The 5 Steps of Ego-Death

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Picture an underwater cave and the inner surface is covered in eyeballs. They're all pointing in. And let's say there's occasional cracks in the wall of the underwater cave. So, it connects it to the ocean. So, that way fish and other organisms can like swim in, enter the cave. Let's say that there's bioluminescent animals, maybe jellyfish. They're emitting light. So, that way the eyes have something to see. All of the eyes together make up one organism that's having the conscious experience of seeing the inside of the cave from a flipped inside out perspective. I guess inside out is a misleading term though because it's not on the inside looking out, it's on the outside looking in. And I guess the point of this thought experiment is just to contrast the normal perspective that we have where we are internal and our eyes and our other senses point outwards. So we end up with this default sense the internal world or inside is me and the external world of not me. So I guess with this organism it would be flipped where if it didn't know of the rest of the universe maybe it would just kind of feel like that's what it is. Not that it would have a concept of the universe, but just have a sense that it is all there is except there's this external space inside. So it sense of self would feel like it's on the outside and the external world would feel like it's on the inside. This kind of relates to this idea of the concept of the self. This neuroscientist named Anneil Seth breaks up the concept of the self into five pieces. First one is the sense of being a body or having a body.

[00:01:19]The second one is the sense of being the one that takes actions. So if I move my hand, it's the sense that I did that. Or if I think a thought, it's the sense that I was the one who did that. So that was the second self. Third self is it's kind of the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Who am I? I like this, I don't like that. I have this kind of personality, not that kind. And I guess all the mundane stuff, you know, I have a meeting at 6:00 I have to get to when I'm late. I really have to start showing up on time. All this kind of story. The second last self is the social self. So if you're outside and you're just walking along like this, then you notice somebody else walking and they're looking at you. There's some kind of a concept of others having a concept of you, the imaginary people in your head.

[00:01:57]Then the last self, which is the self that actually relates to this cave of eyeballs thought experiment. I think it's kind of the hardest one to to grasp, at least for myself. I guess with the vision example, it's this idea that where is the vision going to? There's like a self there that's it's having the field of view presented to it. Or when sound enters your ears, where does it end up? The self that's hearing. Or when you have a thought, who's the thought presented to? And the idea is that with all five the selves, they can all be dissolved. You can have consciousness with all of these senses of self or you can have consciousness without them. But when I try to picture this one being dissolved, I think this one for for me at least, it's the hardest one to imagine. It kind of feels like there's some piece of it that's it has to be there. Like when the field of view comes in, it has to be presented at all. I don't know. Does the cave of eyeballs shed any light on this? make it easier to imagine that this part of the self can be dissolved? Because if you imagine being the cave of eyeballs creature, you could still have that part of the self, but it be flipped inside out. So, does that make it easier to imagine it being dissolved? I guess it seems like it should because, you know, instead of just having to go from one rigid concept of of I'm the one in here and the external world is out here, going from that to letting it be completely dissolved, it's a big step. So if you take this other form, the cave with the eyes on the inside, it's kind of like a stepping stone where before you dissolve the concept, you first look at it and see that you can flip it inside out.

[00:03:20]It's not this rigid structure. It's kind of arbitrary. When I talk about dissolving the self, I don't mean like doing a cannonball into a vat of acid.

[00:03:28]Instead, I mean that there's the person and inside their head there are the concepts or perceptions they have of themselves and they can let all of those dissolve. So, the person is still there, but these five circuits for the sense of self have all been switched off. By the way, I've never achieved this.

[00:03:46]Yesterday, I ended up going down kind of a rabbit hole looking for other examples of this part of the self either getting completely dissolved or where it's shown that it's not immutable, solid, indestructible. So, I'll check the notes. Oh, yeah. One example is out of body experiences where someone can feel like their point of view leaves their body. Maybe it'll be floating on the ceiling looking down at them. Another one is I remember hearing about this virtual reality experiment where just put on the VR gear. Then oh yeah, you have a camera behind you looking at you.

[00:04:18]So you're seeing yourself from that point of view. I guess a third person point of view. So then maybe you can kind of project your sense of self into that image you have of something in front of you instead of where you are.

