Ego
A man “comes to himself,” wakes up from the egocentric daydream when he realizes
Who he is.
A person describing it can talk about a complete loss of the ego and simultaneously claim
that his or her sense of identity expanded so that it encompassed the entire universe.
A psychedelic is the solvent which dissolves the vigorous stereotypes of egocentric
behavior.
After completing the process of ego-death, individuals consider human experience in a
much broader, spiritual framework.
All sexual ecstasy has a quality of self-abandonment, of surrender to a force greater than
the ego.
Because it is a hoax from the beginning, the personal ego can make only a phony
response to life.
Because the ego never actually exists, those who are most captivated by its illusion are
still playing. They take it seriously and do not know that they are playing.
By inducing ego-death and evolutionary perspectives, psychedelic drugs can counteract
the fear of death.
Children are in touch with paradise to the extent that they have not fully learned the ego
trick.
Consciousness-expanding drugs unplug these narrow programs, the social ego, the game-
machinery.
Creative vision and mystical illumination are a function of the cortex when it is
temporarily relieved of word and ego games.
Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union and union can be
achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego.
Ego is the “island” of rational consciousness floating atop the great sea of the
unconscious aspects of the psyche.
Ego-consciousness is a bondage to time, being essentially a complex of memories and
participations. All ego-centric action has an eye to the past or the future.
Ego death is not permanent, but the break-through to a broader awareness generally
begins the process of transformation of the personality.
Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise.
(This refers to negative emotions.)
Expanded consciousness extends far beyond the cultural and ego games in which men are
enmeshed.
Grof describes transpersonal experiences as those in which ego boundaries are dissolved
and awareness is extended beyond the ordinary confines of time and space.
He (Leary) knew how important it was to have a warm supporting setting to experience
the ego-shattering revelations of the mushroom.
How can we Westerners come to see that our own consciousness is infinitely greater than
our little egos and the ego games into which we are so blindly caught up?
I usually trip once a week because I can stand it if I trip only once a week. If I went two
weeks, I’d grow enough ego in two weeks that it would just devastate me.
If there is no distinct ego, the stream of experiences can simply flow on, unobstructed, by
itself, a spontaneous, unforced and unblocked flowing of life.
In many instances, ego dissolution occurs when one is overwhelmed by the perception of
something that is exquisitely beautiful.
In the heart of each of us, a greater potential exists for realizing truth, for experiencing
wholeness, for going beyond the shell of the ego.
It is a non-egotistical consciousness, a kind of formless and timeless consciousness,
which seems to underlie the consciousness of the separate ego in time.
It is a perennial theme in literature, as in mystical religion, this distrust of the intellect,
the agency of ego, as the sole or dominant vehicle of life.
It is possible for us to become ourselves in the fullest ego-transcending form, even in this
life.
It’s a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily without the
sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.
Knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego,
into his consciousness. It is the knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent.
Liberation does not involve the loss or destruction of such conventional concepts as the
ego; it means seeing through them.
LSD strips off the protective barriers of the ego and all sensitivity and perceptibility is
heightened.
Man as ego does not see nature at all. For man as ego is man identifying himself or his
mind, his total awareness, with the narrowed and exclusive style of attention.
Narrowed, serial consciousness, the memory-stored stream of impressions is the means
by which we have the sense of ego.
No one who has been hoaxed into belief that he is nothing but his ego or nothing but his
individual organism can be a civilized, sensitive and intelligent member of the cosmos.
Not until we could set aside the ego by recognizing its relative unimportance could we
achieve spiritual growth here on earth.
Oceanic feelings and ego loss are often called regression to infancy. Why not consider
the possibility of adult oceanic feelings?
One realizes that the form of man extends far, far beyond the limits of the skin and very
much deeper than the conscious ego.
Only the most naive person will ever be able to believe that the ego can cure its own
selfishness.
Our ordinary egocentric consciousness is a limited and impoverished consciousness
without foundation in “reality.”
Our spontaneity is inhibited not only by the ego-complex as such but also by the Anglo-
Saxon conception of masculinity.
Out of the shell and armor of our ego, outward into a “cleaner, purer realm,” that is our
proper destination.
Patients who are bogged down in an egocentric problem cycle can be helped to release
themselves from their fixation and isolation.
People have an untapped potential of great love and wisdom which is too often neglected
in trying to satisfy the imperious power demands of the ego.
Realize that you are not this sad and silly abstract ego trying to run the world from the
outside.
Realization is bringing to consciousness what is true all the time in the “unconscious”, in
the Self and spirit which the ego does not know.
So long as man identifies himself with the ego, he is trying to be God. It is only when he
knows that his center of being is the infinite that he is really free to be man (and God).
Spontaneity is not an ego action at all. It is action which the social control mechanism of
the ego does not block.
Suchness or the divine Ground of all being reveals itself to those in whom there is no
ego-centeredness, either of will, imagination, feeling or intellect.
The cause of pain and evil is craving for separative ego-centered existence with its
corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil except by getting rid of such craving.
