Ego death, also known as ego dissolution, is a phenomenon commonly linked with the use of psychedelics. It is a temporary state of autobiographical amnesia, a psychological condition where you are fully awake and functional, yet cannot remember any information about yourself, even your name or your gender. Ego death is often described as feeling very light and pleasant, as if the weight of the biographical self had been lifted from the body.
Ego death is also used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. Several psychologists working on psychedelics have defined ego-death. Alnaes (1964) defines ego death as "loss of ego-feeling". Stanislav Grof (1988) defines it as "a sense of total annihilation [...] This experience of "ego death" seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual [...] [E]go death means an irreversible end to ones philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called "skin-encapsulated ego". The psychologist John Harrison (2010) defines "[T]emporary ego death [as the] loss of the separate self[,] or, in the affirmative, [...] a deep and profound merging with the transcendent other. Johnson, Richards and Griffiths (2008), paraphrasing Leary et al. and Grof define ego death as "temporarily experienc[ing] a complete loss of subjective self-identity".
Ego death is the (often instantaneous) realization that you are not truly the things you've identified with, and the "ego" or sense of self you've created in your mind is a fabrication. It can offer a profound feeling of peace and connectedness with all that is, as the walls of separation the ego creates come crumbling down. Ultimately, ego deaths are not a casual experience but rather quite the opposite. It changes the course of people's lives entirely. When one comes through on the other side having released all the things they've identified with, with only their true spirit left, they begin to live from a place of pure love.
