Eternal Life In An Instant

[ER]

I heard something interesting.

A psychologist, now elderly, was involved decades ago in research with psychedelics and found that some substances drastically affected the perception of time, with certain subjects in these experiments returning from fifteen minute trips reporting that they'd lived entire lives in that space of time, many of them speaking of "eternity" as the duration (which reminds me of Stephen King's horrifying tale The Jaunt), and while these people sometimes had negative reactions, most spoke of euphoric delight, with a strong feeling of being removed from time and space, often among deceased friends and relatives, feeling extreme love from all around them.

Well, as this scientist grew older and is now, obviously, closer to his own death, he became enamored of the idea that, assuming the brain was not destroyed in the act of dying, we may all have eternity waiting for us....inside our own heads.

His case was that as part of the dying process, something inside the pineal gland activates that lies dormant until that instant, then the brain releases a chemical strikingly similar to the drugs they once used in their experiments in the 1960s. His theory was those who are dying get caught up in what to outsiders is seconds or minutes, but to the moribund individual undergoing the dying experience, the sense is eons pass, possibly in a state of glory and wonderment comparable to paradise.

His thought is either God or.... implanted this last gift into the nervous system, allowing us to have Heaven within us, or that maybe this chemical was the trigger that sent us all into the legitimate afterlife spoken of by sages going back into pre-history.

He did not stop there, he wanted regulations amended to allow study of this effect, not only to understand it but possibly to make use of it scientifically, saying the era of psychedelic drugs being "superstitiously" disdained should have ended long ago.

Captivating idea, all of it.

[javakoala]

So everyone is supposed to get a wild acid trip at the moment of death?

Interesting, but how do we market that on the street?   

[AoTFan]

reminds me of Stephen King's horrifying tale The Jaunt),

I remember that story!  I think of all the elements in it though probably the most unrealistic was Gary Hart becoming President of the United States.

[Rev. Powell]

The drug is called DMT and it was the basis of the plot of the movie ENTER THE VOID.

That said, I think that the idea that DMT is secreted in psychedelic quantities at death is probably bunk. As near as I can tell it's a spitball theory suggested with no clinical evidence.

Psychedelic drugs can alter perception of time dramatically, however.

There is a documentary on DMT called DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE which was available on Netflix (maybe still is). I haven't seen it.