Why is it that some people seek out drugs that generate the perception of ego loss?

I know Terrence McKenna an avid DMT disciple has written books on this very idea, I was just wondering what some of the Nexians here thought about this concept. What led you to seek out a drug like DMT or those who have taken ego loss doses of other psychedelics?

The reason I have tried ego lose doses was simply to help myself combat existential crises I have experienced. it was to help find myself without myself, and be content with that loss. A way to challenge my fear of death, so to speak and hopefully I could emerge a better person on the otherside. At least that was the goal.

Either way just want to hear your thoughts.

Actually I do belive, one has to be kind of fearless, but also slightly insane!

I consider drugs which disable our day to day identity
(nation, gender, race and social position etc.)
to enable ourselves to understand, that challenges in our lifes are symptoms of our inner state and our view on circumstances and so called "reality"

Once we can see, that this particular "I"dentification is one of so so so many possibilities, we are able to accept more, and probably realize this big joke, that we are.
And I mean that in the most funny and loving demeanor.

Please give me thumbs up!

I'd say that right there is probably going to be your majority.

Ive never experienced it, but I feel like thats the answer I personally would give. The self is simply a concept, an archetype. Ridding oneself of that weight of decades of over-saturation must be pretty incredible.

It was more of a side effect for me. I enjoyed the burst of creative and philosophical thinking that psychedelics imbued in me. I continued to seek them out for healing (physical healing more than spiritual).

The diminishing of my ego was secondary. But I do actively seek out doses that provide that effect, as I find it a very useful side effect There is nothing more humbling than a massive dose of psychedelics taken in the right set and setting. Even the wrong set and setting....either way you're going to be pretty humbled by such a powerful experience.

Some people go to church to seek a communion with God. Some people meditate and attempt to achieve enlightenment. Some people. like us, ingest plants and have the mystical experience of the God within and without

To find the real me underneath the not so real 'pretend' me.

The ego is a necessary, but also highly clumsy to the point of overcomplexity. For me it's like I am always running in my mind. Even when I don't want to run I'm always running.

I guess that describes loosely the ego-death desire. Though that's only a fraction of what drew me in.

It's the balance of silencing the everyday mind with a sideorder of internal stimulus that the everyday mind could not fathom.

A Gym for your true inner self, I guess

Some people are tormented by their egos, so taking a break from it for a short while can be seen as beneficial. Also being egoless is so far removed from daily experience that it's natural to want to see what such a state is like.

I wouldn't say I lose my ego, I just realize that it's a lot deeper. From the perspective of the more fundamental aspects of the self what I would usually consider to be my self seems superficial and trivial. I still think that superficial aspects are important but they become more like an art form. No longer am I a character, I now mould character. I have in no way perfected this art, but am aware that I could at least see character as art.

I was never looking for an experience of "ego loss", and I'm not sure you can be until you have it. I now seek out the experience not really for loss of ego but mainly for the lucidity of thought it gives me and because of how strange and difficult to make sense of it was the first time. Maybe that's the same as loss of ego. I haven't tripped in a long while and thinking about all of this makes me want to dive right back in.

Maybe I'll try upping my dose to see if I really can come to a complete ego loss, some kind of super fluidity of conscious experience in which I can know nothing in the conventional sense.

Did you know the name of the book by Terrance that you were referring to? I've not read any of his books.

My pursuit of ego death was a pretty different reason than yours. You said it was a way for you to challenge your fear of death.

Mine was to challenge my overwhelming fear of life. I was quite freaked out by life, society, expectations, and faced much anxiety at the thought of living life the way through. I also completely obsessed with self-induced loneliness for 5 or 6 years before i began my ventures.

I used pretty heavy doses of mushrooms and LSD before i found DMT, which i then used quite copiously, once eyeballing it and overdoing my dose by around 100 mg. ( Many have a weakness to a specific drug or group of drugs, especially those with addictive personalities, and my weakness is to psychedelics, though i have always had entheogenic respect for and intention with them.)

The period of self exploration was very rocky and turbulent, but the result was a person who fully embraces life and death, and loves every aspect of nature. I definitely came out a much better person, both to myself and to others.

I can honestly say i would probably not be alive if it wasn't for that period of risky and somewhat heavy usage of psychedelics. That was the period of my rebirth and i am forever grateful that i took those chances to change.

Even on a very recent breakthrough i spoke to the entities and they welcomed me with open arms, but strongly warned me to stay away from vices that do not help me grow as a person, specifically pot in my case. I even have much less of an urge to smoke after that one interaction.

I realize now though that it wasn't ego death, but ego rebirth. We are constantly being shaped by our surroundings, and this allowed me to get back to my original ego blueprint and eliminate the influences that would otherwise change it. I am not trying to make a new me, but get back to the very original me that existed when i was a child before the world began to shape me.

It was the same for me. I ate some Golden Teachers. It made me see myself from a new perspective. I just couldn't connect myself to my life, somewhat strange experience. Not very pleasant also, when I began to think about my life.

It seemed like a good idea at the time


There was a time in my life I foolishly believed I could take any heroic dose of any psychedelic. The ego death was simply the next level. Boy was I in for a massive dose of reality.... good times

^ innit!

To me, this is the ego fully at work. A mechanism that files life into drawers, labels it, rates it, but for some reason doesn't actually want to live it.

