Throughout my spiritual journey, I’ve had some profound experiences to say the least. However, my biggest encounter with truth was during an experience of ego death that was preceded by a kundalini awakening. This encounter erased all separation from the universe, annihilated the self, and allowed me to experience a state of totality with all consciousness.
Many years later, I still struggle to comprehend this experience because it was so far beyond the constraints of human imagination.
Ego death showed me that we are all the same consciousness experiencing oneself infinitely. We’re experiencing separate nodes of consciousness, but we all have the same roots. My experience of ego death led to a spiritualย awakeningย and facilitated transformation on all levels of my reality.
So what on Earth actually happened here? Let me explain exactly what happened during this ego death experience, and how it permanently changed my life.
What is the ego?
To develop an understanding of ego death, you first need to understand what the ego is. Imagine the ego as a plug. The ego grounds you to reality by providing a sense of self. This is the part of you that separates you from the mesh of consciousness, meaning an ego is a requirement to be an individual.
People tend to use the term ego as a substitute for humility, or lack thereof. Although this is true to an extent as someone with a big ego tends to be less humble, there’s much more to it. In the day and age where so many new-age spiritualists claim to have transcended their ego, ironically, these statements come from a pronounced ego.
Actions, behaviors, or beliefs that separate you from others, perhaps through a sense of superiority or entitlement, pronounce the ego. On the other hand, actions, behaviors, and beliefs that blend you into the fabric of nature as a small gear in the collective subside the ego.
But you can’t simply lose your ego, otherwise you wouldn’t be an individual. We are all individuals, in this reality at least, whether you like it or not. If you weren’t an individual, you would be a vegetable; unable to think, do, believe, or perceive. You would be inseparable from the mesh of existence, meaning your body would be left to rot.
Naturally, we all have an ego, it’s part of the human experience, however, we experience different levels of it. The more pronounced your ego, the more prominent your sense of self – as if you’re sticking your head a little further out of the collective.
On one extreme being ego death, you don’t exist. On the other extreme, only you exist.
Therefore, we all exist somewhere along this spectrum. This is why it’s necessary to have a balanced ego.
What is ego death?
Now that we’ve briefly discussed the role of the ego, what is ego death?
Look at ego death as a complete disconnection from reality (and oneself). Ego death is a spiritual phenomenon when you detach from your sense of self to experience a complete submergence into the collective consciousness. Imagine completely letting go during death, where your mind instantly dissolves into something much bigger than you, like a drop of water rejoining the ocean.
During ego death, you depart all your memories, knowledge, and identity. Every aspect of you is suddenly gone, meaning you don’t exist anymore. There is no fear, thought, worry, or emotion because these all come from you.
Although you don’t exist anymore, the nature of experience continues but it’s completely foreign to what you experience here as a human. Within this state of consciousness, you are no longer bound by the constructs of our universe such as matter, time, space, or form. Instead, you amalgamate an entirely new dimension of existence.
During my experience of ego death, I thought I was literally dying. Before I broke through the mesh of reality, it was a terrifying experience, to say the least. A true dismantling of self in every regard.
When I surrendered to the experience, I was instantly lost in the infinite waters of consciousness. Every aspect of my identity was dispersed, like sand thrown into a hurricane. All there was, was experience. The experience of everything, of totality.
Stages of ego death
There are 5 distinct stages people usually go through when they experience ego death, including:
- Ego Dissolution
- The Surrender
- The Breakthrough
- The Rebirth
- The Spiritual Awakening
Let’s break them down.
- Stage 1: Ego dissolution
Usually, you don’t go directly from 1 to 100. Ego death occurs when you pass the threshold into another realm where the body, mind, and self no longer exist. Ego death is preceded by a process called ego dissolution. Ego dissolution is a partial loss of self. This means you’re somewhat disassociated from reality, but you’re still here.
During ego dissolution, you still have a sense of individuality, but the lines between this reality and the next are blurring, meaning it can be difficult to determine who you are, and what reality is. Once your ego is nearly dissolved, you will reach a point where you must surrender to the experience to go deeper into it.
- Stage 2: The surrender
Before losing yourself completely, you need to surrender to the experience. This is arguably the most difficult stage of ego death because the ego wants to survive. In fact, to survive is the ego’s sole purpose. The surrender is often perceived as the true death of the self, meaning the experience is often embroiled in unpleasant emotions such as existential dread or fear as naturally, we want control.
People who are well-trained in spiritual disciplines like meditation may pass this stage gracefully, but for the common person, surrendering is a terrifying stage of ego death. When you surrender to the experience, your consciousness is dismissed from the human construct. You are at the complete mercy of the experience, without the ability to do anything besides experience.
- Stage 3: The breakthrough
The breakthrough marks the point where you pass the threshold between this reality and a deeper level of consciousness where the self no longer exists. This stage of ego death represents the point of no return, as once you break through, you no longer exist, nor does reality.