[00:04:28]Another example is the rubber hand illusion where place your hand on the table behind a curtain so you can't see it. rubber hand is placed next to it that you can see. Then the experimentter rubs the same part of your hand and the rubber hand in a synchronized way so that you get the sense that your sense of touch is coming from the rubber hand because whenever you see the rubber hand get touched, you feel your hand get touched on that exact same spot. So it's like your brain is being given false evidence that the rubber hand is yours and then you have this experience of feeling like the rubber hand is your hand. That that might have have more to do with the first sense of self, sense of having a body or being a body. Yeah, the perspective. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:05:05]It's weird trying to imagine what does perspective mean when it comes to like sense of touch. The one is the experience of having a voice in your head that's not you. This might be another example where it's more one of the other versions of the self. So, it's more the uh where you feel like you're the one who thought your thoughts.

[00:05:22]Because maybe you can have an experience where you just take a normal thought that you would have thought. You leave everything the same except you dissolve this one piece of the self. The piece that feels like it's the one who made the thought. Maybe that's enough to transform it from a thought to a voice in your head. But whether it's being perceived as a thought or as a voice in your head, as long as you have a sense of being the one that's hearing it, then the perspective part of your sense of self is still online. So then this isn't a good example of this part of the sense of self being unraveled. Another example would be where the self and the world become indistinguishable. I guess I could see that as also potentially being the the first version of the self, the bodily self. Maybe if that one dissolves, that would also cause the the internal and the external to become more indistinguishable. It's an interesting one to think about how that would feel.

[00:06:11]So yeah, I guess you you never have access to the full external world.

[00:06:15]There's just what your senses are taking in. So if you're inside of a room in that moment, the external world is just that room. not even the whole room to just be the the side of the room that you're facing. At least just considering vision. I'm trying to imagine my my sense of self being indistinguishable from I guess being found in that side of the room. I guess there'd be two versions of this. One where the sense of self is maintained but it is kind of like multiplied or expanded so that it includes the other side of the room. And the other version of this would be maybe if you just have the disillusion of the self, then maybe that would also lead to the internal and the external becoming indistinguishable. If you don't have any sense of self, then it won't be found in the person or the room. So they're the same in that way. So you could have a sense of self on the person but not the environment, which is the default experience for most people most of the time. Or you could have it on both.

[00:07:05]Maybe it's possible to experience something like this through meditation.

[00:07:09]Or you could have it on neither, which is the idea behind the disillusion of the self, dissolving the self or ego death.

[00:07:16]>> That's why it hurts. It's ego death.

[00:07:19]Your heart cracks open and your ego is dying.

[00:07:22]>> And then the final possibility in this 2x two is where the sense of self is applied to the environment, but not the person. This one I'm not sure if if anyone ever actually experiences this, but I guess I'm going to talk about it anyway because I don't know, no reason.

[00:07:39]It' be interesting to experience, especially if the person, which in this case is you, but you wouldn't be calling the person you, if the person is going from room to room because you as the environment would be constantly changing. But it does sort of seem like this might be a pretty contrived scenario though because of all the things in the environment. You'd apply your sense of self to all of them except why would the mind single out the person in the environment and say that's the one thing that's not me? Feels like the mind would have to go out of its way.

[00:08:03]But I guess you could say the normal sense of self is kind of going out of its way because it's just doing the opposite. It's saying that person is me and that's the only thing. All of these ideas rely on the assumption that the mind has a clearcut distinction between the person and the environment. But if you think of riding a bike for example, it can kind of feel like it's an extension of your body like when you have to take an evasive maneuver. So even though the bike is normally thought of as part of the environment in cases like this at least one of the senses of self probably the bodily self incorporates the bike with you. So even riding a bike is an example of the environment becoming less distinguishable from you. Another example I've written down is car crash which is just an example I guess of the more like broad category of just any traumatic experience whereas a defense mechanism the mind detaches the self.

[00:08:46]heard a story from somebody who said that they got in a car crash. They didn't remember it. But then one day, I don't know whether this was like months later, they suddenly remembered it, but in their memory of it, they weren't in the car. They were standing outside of the car, and they were watching the car as it was flipping. And they were laughing hysterically. And they said that in their memory, as the car crash ended, they saw their own unresponsive body from a third person point of view, as their friend who had been in the same car desperately tried to aid them. as they said things like, "Please don't die." The next example is how sometimes your first person point of view can feel different when you're dreaming.

[00:09:23]Sometimes in a dream, you're just the point of view. You're not really embodied or the sense that you're behind the wall or behind the person's face, but in a way that's distinct from just being that person.

[00:09:33]>> I was hidden behind one of the faces.

