Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings.
Jungian psychology
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described by
Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the
Hero's Journey
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Earlie ...
. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
In descriptions of
drugs, the term is used synonymously with ego-loss to refer to (temporary) loss of one's sense of self due to the use of drugs. The term was used as such by
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...
et al. to describe the death of the ego in the first phase of an
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the
self
The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
occurs.
The concept is also used in contemporary
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...
spirituality and in the
modern understanding of Eastern religions to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self"
and self-centeredness. This conception is an influential part of
Eckhart Tolle's teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and emotions, continuously identified with, which creates the idea and feeling of being a separate entity from one's self, and only by disidentifying one's consciousness from it can one truly be free from suffering.
Definitions
''Ego death'' and the related term "ego loss" have been defined in the context of
mysticism
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ...
by the religious studies scholar Daniel Merkur as "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 reality-testing, sense-perception, memory, reason, fantasy and self-representation are repressed
..Muslim Sufis call it ''
fana
Fana is a borough of the city of Bergen in Vestland county, Norway. The borough makes up the southeastern part of the municipality of Bergen. The borough was once part of the historic municipality of Fana which was incorporated into Bergen ...
'' ('annihilation'), and medieval Jewish kabbalists termed it 'the kiss of death.
Carter Phipps equates enlightenment and ego death, which he defines as "the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence".
In
Jungian psychology
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
, Ventegodt and Merrick define ego death as "a fundamental transformation of the psyche". Such a shift in personality has been labeled an "ego death" in Buddhism, or a psychic death by
Jung.
In comparative mythology, ego death is the second phase of Joseph Campbell's description of the
Hero's Journey
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Earlie ...
, which includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation. The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, after which the hero returns to enrich the world with their discoveries.
In psychedelic culture, Leary, Metzner and Alpert (1964) define ego death, or ego loss as they call it, as part of the (symbolic) experience of death in which the old ego must die before one can be spiritually reborn. They define ego loss as "... complete transcendence − beyond words, beyond spacetime, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom".
Several psychologists working on psychedelics have defined ego-death. Alnaes (1964) defines ego death as "
ss of ego-feeling". Stanislav Grof (1988) defines it as "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
.. o death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu ...
called "skin-encapsulated ego". The psychologist John Harrison (2010) defines "
mporary ego death
s the
S, or s, is the nineteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ess'' (pronounced ), plural ''esses''.
Histor ...
loss of the separate self
or, in the affirmative,
..a deep and profound merging with the transcendent other. Johnson, Richards and Griffiths (2008), paraphrasing Leary ''et al.'' and Grof define ego death as "temporarily experienc
nga complete loss of subjective self-identity.
Conceptual development
The concept of "ego death" developed along a number of intertwined strands of thought, including especially the following: romantic movements and subcultures;
Theosophy
Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings. Categorized by scholars of religion ...
; anthropological research on
rites de passage and
shamanism; Joseph Campbell's
comparative mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics.Littleton, p. 32 Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used ...
;
Jungian psychology
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
; the
psychedelic scene of the 1960s; and
transpersonal psychology
Transpersonal psychology, or spiritual psychology, is a sub-field or school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. The '' transpersonal'' is defined ...
.
Western mysticism
According to Merkur,
Jungian psychology
According to Ventegodt and Merrick, the Jungian term "psychic death" is a synonym for "ego death":
Ventegodt and Merrick refer to Jung's publications ''
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious'', first published 1933, and ''
Psychology and Alchemy'', first published in 1944.
In Jungian psychology, a unification of archetypal opposites has to be reached, during a process of conscious suffering, in which consciousness "dies" and resurrects. Jung called this process "the transcendent function", which leads to a
"more inclusive and synthetic consciousness".
Jung used analogies with
alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
to describe the
individuation
The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.
The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...
process, and the
transference-processes which occur during therapy.
According to Leeming et al., from a religious point of view psychic death is related to
St. John of the Cross' ''Ascent of Mt. Carmel'' and ''Dark Night of the Soul''.
Mythology – ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''
In 1949, Joseph Campbell published ''
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' (first published in 1949) is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myt ...
'', a study on the
archetype
The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
of the
Hero's Journey
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Earlie ...
