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Ego death, also called ego-loss, is a term introduced by Timothy Leary to describe the experience of mentally dying in an LSD-trip. Leary intended his translation of the Tibetan book of the dead as a guide for undergoing psychedelic ego death, which he characterised as: "an initiation process whose purpose it is to restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth" (p.9). Leary strongly rejected the idea that the relevant sense of 'death' in this context is the literal death of the physical body, and instead suggested that psychedelic ego death is a symbolic kind of death. Leary claimed that it is: "one of the oldest and most universal practices for the initiate to go through the experience of death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to his past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which he has been initiated" (p.12). The term 'ego death' became popular during the 1960s, influencing musicians like John Lennon and Syd Barrett, and therapists like Stanislav Grof.

The Psychedelic Experience

The Psychedelic Experience, published in 1964, is a guide for LSD-trips, written by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, based on Yvan-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was pioneered by Aldous Huxley, who already in the 1950s propagated the use of psychedelics, starting with The Doors of Perception, published in 1954. Huxley also promoted a set of analogies with eastern religions, which inspired the 1960s belief in a revolution in western consciousness. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was one of his sources, which he introduced to Timothy Leary, a clinical psychologust who started to research the effects of psylocybin in 1961. Leary construed the effect of LSD as a "stripping away" of ego-defenses, finding parallels between the stages of death and rebirth in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the stages of psychological "death" and "rebirth" which he had identified during his research.

In The Psychedelic Experience, three stages are discerned:

1. Chikhai Bardo: a "complete transcendence" of the self and game;
2. Chonyid Bardo: self, or external game reality;
3. Sidpa Bardo: the return to routine game reality and the self.

Influence

John Lennon

John Lennon read The Psychedelic experience, and was strongly affected by it. he wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows" after reading the book, and using it as a guide for his LSD-trips.

Stanislav Grof

Stanislav Grof has researched the effects of psychedelic substances, which can also be induced by nonpharmological means. Grof has developed a "cartography of the psyche" based on his clinical work with psychedelics, which describe the "basic types of experience that become available to an average person" when using psychedelics or "various powerful non-pharmacological experiential techniques".

According to Grof, traditional psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy use a model of the human personality that is limited to biography and the individual consciousness, as described by Freud. This model is inadequate to describe the experiences which result from the use of psychedelics and the use of "powerful techniques", which activate and mobilize "deep unconscious and superconscious levels of the human psyche". These levels include:

• The Sensory Barrier and the Recollective-Biographical Barrier
• The Perinatal Matrices:
  • BPM I: The Amniotic Universe. Maternal womb; symbiotic unity of the fetus with the maternal organism; lack of boundaries and obstructions;
  • BPM II: Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit. Onset of labor; alteraion of blissful connection with the mother and its pristine universe;
  • BPM III: The Death-Rebirth Struggle. Movement through the birth channel and struggle for survival;
  • BPM IV: The Death-Rebirth Experience. Birth and release.
• The Transpersonal Dimensions of the Psyche

Ego death appears in the fourth Perinatal Matrix. This matrix is related to the stage of delivery, the actual birth of the child. The build up of tension, pain and anxiety is suddenly released. The symbolic counterpart is the Death-Rebirth Experience, in which the individual may have a strong feeling of impending catastroph, and may be desparately struggling to stop this process. The transition from BPM III to BPM IV may involve a sense of total annihilation:

This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.

According to Grof what dies in this process is "a basically paranoid attitude toward the world which reflects the negative experience of the subject during childbirth and later." When experienced in its final and most complete form,

...ego death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego."

Criticism

Evans-Wentz translation

John Myrdhin Reynolds has sharply criticized Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, who introduced a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen. Evans-Wentz was not familiair with Tibetan Buddhism, and introduced a terminology into the translation which was largely derived from Hinduism, as well as from his Theosophical beliefs. According to Reynolds, Evans-Wentz's view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist." Evans-Wentz was well acquainted with Theosophy, and used this framework to interpret the translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which was largely provided by two Tibetan lamas who spoke English, Lama Sumdhon Paul and Lama Lobzang Mingnur Dorje.

Also Jung's introduction betrays a misunderstanding of Tibetan Buddhism, using the text to discuss his own theory of the unconsciousness.

See also

Notes

1. Cite error: The named reference def_ego-loss was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. Cite error: The named reference def_game was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

References

1. Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 14.
2. Gould 2007, p. 218-220.
3. Chapman 2010.
4. grof 1988. sfn error: no target: CITEREFgrof1988 (help)
5. ^ Gould 2007, p. 218.
6. Gould 2007, p. 218-219.
7. Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 5.
8. ^ Conners 2013.
9. Grof 1988, p. xi.
10. Grof 1988, p. xiii-xiv.
11. Grof 1988, p. xvi.
12. grof 1988, p. xvi. sfn error: no target: CITEREFgrof1988 (help)
13. ^ Grof 1988, p. 1.
14. ^ Grof 1988.
15. ^ Grof 1988, p. 29.
16. ^ Grof 1988, p. 30.
17. ^ Reynolds 1989, p. 71. sfn error: no target: CITEREFReynolds1989 (help)
18. Reynolds 1989, p. 78. sfn error: no target: CITEREFReynolds1989 (help)
19. Reynolds 1989, p. 72-73, 78. sfn error: no target: CITEREFReynolds1989 (help)
20. Reynolds 1989, p. 110. sfn error: no target: CITEREFReynolds1989 (help)

Sources

Printed sources

• Chapman, Rob (2010), A Very Irregular Head: The Life of Syd Barrett, Da Capo Press
• Conners, Peter (2013), White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg, City Lights Books
• Gould, Jonathan (2007), Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, Crown Publishing Group
• Grof, Stanislav (1988), The Adventure of Self-Discovery. Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration, SUNY Press
• Leary, Timothy; Metzner, Ralph; Alpert, Richard (1964), THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE. A manual based on THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD (PDF)
• Self-Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness, Station Hill Press, 1989 {{citation}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Text "last -Reynolds" ignored (help)

Web-sources

External links

• Ego Death and Self-Control Cybernetics
• Osho, "Ego - The False Center"
• The Effect of LSD on the Ego
• Liberation Unleashed - forum dedicated to ego death
• The Almaasery, "Ego Death"
• Who Is It Who Has Transcendent Experiences? (Thomas Merton, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite")

• Ego psychology
• Mysticism
• Nondualism
• Psychedelia