Demystify DyingDemystify Dying
The time has come to talk cheerfully and joke sassily about personal responsibility for managing the dying process. For starters, let’s demystify dying and develop alternative metaphors for consciousness leaving the body. Let us speculate good-naturedly about post-biologic options. Let’s be bold about opening up a broad spectrum of Club-Med post-biologic possibilities. Let us explore the option of re-creational dying.
The house party is a wonderful way to deal with your divinity as you approach death. I can’t recommend it enough …. You can write the programs for how you will de-animate.
—TIMOTHY LEARY
Design for Dying
The circuits of the brain that mediate the “dying” process are routinely experienced during “near-death” crises. For centuries people have reported: “My entire life flashed before my eyes as I sank into the water.”
This “near-death, out-of-body” experience can be turned on via certain aesthetic drugs—Ketamine, for example. Or by learning enough about the effects of out-of-body drugs so that one can use hypnotic techniques to activate the desired circuits without using external chemical stimuli.
Near-Death Experiences
Polls show that more than thirteen million Americans have had a near-death experience (NDE) where they clinically died, or came close to death, and then were revived.
Many people report that during this limbo period they encounters with spirit guides, seeing dead relatives or friends, feelings of total serenity, security, or warmth life review, detachment from the body, the presence of light, which seems like a deity or spiritual presence, or a moment of decision where they are able to decide or are told to turn back.
Near-death experiences suggest that consciousness exists beyond death. Near-death stories passing through a dark tunnel, then refocusing and becoming aware of a detached spiritual body watching the physical body with revival efforts underway. Subsequently a world filled with light and freedom emerges in which the individual meets a “being of light” who portrays perfect understanding and love, leaving them with a deep sense of peace and well-being.
Ancient Egyptians believed that each individual had two souls, a ba and a ka, which separated at death unless steps were taken to prevent this division. Egyptian descriptions of the ba and ka are strikingly similar to modern scientists’ descriptions of the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche.
Many other cultures all over the globe believe in two souls, one like the conscious, the other like the unconscious, which separated at death. Many cultures hold that one soul would go on to reincarnate, while the other would become trapped in a dreamlike netherworld. Some believe that this division could be prevented or reversed, while others see the division as being inevitable. The two stages of near-death experiences—a detached, objective, and dispassionate black void followed by a subjective, relationship-oriented, and emotionally intense realm of light—reflect the distinctions between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The darkness stage seems to be experienced exclusively through the conscious half of the psyche, while the light stage seems to be experienced exclusively through the unconscious, as if the two were operating independently during these episodes.
A similarly polarized dichotomy can be found in the accounts of reincarnation, of the Realm of Bewildered Souls, of the void between lives, of the behavior of ghosts and apparitions, and in statements about the afterlife by parapsychologists. The Binary Soul Doctrine hypothesis—that the two halves of the psyche separate after death—offers a consistent explanation for these afterlife phenomena.
We see immediately that the rituals intuitively developed by religious groups are designed to induce hypnotic-trance states related to “dying.” The child growing up in a Catholic culture is deeply imprinted—programmed—by funeral rites. The arrival of the solemn priest to administer extreme unction becomes access codes for the pre-mortem state. Other cultures have different rituals for activating and then controlling—programming—the death circuits of the brain. Until recently, very few have permitted personal control or customized consumer choice.
Almost every animal species manifests “dying reflexes.” Some animals leave the herd to die alone. Others stand with legs apart, stolidly postponing the last moment. Some species eject the dying creature from the social group.
Death Rattle
There are many symptoms that indicate that we are approaching our death. One of the most well-known is the death rattle. The death rattle is a sound that is produced when air moves through mucus that has accumulated in the throat of a dying person after loss of the cough reflex and loss of the ability to swallow. This is a very common symptom, though it does not always occur prior to death. The death rattle does not cause any discomfort to the patient, however, family members frequently find the sound disturbing.
The death rattle is an indication that death is very near. This type of breathing may go on for hours, but usually the patient will die within 24 hours of onset.
Navigational Control of Dying
To gain navigational control of one’s dying processes, three steps suggest yourself: First, activate the death reflexes imprinted by your culture, experience them. Imagine dressing up like a priest, rabbi, or minister and mimic their solemn, hypnotic rituals. Visualize. Recite the prayers for the dying. Do these things in the virtual reality of your mind. Officiate at your own platonic funeral. Second, trace your origins. And, third, reprogram, install your own pre-mortem plan for immortality. The aim is to develop a scientific model of the chain of cybernetic—knowledge-information—processes that occurs as one approaches this metamorphic stage and to intentionally develop options for taking active responsibility for these events.
All Things Pass
All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass
A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night.
But Earth . . . sky . . . thunder . . .
wind . . . fire . . . lake . . .
Mountain . . . water . . .
These always change.
And if these do not last
Do man’s visions last?
Do man’s illusions?
During the season
Take things as they come.
All things pass.
From Psychedelic Prayers & Other Meditations