Dissolving the ego-boundary through psychedelics is experienced as relief, not terror
Evidence
Alan Watts once called the sensation of an ego a hallucination, “a completely false conception of ourselves as an ego inside a bag of skin.” Learning to see past this boundary can also be a relief. In “My Adventures with the Trip Doctors,” Michael Pollan experiences something like this relief during an ayahuasca experience with a seasoned guide. At some point during the trip, Pollan’s traditional self disintegrates: “‘I’ now turned into a sheaf of little papers, no bigger than Post-its, and they were being scattered to the wind.” Later, his “I” changes again: “Everything I once was and called me, this self six decades in the making, had been liquefied and dispersed over the scene. What had always been a thinking, feeling, perceiving subject based in here was now an object out there. I was paint!” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 478
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The ego boundary is a false hallucination whose dissolution brings relief — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 478; Conscious awareness can outlast the ego, yielding calm relief — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 480; Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 739 (+4 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The ego boundary is a false hallucination whose dissolution brings relief — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 478; Conscious awareness can outlast the ego, yielding calm relief — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 480; Consciousness is a temporary fold in being, not separate from it — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 739 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- The ego boundary is a false hallucination whose dissolution brings relief
#corroborates(0.95) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 478 - Conscious awareness can outlast the ego, yielding calm relief
#corroborates(0.92) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 480 - Life is simultaneously boundless continuity and boundary-determined ego
#complicates(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 811