. 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, whereafter the hero returns to enrich the world with his discoveries. Campbell describes the basic theme as follows:
This journey is based on the archetype of death and rebirth, in which the
"false self" is surrendered and the
"true self" emerges. A well known example is Dante's ''
Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...
'', in which the hero descends into the underworld.
Psychedelics
Concepts and ideas from mysticism and bohemianism were inherited by the
Beat Generation. When
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxle ...
helped popularize the use of psychedelics, starting with ''
The Doors of Perception
''The Doors of Perception'' is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging ...
'', published in 1954, Huxley also promoted a set of analogies with eastern religions, as described in ''
The Perennial Philosophy
''The Perennial Philosophy'' is a comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. Its title derives from the theological tradition of ''perennial philosophy''.
Social and political context
''The Perennial P ...
.'' This book helped inspire the 1960s belief in a revolution in western consciousness and included the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead'' as a source. Similarly,
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu ...
, in his opening statement on mystical experiences in ''This Is It,'' draws parallels with
Richard Bucke
Richard Maurice Bucke (18 March 1837 – 19 February 1902), often called Maurice Bucke, was a prominent Canadian psychiatrist in the late 19th century.
An adventurer during his youth, Bucke later studied medicine. Eventually, as a psychiatrist ...
's 1901 book ''
Cosmic Consciousness'', describing the "central core" of the experience as
This interest in mysticism helped shape the emerging research and popular conversation around psychedelics in the 1960s. In 1964
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
drew a distinction between "sedative" and "conscious-expanding" drugs. In the 1940s and 1950s the use of
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
was restricted to military and psychiatric researchers. One of those researchers was
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...
, a clinical psychologist who first encountered psychedelic drugs while on vacation in 1960, and started to research the effects of psilocybin in 1961. He sought advice from Aldous Huxley, who advised him to propagate psychedelic drugs among society's elites, including artists and intellectuals. On insistence of Allen Ginsberg, Leary, 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''.
Following Huxley's advice, Leary wrote a manual for LSD-usage. ''
The Psychedelic Experience
''The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead'' (commonly referred to as ''The Psychedelic Experience'') is a 1964 book about using psychedelic drugs that was coauthored by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard ...
'', published in 1964, is a guide for
LSD-trips, written by
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...
,
Ralph Metzner
Ralph Metzner (May 18, 1936 – March 14, 2019) was a German-born American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later named ...
and Richard Alpert, loosely based on
Walter Evans-Wentz
Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz (February 2, 1878 – July 17, 1965) was an American anthropologist and writer who was a pioneer in the study of Tibetan Buddhism, and in transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the Western world, most known for publishin ...
's translation of the ''
Tibetan Book of the Dead
The ''Bardo Thodol'' (, "Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State"), commonly known in the West as ''The Tibetan Book of the Dead'', is a terma text from a larger corpus of teachings, the ''Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation ...
''. Aldous Huxley introduced the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead'' to Timothy Leary. According to Leary, Metzner and Alpert, the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead'' is
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, Metzner and Alpert it is....
Also in 1964 Randolf Alnaes published "Therapeutic applications of the change in consciousness produced by psycholytica (LSD, Psilocybin, etc.)." Alnaes notes that patients may become involved in
existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
problems as a consequence of the LSD experience. Psycholytic drugs may facilitate insight. With a short psychological treatment, patients may benefit from changes brought about by the effects of the experience.
One of the LSD-experiences may be the death crisis. Alnaes discerns three stages in this kind of experience:
# Psychosomatic symptoms 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".
Timothy Leary's description of "ego-death"
In ''The Psychedelic Experience'', three stages are discerned:
# Chikhai Bardo: ego loss, a "complete transcendence" of the self and game;
# Chonyid Bardo: The Period of Hallucinations;
# Sidpa Bardo: the return to routine game reality and the self.
Each Bardo is described in the first part of ''The Psychedelic Experience''. In the second part, instructions are given which can be read to the "voyager". The instructions for the ''First Bardo'' state:
Pseudo Scientific research
Stanislav Grof
Stanislav Grof has researched the effects of psychedelic substances, which can also be induced by nonpharmacological 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; alteration 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 catastrophe, and may be desperately struggling to stop this process. The transition from BPM III to BPM IV may involve a sense of total annihilation:
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,
Recent research
Recent research also mentions that ego loss is sometimes experienced by those under the influence of
psychedelic drugs
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...
