Religious experiences can weaken self-centeredness, but they can also strengthen a sense of being special. In the latter case, when the ego expands beyond its inherent personal limitations, we refer to this as "ego inflation."

A sense of unity with something larger. ├→ Will stop prioritizing only oneself → Empathy and humility. └→ "I am uniquely connected" → Leads to a sense of superiority and an inflated sense of mission.

The auxiliary concept for considering this divergence is C.G. Jung's "inflation."

In Jungian psychology, the ego represents the center of consciousness, while the Self represents the central core and totality of the mind, encompassing both conscious and unconscious aspects. The two are not the same. In his work "Collected Works," Jung discussed inflation as a state in which the personality expands beyond its personal limitations. Jung also called the deep layer of the psyche that cannot be reduced to individual experience the "collective unconscious," and he referred to the universal symbolic patterns that repeatedly appear within it as "archetypes." When the ego integrates with such vast content, or with images of religious figures and historical personalities, one may feel as if they possess that power.

The main point here is simple.

Feeling like you have touched something divine and thinking that your own personality has become a god are different things.

The person who saw the ocean did not become the ocean. The fact that a huge psychological content passed through one's mind, and that the everyday self possessed it and became omniscient, are not the same thing.

It is also important to avoid equating Jung's concept of the Self with terms like Atman, God, or Higher Self. Here, we are using an analytical concept that explains how contact with content that transcends the self can lead to ego inflation. This is not a claim that Jung directly criticized modern "law of attraction" and spiritual industries; it is not a historically inaccurate assertion.