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Ego

Ego dissolution happens when the brain looses the ability to differentiate between outside and inside stimulus. Studies theorize that this is due to an increase of entropic (disordered/random) activity in the DMN, and generally across the entire brain. Picture the brain just firing randomly and making connections across the brain in places it’s not suppose to and would never under normal circumstances. As a consciousness you become a passenger to your brains inner mechanisms.

PsychonautWiki describes ego death as memory suppression. Without your memory, there is no 'you'. Ego is an identity. Any identity. It's the ongoing, unconscious process of grouping certain memories, experiences, moments of feedback, etc., into a seemingly coherent narrative that creates a certain self perception.

There is no ego to kill. There are thoughts, emotions, sensory perceptions, intentions, memories, etc. Their changing kaleidoscopic interplay creates the illusion of a separate, permanent self. The point is to see through it, that the illusion is in fact an illusion. “Kill” is not a metaphor I would want to use when exploring the mind. This isn't just semantics. The mindset we use when exploring affects the experiences we create.

I had an experience of true 'ego death' only once on Salvia. In those brief moments, I did not know that I was a human person who just smoked some drug. My experience was completely foreign to me (like an observer that has no control of what I get to experience or feel). There is a brief moment where I thought, wow I just died. Only to have a wild experience that is hard/impossible to put into words for some unknown time. Eventually you do come back as 'you'. With all the memories you had before you smoked and a quickly diminishing recollection of the wild experience you just had. DMT is supposedly like that too but I never had a breakthrough experience on it yet.

One thing I always keep at top of my mind as far as ego goes is that I am not a 'main character' in this story of life. Everyone else around me lives a life as complicated or more complicated as me. Everyone has the capacity to get hurt and feel pain. And everyone can be happy. I should never be better of at the cost of someone else. I should strive to lift everyone around me up.

I like to believe in the idea of Pantheism. I and every other conscious human/animal in this universe is part of one conscious being that is the universe itself. Hurting another conscious being, you are hurting yourself.

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