Alen de Bottoms ideas of ego loss and realizations at the end of “Art of Travel” are important elements to understand while both reading the page, safe at home cozied up with a coffee or a beer, or while out in some foreign land watching the lightning dace across the sky. “There was always more in the world than men could see, walked it they ever so slowly, they will not see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.” (218).
We as a species need association to avoid feeling isolation, and as our worlds grown and new technologies come out the isolation between thought and sight against pace has grown more and more. Little fragments of life just pass us by and even though we can feel connected to something by just taking a quick snap shot of a groovy building or some other shit that we find intersting, and we can post it to social media it has not truly satisfied our being. We become isolated in thinking we are associating but the point that de Bottom makes is that even though we have these great things that could help us, we neglect the time to really see what it is we a looking at, “…and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.” (218).
This to me is like Timothy Leary’s ideas of his book “The Psychedelic Experience; A Manual on the Tibetan Book of the Dead”. In the first Bardo called “The period of ego-loss” he describes “the conscience-expantion process is the reverse of the birth process, birth being the beginning of game life and the ego-loss experience being a temporary ending of game life.” (37) If we look at it not as a psychedelic trip but a physical one, the “birth process” would be like the planning of the trip, the beginning of the plane ride (ect ect). The ego-loss experience would in effect be what de Bottom states about man and his being. As well as this the ego-loss process is encourage by de Bottom through the whole book, he constantly reiterates the fact that while abroad do not fall in to “tendencies” you would have at home. Dare to see, dare to live, dare to do something different other wise your time will not be spent properly and while I am on my trip to New Orleans I will every day try to do this for my self.
Ego-loss can truly be achieved if he or she is willing to step out of them selves and just exist and be as they are at that moment, not imposing any ego games upon them sleves. It will be hard and you may or may not e able to achieve it, but through constant thought and awareness to all thats going on and not getting too fixated on bullshit things, it will come as easy as breathing or walking, one just needs a little time and patience.