I have had a few mind blowing experiences, but never any ego death. I have never completely lost sense of myself. I am able to think clearly and I still know who "I" am. I am definitely transported to another place, but I am also still very aware I am still lying in my bed the whole time, if that makes sense.

I am just confused when I read about ego loss and breaking through. They seem to go hand in hand. I have definitely been to the other side, but I am always aware that I still exsist. Does this mean I am not breaking through completely?

I have never fully broken through on DMT, but I have had an ego death before, and I would have to say yes. If you still know who you are and what's going on in the real world, I'd say you haven't completely broken through. Keep in mind that it is possible to trip hard enough on DMT to begin seeing the other world, seeing entities form and watching the architecture begin to arise, without becoming 100% immersed in it. That would be a dose that just hits the pre-launch space without blasting off and does not necessarily cause loss of sense of self, and I have been to that point before.

I only rarely experience ego death – a loss of self – on DMT. (I have ego death almost every time on salvia.) Ego death is not a prerequisite for a breakthrough. My most intense, deepest breakthrough ever left my ego perfectly intact. The experience would have been much easier to deal with if I had ego death.

what do you call ego, gilbran? A center of consciousness that observes, or the notion of you as in, who you are, that you smoked dmt, your personality, etc?

In my way of looking at it, if you still remember you smoked dmt and your name and where you are or whatever else, you havent brokenthrough. But in breakthroughs one can still be very conscious, in a totally different way (with no recollection of 'you'. But as Lunaria well said, you can definitely have pre-breakthrough experiences that are very strong and you are immersed in another dimension but still aware of yourself as an individual human being that just smoked dmt.

From my own set of definitions, every ego death I have experienced has been in "the color".
What I call a breakthrough pertains to where one goes, not how one perceives. Breaking through the veil of dimension, not the veil of being.

Visiting the land of the machine elves: breakthrough.
Losing perception of the me: ego death.

I consider ego to be that which I normally call myself – my memories and my identity as a particular individual. If we arbitrarily define a breakthrough to include ego death, then many of my breakthroughs aren’t breakthroughs by definition. But that’s not how I define a breakthrough. A breakthrough is a fully immersive experience – a transition to another reality – often a “transformation” of self, sometimes a loss of self, but sometimes not.

I’ve had a variety of different kinds of breakthroughs with respect to ego, and I consider them all to be breakthroughs.

Twice I’ve experienced “ego replacement” where I became another being. To say I “became” another being isn’t quite correct, because there was no sense of transition. There was no awareness that I had ever been anything else. Toward the end of these experiences, I gradually became aware that I was something else – something called a “person”, and I had a whole life different from the one I assumed I always had.

Other times, I’ve been fully immersed in another reality, out of body and unaware of body, yet there is still an acknowledgement that I have a body lying on my bed. I’m not there with it, but I know it’s there. In these experiences, I’m aware of my body as a machine, and it’s a machine that I’m not inhabiting at that moment. I trust that it will continue to function without “me” present.

My deepest and most profound journey is still unique. I posted about it before, and it was the journey that motivated me to join this site. Visually, it was unlike any DMT experience before or since. I was “further” from my body than I have ever been. It was so unique that I quickly became convinced that it wasn’t a DMT experience at all – I concluded that I had died. This was a breakthrough unlike any other, yet I was fully aware of who I was, of what I did prior, etc. (I guessed that I had a heart attack soon after taking my dose of DMT.) I felt a sense of loss and was very much aware of what I was losing. If anything, my ego – my sense of self – was clearer and more vivid than in everyday life.

If I may offer a revised opinion, maybe instead of looking at how we define 'ego death' and 'breakthrough' as broad terms, we should focus on our definition of 'awareness'. When you say that you're still aware of your body lying in bed, are you saying that you're aware of its existence and connection to your consciousness, as I believe gibran is using the term, or are you saying that you are literally still fully, physically within your body and able to move around, if goofily, should you want to? If the former, I would consider it a breakthrough, and I agree that gibran's experiences are valid. If the latter, I do not think you have broken through yet. If you can still traverse the real world while you are peaking, I wouldn't consider it a breakthrough. This was how my strongest DMT trip so far has been; I was communicating telepathically with entities and seeing amazing visions, but there was not a time during the trip when I could not sit up and grasp my surroundings if need be. In this meaning, it's not so much death of the ego that is important but the metaphysical separation from it.

i recommend reading over this post i made a while back, it contains what i believe to be a very accurate account of what ego death truly consists of

https://dmt-nexus.me/for...m=163808&#post163808

I have had several ego death experiences they are very disconcerting. The most intense was this one: https://www.dmt-nexus.me....aspx?g=posts&t=3928

It had occurred when I went to the extreme although it is very possible to have one of the experience with just spice itself. I think it is essentially the high end of a DMT trip but does not always have to do with the amount of spice you ingest. There are unknown parameters that can set it off. Many veterans who have done the journey 100's of times have not had them some who are well experienced retire from the society either temporarily or permanently after one. A ego death can vary in intensity believe it or not.

Well I've definitely had an ego death before but have not broken through on DMT, and after my experiences trying to reach it I just kind of figured they would go hand in hand, which is why I said what I did in my original post. I realize that's just my opinion though, I actually generally stay very clear headed on psychedelics (except mushrooms, oh man fuckin' mushrooms...) unless I'm tripping hard enough to reach an ego death (only happened a few times so far) so I never really thought I could be "sucked into" the DMT hallucinations unless it was happening, but again, I can't speak from experience there.

Ego is what defines every beings as individuals and it works according to an "operating system" corresponding to who we think we are.
So "ego death" would be to loose this feeling of certainty of knowing who you usualy are and instead being immersed in the whole and feeling no boundaries anymore with anything; no more fake "operating system" in the way of awarness but just bliss and understanding, a feeling to be home... (IMO...)

SWIM had a similar experience with Ayahuasca (where he no longer was able to have access to language or any part of his identity) but has a hard time to keep with it as it was so unexpected and too short (as he thinks...), and of course when ego comes back he does everything he can to forget and debunk the experience.

Is it possible to completly loose track of the everyday life with the spice or it is always possible to analyse with the usual state of mind?

I think ego death occurs when we get to the point where we completely "forget" about our selves, when we lose sight of the notion that our consciousness has boundaries, that it has limits, that it only occupies a limited amount of space. Our subjective experience suddenly just becomes an experience, without limits or boundaries, its no longer "i am", but just "am".

I've found that spice has cognitive effects as well as visual effects. It affects how thoughts are pieced together in the cortex, which could make spice a very useful tool. This means that too much can change your state of mind and change how you see everyday life. So one must to be careful to find the sweet spot that produces the effects that are sought.

i like that

you do not cease to exist
the boundaries that define you cease to exist

having no boundaries, 'you' become nothing
yet 'nothing' is still apart of 'everything and thus 'everything' remains

I like that as well. And I like to see it as a process, not as a specific moment. I experience the boundaries (which I normally think that "define" me) gradually dissolving, until my consciousness will eventually realise that there isn't any specific me, that I'm everything and everything is part of me - Ātman.