What, if anything, dies in ego death?
‘Ego death’ sounds dramatic, but it is a phrase that is sometimes used as an alternative to ‘awakening’ so, even though I don’t use the phrase very often because I think it’s unclear and overly dramatic, I thought it was worth a blog to say a little more about how it connects to the awakening process. By the way, some psychologists use the phrase when they are referring to features of mental health disorders such as the dissociative disorders, which can include a distressing or disabling loss of identity or sense of who we are. For example, Millière et al (2018) refer to it as a change in information processing regarding the self and to related alterations in the experience of the self that are linked specifically with the sense of diminution, loss, or disintegration of the self. Although I have worked as a psychologist for several decades I won’t be using the phrase as a feature of a mental disorder here. I use ego death to refer to an enhanced, rather than a diminished,...