[00:09:35]>> And the last example is depersonalization, which is a feeling of detachment from yourself. So, detachment from your thoughts or your body or your actions or your feelings. One common thing that's described is someone will look at their hands and there'll be an unreal sense or a disconnection.

[00:09:52]Normally, your hands are just seen as a part of you in this uncomplicated way, but now there's a distance, a disassociated sense. Depersonalization kind of has some overlap with some of the other things mentioned, the out of- body experience. That's a common thing described with depersonalization is viewing yourself from the outside, but it's still definitely distinct from an out-of- body experience. It's interesting how with depersonalization and I guess derealization too, how they'll have like a a negative veilance to them. Like it'll be distressing.

[00:10:19]People could have an experience that involves elements of depersonalization but doesn't include the negative veilance. You can imagine a neutral version of it. Like out of body experiences can be positive, for example. So it's possible to have the perspective sense of the self detach and be positive or negative. So it's interesting thinking about why when there is a negativity associated or positivity associated. Why is that the case? Imagine you're having a conversation with a friend.

[00:10:46]>> How does being in this social situation have an influence on how your sense of self feels? Is it a sense that the other person is perceiving you? Like a sense of their third person point of view? How would your sense of self feel different if they were somewhere else instead?

[00:11:00]You could do an experiment with your friend where you stare at them, then a wall drops down between you and separates you so that you're now in different rooms. Then the wall raises again. You stare, wall lowers, and so on. As this is happening, you could try to become aware of how your sense of self feels and whether you can notice a difference when the wall is raised versus lowered. When it's raised, is there a sense of the other person's point of view that appears in your mind?

[00:11:24]Like a part of your brain is keeping track of their perception of you. For you, their point of view is outside of yourself. What would it feel like if this sense of self, the social self, were to overtake all the other senses of self, like you could turn its intensity way up so that it overwhelms you. Would you feel like you are the other person or at least like you have their point of view? Your other senses would contradict this. Your eyeballs would still be seeing from your point of view.

[00:11:50]Inside your brain, >> there's something kind of like a map of the room that you're in. So that when you're in this location, particular brain cells fire called place cells. And when you move over here, a different set of place cells fire instead. The idea is that they tell you where you are. So as you stand here and this place cell fires, you feel the sense of being here.

[00:12:13]Does this mean we have to add a new sense of self to the shelf of selves?

[00:12:19]What would happen if this play cell didn't fire and the place cell for this spot over here fired instead? Would you feel like you're over there? If so, would this qualify as an out-of- body experience or depersonalization? And what about if you want the sense of self to dissolve? If you could switch off all of the play cells, would that help with dissolving the self? One way to do this would be to place a blanket on top of yourself and then have a friend move you to an unknown location >> this way, Moni.

[00:12:47]>> So that way, the place cells wouldn't know where you were. So maybe they'd all stay switched off. What if you could do the opposite and get all of the play cells to activate at the same time?

[00:12:56]Would your sense of self feel like you're everywhere? If two different place cells activate at the same time, would you feel like you're in two places at once? What if they all started activating randomly? It would be really fun because maybe you'd feel like you're simultaneously in different places and constantly changing size and shape and moving in many different directions at once. But my guess is that it would feel like your location is doing all those things, not your body. But still though, it would also be fun if you could draw shapes in the place cells just to feel what each shape feels like. You could draw a hollow circle. Then maybe you'd kind of feel like the cave of eyeball.

[00:13:31]The brain also has cells that tell you what direction you're facing. If you stayed still, but in your mind you were able to rotate this sense, would it feel at all like your sense of self was rotating? If so, should we add this one to the shelf, too?

[00:13:45]Inside your ear, you'll find this thing, which creates your sense of balance. Is this feeling part of your sense of self too? Let us add it to our collection.

[00:13:54]Inside your muscles, your tendons, and your joints, there are receptors that let you sense the motions and positions and posture of your body. They call it proprioception. Let's add it. There are other cells in the brain that have to do with where you are relative to a wall or other boundary. Let's add it to our collection. One point of view would say that we're getting way off track here.

[00:14:15]The sense of self is this core part of you that you feel way deep down inside.

[00:14:20]It's not your distance to a wall.

[00:14:23]>> It's a feeling deep inside.

