Lucidity
The first time that he experienced ego-death was while having a lucid dream, which is a dream in which one realizes that one is dreaming.
Acknowledging the dream for what it was, he realized that literally everything constitutive of this experience was “not real,” meaning “not physical” or “not waking-state phenomena.”
He realized that literally any aspect of the experience that he could perceive or identify was not real.
The dream-sensations were not real, the dream-emotions were not real, the dream-thoughts were not real.
His dream-body, the experience of himself as an individual, was not real.
Yet despite the fact that all his experience was unreal, “I” still existed – but absolutely nothing perceivable constituted this “I.”
He, as this I, existed as the source of perception, but not as the objects or phenomena he perceived.
He was simply pure being.
Subsequently, he realized, “If I am pure being, most fundamentally, then my ultimate identity could not be conceptually or linguistically reduced to any limitation or thing."
"I am infinite."