The child is tricked into the ego-feeling by the attitudes, words and actions of the society
which surrounds him.
The conscious ego does not control, let alone understand or produce all those psycho-
physical processes upon which it depends.
The conscious ego doesn’t know that it is something which that divine organ, the body, is
only pretending to be.
The Eastern mind has no difficulty in conceiving of a consciousness without an ego.
Consciousness is deemed capable of transcending its ego condition.
The ecstatic trip can be diverted, the person’s mind ready to explain away paradise and
pull him back to the old egocentric game.
The ego death that precedes rebirth is the death of our old concepts of who we are and
what the world is like.
The ego is a concept, a symbol, even a delusion—not a biological process or physical
reality.
The ego is a social convention, like the intervals of clock time, as distinct from a
biological or even psychological entity.
The ego is not a psychological or physical organ; it’s a social convention, like the
equator, like the clock or calendar or like the dollar bill.
The ego is only a concept, a symbol and thus can no more do anything than the word
“water” can quench thirst.
The ego is the cause of all the wars inside the human mind and by implication, also of all
the wars in the world-at-large.
The “ego” is the instrument for living in THIS world. If the “ego” is broken up or
destroyed, then the person may be exposed to this other world.
The ego is the social image or role with which the mind is shamed into identifying itself,
since we are taught to act the part which society wants us to play.
The ego or conscious will is an imaginary, socially fabricated self working against the
organism, the self that is biologically grown.
The ego senses the threat implied to its domain by the fact of an unconscious mind that
can perceive an internal reality.
The ego’s pride in itself is entirely debunked, not masochistically, but in the spirit of
cosmic humor.
The egotistic viewpoint is so thoroughly complex that it has extreme difficulty in
recognizing the essentially simple.
The essential effect of the psychedelic experience is the death of the time-bound ego and
the consequent realization of the Supreme Identity.
The experience of ego-death in psychedelic sessions is the most powerful remedy against
suicidal tendencies.
The experience of liberation from the tyranny of the ego is an experience so
extraordinary, so unique that it is never forgotten.
The feeling of being the ego is itself part of the stream of experience and does not stand
outside it in a controlling position.
The goal is to shed all ego sensations completely and in mystical experience, merge with
the totality of the cosmos.
The greatest illusion of the abstract ego is that it can do anything to bring about radical
improvement either in itself or in the world.
The LSD revelation is the clear perspective. The LSD panic is the terror that ego is lost
forever.
The mind must stop trying to act upon its stream of experiences, from the standpoint of
the idea of itself which we call the ego.
The mistake of regarding men as separate egos has had disastrous consequences. (Just
look at our insane society.)
The most strongly enforced of all taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you
really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent and isolated ego.
The mystical experience enables the individual to be so open and sensitive to organic
reality that the ego begins to be seen for the transparent abstraction that it is.
The past, from which our ego is abstracted, has entirely disappeared. Any attempt to cling
to the ego or to make it an effective source of action is doomed to frustration.
The psychedelic experience is fundamentally or ideally the bursting of ego-
consciousness, with the concomitant realization of cosmic-consciousness.
The realization of the Supreme Identity, of the truth that the Self is the infinite and not the
ego, does not involve the obliteration of the ego or of finite experience.
The root of evil is ego, the social fiction, the “Great Lie.” We are letting the “pretended
soul” gyp and deceive the “real soul.” Your own betrayer is inside you and sells you out.
The sense of I as distinct from everything else in the universe is the very root of ego
consciousness.
The socially conditioned role-playing ego is never a free agent. Man is free to the extent
that he realizes his genuine self to be the author and origin of nature.
The taboos of ego and superego became sufficiently weakened to allow unconscious
material to flow into consciousness.
The trained guide can usually sense when ego-attachment threatens to pull the person out
of the unitive flow.
The “turned-on” person realizes that he is not an isolated, separate social ego, but rather
one transient energy process hooked up with the energy dance around him.
The very fact that man, as an ego, can attempt to accept or know himself is the certain
sign that he is more than ego and is beginning to realize it.
The world around us—so often gray—is the product of our own distorted vision of our
ego-consciousness and ego-clinging.
The world of nature is neither things seen by an ego, nor things, some of which are
sensations, bundled mechanically together, but a field of “organic” patterns.
There is an egoism far more ghastly than that of the tyrannous individual. It is the egoism
of the flock.
There is no ego, no enduring entity. The ego exists in an abstract sense alone, being an
abstraction from memory.
There isn’t anything in the whole universe to be afraid of because it doesn’t happen to
anyone! There isn’t any substantial ego at all.
There’s a plastic film between you and the divine process around you. It’s your
egocentricity, your deadening mind.
Things are brought into order through regarding them from a viewpoint unrestricted by
the ego.
Those who vainly reason without understanding the truth are lost in the jungle, running
about here and there and trying to justify their view of ego-substance.
To identify with the ego is to confuse the organism with its history, to make its guiding
principle a narrowly selected and incomplete record of what it has been and done.
