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Ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition in the death and rebirth mythology, as described by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology, and is also being used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.

The term is used synonymously with the term ego-loss, to refer to the (temporary) loss of the sense of a separate self, "ego-feeling" or subjective identity, due to the use of psychedelics. The term was used as such by Timothy Leary to describe the first phase in an LSD-trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self and game appears.

The term is also used to describe a permanent loss of attachment to a separate sense of self and the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence.

Definitions

Various definitions can be found of ego death.

Mysticism

Daniel Merkur:

... an imageless experience in which there is no sense of personal identity. It is the experience that remains possible in a state of extremely deep trance when the ego-functions of relaity-testing, sense-perception, memory, reason, fantasy and self-representation are repressed Muslim Sufis call it fana (annihilation), and medieaval Jewish kabbalists termed it "the kiss of death."

Mythology

"Ego death" is the second phase of the Hero's Journey, which includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation. The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, where-after the hero returns to enrich the world with his discoveries.

Psychedelics

Leary, Metzer & Alpert (1964):

omplete transcendence − beyond words, beyond space−time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological) involvements.

Alnaes (1964):

oss of ego-feeling.

Stanislav Grof (1988)

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

Daniel Merkur (1998) uses the term to refer to the "death crisis" which may occur during a trip:

death-rebirth experience also described in the literature as "ego death." It is sometimes termed "ego loss" The death crisis takes various forms. The early examples in a series of death crises are usually attended by extreme panic.

Michael Hoffman (2006-2007):

Ego death is the cessation, in the intense mystic altered state, of the sense and feeling of being a control-wielding agent moving through time and space. The sensation of wielding control is replaced by the experience of being helplessly, powerlessly embedded in spacetime as purely a product of spacetime, with control-thoughts being perceptibly inserted or set into the stream of thought by a hidden, uncontrollable source.

Johnson, Richards & Griffiths (2008), paraphrasing Leary et al. and Grof:

The individual may temporarily experience a complete loss of subjective self-identity, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as ‘ego loss’ or ‘ego death’.

John Harrison (2010):

emporary ego death loss of the separate self or, in the affirmative, a deep and profound merging with the transcendent other.

Spirituality

Richard White, citing Carter Phipps:

Enlightenment equals ego death the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence.

What is Enlightenment-Magazine:

go death the final destruction of our attachment to a separate sense of self.

Development of the concept

The concept of "ego death" developed along a number of intertwined strands of thought, especially romantic movements and subcultures, Theosophy, anthropological research on rites de passage and shamanism Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology, Jungian psychology, the psychedelic scene of the 1960s, and transpersonal psychology.

Bohemianism

Bohemianism was a distinctive component of the 19th century romanticism, which reached New York in the 1830s. Drug-use, particularly hashish and opium, was an integral part of this 19th century romanticism. Occult or esoteric components were added between 1900 and 1920. By the 1920s, American Bohemianism involved a "system of ideas":

alvation by the child (within), self-expression, paganism, living for the moment, liberty, female equality, psychological adjustment, and changing location.

These values were inherited by both the Beat Generation and the hippies.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

In 1949 Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a study on the archetype of the Hero's Journey. It describes a common theme found in many cultures worldwide, and is also described in many contemporary theories on personal transformation. In traditional cultures it describes the "wilderness passage", the transition from adolescence into adulthood. It typically includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation. The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, where-after the hero returns to enrich the world with his discoveries. Campbell describes the basic theme as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

This journey is based on the archetype of death and rebirth, in which is the "false self" is surrendered and the "true self" emerges. A well-known example is Dante's Divina Comedia, in which the hero dewcends into the underworld.

1950s Beat Generation and Aldous Huxley

See also: Shamanism, Neo-shamanism, and Beat Generation

In the 1940s an interest in Native American peyotism had developed among anthropology-students in San Francisco. Beat poets in San Francisco, such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure integrated peyotism into their bohemianism, around the time that Aldous Huxley published The Doors of Perception.

Aldous Huxley 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.

Alan Watts had a profound influence on the psychedelic experiences of the beats and the early hippies. His opening statement on mystical experiences in This Is It draws parallels with Richard Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, describing the "central core" of the experience as

... the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of all living.

