I just got done with the absolutely fantastic book: "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" and I feel like a lot of folks her on The Nexus might be very interested in some of the things he has to say about consciousness and what makes us 'I's instead of 'it's.

Is there anyone here who has read either this, or the similarly fantastic book "I Am A Strange Loop?"
I've been thinking about what it means for us to be self-aware, and what exactly psychedelic drugs do to our self-awareness.

Specifically, what exactly is going on with 'ego death.'
I have never experienced it, but from reports, it seems that self-awareness is lost, and thinking about this, through the lens of Hofstadter's theory (that our consciousness is a side effect of infinitely recursive rules) has made me wonder what exactly is happening when ego death occurs?
Do the rules break down?

I welcome all discussion on this, the books in general, or theory of consciousness in general.
For anyone who hasn't read these books, I highly recommend them.

Thanks for the heads up, sounds like a nice chew.
The rules, so-to-speak, only apply to a small window of creation. Ego death could be any number of things, just as dreams, or even reality. Any label automatically indicates variables rather than consistency.
Open the window up to the so-called outside which is inside which is neither. No one knows exactly where the settings need to be in place for optimal awareness, or why some react differently than others. What I mean is- Ego death happens to every ego differently. Some die harder than others. Rules aren't necessarily being broken, just changed to other interconnected modes.

The only time my ego dies is every night. The descending oscillation may be a useful indicator to you dream walkers.

a beautiful response ^

..it's a good, though very intellectually dense book..

the 'strange loop' is the Paradox..

expressible mathematically (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem) or creatively (Escher's endless waterfall, or a Bach fugue)

..so it can be said that ordinary western logic, unable to incorporate paradoxes, fails to grasp these universal patterns, while the internal sensory intuition can..

the acceptance of the paradox (i.e. enjoying Bach or an Escher print) brings transcendence, or unification of aspects of mind/consciousness..
.

Nice observations, guys. I'll give it a second chance.

I bought the book -more like the treatise- a few years ago, I started it in probably in a bad context and didn't read much. Some time afterwards, and after enjoying The Emperor's New Mind by Penrose, I remember reading something about Hofstadter being a representative of the strong AI position, and I did the old mistake of setting aside a book just because it's supposed to defend ideas we are not sharing at the moment. But I'll give it another try soon.