Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rhiannon on September 22, 2018, 08:26:53 AM
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Interesting stuff.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/dd52796e-5935-414e-af0c-de9686d02afa
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DMT is a tremendously interesting drug.
This feeling, known as "ego death", has been reported by many people experiencing intense psychedelic experiences.
It can be described as a total loss of a sense of self which happens to the subject while they're still conscious, according to Chris's fellow researcher Robin Carhart-Harris. He says it's like being awake and having no sense of personal identity.
You can get the same effect via meditation - unfortunately, only after a very, very, very long period of intensive practice.
Ketamine has many of the same effects with regard to an NDE, as it happens.
Along the same lines, via his experiments with hallucinogenics, when he was on his deathbed (dying of cancer) Aldous Huxley was injected with LSD so that he could take his last trip tripping.
I like this:
“We cling to this idea that something of ego consciousness survives after death – and the idea that it doesn’t is frightening, because we’re so attached to our egos,” says Robin.
“But the other probability is that when you die the world doesn’t end, because it goes on for everyone else. And if that doesn’t console people, then there’s something narcissistic there, isn’t there?” he says. “Because the universe goes on.”
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I think something like it happens to seriously ill people sometimes. In one of Dickens's novels - can't remember which - a meek, submissive woman is dying. She is asked if she has any pain, and replies "there is a pain in the room, but I can't say that I have it", which is said to be a good description of this disintegration of personality.
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Found it - 'Hard Times', Mrs Gradgrind, chapter IX:
'Are you in pain, dear mother?'
'I think there's a pain somewhere in the room,' said Mrs. Gradgrind, 'but I couldn't positively say that I have got it.'
http://www.victorianlondon.org/etexts/dickens/hard_times-0025.shtml
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And old priest friend of mine made being with the dying part of his vocation.
‘It’s rarely nasty’ was how he desribed it.