During this experience, you experience something much more profound than what you’re capable of perceiving during waking consciousness. Your experience is usually consumed by fractals, patterns, and movement. You become an observer with no ability to do anything because you no longer exist, nor does space, time, or any construct of this dimension. You don’t exist, but something certainly does.
- Stage 4: The Rebirth
The rebirth occurs when your consciousness returns to your body, and you ‘wake up’ from the experience of ego death. But it’s not like waking up from a dream, not at all. The rebirth is when you wake into a new self. As a sponge dipped into an ocean of information, you reemerge into reality with a new understanding of yourself, reality, and spirituality.
The experience of ego death is so profound that upon waking up from it, you may feel reborn. People often have new perspectives, mindsets, and views on life. They often feel reset on all levels which creates a stage for a more beautiful, and more wholesome life experience moving forward.
- Stage 5: Spiritual Awakening
After the rebirth experience, you will move on with your life, but through a different frame. The experience of ego death often offsets a spiritual awakening, as people have such a profound encounter with truth that they can’t simply go back to who they were. Their mind has been opened to something much bigger than this reality, and now starts the process of finding themselves.
Ego death doesn’t always offset a spiritual awakening, but it does for most people. Now comes the process of integrating the experience and developing oneself in a way that is in alignment with the soul.
What does ego death feel like?
Depending on a variety of factors, the gateway to ego death can be extremely frightening, often accompanying existential dread and panic. This is because your ego can’t discern the death of itself from physical death.
Imagine ego death as opening the curtain concealing the network beyond this universe, and jumping into it. Experiences of ego death may differ from person to person, but once the person jumps off the cliff, the experience is usually akin to experiencing a singularity of incomprehensible magnitude.
During my experience of ego death, it felt like my consciousness was sucked out of my body and expanded infinitely. There was no me anymore, but I experienced everything in a way that I can’t describe.
During this experience, there were endless fractal-like patterns, sacred geometry, and an infinite collection of raw consciousness which I can only describe as source. It felt like I was a drop of water in this infinite interdimensional riptide. This experience seemed to last forever, yet there was no concept of time or distance. I didn’t know that I wasn’t in reality, because during that experience, reality didn’t exist.
People who experience ego death often report experiencing the following:
- Loss of control and surrender to the experience
- Initial existential dread
- Transcendence of oneself and reality
- Transcendence of space, time, and form
- Infinite interconnection of all things
- Sense of unity with everything, no sense of separation from existence
- Mystical experiences such as bliss, feelings of enlightenment, universal knowledge
- A knowingness of everything
How do people experience ego death?
There are a few noteworthy paths where people can experience ego death. The first is working with plant medicines.
Using psychedelics to access other realms of information is an ancient practice exemplified by shamans. Although rare to completely disconnect under the influence of any psychedelic, it can certainly happen during the deepest levels, which I call a level 5 trip.
Although this is probably the most common way that people experience ego death, I certainly don’t advise it. Jumping into such a powerful experience can scramble your mind. I’ve met people who went psychotic after going too deep into a psychedelic journey without being properly prepared.
However, if you do go down this route, you may find it to be difficult to let go. To experience ego death via psychedelics, you must surrender to the experience, by trusting that you will come back.
Inducing ego death via spiritual practices is extremely rare, but it does happen. This is by far the most elegant way to experience ego death, but it’s only achievable at a level of spiritual mastery.
Some people have experienced ego death through spiritual disciplines such as meditation, yoga, prayer, and fasting. I know shamanic healers who have experienced ego death during vision quests.
Spiritual practice is a pathway into the deepest levels of the soul. Within the deepest levels of the soul exists a unity of consciousness. All souls branch from the same tree. Through spiritual practice, advanced individuals may experience consciousness as the tree, rather than the individual leaf.
Otherwise, some people claim to experience ego death at times of extreme suffering. This reportedly happens when the pain becomes too much to bear, so the ego dies to reset. This is how Eckhart Tolle experienced ego death and his spiritual awakening.
What happens after ego death?
After ego death, people experience what we understand as a rebirth.
A rebirth is also known as a spiritual birth, and often offsets a spiritual awakening. This is when you feel like you have been completely reset, with tangible changes in your perspective, attitudes, and behaviors.
In a sense, you feel like a new person after experiencing an ego death, because you have tapped into something so profound, that it’s near impossible for your life not to change afterward.
My ego death experience permanently changed my life as it acted as a complete reset, and illuminated a deeper truth beyond reality, and myself. From being suicidal, ego death was the wake-up call I needed.
With that said, your aim shouldn’t be to kill your ego, knowing that the ego serves an important function.
Rather, it’s best to find a healthy balance with your ego, and take measures to manage it. Aiming to live a life where your ego doesn’t control you is the best thing you can do, as you learn to navigate the world with humility and compassion, rather than arrogance and self-centeredness.
Aim to live a life with a minimal ego, and you will live a happy life.