The practice of ego death as a deliberately sought "mystical experience" in some ways overlaps 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.
Many other methods, practices, or experiences may also induce this state, including prayer, sleep deprivation, fasting, meditation practice, or through the use of an isolation tank. Less frequently, it might also come about spontaneously.
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.
This "perceived loss of boundaries between self and environment" can 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. Either way, it feels as if new dimensions are perceived, such as a two dimensional being suddenly looking "up".
It should also be noted, within the context of this system, that ego death is not actual death itself, but rather a state of mind (temporary or permanent) 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 metabolic elimination for those who have reached the state using psychedelics.
However, there are at least as many points of view about the nature of ego death as there are mystics, psychonauts, etc. who have had the experience. (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.") 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.
Many users of psychedelics like LSD and DMT report experiences of Ego death along with other mystical experiences common with psychedelic substances.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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