.
The Ego-Dissolution Inventory is a validated self-report questionnaire that allows for the measurement of transient ego-dissolution experiences occasioned by psychedelic drugs.
View of spiritual traditions
Following the interest in psychedelics and spirituality, the term "ego death" has been used to describe the eastern notion of "enlightenment" (''
bodhi'') or ''
moksha
''Moksha'' (; sa, मोक्ष, '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'' and ''mukti'', is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriologic ...
''.
Buddhism
Zen practice is said to lead to ego-death. Ego-death is also called "great death", in contrast to the physical "small death". According to Jin Y. Park, the ego death that Buddhism encourages makes an end to the "usually-unconsciousness-and-automated quest" to understand the sense-of-self as a thing, instead of as a process. According to Park, meditation is learning how to die by learning to "forget" the sense of self:
According to Welwood, "egolessness" is a common experience. Egolessness appears "in the gaps and spaces between thoughts, which usually go unnoticed". Existential anxiety arises when one realizes that the feeling of "I" is nothing more than a perception. According to Welwood, only egoless awareness allows us to face and accept death in all forms.
David Loy also mentions the fear of death, and the need to undergo ego-death to realize our true nature. According to Loy, our fear of egolessness may even be stronger than our fear of death.
"Egolessness" is not the same as ''
anatta (''non-self). Where the former is more of a personal experience, ''Anatta'' is a doctrine common to all of Buddhism - describing how the constituents of a person contain no permanent entity (one has no "essence of themself"):
Taoism
The Taoist internal martial artist
Bruce Frantzis
Bruce Kumar Frantzis (born April 1949) is a Taoist educator who studied Taoism in China.
Biography
Beginning as a young karate champion, he engaged in a multi-decade journey leading him throughout Asia and the Eastern energetic traditions. Choosi ...
reports an experience of fear of ego annihilation, or "ru ding":
I was in Hong Kong, beginning to learn the old Yang style of Tai Chi Chaun when ru ding first struck me… It was late at night, at a still and quiet terrace on the Peak, where few people came after midnight…the park was quiet, and the moon and the sky felt as though they were descending downward, putting enormous pressure on every square inch of my skin, as I tried to life my arms with the expansive energy of tai chi…I felt as if Chi from the moonlight, stars, and sky penetrated my body against my will. My body and mind became immensely still, as though they had dropped into a bottomless abyss, even though I was doing the rhythmic slow motion movements…At the depth of the stillness, an overwhelming, formless fear began to develop in my belly…. Then it happened: an all-consuming, paralyzing fear seemed all at once to invade every cell in my body… I knew if I kept practicing there would be nothing left of me in a few seconds… I stopped practicing… and ran down the hill praying hard that this terror would leave me….
The ego, goes into a mortal fear when the false reality of being separate from the universal life force is threatened by your consciousness having reached an awareness of connection to everything in existence. The ego spews forth all sorts of terrifying psychological and physiological reactions in the body and mind to make meditators petrified of leaving the state of separation.
Bernadette Roberts
Bernadette Roberts Bernadette Roberts (1931–2017) was a former Carmelite nun and contemplative in the Catholic tradition.
Biography
Bernadette Roberts was born in 1931 in California to devout Catholic parents. She entered the Monastery of Discalced Carmelites in ...
makes a distinction between "no ego" and "no self". According to Roberts, the falling away of the ego is not the same as the falling away of the self. "No ego" comes prior to the unitive state; with the falling away of the unitive state comes "no self". "Ego" is defined by Roberts as
Roberts defines "self" as
Ultimately, all experiences on which these definitions are based are wiped out or dissolved. Jeff Shore further explains that "no self" means "the permanent ceasing, the falling away once and for all, of the entire mechanism of reflective self-consciousness".
According to Roberts, both the Buddha and Christ embody the falling away of self, and the state of "no self". The falling away is represented by the Buddha prior to his enlightenment, starving himself by ascetic practices, and by the dying Jesus on the cross; the state of "no self" is represented by the enlightened Buddha with his serenity, and by the resurrected Christ.
