Apologies in advance for the wall of text, but this is a topic that has occupied a considerable portion of my attention for nearly 25 years. :)

If any of what I share here is helpful for someone, it will be well worth drifting significantly off topic and perhaps over-sharing my personal experience.

That said, my experience is my own - other people's mileage may vary depending on their background and personal makeup. Trust your intuition (and your doctor / therapist if you have one)!

From your comments below (about being able to notice yourself out of existence), it sounds to me like you experienced both udayabbaya-nana (knowledge of arising and passing away) and bhanga-nana (knowledge of dissolution), as well as the other dukkha-nanas (knowledges of suffering) that follow [1].

It also sounds like you are familiar with the Zen analogs for these Theravada terms - sharing them here mostly for other readers.

These are well-known and understood phenomena, at least in Buddhism. Some modern yogis refer to this territory as the "Dark Night", a term borrowed from St. John of the Cross' work describing the experiences from a mystical Christian perspective[2].

The Atlantic had a good piece on this (touching on some relevant research at Brown) several years back [3].

I went through something similar to what you've described here with meditation, and similar to what many others have described here with psychedelics.

It took years of searching, research and growth for me to process and integrate these experiences and return to both a stable, consistent meditative practice and enjoyable / helpful use of psychedelics, including cannabis (which gave me panic attacks for many, many years).

For anyone who is in similar territory but wishes they could continue exploring: Bhajan / Kirtan [4] (example [5]) and Yoga Asana were both incredibly helpful for me, as was a-melodious chanting of various mantra and stotra.

Coming at the problem as a programmer with some understanding of machine learning - I looked at chanting practices as training data for my own biological neural network. A way to re-wire my relationship with meditation / spiritual practices / ego death.

The transition from my atheistic Buddhist practice to a sort of mystical pluralist practice that integrates many traditions was an interesting one, for sure.

I stopped seeing "god" as an absurd, surely-non-existent (for everyone) personal entity and began recognizing "gods" as undeniably-existing (for me) hybrids of:

* helpful anthropomorphic representations of key truths

* helpful anthropomorphic representations for lawful phenomena

* at the highest level: helpful conceptual placeholders for things that are completely impossible for me to describe

As a former atheist, I slowly became more and more comfortable with this framework. I think this was a combination of having grown up in a religious environment; having mystical experiences, searching for answers and finding documentation (independently arising in many different traditions) that closely mirrored my experiences; and feeling like there was tremendous mind-shaping power in a shared subconscious framework transmitted through trance-inducing chants practiced by millions of people over many centuries.

Like many, I would encounter truths through various mystical experiences and find great relief - only to fall back into unhelpful habitual patterns later. A daily relationship with one's personal Gods (in whatever form they take for you) is a very powerful psychological anchor for remaining tethered to truths discovered through mystical experience.

Lectures by Ram Dass[6], talks by Mooji[7] and dharma talks from many different teachers at Dharma Seed [8] also helped considerably.

I have some conjectures rattling around in my mind about _some_ manifestations of mental illness having _some_ of their roots in the territory of ego death (or close brushes with it). Many of us live in a society where all of our basic needs are met and there is ample time for introspection. Moreover, many of us fill a good deal of our non-introspective free time with music, cinema and television which has been shaped (directly or indirectly) by artists and thinkers under the influence of mind-expanding drugs, leading to further introspection (at least this was the case for me and many of my peers).

That is, I don't think someone necessarily needs to even be a yogi to wander into Dukkha-nana territory. Though, to be sure, the proliferation of superficial "mindfullness" practices will add to the aforementioned dog pile of causes and conditions for initial "spiritual awakenings" (for lack of a better term).

I'd love to share my entire journey and more thoughts on this (including 8 years living and traveling in Asia, trying to find answers). One day!

Lastly: if you find yourself in this territory and things are really bad, there are resources available to you! Check out: https://spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk.

Shenzen Young also has really helpful advice about when it's time to seek help from a medical professional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ5B70ac_9M

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[1] - http://www.buddhanet.net/knowledg.htm

[2](pdf) - http://www.carmelitemonks.org/Vocation/DarkNight-StJohnofthe...

[3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...

[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtan

[5] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBso7TPtvJU

[6] - https://beherenownetwork.com/category/ram-dass/

[7] - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/satsang-with-mooji/id1...

[8] - https://dharmaseed.org/talks/