Comment by kgwxd
8 months ago
Death means dead. If it comes back, it didn't die. So either everyone saying they've experienced it, has no ego (what are "they" then?), or they're using the wrong word.
I've experienced all those realizations myself, but "I" am back for now. So what's a better word for it? Maybe if we didn't call it "death", it wouldn't sound so scary, or mysterious, or interesting, or even useful. Guess it'd be kind of hard to build religions around that though.
"Ego death" is really not the death of ego, but the death of the belief that ego is is at the center of all things, and is somehow a thing that actually exists in the way we tend to believe it exists before examining it more closely.
> Maybe if we didn't call it "death", it wouldn't sound so scary, or mysterious, or interesting, or even useful.
I tend to agree. I think there's a strong stigma and association people hold when they hear these words, that are unrelated to the actual phenomena itself.
> Guess it'd be kind of hard to build religions around that though.
This reveals some of the associations you seem to have with the concept. I'm not religious, have taken on no metaphysical beliefs, and consider myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist.
There is nothing at all religious about ego death, even if many religions and people who talk about such things are doing so from a clearly religious context. It's this religious association that kept me away from exploring the ideas for many years.
It wasn't until I had directly experienced a taste of what that phrase means that I took it seriously. My worldview remains as irreligious as ever.
In retrospect, avoiding it because of this association seems as ill-advised as avoiding science because of its origins and associations with the Catholic Church.