Integration after ego-death experiences
Psychedelics
According to
Nick Bromell
Nick Bromell (born 1950) is an American author and educator in the field of intellectual history. He is the professor of American studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. In his writing and research, he specializes in media and public opin ...
, 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 Grof, death crises may occur over a series of psychedelic sessions until they cease to lead to panic. A conscious effort not to panic may lead to a "pseudohallucinatory sense of transcending physical death". According to Merkur,
Vedanta and Zen
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.
Jacobs warns that Advaita Vedanta practice takes years of committed practice to sever the "occlusion" of the so-called "
vasanas,
samskaras Samskara, saṃskāra, saṅskāra or sanskara may refer to:
* Sanskara (rite of passage), Hindu and Jain rites of passage
* Samskara (ayurvedic), a technique in ayurvedic medicine
* Samskara (Indian philosophy), the concept of imprints or impres ...
,
bodily sheaths and
vritti
Vritti (Vrutti) (Sanskrit: वृत्ति, Harvard-Kyoto: vṛtti, Gujarati: વૃત્તિ), means "streams of consciousness",it is also a technical term used in yoga meant to indicate mental awareness against disturbances in the mediu ...
s", and the "granthi or knot forming identification between
Self
The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
and mind".
Zen Buddhist training does not end with
kenshō
''Kenshō'' (見性) is a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. ''Ken'' means "seeing", ''shō'' means "nature, essence". It is usually translated as "seeing one's (true) nature", that is, the Buddha-nature or nature of mind.
Kenshō is an ...
, 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
, Japanese name#In English and other Western languages, or Koun Yamada, was a Japanese Buddhist who was the leader of the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, the Dharma heir of his teacher Yasutani Haku'un Ryoko. Yamada was appointed the leade ...
, "if you cannot weep with a person who is crying, there is no kensho".
Dark Night and depersonalisation
Shinzen Young, an American Buddhist teacher, has pointed at the difficulty integrating the experience of no self. He calls this "the Dark Night", or
Willoughby Britton is conducting research on such phenomena which may occur during meditation, in a research program called "The Dark Night of the Soul".
She has searched texts from various traditions to find descriptions of difficult periods on the spiritual path,
and conducted interviews to find out more on the difficult sides of meditation.
Influence
The propagation of LSD-induced "mystical experiences", and the concept of ego death, had some influence in the 1960s, but Leary's brand of LSD-spirituality never "quite caught on".
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 diminished 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
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was released in August 1966 as the final track on their album ''Revolver'', although it was the firs ...
" 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. He eventually 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 Bromell, 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. He further states this also led to a different attitude among youngsters in the 1960s, rejecting the lifestyle of their parents as being deceitful and false.
Controversy
The relationship between ego death and LSD has been disputed.
Hunter S. Thompson, who tried LSD, saw a self-centered base in Leary's work, noting that Leary placed himself at the centre of his texts, using his persona as "an exemplary ego, not a dissolved one". Dan Merkur notes that the use of LSD in combination with Leary's manual often did not lead to ego-death, but to horrifying
bad trips.
The relationship between LSD use and enlightenment has also been criticized.
Sōtō
Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngsh ...
-
Zen
Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
teacher
Brad Warner
Brad Warner (born March 5, 1964) is an American Sōtō Zen monk, author, blogger, documentarian and punk rock bass guitarist.
Biography
Brad Warner was born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1964. His family traveled for his father's job and Warner spent ...
has repeatedly criticized the idea that psychedelic experiences lead to "enlightenment experiences". In response to ''The Psychedelic Experience'' he wrote:
The concept that ego-death or a similar experience might be considered a common basis for religion has been disputed by scholars in religious studies but "has lost none of its popularity". Scholars have also criticized Leary and Alpert's attempt to tie ego-death and psychedelics with Tibetan Buddhism. John Myrdhin Reynolds, has disputed Leary and Jung's use of the Evans-Wentz's translation of the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead,'' arguing that it introduces a number of misunderstandings about
Dzogchen. Reynolds argues that Evans-Wentz's was not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, and that his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist". Nonetheless, Reynolds confirms that the nonsubstantiality of the ego is the ultimate goal of the Hinayana system.
See also
Notes
References
Sources
Printed sources
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Web sources
Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ego death
Ego psychology
Mysticism
Nondualism
Psychedelia
Timothy Leary