By Robert Matone — 2019
Research finds parallels to certain psychoactive drugs.
Read on www.scientificamerican.com
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I drank ayahuasca in 1999, in a ceremony led by two scholars with expertise in ayahuasca. What follows is an edited version of what I wrote about the experience in my 2003 book Rational Mysticism.
Over the last decades, iboga has developed a cult following in the United States and in Europe, where it is known as ibogaine. In the West, the psychedelic is being promoted as a potential one-shot cure for treating addiction to heroin and other drugs.
This question is more than a mind-bender. For thousands of years, certain people have claimed to have actually visited the place that, Saint Paul promised, “no eye has seen … and no human mind has conceived,” and their stories very often follow the same narrative arc.
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When Gregg Nome was 24 years old, he slipped into the churn beneath a waterfall and began to drown, his body pummeled against the sandy riverbed. What he saw there surprised him.
A neurological explanation of NDEs remains elusive.
Despite parallels, there are profound differences between DMT and NDEs.
Research shows hallucinogen found in traditional medicine ayahuasca produces similar feelings to those felt by people during near-death experiences.
Acid was at the start of its own long strange trip: from research chemical to psychiatric wonder drug, brainwashing tool to agent of ego-dissolution, cosmic insight and cultural revolution.
They cannot prove the existence of heaven or hell, but they can give us hope.