inducing the experience
Perhaps the most direct means of accomplishing the mystical experience of ego death is through ingestion of psychedelic drugs[1] such as LSD, Salvia divinorum, DMT, psilocybin, 2c-b and mescaline, as well as cannabis.
Many other methods, practices, or experiences may also induce this state, including prayer, sacred ritual, sleep deprivation, fasting, sex magick, meditation practice, or through the use of an isolation tank. Less frequently, it might also come about spontaneously or "of its own accord" (as a symptom of certain mental illnesses, or in response to severe trauma).
There are a variety of schools of thought about the aim, practice, and interpretation of the ego death experience. According to one person, for example (see egodeath.com) it is 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," loose "cognitive-association binding," and even
...a sense of being controlled by frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. Experiencing this model of control and time initially destabilizes self-control power, and amounts to the death of the self that was conceived of as an autonomous control-agent. Self-control stability is restored upon transforming one's mental model to take into account the dependence of personal control on a hidden, separate thought-source, such as Necessity or a divine level that transcends Necessity.[2]
It should also be noted, within the context of this system, that ego death is not actual death itself, but rather a temporary state of mind which can be stabilised and reverted. This can be done either by thought-source control for any who have achieved the state, as well as by de-intoxication for those who have reached the state using psychedelics.
However, there are, again, at least as many points of view about the nature of ego death as there are mystics, psychonauts, etc. who have had the experience.[citation needed] (Some, for example, may even go so far as to agree with the poet Dylan Thomas who said, "after the first death, there is no other."[3]) It can also be argued that experiencing ego death is not possible because an ego is a functional necessity of experience and hence experience does not occur after ego death. Unless one's contemplation (while not ceasing to exist) is focused and or completely absorbed into an infinite object.
See also
- Altered states of consciousness.
- Death, Brain death, and Near-death experience.
- Gnosis and Kenosis.
- Ego (philosophy), Ego (spirituality), and Self (spirituality).
- Mysticism
- Mystical psychosis
- Night of Pan
- Nondualism
- Psychedelic experience and Entheogenic experience.
- Depersonalization and derealization
References
- ^ Grof, S: "LSD Psychotherapy", page 35. Hunter House, 1980
- ^ The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death
- ^ "A refusal to mourn death," by Dylan Thomas (retrieved 21-2-2008)
External links
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