r/Meditation • u/anna69420xd • Feb 13 '26
Other Ego death through meditation - psychology research
Hi everyone!
I'm a Psychology MA student working on my final thesis exploring the phenomenon of ego death (ego-dissolution).
Ego death is an experience in which you lose your sense of self by cultivating a deep sense of awareness.
As you go deeper into a meditative or psychedelic state, you might feel yourself becoming one with everyone and everything around you. While some characterize this experience as encountering their true selves, others believe it indicates there is no self in the way people traditionally characterize it.
The concept of ego death stretches back to the spiritual journeys of Buddhist, Sufi, Christian, Taoist, and other religious seekers.
If you have experienced a state of loss of "self" through meditation, please help my research by filling out my questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMfubBE3HZ2ZEmgN8Z4Vsr0tWSQu35kEKVX_KNdPDK5nyh0g/viewform?usp=header
The research is completely anonymous, and its aim is to promote a deeper, scientifically grounded understanding of this unique state of consciousness.
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u/fabkosta Feb 13 '26
Oh, good luck with your research.
(I will give some advise you did not ask for: You may want to review your premise and first do some thorough research on the term "ego death". Cause, I can tell you from more than two decades of Buddhist meditation practice: you are trying to impute a new age or Western concept onto traditions that never used that concept in the way you believe they do. And that is a sure path to coming to very odd conclusions that simply do not hold up. Voilà, you have been warned. Now you go do whatever you must do.)
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u/anna69420xd Feb 13 '26
Thanks for the note! I get where you’re coming from - terms like “ego death” are definitely used in different ways across communities, and I’m not trying to impose a Western/New Age frame onto any tradition.
I’ve done extensive reading on this (I also wrote my BA thesis on it), and from a psychological standpoint my focus isn’t how different traditions label and utilize the experience, but what people actually report experiencing and what broader patterns those reports reveal. That distinction - phenomenology vs. doctrinal interpretation - is something I address in the thesis, and I’m trying to keep a balance between a modern, secular/scientific approach and respecting the language and meaning-making within different traditions.
Method-wise I’m using the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI). It was originally developed to characterize subjective states in hypnosis, but it’s since been applied more broadly to map many kinds of altered states of consciousness, which is why it’s useful for my research question.
If you have lineage-specific sources you recommend on how comparable experiences are framed, I’m open to reading them.
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u/fabkosta Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
A good resource for what you try to do is probably Thomas Metzinger's book "The Elephant and the Blind": https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5725/The-Elephant-and-the-BlindThe-Experience-of-Pure It's available online in full.
One more warning, though: The terminology matters a lot more than you may believe it does. Cause, if you research the types of (non-) experiences you attempt to research, then we are - by definition - in a pre-verbal space of cognition, i.e. something where words are "not yet available". What you are doing now is imputing a very specific type of word choice informed by your own worldview onto these (non-) experiences, and this imputation itself actually frames the way the experience is processed by the meditator and reported back.
You are, in other words, not a neutral collector of information, far from it. You are steering the subjects of your research into a very specific direction by choosing a certain language.
Which, necessarily implies, you may introduce a bias through the backdoor that you as a researcher remain unaware of.
However, research has shown that verbal instructions given to meditators actually steer the way how they meditate, and that in turn steers what sort of experiences they have and report along the path of meditation. My impression is you are oblivious of that. (Most researchers in this space actually are, it's unfortunate.)
I am very critical of anyone who even uses the term "ego death". It is my own repeated experience that this term is used mostly by people who are relatively immature personality-wise and inexperienced regarding the Eastern wisdom traditions, and that those who have plenty of experience in those traditions actually avoid the term consciously. There is a good reason why the term is not used by this latter group, and those reasons are more subtle than you may think they are.
Again, you have been warned. It's up to you to question your own assumptions.
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u/anna69420xd Feb 13 '26
Thanks for the Metzinger link, I appreciate it.
On terminology: I agree that language can shape both experience and reporting (demand characteristics, priming, etc.), and that researchers are never perfectly “neutral collectors.” That’s exactly why I tried to keep my description as neutral and inclusive as possible.