Transcending the ego leads to great individuality, the person no longer believing that the
rules of the game are the laws of nature.
Turn off your mind. Step for a moment or two out of your own ego. Stop the robot
activity for a while. Stop the game you are in. Look within.
Waiting on the other side of what feels like total destruction of the ego is a broader, more
encompassing sense of self.
We attempt to impose our ego-will on the ever-changing life process, a stoppage, a
blocking of life-energy flow.
We confuse our systems of symbols and descriptions with the real or natural world, the
ego with the organism, the map with the territory.
We insist that inner conflict between ego and body, reason and instinct, is the essential
condition of civilized life.
We must act not from our inflated or deflated ego but from the deepest recesses of our
being.
Westerners see the ego-loss experience confused with schizophrenia because they can’t
label it and therefore it can’t be investigated.
What needs to be controlled is not so much the spontaneous flow of human passions as
the ego which exploits them.
What really dies in the process of ego-death is that part of us that holds a basically
paranoid view of ourselves and of the world around us.
When subjects share ego-shattering experiences together, they develop strong, positive,
emotional bonds.
When the ego is dispelled, there is insight, the perception of a whole new pattern of
relationships comparable to scientific or artistic discovery.
When the voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide will
remain silent.
Whereas the ego is your idea of yourself, the total energy system of the universe is what
you are.
You, your ego is trained to remember secular-game landmarks, like a prom or wedding
day, etc.
After the experiences of ego death, abuse of alcohol or narcotics, as well as suicidal
tendencies, are seen as tragic mistakes due to an unrecognized and misunderstood
spiritual craving for transcendence.
As soon as the ego’s act of identifying itself with the future can be seen as something
present, one is seeing it from a standpoint superior to the ego, from the standpoint of the
Self.
Awakening almost necessarily involves a sense of relief because it brings to an end the
habitual psychological cramp of trying to gasp the mind with the mind, which in turn
generates the ego with all its conflicts and defenses.
Awareness of all normal sense impressions and the empirical ego seems to die or fade
away while pure consciousness of what is being experienced paradoxically remains and
seems to expand as a vast inner world is encountered.
Ego focuses consciousness on the few immediately neighboring pieces of the game board
because ego knows that one glance across the game board or beyond it puts the whole
thing in perspective.
Ego-consciousness must either live the world to the exclusion of God or God to the
exclusion of the world; there cannot be room for both on the objective plane. (The ego
and its “objective plane” don’t understand that God is not separate from the world.)
Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment. (That’s because enlightenment
means that it’s all over for the ego, the ego being exposed for the fraud that it always
was.)
I think the ego forms in this way: in order to behave in a way that is acceptable to your
parents, you—by necessity—suppress your intuitive reality. You behave as though you
believe that your reality is what your parents believe it is.
If the answer existed within the conscious ego, the quest would never have begun. The
answer is found in those areas that were previously unconscious, those areas where the
body links and joins other bodies and the total energy continuum of life and ecology.
In experiences that have transpersonal dimensions, the individual has the sense of having
transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are defined in the
ordinary state of consciousness.
In reality, all men are alike in their essential innocence— that the division of their natures
into the good and evil is arbitrary or a decision of an independent spectator, none other
than our old friend, the isolated observing ego.
Individuals who experienced the phenomenon of ego death followed by the experience of
rebirth and cosmic unity seemed to show radical and lasting changes in their fundamental
understanding of human nature and its relation to the universe.
Internal unity occurs when consciousness merges with this “ground of being,” beyond all
empirical distinctions. Although awareness of one’s empirical ego has ceased, one does
not become unconscious.
It is one thing to note that civilization as we know it has depended upon the ego concept;
it is quite another to assert that it must, as if this convention were somehow in the nature
of things.
It is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which
flash by at the speed of light and to become aware of the enormous treasury of ancient
racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every cell in your body.
Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual activity. The mind in its
conditioned state, that is to say, when limited to words and ego games, is continually in
thought-formation activity.
Mystics who believe that God is everywhere but is invisible to us due to our ego-centered
nature, will find it easy to believe that a drug that occasionally obliterates the ego can
also make God more visible.
Obviously, you must be other than God so long as you conceive yourself as the separate
ego. (To be clear, you are God whether the ego knows it or not and the ego knows
nothing.)
Odd as it may sound, the ego finds that its own center and nature is beyond itself. The
more deeply I go into myself, the more I an not myself and yet this is the very heart of
me.
Our famous ego is pieced together out of society’s stockpile of images and ideas,
according to our individual circumstances and this abstraction dictates what we see and
feel and think.
Profound transpersonal experiences move the individual out of the narrow framework of
identification with the body-ego and lend to feeling and thinking in terms of a cosmic
identity and unity with all creation.
So long as man feels himself to be the ego, to deprive him of freedom or the sense of
freedom is to subject him to the despair of being a mere pawn of the divine tyrant. (No
tyrant is divine.)
Social conditioning fosters the identification of the mind with a fixed idea of itself as the
means of self-control and as a result man thinks of himself as “I,” the ego. Thereupon the
mental center of gravity shifts from the spontaneous or original mind to the ego image.
