How do we define "Ego Death"?

[joedirt]

"You" don't define ego death.

And not to play this silly card, but I absolutely promise that you will know for certain when it happens.
If you don't have this kind of certainty then you likely haven't achieved it.
Also it is only partially a function of dose size so taking more doesn't help. It's getting into that witness mode without an 'I' trying to control it and then riding that state as the psychedelics expand it. The initial breaking of the veil is utterly terrifying and I don't care how many times you have achieved it. When your ego is faced with even a partial extinction it freaks out big time. But if you are brave enough to release even the idea that you may never return then you are likely to achieve this inner state of supreme samadhi. Christ my hands are shaking as I type this just reflecting back on the handful of experiences I've had with this. nothing, literally nothing compares to it...though trying to achieve it is like pissing in the wind.

My advice for those trying to achieve it is practice regular meditation outside of your trips. Get comfortable just observing your thoughts and body in a passive way... then maybe, just maybe on a far flung hyperspace journey when the fear of death arises you can simply observe that impartially as well..

Things will still happen, visions will still be present, there just won't be a part of your mind clinging to things as it's own any longer... Usually when this happens to me everything goes white for a few moments and then returns to a normal psychedelic like visionary state without me involved. The longest this has lasted has been approximately 20 minutes..

When it happens without psychedelics it's basically the same thing sans all the psychedelia.

 

[soulfood]

I get confused to the levels in which folk trying to classify "it" in which they say "it" is gone.

I don't think there was ever a situation where it happen'd to me and afterwards I jumped up and clarified to myself "Ooh! I just experienced a loss of my ego". More like it is something that when discussed at a later date with others, presents various characteristics that can be agreed on by peers. But I do believe semantics in this case are actually very important, especially when it comes in the form of ego death due to the influence of DMT.

I have experienced what I believe to be a false kind of ego dissolution whereby the mind is so overloaded with internal stimulus that there is no room for thoughts and feelings and I just become a point of awareness as to what is going in inside my mind. Memory of these experiences is usually vague and they offer very little in terms of anything beyond the weird factor.

True dissolution occurs to me when I still have the ability to be aware of what is happening. Most important of all, the ability to feel is still intact. I believe ego to be the mechanism that thinks, quantifies, scrutinizes and relates learned information, but it does not feel. Central uncoloured awareness is feeling. However in the moment, uninfluenced by worries of the past and the future (what the ego brings) there is a bliss of presence. I'm not thinking about what happen'd a second before or thinking about what may happen a second after. I'm not even questioning the impossible unfurling within me, because it's not impossible in the present. In the present it's simplicity. However we can only relate it to one another through language, the main component of ego. Beyond that key moment, simplicity becomes impossible.

 

[indydude19]

By the popular definition I have experienced ego death on one of the highest levels.

When I was younger, about 16, I eye balled a dose into my bong and ended up doing 120 - 160 mg and had a seizure like episode of flailing for about 1 1/2 minutes and came out in an eleysian field type world and felt I lived there forever, my body dissolved at times and I became the breeze and became trapped in the leaves of a great alien tree of spirit and wisdom. I recollected and hadn't a single thought in my head. I was completely in the now of the experience.

It Felt I Lived That Way for 100 years. And when I came down I felt weightless. My head felt like my body was no longer a burden to my mind. I lost the ability to feel hunger and thirst and lost more than 20 pounds in a month and a half. I was content until I realized what was going on. The rest is another story.

Point is by most of your definitions I have experienced ego death to an amazing degree. but I feel death is the only true ego death IMO though I will respect the popular definition:d

 

[Orion]

Yes yes I apologize for responding rudely to orions definition. I hope he can forgive me I was out of line with that. Sorry for being so subjective on a thread I made for me to be objective (wish there was an emoti for slapping myself in the head)

No worries, no grudges from me, we're all brothers and sisters

I don't know if it came out in my wording, but what corpus callosum said is pretty much what I was envisioning. When you move just beyond it, you become the movement itself.