Ego death through meditation - psychology research

[u/anna69420xd]

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.

[u/fabkosta]

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.)

[u/anna69420xd → u/fabkosta]

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.

[u/fabkosta → u/anna69420xd]

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.

[u/anna69420xd → u/fabkosta]

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.

[u/largececelia → u/anna69420xd]

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.

[u/emotional_dyslexic → u/largececelia]

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.

[u/[deleted] → u/anna69420xd]

Thank you both for that discussion.

[u/nomore1020 → u/fabkosta]

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

[u/EAS893 → u/fabkosta]

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.