Spiritual practice begins by allowing ourselves to die to the ego’s ideas about how things
should be and to love and accept the truth of things as they are. (The ego doesn’t know
the meaning of truth.)
the clearly mystical sensation of self-and-universe as a unified field or process. The
sensation of man as an island-ego in a hostile, stupid or indifferent universe seems more
of a dangerous hallucination.
The common denominator of this rich and ramified group of transpersonal phenomena is
a feeling that consciousness has expanded beyond the usual ego boundaries and has
transcended the limitations of time and space.
The ego entirely leaves out the polar unity of the organism with the universe, ignoring the
fact that the two are a single process. (The ego doesn’t actually ignore that fact in that it
doesn’t even know that it is a fact.)
The habitual egocentric mode in which man identifies himself with a subject facing a
world of alien objects does not fit the physical situation. So long as it remains, an inward
feeling is at variance with reality.
The highest point of the experience is a moment of transcendence in which the user
passes out of the everyday world into a paradisiacal egoless state in which he believes he
has attained some ultimate revelation about the nature of mind and the universe.
The insane man who has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his
ego. (A society hung-up on ego sees the sage as insane because they have no idea where
the sage is at.)
The main objective of psychedelic therapy is to create optical conditions for the subject to
experience the ego death and the subsequent transcendence into the so-called psychedelic
peak experience.
The neural structures of the brain, upon which intelligence depends, are certainly not the
deliberate creations of any conscious ego. (The ego knows nothing at all about the neural
structures of the brain, let alone being able to create them.)
The root of mental disorder is that the ego-feeling as such is an error of perception. To
placate it is only to enable it to go on confusing the mind with a mode of awareness
which clashes with the natural order.
The sense of the vast gulf between the ego and the world disappears and one’s subjective,
inner life seems no longer to be separate from everything else, from one’s total
experience of the stream of nature.
The usual definition of oneself as an independent ego is a social institution rather than a
physical reality, having therefore the same kind of reality as a minute or a verbal
definition.
Those who uphold the impoverished sense of reality sanctioned by official psychiatry
describe this type of awareness as “depersonalization,” “loss of ego-boundary” or
“regression to the oceanic feeling,” all of which are derogatory terms.
To lose the reality of the isolated ego is not to lose the integrity of the individual.
(Actually, the ego has no real reality and has nothing to do with the real integrity of the
individual.)
Transpersonal experiences can be defined as “experiences involving an expansion or
extension of consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries and beyond the limitations
of time and/or space”.
We cannot make intuitions happen; we can only let them enter our awareness. In fact, if
we disengage our awareness from ego consciousness and intellect, we cannot stop
intuitive knowledge from bubbling up out of the unconscious depths.
When the Self is no longer identified with the ego, when in certain spiritual practices, it
penetrates and realizes its own depths, it simply KNOWS that it is eternal and all-
inclusive.
With the ego and mind unplugged, what is left? It’s something Western culture knows
little about, the open brain, the uncensored cortex, activated, alert, open to new realities,
open to a broad sweep of internal and external stimuli hitherto screened out.
You cannot take LSD once a week and stay rigidly rooted in a low-level ego game. You
have to grow with the flow or you will stop taking LSD. You must hook up your inner
power to a life of expanding intelligence.
Every human being is born with an innate drive to experience altered states of
consciousness periodically, in particular to learn how to get away from ordinary ego-
centered consciousness. This drive is an important factor in our evolution, both as
individuals and as a species.
I am not merely spinning senseless paradoxes when I say that we, the sane ones, are out
of our minds. The mind is what the ego is unconscious of. The mind of which we are
unaware is aware of us. It is we who are out of our minds. We need not be unaware of the
inner world. (That was R. D. Laing.)
Identification of consciousness with ego-consciousness leads to confusion of mind and
intellect, to acceptance of appearance as reality, to materialistic formulations of the
interaction of mind and matter, to isolation and fear, to increasingly negative conceptions
of reality and ultimately and very logically, to disaster.
It is one of the oldest and most universal practices for the initiate to go through the
experience of death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically, he must die to his
past and to his old ego before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which he
has been initiated.
Metanoia is that profound state of consciousness which mystical experience aims at—the
state in which we transcend or dissolve all the barriers of ego and selfishness that
separate us from God. It is the state of direct knowing, immediate perception of our total
unity with God.
Most of the awe and reverent wonder stems from this confrontation with an unsuspected
range of consciousness, the tremendous acceleration of images, the shattering insight into
the narrowness of the learned as opposed to the potentiality of awareness, the humbling
sense of where one’s ego is in relationship to the total energy field.
One enters the other world by breaking a shell: or through a door: through a partition: the
curtains part or rise: a veil is lifted. The “ego” is the instrument for living in this world. If
the “ego” is broken up or destroyed, then the person may be exposed to other worlds,
“real” in different ways from the more familiar territory.
