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Greetings.
I'm not sure if it's possible not to have any ego full-time as it were, or to 'lose it' entirely.
It is possible to choose to identify/associate with ego or not, according to circumstance and it's also possible to be a 'master' over it, rather than letting it control/decide our actions.
I have likened it to a player in a ball game, where a conscious choice exists to have the player on the field during the game, or to bench it and allow it to observe the action from the sidelines.
I have found that often, it is needed in the material world for our very survival, but beyond that, it just becomes an indulgence, a luxury.
One could say that in reference to the bliss of Brahman (Satchitananda), everything else about you is ego...I am using my ego to type up this reply to you, as you have done so in also making the opening post, if mind/manas is also equatable with ego.
According to Advaita Vedanta, anything that is 'not this' must be 'that', so anything that is not ego must be Brahman, but saying it, knowing it and directly experiencing it are three different things.
It is possible for me to lose my ego totally, but then I/ego would not be able to type on this forum.
It is also possible to say "Shivoham" or "Aham Brahmasmi" but who/what is saying that? why...it's still the ego, of course. lol
Ego, in the general sense means our notion of self as it relates to everything around us...it is our mind and our feelings working together to a constructive or detrimental purpose and I don't think anybody will ever be free from that totally; maybe if they perform karma yoga and say they are not the 'do-er' or the 'think-er' or the 'type-er', but then what is? It is still the ego, but a much higher aspect of it.
We can say 'neti neti' until we can say that no more, but then what? our ego dissolves in Brahman, our kundalini flies out of our sahasrara chakra and we become lost in bliss...but, even the enlightened sage must come back down into the throat chakra, where the ego resides to interact with whatever is surrounding them at the time.
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