I would say permanent isolation would be the only realistic way to achieve permanent ego death. Once you were to reintegrate back into normal society that ego death state will dissipate. I like to look at parts of society like rivers with currents. When you jump in it, it will take you where the current is flowing. So to achieve permanent ego death you would need to avoid jumping in these rivers.
Maybe if you mastered mantra you could alter the effects of these currents as i described, but i do not know.
I would assume if you were to achieve permanent ego death in order to interact with this world you would need to relate which means at least some part of you needs to have ego to do this.
Many people who practice retreat experience temporary changes to their habitual emotional and mental reactions. This is especially true of people on meditation retreats. These changes then fade over a few days up to about a week. OTOH even short retreats really can have a profound effect on some people.
I kind of look at the guru or teacher that has disciples following him as the source which the disciples anchor themself too. So i guess i can agree with what you are saying in that regard for achieving permanent ego death.
I also see mantra itself as an anchor. So for example in hinduism the mantra focused on the deity they are devoted to becomes the source which provides what they wish if that is specifically ego death — in that case it most likely would be Shiva or the Goddess Kali
It's true that the guru/teacher is a massive spiritual anchor (this is in fact the meaning of guru as weighty). In Indic systems devotion to the guru alone can result in the development of the internal spiritual qualities of that system.
This is the traditional Indic interpretation.
There are literally millions of Hindu deities that one can take as one's deity within what we call Hinduism any of which can lead to liberation or ego death (these aren't the same thing within Hinduism). Having said that generally we can say that most of these can be seen as different versions either of the main, well-known gods and goddesses or in a simultaneous interpretation as an aspect or even an avatar of a singular main god (in these interpretations Hinduism can be said to be simultaneously monotheistic and polytheistic because reality is more complex than we generally understand).
If you know a good ammount about magickal systems in eastern culture specifically under the umbrella of hinduism i kindly ask you to start a thread talking about what you know. Im very interested in learning more about the subject. I have spent a great deal of time on youtube trying to initiate myself into the culture, but i find this excessively difficult being a westerner. I have great interest in the rishis and upanishads as well. I kind of like to get to root of things. There is alot i do not understand especially with dieties like Shiva which has 64 different avatars from my understanding.
What I experienced was not necessarily a Buddhists view of it, or at least I don't think so. I'd like to call it Ego-Death because I have never experienced such a feeling before as well as I felt disconnected from things that were pointless. What was once a tempest of worries and hatred towards certain things/figures became a mind that could only perceive things that really mattered. I literally was unable to perceive anything other than neutrality, or happiness. But never anything less. I remember perceiving things around me as almost dream like sort of. I knew everything was there but I felt as if I was watching it from a more elevated distance whilst still interacting with it if that makes sense.
So you were in a state connected with the divine or the state of bliss?
I would say connected with everything in a way but also still an individual being in a sense. As if I was a part of what was making everything else, well... Work the way it does. I wouldn't say "bliss" as it scared me a little at first actually, however I would say it was quite joyful in a way once I accepted it.
Would you say your fear of it was the reason it took you out of that state?
Maybe fear itself is whats limiting this.
Got it. What you experienced is just a relaxation of stress at some level. This can happen with practically any kind of meditation (meditation is unlimited and there are meditations to cultivate even what we would normally call hatred so I am trying to be precise). Since you experienced it for a few hours this probably accompanied a realization about things that were pointless because you mention that in your second post. By realization I mean a real shift in your thinking however slight. Since you were unable to perceive anything other than neutrality or happiness then what happened caused you to shift to this temporary state of bliss. Then you describe this as feeling like a kind of dream state including watching things as if from a distance. These are all classic descriptions.
My reason for wanting to make it permanent is because I believe it could help me focus more on my practice as a whole instead of certain aspects of it.
Also, I should have mentioned it but I didn't even meditate beforehand. It came on completely randomly.
I don't at least not directly. Beyond divination I have never had a Indic magick/occult guru. Real magickal systems from the Indic work are really antinomian, except for the cultivation of some siddhi (powers) commonly found in Buddhism and Hinduism (but these then strictly rely on bestowal from the deity and for most of us this would take their whole life if they were successful). I know about this because I practiced Buddhism for a long, long time and was also exposed to Hinduism. In Buddhism mostly what we would call magickal systems are really frowned upon (except in some very limited contexts). In HInduism they are also usually not mainstream and as I mentioned they can be really antinomian (think much, much worse than Crowley reportedly [and probably falsely] sacrificing a cat at Cefalu). Some of this stuff was taken into tantric Buddhism but then toned way down.
Well, what can really help your practice is concentration meditation and there are lots of those. Frequently in western occult you begin by meditating on a candle flame but I have had experiences where I can lose all sensory input (in fact people are kind of divided into their tendency to experience different stuff but it's usually losing sensory input or experience bliss in some form or some other experiences like unity with everything or something they tend to experience as nothingness but there are more divisions than this) so I tend to not do this except in visualization.