The best researchers, when confronting problems and riddles that had defied all solution
by ordinary methods, did employ their minds in an unusual way, did put themselves into
a state of egoless “creativity” which permitted them to have insights so remarkable that
by means of these they were able to make their greatest and most original discoveries.
The difficulty with both psychotherapy and liberation is that the problem which they
address lies in the social institutions in whose terms we think and act. No co-operation
can be expected from an individual ego which is itself the social institution at the root of
the trouble.
The guide possesses enormous power to shape the experience, move consciousness with
the slightest gesture or reaction. The key issue here is the guide’s ability to turn off his
own ego and social games, to muffle his own power needs and fears. The guide must
never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing.
The individual identifies with only one aspect of his or her being, the physical body and
the ego. This false identification leads to an inauthentic, unhealthy and unfulfilling way
of life, and contributes to the development of emotional and psychosomatic disorders of
psychological origin.
The modern term for the direct experience of spiritual realities is transpersonal, meaning
transcending the usual way of perceiving and interpreting the world from the position of a
separate individual or body-ego. There exists an entirely new discipline, transpersonal
psychology, that specializes in experiences of this kind and their implications.
The reason psychedelic experiences are important and valuable is that people live their
lives by their own “chess-boards,” playing the lawyer-game, the merchant-game or some
rule-ridden ego-game, rarely if ever expanding their consciousness to the point of true
awareness and understanding of man and nature, including themselves.
True sanity entails, in one way or another, the dissolution of the normal ego and a new
kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its
betrayer. (You are the divine and your ego should serve you and your divinity or it should
flake off, take a hike, get lost and leave you alone.)
We are largely cut off from this Deep. The stress on ego controls, rationality, focusing
outwardly rather than inwardly, have prevented us from hearing the full range of
dissonances and harmonies of human existence. Our present lives are empty, lacking in
depth, substance and direction.
When the shell of the ego has been cracked and there begins to be a consciousness of the
subliminal and psychological otherness underlying personality, it sometimes happens that
we catch a glimpse, fleeting but apocalypic, of that Othernesss, which is the Ground of all
being.
In the transpersonal realm, we experience an extension of our consciousness far beyond
the usual boundaries of both our bodies and our egos, as well as beyond the physical
limits of our everyday lives. The more I have explored this realm in my own research, the
more I am convinced that these experiences in transpersonal consciousness can include
the entire spectrum of existence itself.
There is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words. That awareness
can expand beyond the range of your ego, your self, your familiar identity, beyond
everything you have learned, beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the
differences which usually separate people from each other and from the world around
them.
Under conditioning, it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not
reside in the ego alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies
to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence “I” am immeasurably old; my
forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a
single and eternal flow of energy.
Under the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of the ego is associated with
one’s ability to test reality and to function adequately in everyday life. Individuals who
share this limited point of view see the perspective of the ego death with horror.
However, what actually dies in this process is a basically paranoid attitude toward the
world.
A life lived in the consciousness of ego and separateness is necessarily a life of conflict.
As egos, they do not know the ultimate reality at all.
Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.
Beyond the falsifications of egocentric consciousness lies the world of awareness.
Clear perception of the limitations of the ego will awaken you to the Self.
Consciousness, in so far as it feels itself to be the ego cannot stop its own shrinking.
Courage is the key to creativity or to any relinquishing of ego structure.
Ego discovers that ego is a fraudulent actor in a fake show.
Egg is ego and the bird is the liberated Self.
Ego is a small aspect of the totality of the psyche.
Ego is a social fiction, pure hypnosis.
Ego is indeed a fake, a wall of defense around a wall of defense…around nothing.
Ego sweats to maintain a tenacious grasp on the ungraspable.
Ego was never anything but an abstraction.
Ego-centric activity implies that one is still ego-conscious and not at all Self-conscious.
Ego-consciousness involves repression.
Growth towards wholeness means growing beyond ego.
Illusory egos alone bar us from the ecstatic bliss of universal consciousness.
In the pure present, there is no egotism.
In the West, we are a cult of the ego.
It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the ego.
It is the Self and not the ego which realizes.
It is useless to talk about my ego. That only means that I have made up an idea of myself.
Life ceases to seem problematic when it is understood that the ego is a social fiction.
Loss of ego may be confused with physical death.
LSD takes you out of the normal space-time ego.
LSD unplugs the ego, the game machinery and the mind, that cluster of game-concepts.
Man wakes up from his egotistical daydream and discovers himself.
Many problems are rooted in the ego’s conceptions of reality rather than in reality itself.
One can discard all traces of ego awareness and be more than one was before.
Our ego spins around inside the mind compelling us to be tied to its field of gravity.
Physical tensions which are built up by our anxious and ego-centered life are released.
So let us pray: Almighty ego, set I free!
So long as attention is fixed on the delinquent ego, it cannot be fixed upon God.
Suffering and death are problematic for the ego rather than the organism.
Suicide is the escape from ego. Only ego contemplates escape.
The center of man’s being is not the ego but the Self.