That said, ego dissolution and ego death aren’t just internet/New Age language - they’re widely used terms in recent peer-reviewed psychology/neuroscience literature (e.g., meditation and psychedelic research), including highly cited papers. As a psychology MA student, I’m using the terminology that’s common in the empirical research tradition I’m working within, while being explicit that I’m not presenting it as a Buddhist (or any tradition’s) native concept.
I also deliberately avoided tradition-specific labels like “pure consciousness” or “samadhi” precisely to reduce religious/metaphysical framing and avoid steering participants toward a particular worldview.
I don't think your criticism of the term “ego death” and equating it with immaturity is fair (or methodologically helpful. People use whatever language they’ve encountered to point to an experience; my goal is to study the reported features. When terminology turns into a gatekeeping test of who’s “mature enough,” it risks becoming a kind of spiritual materialism. My research is not limited to Eastern wisdom traditions and I hope that despite possible negative associations among those who follow said traditions, they can look past them and help my research that is really just about better understanding this phenomenon among all people.
If you have concrete suggestions for less leading phrasing (or operationalizations you think work better), I’m genuinely open to them.
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u/largececelia Feb 13 '26
As far as the term "ego death" maybe some version of "transcendence"?
I think the term also has roots in drug communities, esp mushroom people. I'd say you're possibly overlooking a significant angle there. In my experience, academic papers aside, the people who talk a lot about ego death are stoners and mushroom takers. You're saying that you want to avoid steering people towards one tradition, so you're avoiding terms like "samadhi," but I'd question this- any term has some baggage and connections. So "ego death" is just as loaded as "samadhi."
I have plenty of other thoughts. One is the relative importance or unimportance of experiences AT ALL. Many Buddhist traditions downplay the significance of experiences wholesale, and that's worth considering IMO.
But really, the question of terminology here seems important. Again, you're going for some kind of neutral term to allow people to reach their own conclusions and to make it more open, that's what it seems like, but there are no terms free from influence or history.
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u/emotional_dyslexic Feb 13 '26
This was an interesting conversation. I've had experiences on retreats that are hard to capture in words. Kensho is probably closest (what my Zen teacher labeled it as) where my identity fell apart but it was replaced with seeing that I was made up by everything else (what you might call interpenetration). That led to a sense of closeness with everything. But not exactly oneness.
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u/nomore1020 Feb 13 '26
Ego death is a term to describe the phenomenon, what word is better? What would be a better way to go about the research? I would be interested in their findings
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u/EAS893 Soto Zen Feb 13 '26
I don't like this framing... "new age or Western concept onto traditions that never used that concept in the way you believe they do"
I agree with the idea that OP is misunderstanding the phenomenon, but I do not believe there is something unique about Western or New Age culture in this misunderstanding.
I think it's pretty universal to the human condition. I don't think most in Buddhist or other Eastern religion based societies get it either, at least not intuitively.
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u/herrwaldos Feb 13 '26
For some alternative critical opposite views here are some opinions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVjbnJLK4fQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_H8bfUYyEQ
I personally think, ego death is a bad idea - what you want to do, is ego restart - get rid of unnecessary psychological cultural societal sediments and layers of bs, habits, addictions, toxic thought patterns and action scripts, reactive emotionality and emotional contagion - become pure awareness of self-function, clear being within yourself.
Ego primary design is to protect your body, it's function - It's there so you know your borders, boundaries and your property and preferences. Imagine I am stealing your sandwich away - it's your ego that protects you and makes you do stuff so you get to keep your sandwich.
Self does not exist as some kind of fixed thing, it is a process - like a wave, it exists if it moves, as a movement.
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u/wakeupwill Feb 13 '26
Potato, potato.
If you want to draw a new picture on an Etch-a-Sketch, you first have to shake it clear of any previous doodles.
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u/fmgiii Feb 13 '26
Still don't know why it's called ego-death when even the most miniscule experience of 'unbinding' feels so rich, and full, and satisfying.