1960 hippies

The use of drugs was an important part of the emerging 1960s hippie-scene of San Francisco. In 1964 William S. Burroughs drew a distinction between "sedative" and "conscious-expanding" drugs. The distinction was taken over by the hippies, calling sedatives "drugs", and conscious-expanding substances "dope".

LSD

In the 1940s and 1950s the use of LSD was restricted to military and psychiatric researchers. By the end of the 1950s, a number of researchers began to share LSD with their friends in private situations. Fatal incidents eventually lead to the criminalization of LSD in 1966.

One of those researchers was Timothy Leary, a clinical psychologist who first encountered psychedelic drugs while on vacation in 1960, and started to research the effects of psylocybin in 1961. He sought advice from Aldous Huxley, who advised him to propagate psychedelic drugs among society's elites, including artitst and intellectuals. On insistence of Allen Ginsberg Laery, together with his younger colleague Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) also made LSD available to students. In 1962 Leary was fired, and Harvard's psychedelic research program was shut down. In 1962 Leary founded the Castalia Foundation, and in 1963 he and his colleagues founded the journal The Psychedelic Review.

The Psychedelic Experience

Main articles: The Psychedelic Experience and Bardo

Following Huxley's advice, Leary also wrote a manual for LSD-usage. The Psychedelic Experience, published in 1964, is a guide for LSD-trips, written by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, loosely based on Yvan-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aldous Huxley introduced the Tibetan Book of the Dead to Timothy Leary. According to Leary, Metzer and Alpert, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is

... a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and a guide for initiates, and for those who are seeking the spiritual path of liberation.

They 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 Leary had identified during his research. According to Leary, Metzer and Alpert 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.

In The Psychedelic Experience, three stages are discerned:

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

Randolf Alnaes

Also in 1964 Randolf Alnaes published "Therapeutic applications of the change in consciousness produced by psycholytica (LSD, Psilocyrin, etc.)." Alnaes notes that patients may become involved in existential problems as a consequence of the LSD experience. Psycholytic drugs may facilitate insight. With a short psychological treatment, patients may benefit from changed brought about by the effects of the experience.

One of the LSD-experiences may be the death crisis. Alnaes discernes three stages in this kind of experience:

Psychosomatic symtoms lead up to the "loss of ego feeling (ego death)";
A sense of separation of the observing subject from the body. The body is beheld to undergo death or an associated event;
"Rebirth", the return to normal, conscious mentation, "characteristically involving a tremendous sense of relief, which is cathartic in nature and may lead to insight."

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 desperately 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."

Theoretical background

See also: Mysticism and Perennial philosophy

Leary's terminology

Leary developed the concept of "ego death" as a description of unitive states. According to Merkur,

The conceptualisation of mystical union as the soul's death, and its replacement by God's consciousness, has been a standard Roman Catholic trope since St. Teresa of Ávila; the motif traces back through Marguerite Porete, in the 13th century, to the fana, "annihilation", of the Islamic Sufis.

Merkur further notes that, accurately described, not the ego, but the self-representation disappears. The ego, "defined as the seat of experience", continues to function.

Perennial philosophy

1960s studies of mysticism were generally informed by the "common core thesis", the idea that mystical experiences are essentially the same, independent of the sociocultural, historical and religious context in which it occurs. This idea was also popular among the hippies.

In the 19th century perennialism gained popularity as a model for perceiving similarities across a broad range of religious traditions. William James, in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, was highly influential in further popularising this perennial approach and the notion of personal experience as a validation of religious truths.

Aldous Huxley was a major proponent of the Perennial philosophy. He "was heavily influenced in his description by Vivekananda's neo-Vedanta and the idiosyncratic version of Zen exported to the west by D.T. Suzuki. Both of these thinkers expounded their versions of the perennialist thesis", which they originally received from western thinkers and theologians.

The perennial position is "largely dismissed by scholars", but "has lost none of its popularity".

Evans-Wentz translation

According to John Myrdhin Reynolds, Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead introduced a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen. 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. Evans-Wentz was not familiair with Tibetan Buddhism, and his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist." He introduced a terminology into the translation which was largely derived from Hinduism, as well as from his Theosophical beliefs.