The center of the mind’s activity is not in the conscious thinking process, not in the ego.
The ego cannot see the reality of nonordinary reality.
The ego dissolves.
The ego is a false and impotent image.
The ego is a social convention foisted upon human consciousness by conditioning.
The ego is merely a convention.
The ego is the principle stumbling block to favorable changes in personality.
The elimination of the false ego helps us to develop a more realistic image of the world.
The essential hostility of the ego to the physical organism and world is dissolved.
The goal of the spiritual path is transcending the ego.
The inner sphere is the real self, unknown to the conscious ego.
The LSD ecstasy is the joyful discovery that ego is only a fraction of my identity.
The mystical effects of LSD transcending ego barriers may lead to creativity.
The personal ego is a hallucination.
The price of the leap into Paradise is the loss of one’s ego.
The “social ego” is trivial compared to the “atomic I”, the “DNA I”.
The subject experiences various degrees of loosening and losing of his ego boundaries.
The whole man is a great deal more than the ego.
There is nothing intrinsically pathological in the experience of ego-loss.
To cherish the ego is to cherish misery.
To go beyond the limits of the insulated ego is such a liberation.
Transcendental experience is the only escape from the prison imposed by the ego.
True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego.
Under sway of the egotistical delusion, we may feel cut off.
We are forced into becoming acceptable egos.
We have a poor image of ourselves as egos in bags of skin.
We have been conned into the illusion that we are separate “skin-encapsulated egos”.
What death negates is not the individual, not the organism/ environment, but the ego.
When action is felt to be motivated, it expresses the hungering emptiness of the ego.
When the ego controls dissolve, the world within is glowing, serene and meaningful.
Whoever loses his ego finds his life, but it cannot be done on purpose.
With your ego left behind you, the brain can’t go wrong.
You are no longer encapsulated in the structure of ego.
You…the ego-you can never enter the Void.
Your ego is to your brain what the planet earth is to our galaxy.
He has ceased to identify himself with his ego, with the image of himself which society
has forced upon him.
He sees that his ego is his persona or social role, a somewhat arbitrary selection of
experiences with which he has been taught to identify himself.
He stands outside of and apart from his familiar ego, all its protective barriers having
been shed; and this can lead in some to transcendent experience, while in others to a deep
panic. To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of
consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.
His center of experience moves from ego to Self.
The person has lost his own ego boundaries and has flowed into the world outside.
They have seen beyond the separateness of the ego’s shell.
Acid allowed me to experience my soul. Ego, ambition, defenses, critical faculties are
sloughed off or suspended.
Although there was thinking, talking going on, my mind was being used, yet there was no
ego.
Following the ego death, individuals saw human existence in a much broader spiritual
framework.
Huxley described the experience at its best as a “gratuitous grace,” providing access to
what he called “Mind-at-Large,” beyond the “reducing valve” of the ordinary egoic mind.
I discovered emotionally that the essence of reality is self-awareness, selfhood, not
egohood.
I existed “in” these dimensions of being, as I had transcended not only my ego, but also
the dichotomy between subject and object.
My little ego seemed removed and I felt that I saw clearly and purely for the first time in
my life.
Once the God self was recognized and appreciated, all need for arrogance and egotism
was gone.
We were changed forever, because we were experiencing these inspiring truths. And we
could laugh at ourselves as well, as we saw through our various ego-trips and guises.
When the ego-personality was ripped away completely, what was left was “purest love”
and a sense of oneness with all living creatures.
Awareness was not referred to as ego; it was so to speak on its own. For the moment, that
interfering neurotic who, in waking hours tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the
way. (That was Aldous Huxley referring to his first trip, free of the ego.)
I felt totally new, as though I’d just been born. Having had so much ego burned away had
cleared and refreshed my spirit. It was a grace that profoundly changed my life by giving
me a reason to override my scientific skepticism and accept the reality of the spirit.
My exponentially heightened awareness saw through the static, one-dimensional ego-
constricted false front which is the consciousness-contracted reality of the everyday
world.
Never has greater beauty immersed me in its flood. I was so lost in its waves, so separate
from myself, so disembarressed of my ego, that odious appendage that accompanies us
everywhere.
The part of the mind given to trivial things surely had no immortality and the ego, which
continuously pushed us about trying to satisfy its selfish wants, would be dissolved and
good riddance.
The possibility of transcending boundaries between self and other, the illusory nature of
ego, the interdependence of opposites, the relative nature of dualism and the resolution of
paradox in transcendence became clear.
Everything was beautiful. Everything was right. Each smallest thing was uniquely
important, yet fitted perfectly into the whole. My little ego seemed removed and I felt I
saw clearly and purely for the first time in my life. I wept with relief and joy. I felt
unworthy of such blessedness.
This clear-light experience, as Leary termed it, was a true communion of the soul. I felt
as if my consciousness and entire being had broken up with the brittleness of linear ego
thought, while the person that filled the vacuum bore the same body of experience with a
totally new vitality and an understanding of life’s true value.