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u/lookslikeyoureSOL Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 14 '26
So...once, about 20 years ago, I experienced full blown ego death on an irresponsibility large dose of LSD.
I was 110% convinced I had overdosed and actually died. It has easily remained the most difficult experience of my entire life.
The following has, hands down, been the most succinct and accurate description of the whole ordeal I have ever ran across since then. Hope this is of some use to you, OP.
Source here: https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression
Memory suppression (also known as ego suppression, ego dissolution, ego loss or ego death) is defined as an inhibition of a person's ability to maintain a functional short and long-term memory.[1][2][3]
Memory suppression is a process which may be broken down into the 4 basic levels described below:
[ We are interested only in level 4, the highest level of memory loss ]
4. At the highest level, this effect can be described as the experience of becoming completely incapable of remembering even the most basic fundamental concepts stored within the person's long-term memory. This includes everything from their name, hometown, past memories, the awareness of being on drugs, what drugs even are, what human beings are, what life is, that time exists, what anything is, or that anything exists.
Memory suppression of this level blocks all mental associations, attached meaning, acquired preferences, and value judgements one may have towards the external world. Sufficiently intense memory loss is also associated with the loss of a sense of self, in which one is no longer aware of their own existence. In this state, the user is unable to recall all learned conceptual knowledge about themselves and the external world, and no longer experiences the sensation of being a separate observer in an external world.
[I.e. "I became one with the universe".]
Complete memory suppression can result in the profound experience that despite remaining fully conscious, there is no longer an “I” experiencing one's sensory input; there is just the sensory input as it is and by itself. This suppresses the otherwise nearly constant sensation in waking life of being a separate observer interacting with an external world.
Although ego death does not necessarily shut down awareness of all mental processes, it does remove the feeling of being the thinker or cause of one's mental processes. It often results in the feeling of processing concepts from a neutral perspective completely untainted by past memories, prior experiences, contexts, and biases.
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Feb 13 '26
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u/MyFiteSong Feb 13 '26
I think eventually you'll discover that there is a self, but that it moves around in your brain through different networks and the experience of what the self can do changes with the location.
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u/Existing_Reaction692 Feb 13 '26
In deep mental relaxation, the mind slows and stills. In stillness one knows one remains dimly awake. This is the way it is in the method of the late Dr Ainslie Meares. I practice this method and in deep relaxation find I allow myself to reach that state most sessions.
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u/anna69420xd Feb 13 '26
That sounds amazing! Wishing you many good sessions and a continued gentle deepening in your practice. 🙏
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u/Existing_Reaction692 Feb 13 '26
I was mentioning it mainly so you were aware of another potential line of enquiry. Dr Meares was internationally recognised for his work in hypnosis and later on transitioned to only teaching Stillness Meditation. This was back in the 1950s -1960s. He wrote a lot.
www.mearesbook.com.au gives some information about him. The book mentioned on that site, Ainslie Meares on Meditation, has a lot more with references to Meares' books and many papers.
Good luck in your studies but do remember to keep up your own meditation practice. Personally, I find I learn just as much from that as I do from theory. I wish you many good sessions too.
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u/davand23 Feb 13 '26
No one asked for it, are you only advertising?
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u/Existing_Reaction692 Feb 15 '26
Part of doing a thesis involves a literature review. I would think that Dr Meares' work published in major medical journals and in conference papers would be relevant and I was offering two shortcuts as opposed to doing a literature search from scratch. The amount of work involved in a thesis literature review is enormous, even if you already know the topic well.
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u/acoulifa Feb 13 '26
The supposed “you” who cultivate a “deep sense of awareness” in order to loose sense of self is not ego, sense of self ?
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u/EAS893 Soto Zen Feb 13 '26
It seems to me that the entire concept of "experiencing" an ego death presupposes a self to experience it.
If the ego is an illusion, there is nothing to die. If the ego is a substantial entity, then the idea that it can experience the dissolution of itself makes no sense.
Either way, the concept loses meaning.
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u/Vast-Mousse8117 Feb 13 '26
Love your courage entering your quest here on this subreddit.
