My presentation from Breaking Convention.

Dying to Live

Can transcendent experiences help us die better deaths? And can the wisdom gained through transformational experiences help us live better lives? A talk on how experiences through psychedelics can alleviate death anxiety and help us prepare for the inevitable. Experiences through psychedelics, near-death experiences (NDE’s) and out of body experiences (OBE’s) can transform human personality and deeply affect the way we view life and death. Can these experiences provide us with a link to a core unitive human transcendent experience, or are there many petals on the lotus flower? The insight and wisdom gained through these experiences may have much to teach us about how we can die better deaths and live better lives.

Enjoyed viewing your talk.
I completely agree with Griffiths' opinion.
These substances are too valuable to only use them for terminal illnesses.
But already using them just for that on a wider base could already probably help many people.
I bet they would proof also very valuable in treating all kinds of traumata and depression.

I'm not really surprised by the similarities between NDEs and these substances. But this has already been discussed. My stance is still, that the differences are mainly by the kind of how one gets into this state.
Via a substance will always hinder the functioning of the mind and you will never be as clear remembering etc due to this.
And the more you can get out of it (remember), the stronger the healing effect.
(Just MHO)

Awesome Banco, enjoying what I've watched so far. Thanks for posting this

Thanks for posting this Banco, I enjoyed it and keep up the good work!

Couldn't make it to the talk but bang up for watching this soon...

You were pretty busy that morn what with running a conference so I'm going to let you off!! You did actually catch the end I think. I have to admit I regrettably didn't make any of your talks either so I'm looking forward to when they're put online, I very much liked the sound of the ecopsychology one. I had come down on the "sleeper" train from Aberdeen the night before (not having had the best sleep) and made it to the conference with very little time to spare...regrettably I missed out on some stuff I was meaning to say but I think/hope the overall message I was trying to get across was made.

Glad y'all enjoyed it. Regarding the overlap between psychedelic experiences and NDE's, there is definitely a fair bit of overlap, but also some notable differences too. It would have been more rigorous to hear the views of people who felt they had a mystical experience via psychedelics and an NDE, rather than just experience with psychedelics, but facebook wasn't the platform to specify and I didn't have the sample size to be that choosy either. It seems that a few people did report full mystical experiences via psychedelics, and these did have a lot of overlap with the NDE. The general consensus though was that the NDE was a much higher order and deeply affecting experience that yielded long term changes, and was experienced as being incredibly clear, compared to the more dreamlike and fleeting psychedelic experience.

Phase 3 trials are soon to commence in the US to look at psilocybin as a treatment for anxiety and depression in those suffering from terminal diseases, I think this will eventually result in psilocybin being recognised as a medicine, and there will be a change in the law to allow this, I think it is likely this will be the first medicinal application for psilocybin (here in the UK it looks like it will first be recognised as a treatment for treatment-resistant depression, from the way the science is panning out here). This I see as a positive step, and maybe sometime in the future psilocybin will have applications in treating those are not terminally ill and be used for "the betterment of well people".

imho "simulating death" is such s shallow, and profoundly silly concept, with a strong penchant for masquerading as profoundly deep or deeply profound... the low hanging fruit if there have ever been one... not so much "breaking convention", more like "reinforcing convention", as "simulating death", "core universal human" this and that, "skeptical crowd", "going deep", etc, etc, are all deeply deeply deeply steeped in convention cliches, used and re-used, and then re-used some more, time and again... i understand very well the allure of presenting convention as its opposite, i do, nothing quite new here either. watching this video did not challenge my thinking based on more than a quarter of a century of research and experience btw

having said that, even if not interesting to me it's always great to see more videos posted. thank you for posting. the more (videos) the merrier, a most suitable "shire" philosophy, methinks, no

Thanks for posting, bancopuma! Will check it out this week



Seems you have a strong opinion on the subject, but it would be good if you would back it up with at least reasonable arguments, instead of simply expressing your dislike. Why is 'simulating death' a silly concept? What would be a more interesting way, in your opinion, of looking at whats happening here, at whats being discussed? Whats your suggestion for improvement?

Firstly, judging the entire theme of the Breaking Convention conference on a single talk is deeply flawed, as I hope you can understand. Secondly, in many ways topics being discussed at this conference are very much challenging conventional views on many different fronts. While the psychedelic research renaissance is in full flow, psychedelics are still highly controversial substances in the eyes of mainstream medicine and psychiatry and we have a long, long way to go before these are integrated as medicines and therapeutic tools. So by its very existence, a conference like this is indeed challenging convention. I wasn't setting out to specifically challenge conventional thinking with my talk, although as part of the theme of my talk I did want to challenge the conventional view we have of death and dying in the Western world. Why is "simulating death" a silly concept? What do you propose in its place?

I'm guessing you had a point in there somewhere you were trying to make, but I'm not clear what that was.

In this context it would be very interesting if during these experiences you did have some ego deaths and/or some full releases.

I've just had a paper published on the subject matter of my Breaking Convention talk, published in the new, free online-only open access journal Threshold, whose scope is inter-disciplinary consciouness research and how this relates to death/dying (full paper accessible via link below). Now this is published I'm going to do my best to try and ignite some research interest in using psilocybin to treat existential anxiety in the terminally ill here in the UK, to follow in the footsteps of pioneering research already conducted in the US.

http://tjics.org/index.php/TJICS/article/view/14

Nice one, Banco! Fascinating that even the mention of NDEs causes a shift in someone's outlook, without the person having ever experienced it themselves. The subject of death is definitely a powerful tool in changing people's perspective on life. Great read.

Nice plan to try spark some new research here in the UK too. Keep smashing it!

Very nice.

Side question, I'm considering coming out of the psychedelic closet one day. Any insights on the process or what to expect?

I think that folks coming out is helping society accept our psychedelic community. It seems that it certainly helped the gay community claim their rights and social acceptance when upstanding members of the community and family members and friends started coming out in their case.

Thank you for your work.

I am really happy to have seen this Bancopuma. Good work!

I'll read the paper next when I have the chance.

Thanks for sharing all this.

JBArk

Good stuff man, this is a very interesting subject. Thanks for sharing.

Sometimes I get ready to say "How lucky we are, here at the nexus, to have folks like the Bancopuma". And we really are lucky.

But it's also testament to the nexus itself, that folks like you share these things with us.

But I regress.

Two things stood out:

Like the Kermit points out, how you describe the contagion of the NDE.

The other thing, first I heard it in your presentation and you hit it again in your paper - how we consider death to be a 'medical failure'.

To a simple and old man like me, I really like learning of those things, and the perspectives it gives me.

Thanks.

Thanks for the good vibes peeps, I'm glad the subject matter resonated with you. I've written an article on this for Reality Sandwich as I do feel this is an important topic worthy of more attention and want to get the word out there.

http://realitysandwich.c...of-existential-anxiety/

Loveall - Regarding coming out of the psychedelic closet, I guess I've always been lucky in that my family are open to psychedelics and we are all really open with each other. I am open about my psychedelic use among psychedelic-using or interested friends and family members, but otherwise it's not something I tend to bring up (well my personal use of them anyway), when chatting to other people (especially in my work place say where I don't feel many people are open to such things). So I don't shout about my psychedelic passion from a mountain top for all to hear, but then one wouldn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to discover I'm open to and interested in psychedelics if one has access to the internet. I guess for me I like to be open and up front with things rather than being paranoid about it, if that makes sense.

very beautiful talk
good to see the subject of death and its comprehension (practical uses) are being brought back into the world