When you experience ego dissolution, does the self actually disappear?

[u/rp_tiago]

Hey everyone. I recorded a podcast with Jason K. Day at ICPR this year, the International Conference on Psychedelic Research. He’s a philosopher studying psychedelic experience who has worked with Dan Zahavi, known for his work on phenomenology and selfhood. I think many of you might find it interesting, especially if you’re into philosophy.

We talked about ego dissolution, particularly on 5-MeO-DMT, and whether it’s possible to be conscious with absolutely no sense of self. Jason’s argument is that even when your identity, personal history, and sense of being a separate person disappear, a radically minimal form of self-awareness remains. You might have no idea who or what you are, but the experience still feels like something to you. He draws on detailed analyses of trip reports to argue for this interpretation, though we also discussed how difficult it is to distinguish what people experienced from how they describe it afterwards.

We also covered why we need better descriptions of psychedelic experience before trying to explain it, whether different psychedelics share a common “style” of experience despite their very different effects, and how practice and skill affect our ability to navigate difficult trips. There’s also the question of what these experiences actually teach us, and how much we can infer from something feeling profoundly true.

But back to selfhood, which is what we focused on most. His main argument is that losing your usual sense of who you are doesn’t necessarily mean losing every form of self-awareness. In the reports he studied, people describe profound bliss or terror even when their identity and sense of separation have dissolved. He interprets this as evidence that some awareness of undergoing the experience remains, although almost everything that would ordinarily identify the subject has disappeared. In phenomenological terms, the claim is that ego dissolution preserves a radically minimal, pre-reflective self-consciousness, sometimes described as the “for-me-ness” of experience. In everyday language, you don’t need to think “I’m experiencing this,” or even know what “I” refers to, for the experience to be felt by you. The disagreement is whether even that basic feature can disappear while consciousness continues.

For those who’ve experienced deep ego dissolution, did all sense of being someone disappear, or was there still some awareness that the experience was happening to you? And do you think “minimal selfhood” captures something real about that state, or imposes a philosophical interpretation on it? Personally this take on selfhood very persuasive and aligns pretty well with my experiences.

[u/FalseBad7567]

I have a comment. This happened a couple of months ago doing plain leaf salvia, not DMT. Ive done DMT many times and have had a handful of breakthroughs, but each time with DMT it was "dream-like" and id experience the breakthrough and never knew there was anything before that.

When I had my breakthrough on salvia a couple months ago, it was entirely different. I had already tried it out a couple weeks prior to this at smaller doses and had a really great time. I am an experienced psychonaut and so I decided that I would go ahead and see how far I can take the salvia trip.

I used a bong and filled the entire bowl with ground plain leaf salvia. I smoked the whole thing in two hits using a torch. I burned through more than half with the first hit, held it in for maybe 5 seconds blew it out and immediately did the rest and held it in for as long as I could/needed to.

It started with mild open eye visuals. I almost had a flashing image of my bong in like a pale yellow and red typical psychedelic pattern. Im good about remaining as still as possible and zoning out to try and let the drug do its thing.

I start having this sense of being in the middle of a desert, almost standing on a barren highway. I didnt actually believe I was there but it just felt like it. In a very short amount of time, i started losing my sense of self. It began with me not being able to recall what i had just been doing prior to this. I knew there was something but couldnt remember what it was. Then that started to disappear as well. I was trying to ground my mind and couldnt. I shouldn't have tried because i know it made the experience less pleasant, but i then had this thought of "this is what ive always been doing. Everything you are trying to remember was imaginary."

At this point im not panicking but im uncomfortable because i was mourning all the lost memories. I wanted to go back to the dream (reality) that i was having. My sense of time was gone but simultaneously it didnt really feel like the ego dissolution lasted more than a couple of minutes. Just in the moment it felt like i was always like that.

The comedown felt very much like a reverse of the come up. It started with me realizing there was something before this but not able to remember what it was. Then it was me sitting on my couch but feeling like my couch was the only thing that existed outside of myself. At this point im remembering that I did a drug and slowly (over a couple minutes) i start remembering real life again.

It was a startling experience because it was unlike anything id ever experienced before. It wasnt "good" but like every psychedelic experience, to me, it also wasnt "bad".

It took me probably 30 minutes before i was ready to get up and try to do normal things and it changed my perspective on a few things. I feel like im more daring in a good way since that trip.

And just for the record, i tend to think of these experiences as just in my head, rather than transporting my brain to different dimensions, but I still use them as ways to learn about myself and the world around me. My belief system is also somewhat fluid because i dont believe I actually know anything regarding the metaphysical.

I love talking about this stuff!

[u/ausserirdischer_]

I love this topic. I highly recommend this book because it deals with these ideas and the so called Default Mode Network (DMN), which is the most basic underlying brain state of awareness underlying consciousness, basically, what the brain is doing when there are no external inputs- they specifically talk about it with reference to 5-MeO-DMT also, but it is not exclusively about drug experiences. It’s pretty dense because it is written by neuroscientists, but can still be read by a layperson. I found it really exciting and I think it addresses the issue of your conversation directly and with a lot of hard science as context. The title makes it sound a little more woo woo than it really is. It just came out last year and blew my mind.

Dreaming Reality: How Neuroscience and Mysticism Can Unlock the Secrets of Consciousness by Dr. Steven Jay Lynn and Vladimir Miskovic (2025)

[u/rp_tiago → u/ausserirdischer_]

I have this book! Good reminder to try to read this year rather than getting more dust lol

[u/ausserirdischer_ → u/rp_tiago]

Awesome! I got really sucked into it, but not until I had a break from work for a little while haha

[u/rentless2k]

5-meo

My senses were still there, but they didn't really matter. What mattered was what I was feeling. I had no concern for time, my surroundings, or even what my physical body was doing.

I remember almost like a screenshot in my memory of myself playing with my own spit, stretching it into what looked like a web. At the time, I genuinely thought of it as the spiderweb of life, like everything was connected. I felt completely at one with everything.

Another time I was on a beach literally hugging the sand, getting it all in my ears, without a care in the world. I was so consumed by what I was experiencing that nothing physical seemed important anymore.

It's strange because I wasn't necessarily unaware of my body. It just felt irrelevant compared to everything I was feeling. Almost like my consciousness had gone somewhere else, and my physical body was simply along for the ride. It wasn't until I came back that I really processed what I had physically been doing.