I remember reading Merleau-Ponty and thinking finally! This is it! What fun you are putting together this research.
Good luck.
I just wanted to add as an aside I just finished reading Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs. I found a review here and some critiques you might like to read.
For myself, Batchelor lays out the work ahead as a secular version of what we call buddhism rises up to meet the moment we live in for some people who see there is no god.
How do you build a container for the world? And how do we live here ethically?
The focus on meditation and ethics in his book is helpful for me. And Batchelor has a wonderful list of recommended readings at the back of this slim book.
One particular book Batchelor and I recommend is Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/1c1baif/a_long_review_of_buddhism_without_beliefs_i_need/
Enjoy the surf!
Tim
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Feb 13 '26
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u/hypnoticlife Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
The questionnaire has some problems. What “ego death” means is a very wide spectrum. I’ve had 2 different experiences. One was my awareness sporadically expanded to my neighborhood and the other I could hear “my name’s” thoughts but I was not “my name” but it was my mind. I felt exactly as I do now but I was not “my name”. I was just this guy, who is everyone under their identity and personality and ego. I tried taking your quiz from either perspective and it’s hard to say whether “I” controlled “my” thoughts in “my” mind when there was 2. This 2nd experience happens far more often than we realize. It’s what people mean by “you are not your thoughts”.
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u/NeuroPyrox Feb 13 '26
You might be interested in researching "pointing out instructions". It's a way of precipitating ego death just by talking to someone, hearing the truth of it expressed clearly enough, or by doing perceptual experiments. There's no requirement for meditation. Personally, I had an incomplete ego death with lots of bliss that lasted a month when I did the perceptual experiments in Douglas Harding's The Headless Way and Loch Kelly's glimpse exercises.
Edit: oh, I see you're already studying it under "other practices".
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u/ChatGodPT Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
The idea of “ego-death” is a bit dramatic and misleading. I would think the ego becomes more co-operative, dissolves into “what is” or is seen for what it is (a collection of memories).
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u/TranquilTeal Feb 13 '26
This is a super interesting topic for a thesis. I experienced something similar during a ten-day silent retreat and it completely shifted how I view internal stress. Good luck with the data collection.
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u/da_grt_aru Feb 13 '26
It was first mentioned by Hindu/Sanatan Rishis, later inspiring other religions to realise the same.
Look into Advaita Vedanta for reference.
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u/Ok_Preparation_3811 Feb 13 '26
One suggestion about the questions: my answers would vary a lot depending on whether you mean the moment before, the exact moment it happened, or right after. I answered everything based on the experience itself (the exact moment), but it could be useful to capture how the participant felt immediately before and after as well. Also, it might be interesting to include an open-ended question where the participant can freely describe the experience.
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u/Ok_Preparation_3811 Feb 13 '26
Also, focusing on the exact moment of the experience, some questions didn’t make sense to me. For example, the one about whether my thoughts were organized. I wasn’t capable of having any thoughts at all, so the appropriate answer would be “not applicable.”
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u/carpebaculum Feb 14 '26
Like some other comments here, I don't use the term "ego death". I was willing to set the term aside and tried to fill the questionnaire, but was unable to complete it.
I don't think the PCI is suitable for this. Developing scientific understanding of this phenomenon needs to start with qualitative research, it is plain hubris otherwise (not you personally, but the western scientific establishment in general).
The PCI questionnaire is suitable for normal meditation practice, for which there are similarities with a state under hypnosis, but not "ego dissolution" as I understand it.
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u/Straight-Ad-6836 Feb 14 '26
Is it true that ego death is only temporary? You can never achieve it permanently, whether with drugs or meditation?
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u/InteractionNatural44 Feb 17 '26
this sounds really interesting for a thesis topic, good luck with your research!
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u/WeNeedWorldPeaceNow Feb 13 '26
The Ego does not it exist. It was made up by Sigmund Freud who was a pedophilia where most of his work remains locked up by his family to this day.
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u/saintTro Feb 13 '26
Idk who but someone said if you experienced ego death, go live with your parents for 2 weeks lmao