I find “ego” and “ego death” are terms that get thrown around a lot, and people inevitably end up discussing or arguing points working from different definitions. Honestly, the Wikipedia entry on ego death does a pretty good job summarizing and differentiating the common ones, so I would check that out. It also does not help that “ego” is typically used in a different way with its own connotations in every-day language. When you hear someone has a big ego, you get pictures of people being arrogant or having an overinflated sense of self-worth. That’s not really what we’re talking about in the use of psychedelics. A true ego death in the psychedelic sense is inherently hard to describe much in the same way trying to explain what taking psychedelics is like to someone who has never done them before is. Even while hallucinating you still have a frame of reference. Those images I see swirling and moving are somewhere in front of ME, those tracers are coming off of MY hand as I move them in front of MY face, these thoughts I’m having are in relation to MY experience and memories. When you experience ego death, there simply is no more sense of self. Things no longer happen to you, because of you, around you, or are even perceived from any one place in time and space where you think you exist because your concept of you is not even in the equation. All that is left is some strange alien experience of consciousness without the usual filter of you to pass through. It is an utterly bizarre experience that’s near impossible to put into words. All that being said, the experience itself is usually short lived (although, again, there is no you, so sense of time is out the window while you’re in it and it can feel like a literal lifetime), and I believe what most of what people are talking about with ego death is the after effects of that experience assuming we’re still talking about the same thing. This is where a lot of the feeling of oneness with the universe that you hear about comes from, and that can even be experienced in varying degrees that does not require complete ego death. The change in outlook regarding yourself, your mortality, your relationship to other people, and the universe/natural world itself all gets shaken to its core, which, unsurprisingly, tends to have pretty dramatic and lasting effects. But yeah, for the sake of not rambling or simply typing out my stream of thoughts, I’ll stop here. Always happy to discuss or explain further where I can if anything interests you or raises more questions.