I experienced a wave of extraordinary bliss, like a full-body orgasm, and the sense I was
in the presence of something absolutely awesome. Sex is nothing compared to the ecstasy
I felt at that moment. I had no awareness of my body or ego or time, only a profound
sensation of illumination and the feeling I was in the presence of ALL That Is, eternity,
God, whatever you might call something all-encompassing.
All patients, said Grof, apparently moved through similar levels during their sessions.
They passed first through aspects of their own life experiences—birth, childhood,
adulthood—and then into experiential realms described in mystical traditions,
experiences of ego-death and rebirth followed by “satori”—the dissolution of ego-
boundaries and the loss of duality, an unfolding awareness of cosmic unity, a sense of
Oneness.
His ego dissolved and he became all of existence.
I ceased to exist, but could have “looked back on my ego” and answered questions.
Looking from behind the ego, it was a big joke seeing how seriously the ego takes it all.
With ego-loss came feelings of the enhanced significance and relevance of everything.
a keen appreciation of the beauty of the music, my surroundings and myself, although
without egotism
a renewed sense of personal worth coupled with a relaxation of habitual mechanisms of
ego defense
a state of egoless “creativity” which permitted them to have insights so remarkable that
by means of these they were able to make their greatest and most original discoveries
an altered state of consciousness that focuses our awareness on something other than our
ego and intellect
aware that I was not myself, but a selfless, egoless, joyous representative of all humanity,
loving, searching and soaring into the infinite
breaking down ego defenses and bringing up repressed feelings and thoughts from the
unconscious
“cosmic consciousness” in which the individual feels that his own inmost Self behind the
superficial ego, is God
“cosmic consciousness” the shift from egocentric awareness to the feeling that one’s
identity is the whole field of the organism in its environment
ego fighting to maintain or regain its hold over an outpouring of feeling over a
dissolution of emotional boundaries
how to break out of personality into new realms of consciousness and how to avoid the
involuntary limiting process of the ego
hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego—as an isolated center of consciousness
and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world
is no longer an emotionally charged ego, but finds himself an element in the given reality
which is not an affair of objects and subjects, but a cosmic unity of love
Leary’s model for “transcendental communities” where family members could maintain a
level of experience which cuts beyond routine ego and social games
people who have evolved past the ego, who were living beyond “the persona, the role or
mask which we normally are compelled to exhibit socially”
reported that their previous suicidal tendencies had actually been unrecognized cravings
for the ego death and transcendence
seeing through the social institution of the separate ego, no longer confusing his identity
with his social role or taking his role seriously
the chasm that opens between our present ego-restricted lives and the wider seeing which
is possible
the distinction between one’s true self and the spurious ideas of oneself which constitute
the ego
the ego and the power of conscious reason nothing but cumbersome clowns in
comparison with the organic wisdom of the body
the ego-loss experience being a temporary ending of game life, a passing from one state
of consciousness into another
the egocentric fallacy of the doctor-patient relationship (This refers to psychiatrists,
psychologists and psychology, not medical doctors and medicine.)
the everyday illusion of Newtonian reality, where we seem to be “skin-encapsulated
egos” existing in a world of separate beings and objects
the height of egocentricity, the final achievement of controlling my own letting go of
myself
the incomprehensibility of nonordinary reality from the point of view of ego
consciousness
the intellect divorced from old-fashioned neurosis, freed from egocentricity, the mind
illuminated
the isolation of man-as-ego from his organic life on the one hand and from his fellow
man on the other
the modification of consciousness until it ceases to be ego-centered and becomes centered
in and united with the divine Ground
the mystic non-self and the mystic self experience, flashing in and out between the two,
the flashing in and out between pure egoless-unity and lucid non-game selfhood
the myth of the ego as an isolated, independent observer from whom the rest of the world
is absolutely external and “other”
the shift of attention from the conscious ego to the previously unconscious organism-
environment feedback network
the spiritual state of no-game, no-ego, the ultimate liberation and the very highest forms
of maturity
the subject’s feeling that his or her consciousness has expanded beyond the usual ego
boundaries and has transcended the limitations of time and space
the transcendence of verbal word-concept games, perceived space-time dimensions, ego,
and personal identity
the unreal ego, perpetually distracted from the only source of real satisfaction, the living
moment
to break down ego defenses and induce a “transcendental experience” which seems to be
almost always religious in nature
to experience a state of egoless freedom, freedom from compulsive ego-centered passions
and desires
transcendence—becoming aware of a reality which lies outside of time and space and the
ego
tricked into disowning himself and his own feelings by accepting the fiction that he is his
ego and not his entire organism
when the ego-sense is relaxed, when a sense of the infinite and eternal replaces our usual
self-centeredness
sensory and emotional changes referred to as “distortions,” “regressions,” “loss of ego
structure,” “abnormal perception of body image”—This is the language of pathology. (It
is absurd to refer only negatively to such sensory and emotional changes.)