My first deep-end experience with DMT had me in absolute complete awe of Isness. This instantly diluted the concentrations of what should be in my waking life and made way for love and creativity.

Opposed to this in my experience was cannabis. It made me feel guilty about having problems but left me with no energy to get anything done.

I'm with the "side effect" crowd here. I was in my twenties and just experimenting with acid... My friends were doing it and it held some unique interest that I felt compelled to try. First it was just fun... Then it started getting a little deeper. Soon I found that it was enormously empowering from an artistic standpoint where I was able to radically expand my visual vocabulary with each major experience. Soon I was tripping with my art, by myself, upping the dose gradually until the inevitable happened and my ego failed to show up at one of these ceremonies.

Going knowingly into an ego loss situation can be pretty intimidating, and for a lot of us it's probably a good thing that the first time happens without knowing what to expect. But once there it can be an amazing place- you may find yourself laughing hysterically at the things that we normally find important: social status, gender roles, our culture in general. Seeing how much of our daily lives is designated toward these apparently shallow and silly things is I think a very valuable experience. But then of course you have to come down, to try bringing some of these understandings back. Which the day-to-day ego will resist: changes to your fundamental perspective are not easy for the ego to swallow. Alex Grey calls it "the sickly, contracted ego" which is not a bad description. Having a chance to see the world directly, not through the ego's lens... As Global was saying, that can give us some much-needed relief from the somewhat oppressive grip of the ego and its tunnel-vision outlook of the world.

But it stays scary for most people, no matter how many times...

At first it was a side effect. I only realized after a couple of times what actually happened.

I became fearful as it became deeper and i experienced the first bad trips (on shrooms).

I startet to hate the experience of egoloss, but i did it anyway.

I had so many dark, intense emotional and disturbing/difficult shroom trips i just got a littlebit used to it over the years.

The feeling of beeing in an abusing relationship crossed my mind several times.
Getting beaten into submission was not really my definition of a fun evening.

It stays scary sometimes, but sometimes scary is just what i need.

The ego is the source of all of our suffering.
It is the ego that is born and it is the ego that dies.
We are lucky that a medicine can allow us to touch the deathless state.

The egoless state gives you an immediate glimpse into the fact that
it is the ego that creates the illusion of separation. It is the ego that
acts like a filter on top of reality clinging to this belief or that belief.

Quite honestly I think the egodeath experience is probably the most profound
experience a person can have.... and I don't think most people that claim to
have experienced it actually have. Honestly it's not something that most want
to repeat. It is usually precipitated by an intense feeling of impending death.

Nothing compares to the experience of pure raw awareness that is untainted
by thoughts of 'I', 'me', and 'mine'... It will forever change you.

Ego death/loss is something to be experienced at least once in life time. It will shine eternal light on illusions of ˝I˝ and reveal to you the limitless ˝YOU/IT˝.
AHA!!! So this is.
Pure awareness of being everything and nothing. Everlasting IDEA.

Turning off the ego is programmed in the human experience. The ego is dissolved every time one enters deep sleep. It is a blissful and recharging experience, because maintaining and operating in the Creation is a labor-intensive activity for the ego. Deep sleep, however, is unconscious rest and brings about only temporary relief from the fundamental existential problem - the lack of lasting satisfaction. Nonetheless, it is an experience beyond a separate identity and it is a satisfying one. It is something we have a taste of.

The urge to dissolve the ego permanently seems to be inherent in human nature. World experiences, however charming they may be - and much of the time they are not charming at all - do not bring permanent satisfaction. For a while, this is not obvious and there seems to be the possibility that a change of circumstances or new experiences can maintain the charm of worldly existence, but eventually the fact is brought home unambiguously that this is not so. The drive to transcend the ego is an attempt to solve this problem. How intense the effort will be depends on how intense the ennui of living in the world has grown. The draw of ego death is like the draw of one's home after a prolonged exile away from it. It is meaningful that one of the archetypal human stories is that of paradise lost and the quest to recover it, the search for a way home.

Peak psychedelic experiences can provide a glimpse into existence beyond a separate identity. So can other methods, well described, recorded, passed down through the ages, or newly discovered. Transcending ego has been an important pursuit in the human experience because that is the ultimate nature of the experiencer.

My thoughts.

Ego is weight. An aggregate of enmeshed time. It is your body, and it is an indispensable tool for keeping your soil fertile and staying alive. Psychedelics serve to sharpen it, to shave off excess with a terrifying clarity.

Why seek out ego death?

I dont think many seek it out directly but it more happens as a side effect of strong psychedelic experiences. To me, ego death is the point people label as a "break through" where you become so enveloped by the experience that time starts to dissintegrate, you forget your personal ties to the world and who you are, and are quite purely just in a state of "Being" flowing with the experience. And sometimes comes with the feeling of dying.

Like a state of chaotic blissful enlightenment, for me it eliminated alot of fear of death becuase you can feel what is like to be without a body or mind with memories attached to it, which will both probably be gone after life. And not to mention it opened my mind to just how little we humans know about the workings of the cosmos, which could in turn span not only our universe but across many different dimensions/realms.

If there were reasons to seek out ego death, I would say for knowledge and personal growth, otherworldly insight, and to help one reconnect with what is really important in life.