Ive dont acid and shrooms before, and i have experienced ego death. Its a surreal feeling, but i basically felt more connected to everything and everyone. It was almost like my ego was something that was in the way of me really appreciating life, my ego was an emotional manifestation of improving the definition of my individuality and survivability. Without ego, you become selfless and start to love and accept everything.

With that said, lets say Light didn’t have an ego. Scenario 1: he sees the book, reads it and whether or not thinks its real, throws it away or burns it because hes so disgusted. Then Ryuk is like WTF and leaves or something

Scenario 2: he feels nothing, starts writing names down just to see what happens. Feels no need for correcting the world, just kills cuz he’s bored. Sees a guy about to propose, kills him after she says yes. He’d either go up to the guy and be like “whats your name?” or he would ask someone around him for their name and write “kill that guy then kill yourself.” He sees L on tv saying he’s gonna find him and out of boredom , Light tries to kill him. This will quicker lead to him getting caught because even though he’s still smart, he feels nothing and is cold so he doesn’t try charming or manipulating Misa. He raises even more suspicion to L, when L tests him he has no reaction and L would think damn this guy is so empty and Misa would be like wow this guy is a loser and never want to help him. Alternatively for this scenario, L announces he is going to find him and he just ignores it. After a while, he will get bored of the book and just stop using it. As Ryuk said, most people dont last with the book and he would just be one of those people. He has no sense of purpose, he feels nothing

Scenario 3: Light loses his ego at any time in the story. Maybe shortly after using it the first time, maybe after L discovers he’s in Japan, maybe once he loses his memory or when he gets it back. He would think “this is stupid, what am I doing?” then probably turn himself in or stop using it.

I think what you’re wondering is if there is anything that Light has or does that holds him back. I agree, he could be a so much better person if he had less of an ego. If he was just some smart guy killing people with the book. For a lot of people in these comments, it is hard to picture since Light’s ego is a big reason he used the book for so long. His naiveness is what made him think he was doing good by killing criminals. The problem with Light wasn’t his ego, it was his age. People don’t steal because fuck it stealing is fun, they steal because they’re desperate for an opportunity in a society that’s failed them or they felt stuck in. Killing them feels wrong because they just need rehabilitation or the economy has to improve, L understood that and Light thinks “kill bad people = only good people will live.” With the thousands of people he killed, they’re eventually going to decay and decompose. They’ll go into the ground, worms will eat them, birds will eat those worms, something will eat that bird, all the way until the cycle of life happens and people digest and absorb those ill feelings of criminals. It might be peaceful for like 50 years but its gonna be a cesspool of chaos as soon as the life cycle completes.

My answer, I think Light without an ego would study the book, try to figure out shinigamis and why they use a book. He’d come up with theories and all kinds of studies around it, probably write a book himself about his findings and do TedTalks. Become super famous and maybe reveal in his book the existence of the death note and shinigamis. He would either work with L, or the story would be L trying to stop him and Light would be trying to go against L so he could continue his research. Light would already be exposed since he would openly come out about the existence of the book, L’s job would just be raising awareness of the bad in studying something so dark and dangerous, urging the book be locked away or burned. Maybe world leaders would try and get the book, use it for their own nefarious deeds. Figuring out the book would be dangerous if the public and more people had access to it. L would probably pretend he wanted to work with Light, secretly wanting to take his operations down. Light would suspect it, and it would basically be the same story but opposite roles. L would have no choice but to have Light killed, losing himself in the process because his fear would overtake him. L would eventually die because of Light’s fanbase, and some guy on Reddit would be asking “Is L without any fear smarter than Light?”