ELI5..’Ego death’ on a psychedelic.
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Your ego is basically the part of your psyche that holds the concept of “you.” It usually doesn’t want you to change, and it always wants you to feel correct about things. This can be both good and bad, as on one hand it might help you be the best you can be, but a lot of times it doesn’t care if you *are* right, just that you *feel* right about something (such as believing anyone who disagrees with you must be an idiot).
When you do psychedelics, the part of your brain that processes your ego temporarily shuts down. Since the ego is “you,” the transition during shutdown can feel like you’re dying. This is often an extraordinary experience, because it’s the first time in someone’s life they’ve existed outside of the concept of their own self and can look at the world in a brand new way.
It’s impossible to accurately describe, but the closest I can get is something like: *You* stop looking at the world and the matter inside it, and instead *become* the matter that makes up everything. The concept of time doesn’t apply anymore, and everything becomes different shapes of matter in a cosmic dance.
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