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

Influence

Reports of psychedelic experiences

Leary's terminology influenced the understanding and description of the effects of psychedelics. Various reports by hippies of their psychedelic experiences describe states of dimished consciousness which were labelled as "ego death", but do not match Leary's descriptions. Panic attacks were occasionally also labeled as "ego death".

The Beatles

John Lennon read The Psychedelic Experience, and was strongly affected by it. He wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows" after reading the book, as a guide for his LSD-trips. Lennon took about a thousand acid-trips, but it only exacerbated his personal difficulties. Eventually John Lennon stopped using the drug. George Harrison and Paul McCartney also concluded that LSD use didn't result in any worthwhile changes.

Radical pluralism

According to Nick Bromell, ego death is a tempering though frightening experience, which may lead to a reconciliation with the insight that there is no real self. According to Brunell, the experience of ego death confirms a radical pluralism that most people experience in their youth, but prefer to flee from, instead believing in a stable self and a fixed reality. According to Bromell, this also lead to a different attitude among youngsters in the 1060s, rejecting the lifestyle of their parents as being deceitfull and false.

Criticism

Fatal accidents

Dan Merkur notes that the use of LSD in combination with Leary's manual often did not lead to liberating insights, but to horryfying bad trips. It also lead to fatal accidents, which were trivialized by Alpert.

Charlatan

Hunter S. Thompson, who tried LSD, criticized Leary as a charlatan who was exploiting the credulity of large numbers of disaffected people. Thompson perceived a self-centered base in Leary's work, placing himself at the centre of his texts, using his persona as "an exemplary ego, not a dissolved one."

Integration

Both the Vedanta and the Zen-Buddhist tradition warn that insight into the emptiness of the self, or so-called "enlightenment experiences", are not sufficient; further practice is necessary.

Vedanta

Jacobs warns that Advaita Vedanta practice takes years of committed practice to sever the "occlusion" of the so-called "vasanas, samskaras, bodily sheaths and vrittis", and the "granthi or knot forming identification between Self and mind".

Zen Buddhism

Sōtō-Zen teacher Brad Warner has repeatedly criticized the idea that psychedelic experiences lead to "enlightenment experiences." In response to The Psychedelic Experience he wrote:

While I was at Starwood, I was getting mightily annoyed by all the people out there who were deluding themselves and others into believing that a cheap dose of acid, 'shrooms, peyote, "molly" or whatever was going to get them to a higher spiritual plane While I was at that campsite I sat and read most of the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass, later of Be Here Now fame). It's a book about the authors' deeply mistaken reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a guide for the drug taking experience It was one thing to believe in 1964 that a brave new tripped out age was about to dawn. It's quite another to still believe that now, having seen what the last 47 years have shown us about where that path leads. If you want some examples, how about Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Syd Barrett, John Entwistle, Kurt Cobain... Do I really need to get so cliched with this? Come on now.

Zen Buddhist training does not end with kenshō, or insight into one's true nature. Practice is to be continued to deepen the insight and to express it in daily life. According to Hakuin, the main aim of "post-satori practice" (gogo no shugyo or kojo, "going beyond") is to cultivate the "Mind of Enlightenment". According to Yamada Koun, "if you cannot weep with a person who is crying, there is no kensho".

Notes

^ Leary et al.: "The first period (Chikhai Bardo) is that of complete transcendence − beyond words, beyond space−time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological) involvements."
^ Leary et al.: ""Games" are behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space−time locations and characteristic patterns of movement.
^ See also Encyclopedia Britannica, Fana, and Christopher Vitale,
See The Knot of the Heart
See:

References

^ Taylor 2008, p. 1749.
^ Plotkin 2010, p. 467, note 1.
^ Rosen 1998, p. 228.
^ Atkinson 1995, p. 31.
Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 14.
Merkur 1998, p. 58.
^ Johnson, Richards & Griffiths 2008.
Dickins 2014, p. 374.
^ Merkur 1998, p. 60.
^ Harrison 2010.
^ Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 5.
^ White 2012, p. 7.
Merkur 2007, p. 66.
^ Grof 1988, p. 30.
^ Merkur 1998, p. 58-59.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 211.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 212.
^ Reynolds 1989, p. 72-73, 78.
^ Taylor 2008, p. 1748-1749.
Rosen 1998, p. 226.
Merkur 2014, p. 219-221.
^ Grof 1988.
Campbell 1949, p. 23.
^ Gould 2007, p. 218.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 213.
Merkur 2014, p. 213-218.
Merkur 2014, p. 218.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 219.
Merkur 2014, p. 219-220.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 220.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 221.
Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 11.
Gould 2007, p. 218-219.
Leary, Metzner & Alpert 1964, p. 12.
^ Alnaes 1964.
Grof 1988, p. xi.
Grof 1988, p. xiii-xiv.
Grof 1988, p. xvi.
grof 1988, p. xvi. sfn error: no target: CITEREFgrof1988 (help)
^ Grof 1988, p. 1.
^ Grof 1988, p. 29.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 225.
^ Merkur 2014, p. 207.
Katz 2000, p. 3.
^ King 2002.
Harmless 2007, pp. 10–17.
King 2002, p. 163.
McMahan 2008, p. 269, note 9.
McMahan 2010, p. 269, note 9. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMcMahan2010 (help)
^ Reynolds 1989, p. 71.
Reynolds 1989, p. 78.
Reynolds 1989, p. 110.
Merkur 2014, p. 222.
Merkur 2014, p. 225-227.
Merkur 2014, p. 227.
^ Conners 2013.
Lee & Shlain 1992, p. 182-183.
Lee & Shlain 1992, p. 183-184.
Bromell 2002, p. 79.
^ Bromell 2002, p. 80.
Merkur 2014, p. 222-223.
Merkur 2014, p. 224.
^ Stephenson 2011.
Jacobs 2004, p. 84.
Jacobs 2004, p. 85.
Sekida 1996. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSekida1996 (help)
Kapleau 1989.
Kraft 1997, p. 91.
Maezumi 2007, p. 54, 140. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMaezumi2007 (help)
Waddell 2004, p. xxv-xxvii. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWaddell2004 (help)
Hisamatsu 2002, p. 22.
Hori 2006, p. 145. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHori2006 (help)
Hori 2006, p. 144. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHori2006 (help)
Yoshizawa 2009, p. 41. sfn error: no target: CITEREFYoshizawa2009 (help)
MacInnes 2007, p. 75.

Sources

Printed sources

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Campbell, Joseph (1949), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press
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
Dickins, Robert (2014), Variety of Religious Paths in Psychedelic Literature. In: J. Harold Ellens (ed.), "Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances: Chemical Paths to Spirituality and to God", ABC-CLIO
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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
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Harrison, John (2010), Ego Death & Psychedelics (PDF), MAPS
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Leary, Timothy; Metzner, Ralph; Alpert, Richard (1964), THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE. A manual based on THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD (PDF)
Lee, Martin A.; Shlain, Bruce (1992), Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD : the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond, Grove Press
MacInnes, Elaine (2007), The Flowing Bridge: Guidance on Beginning Zen Koans, Wisdom Publications
Maezumi, Taizan; Glassman, Bernie (2007), The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment, Wisdom Publications
McMahan, David L. (2008), The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195183276
Merkur, Daniel (1998), The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization, SUNY Press
Merkur, Daniel (2007), Crucified with Christ: Meditations on the Passion, Mystical Death, and the Medieval : Invention of Psychotherapy, SUNY Press
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Plotkin, Bill (2010), Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, New World Library
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Sekida (translator), Katsuki (1996), Two Zen Classics. Mumonkan, The Gateless Gate. Hekiganroku, The Blue Cliff Records. Translated with commentaries by Katsuki Sekida, New York / Tokyo: Weatherhill {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)
Stephenson, William (2011), Gonzo Republic: Hunter S. Thompson's America, Bloomsbury Publishing USA
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Yoshizawa, Katsuhiro (2010), The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin, Counterpoint Press

Web-sources

External links

Psychedelics

The Effect of LSD on the Ego
psychonaut.com, What is Ego-death ??? descriptions of experiences of ego death caused by pstchedelics

Psychedelics and spirituality/religion

Spirituality

Self-awakening

Liberation Unleashed - forum dedicated to ego death

Self-help

maryplaza.com, Signs, symptoms, and how to manage an ego-death

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