the mind that has broken out of its prison of cultural conditioning and egotism and is as
fully receptive to given reality on every level, as it is possible for the human creature to
be
the state in which we transcend or dissolve all the barriers of ego and selfishness that
separates us from God, the state of direct knowing, immediate perception of our total
unity with God
must resist the dictates of reason, as we understand it and give up the supremacy of
egohood (If we associate reason with ego, that is quite unreasonable because the ego is
unreasonable. Ego cares about itself and nothing else which is not reasonable because
there are other people and their egos. If all egos are going to do is fight with each other,
that’s why we have the world we have. When we get beyond the ego, we’ll have a real
world.)
a condition of mindlessness, of non-ego
a consciousness which is not that of the ego
a deep trans-ego experience
a dissolution of ego structures that is necessary in order to reach a larger definition of self
a dissolution of the ego-based apprehensions that cloud the sky of the mind
a hidden Self that is actually much more the central me than my ego
a higher non-egotistic level
a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy
a self far beyond the image of the ego or the human body as limited by the skin
a sense of the ego dissolving into boundless being
a shift in the sense of identity—from the ego to the universe
an ecstatic non-ego state
an ecstatic state of non-ego
an egoless involvement with the abyss inside the self
an instance of ego-transcendence through empathetic entrance into the essence
awareness of a not-self superior to the disintegrating ego
awareness of selfhood as distinct from ego-awareness
awareness which extends beyond the personal goals of ego
awareness which is beyond body, mindand ego
bad karma, heavy ego games
breaking through to ego-loss understanding and awareness
“broke through” the realm of the ego into the transcendent dimensions of being
confusing personality or ego with the actual human organism
creating a better and more optimistic reality-tunnel, transcending ego games
discovered that “I” exist independent of social ego
ego getting in the way of self
ego the mask which conceals the splendor of our Original Face
ego transcendence
ego-filter
ego-loss state, recognize the process as an end eagerly awaited
ego-transcended experiences, non-game experiences
“egolessness” or “no-mindness”—no feeler in conflict with feeling
freedom from perceptual and intellectual attachment to the ego-principle
freedom from the fundamental disability of egoism
have entirely transcended the ego and reidentified with the divine
liberated from his bondage to the ego
liberates the human mind from its constricting identification with the abstract ego
liberation from egocentricity
liberation from the ego fiction
liberation from the ego. You are on a different level.
liberation not from the physical world but from the egocentric style of consciousness
limited ego-oriented consciousness mistaking itself for the whole
mystical union, liberation from ego and space-time limits
no longer an insular ego-consciousness, but a cosmic consciousness
overcomes his ego-limitations and reaches spiritual maturity
possibilities within your mind that have gone unrecognized or were denied, by your ego
propels the subject beyond space, time, ego, culture, etc.
release from the limitations of the ego
reveals the ego to be a fiction and leads to a new sense of identity
selfish, ego-dominated game playing (Is that life?)
states of consciousness where there is no basic separation between the ego and the world
superficial ego
that the origin of sin lay in the ego
the anxiety of the dualistic ego
the anxiety-ridden, dualistic-thinking ego
the attainment of the mystical vision through “ego death”
the blissful egoless states a child experiences during the early period of its life
the discovery that he is more than ego
the dissolution of ego boundaries, prized by mystics as a step toward unitive perception
the ego a limited, finite center of consciousness
the ego, godless and full of thought (or full of bull)
the ego, isolated from the source of cosmic potency
the ego, standing apart from the immediate feeling or experience
the ego, the purely abstract and conceptual man who is locked up inside his skin
the ego with its pride in the past and its fear and greed for the future
the ego’s limited world
the ego-fiction
the ego-mask
the ego-shattering effects of the drug
the egocentric contraction of consciousness
the experience of beyond ego
the fiction of the isolated ego as the real individual
the fiction of the separate ego, the fiction of separate things a perception of the ego
the ghost of the isolated ego
the habitual empty feeling of an isolated ego
the heightened sensitivity of ego transcendence
the highest state of complete unity and pure egoless energy
the illusion that the ego is real
the imposter ego
the individual’s intrinsically insignificant ego
the liberating ego-death
the limitations of ego-consciousness
the little self, the ego-personality
the love-preventing monster of ego
the Other World where egos melted and a spiritual rebirth occurred
the petty insignificance of man’s ego-oriented aims
the plastic-doll nature of social reality and social ego
the strong illusion of being no more than the skin-contained ego
the therapeutic significance of the ego death and rebirth experience
the timeless and egoless eternal now
the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions and of the ego or identity
the “unreality” of the ego
the very limited center of conscious attention which we call the ego
this foolish egocentricity
to move beyond the ego which holds onto what is predictable in life
to penetrate into the deeper reality below the externals of egocentric consciousness
to see ourselves whole, free from egocentric attachment to form or outcome
to take high-powered egos and weld them into a true spiritual brotherhood
to transcend the identification with the ego
too egocentric to achieve enlightenment and a total deliverance
transcendence of the ego
transcendence of the usual ego hang-ups
transcending self-centered ego and becoming God-centered
unreflecting egotism
waking up from the illusion of ego, from the dream of worldly life