When I say total annihilation, I mean from using psychedelics. When we experience ego death, all facets of our humanity are dissolved. But we can still remember our trips to hyperspace. In the moment, we feel this essence of being and not-being. Being there, but not there. A complete loss of ourselves, and yet we are able to experience this lack of existence. Are we truly letting go of existence? Is it truly ego death if we experience these breakthroughs, and being able to feel all of it?

Maybe ego death isn't the best term to use for this phenomena. Perhaps ego sleep or ego coma. Maybe that little sleeping "subconscious" of our ego is what allows us to know, feel and remember our trips to hyperspace. Perhaps when that inevitable day comes that we shuffle off our mortal coil, we will experience complete lack of existence. To the point where we cease to exist, much like before we were born.

What do you guys think?

I feel that awareness can not cease, the content can change so awareness of... can end, we can lose identities, even consciousness, but awareness itself is seamless... i feel like awareness is also synonymous with love, so what i'm saying is akin to this line from the Dylan Thomas poem

'Though lovers be lost love shall not'

Your post also reminds of this quote from Ramana Maharshi

'You will know in due course that your true glory lies where you cease to exist'

So do you think awareness depends on consciousness? Or is it a completely different realm of being?

to me consciousness without the self is awareness.

i feel like there must be a fair chance that awareness creates everything and is dressed up as consciounses when it is manifest into the monkey mind.

if this is the case then there must always be awareness as it is the base level constuct of existance.

I wouldn't say awareness depends on anything, more that everything depends on awareness, as without awareness, what is there?

I would say rather than awareness depending on consciousness, that consciousness depends on awareness as consciousness can arise from nowhere else, although consciousness is necessary for self-awareness, so in that respect i could see how awareness could be said to be dependent on consciousness.

From my experiences it seems as if being aware of what is happening & remembering what has happened does not depend on an ego at all.




This is a very interesting take on things IMHO...

Personally I perceive this backwards from what Chronic is stating here, in that it seems to me that consciousnees is the basic substrata of all there is & awareness arises out of it.

I don't know...we may never know for sure, but it sure is fun contemplating this stuff with all the amazing minds I find here on the nexus.

I definitely think that total annihilation is possible. Go find some reports of people who have taken super-massive doses of LSD. From a report:



That sounds to me like loss of awareness/consciousness/whatever you want to call it. I feel like I've seen the shadow of it on mushroom trips.

Blessings
~ND

I can see how self-awareness arises from consciousness, but awareness itself i can't see as anything that arises, as anything that arises is seen in awareness

Just to clarify, when i say consciousness arises out of awareness i simply mean that there is awareness of I/consciousness...

Ultimately it's ridiculous to differentiate it

I totally agree!!!!

Then who is aware of there being no me? Similarly, who is aware of there being no thing in deep sleep?

No one. If you're truely unconscious, there is no 'you.'

It's like trying to remember what it was like before you were born.

Blessings
~ND

That is my point exactly.



Then what causes me to remember what "not me" has experienced?

I don't know, you either at least we can admit that.

I can't remember what was going on before birth, but making claims about that state, in whatever direction, is bold.

Good point.

We will NEVER experience a complete lack of existence,. A complete lack of existence would also mean the lack of an experiencer. Without an experiencer, there are no experiences!

I can say with complete confidence that I have never experienced a complete lack of existence, and never will.

To me, this sounds like that the transition was not fully completed. That means that maybe this person didn't get the connection after the desolution of the ego between all = I, at least during this trip. It sounds like a fearful part of his/her experience, stuck in nowhereland, lost in my own uncertainty, I have experienced this myself. Maybe I am totally wrong and he smiled all over his face during this process.

Relating to "super massive doses": I experience that tryptamines like N,N-DMT, psilocybin, LSD, and even phenetylamines like mescaline enhance my awareness. Stanislaf Grof uses up to 1500micrograms in his psycholytic treatment. Thus, a patient can only benefit from this super intense experience when (s)he is aware of what is going on. Dissociation (= other side of the spectrum) is like a protecting mechanism from myself, to prevent me from experiences which I mostly subconscious rate as super highly dangerous to me. Dissociating is like the "cmd+alt+del" command on the computer keyboard, driven by evolutionary fear to survive. Whenever I dissociate as a reaction to a stimulus, I hinder myself in integrating what is going on.


I go along with this thought.

tseuq

If you reread the quote, you'll see that the author didn't remember anything, because they didn't exist. You can recapture the moment before, and the moment after, but the moment of is missing.

Blessings
~ND

Pure consciousness IMHO.

Thank you for pointing this out.

tseuq

This is a very interesting question. I've had some distinct experiences of complete dissolution for a fraction of a second on 5MEO-DMT after inhaling as much as I could take in a big held lungful.

I've reproduced the experience enough times to have studied the phenomenology of it. It is a complete dissapearance of selfing and worlding or of self and otherness. It comes on as pulsations of white light which completely dissolves me as a witness for a moment; and then in a wild shower of out-shooting stars I and the world reappear. It is a dramatic and discrete experience of the interdepence of witnessing awareness and appearance. I also take it to be a limit experience of the edge where I disappear and it all disappears.

A number of traditions, as many of you know, have approached that limit. In fact in Vajrayana yoga a certain practice produces a similarly discrete experience of momentary dissolution and then return.