Good morning to one and all!

Im sure many of us here have experienced a state which we refer to as being like death on some level whilst under the influence of DMT.

Is this presumptuous as no-one here as had the one-in-a-lifetime experience yet?

Or is this simply a way of trying to explain the profound nature of what we experience at that moment?

I guess it depends on how one defines death, be it in terms of a biological process, an absence of conciosnessness or indeed in some other fashion?

The following article has got me pondering: http://plato.stanford.ed...ntries/death-definition/

So, good people, how do you define death, and how does this relate to that ineffable place we willingly choose to visit?

I would say its very presumptious to assume dmt is anything like death.

DMT can fragment and dissociate your ego. You can lose your sense of self. Death the self is physically and mentally destroyed. I think the only relation is that death your ego and sense of self is also gone. But so is your body and brain and thats the critical part. DMT is just a temporary fragmenting of the mind. Death is permanent as far as we can tell.

I think death is when your metabolism ends for a long enough period where it can never be recovered again. Like if your heart stops for a few seconds, i think even minutes sometimes, its possible to start up again. Death is when that can't happen anymore.

I can't claim to know what happens to consciousness when one dies. However I also cannot fathom anyway that consciousness could continue in the absence of the brain that created it.

^^Nicely said.

No living person knows what “being dead” is like.

Many people know what the process of dying is like, and some who have experienced both DMT mediated and non-drug mediated NDEs claim there are similarities.

With respect to DMT use, this is an interesting topic. I’ve seen plenty of reports stating “I died.” Having had such an experience myself, I’m very curious about how others interpret it. You can read part of my report here:

My Death, part II

I think some refer to ego-death as being dead, others refer to out-of-body experiences as being dead, and still others may refer to any intense ineffable experience as being dead. I’d like to see more explanations describing why people interpret a particular experience as death.


The Spring MAPS Bulletin is about this very topic:

Spring 2010: "Special Edition: Psychedelics, Death and Dying"


If we assume that the brain creates all aspects of consciousness, then this is reasonable.

Yes I am currently running under that assumption unless something points out otherwise.

But what your saying about ego death.

Maybe the reason people associate ego death and death so much and interchange words is because there is the word death in the term ego death.

I don't really like the term ego death. Ego is too vague of a concept to me at times. Different people use it differently to mean different things.

I prefer calling that state: pure awareness. You are aware. Your just disconnected from your 'self' your memories maybe even the world around you. But your awareness never goes away on tryptamines anyway.

Under anesthetia your awareness can go away but your body is still alive. When your completely unconscious your awareness can go away. Although sometimes in a coma people are aware in a kind of dream state.

Thats where ego death under psychedelics seems different then being unconscious or dead. Unconscious is different from dead too because your body is still functioning.

Is this presumptuous as no-one here as had the one-in-a-lifetime experience yet? we all have once in a lifetime experiences every second and nano second of our lives as we can't do it over again or relive them

Or is this simply a way of trying to explain the profound nature of what we experience at that moment?all we have is the moment in the here and now now now......

I guess it depends on how one defines death, be it in terms of a biological process, an absence of conciosnessness or indeed in some other fashion? define death?? all is energy in transformation so when something is said to have died it only really transforms into something else......energy can't be destroyed only altered.....
The following article has got me pondering: http://plato.stanford.ed...tries/death-definition/i'm going to check out this article after i post this

So, good people, how do you define death, and how does this relate to that ineffable place we willingly choose to visit? there is no such thing as death ...ego death is only the absense of your ego after all one can always bring it back to life but it's alway in the void waiting for someone to claim it..lol
death can be defined many ways but it's only an illusion

Well you can never truly understand something without experiencing it for yourself. Since you can't actually be dead until your dead I guess you'll just have to wait and find out. Until then there's only speculation. I have no solid beleifs but I once heard "Your soul is infinite, dwelling inside a finite body. Eventually your soul will leave that body and move on. There is no such thing as death just another phase of existence." I wouldn't say this is a die hard beleif of mine but I like the ideology of it

i'd like to think we are spirits going through a temporary human experience rather than humans going through a spiritual experience