[00:14:25]>> And yeah, maybe the wall sense of self is taking this too far. Maybe it's just part of your sense of place and not its own independent sense. But the sense of place still counts, doesn't it? If it gives me the sense that myself is in this place, doesn't that make it part of this sense of self? Here's one of the parts that I still don't get. Imagine somebody who just got finished with dissolving their sense of self. So, they're still aware that the sensory experience of being a person is appearing in consciousness. It's just that they're not adding the sense of self on top of that. I was going to put an animation at this part of the video showing them dissolve their sense of self, but it sort of took on a life of its own and it partially gets into another topic. So, I'll just play it at the end of the video instead. No big deal. If you were to ask this person who just dissolved their sense of self what part of the room they're in, and if they didn't want to use the word I, like I am in this part of the room, they could point to the place on the floor where they're standing and say >> the person is in this part of the room.

[00:15:22]>> That means that this part of the self, the part that tells you where you are, is still online. But if they dissolve their sense of self, I thought all these parts of the sense of self were supposed to be offline. Do all of these senses of self have a self version and a non-self version and they were just using the non-self version of this one or is there just one copy of each and they can switch between self mode and non-self mode? Do they all connect to their own separate self circuit and they can be disconnected and reconnected? Do they each have their own unique self circuit or is there just one central sense of self that they all connect to? If so, can they all be disconnected independently? Or is it more like there's just one onoff switch on the central sense of self? I guess that wouldn't match up with the idea of all these separate components of the self.

[00:16:08]Maybe these five are the primary ones and each of them have their own sense of self, but maybe all of these other elements don't get their own sense of self, but they connect to one or multiple of the five primary ones. No idea. But anyway, I was going to play that animation that I mentioned earlier, but if I were to play it right now, it would probably feel out of place because when I started making it, it kind of evolved into this other topic. So, there's one more idea I want to talk about first. There's this metaphor for consciousness that says that consciousness is like a mirror. To draw a mirror, you go like that. Yeah. So consciousness is the mirror. Then all of your thoughts and your feelings and your the sights you see, sounds you hear, these are all objects in the mirror.

[00:16:48]So the mirror is the capacity to reflect any image. And consciousness is the capacity to experience any experience.

[00:16:57]If we were to take these five elements of the self and any other parts of the self there might be and we were to relate them to this mirror metaphor, then they would be images inside the mirror. If someone sees that their sense of self is an illusion, then all of these would dissolve, but the mirror would still be there. Plus, there'd still be whatever sights or sounds or any other objects of consciousness.

[00:17:23]The word self here is being used to refer to these parts of the self, these reflections in the mirror. And if these ones are an illusion, you can say there's no self.

[00:17:35]But if you wanted to, you could say that because the mirror is still there, you could just call that a self. If you wanted to, just the mirror itself, regardless of what's being reflected, it would just be a different use of the word self. This self would still be an illusion. But this other use of the word self could apply to the mirror. And there's no right answer. It's just a word. I think I like calling it the self though. To me, it just feels more alive or something. Cuz if you just say there's no self, full stop, then I don't know.

[00:18:03]It has some kind of a empty feeling or something. Calling it the self feels like it's better at bringing to mind how there's someone there, someone capable of suffering or joy or any experience.

[00:18:15]If you are the mirror, then you have your mirror over here and I have my mirror over here, your objects of consciousness over here, and my objects of consciousness over here. Is that how it works? Or are we just different patches of images reflected in the mirror, but there's only one mirror?

[00:18:38]If consciousness is just the capacity to experience any experience, then it would be identical for everyone, everything that's conscious. And if that's what you are, does that mean that the you that's experiencing this moment right now is the same as what's experiencing every other moment of consciousness?

[00:19:01]>> There's no self there inside the body.

[00:19:10]There are just perceptions of the body appearing in consciousness.

[00:19:21]There is love thinking thoughts. There are just there's no self as the main character of the mind's stories.

[00:19:43]There are just stories as the way you imag others perceive you. There's just a sense >> perceiving perceptions.

[00:20:13]appearing in consciousness.

[00:20:18]There are just perceptions.

[00:20:32]There's no self there as something distinct from that which experiences inclusive any other moment of consciousness within any other being.

[00:20:50]There's just there's just every moment >> every moment >> every moment >> ever experienced by anything.

[00:21:23]Thank you for watching and thank you to all my supporters on Patreon and also I just started a Kofhei account and on Patreon Kofi, I could upload some tutorials on how I made this animation if anybody's interested.