Ego Death
“Ego is composed of a socialized set of arbitrary boundaries (limitations) that
altogether define a person’s inner-identity. These inner-boundaries include values,
beliefs and “understandings”- in the sense that people tend to “stand-under” or within
these socially-enforced, self-imposed limitations.” John Van Bortel
“The myriad forms of dysfunction all derive from the separation between self-
awareness and awareness of the whole...a separation that the negative aspect of the ego
battles to maintain.” John Pierrakos
The ego protects us from full knowledge of the shadow and to the extent that it
does this it also blocks us off from super-consciousness as well. The ego (functional
personality) disappears in extreme kundalini events because of the enormous
energy coursing through the hindbrain, sensory-motor cortex and limbic brain.
Normally in extreme fight-or-flight chemistry the prefrontal lobes are disengaged
in order to allow the more instinctive parts of the brain to deal with the danger.
During a spiritual emergency however, the stimulation to the nervous system is
internally generated. Often the autonomic shock involved in kundalini awakening
is many times greater than that which we could ever experience in the course of a
normal human life.
Just as a virgin only has a limited grasp of what it is to be human prior to
having sex, so too, those who have not experienced the ecstatic inner-conjunction
or a Dark Night, also have a limited perception of the height and depth of human
experience. These extreme events make the ego more sober, respectful and humble
because of this cellular reassessment of what it is to be human. This adjustment
is largely biochemical, involving the expulsion of stored tension-energy and
extensive reconstruction of neural hardware. And it is this chemical, energetic and
experiential reformation, which leads to what we know as Ego Death. Whereas it
really should be known as the expansion of the limited boundaries of the Ego to
encompass a larger felt-sense of what it is to be human.
What is Ego Death? Ego death represents the neurodetoxification of fossilized
repression, removing the friction and futile cycling of the nervous system, allowing
a higher pattern to form. With higher coherency and integration the neurotic
compartmentalized self is healed or made “whole.” (See Toxic Mind Theory,
BOK-2). Our self is composed of the parent-superego, adult-ego, child-id in ALL
STATES. That is waking, dreaming and deep sleep, plus altered states. To this
triad there is both the light and dark aspects: Eros (pro-life) and Thanatos (pro-
death). Coupled with the Unconscious, conscious and Supraconscious. All these
factors interact to create the subjective experience of our seat of self-Self. This is
determined by the karma of happenstance and our response to it. Once we are
able to stabilize our consciousness a beyond knee jerk reaction to environment, we
are capable of cultivating greater depth and coherency. As we increase our “light,”
that is increase our energy of consciousness, we embody more of the positive-
Eros qualities and our conscious bandwidth expands to encompass more of the
unconscious and superconscious. Ego death in this sense is simply loss of neurosis
via increased integration and coherency.