Death,
being a subject that one can really only speculate on at best, is
considered to be one of the great mysteries of life. It is the end for
every existing creature on this planet, and neither king nor beggar is
spared from its clutches. I decided to talk to
two people who I considered to be among the most intelligent living
philosophers around at the time to see what their individual
perspectives were on the subject. I put together a list of questions and
conducted each of these interviews separately. The answers were quite
interesting, to say the least. Robert Anton
Wilson, co-author of the legendary Illuminatus! Trilogy , has written
extensively on everything from parallel dimensions and their relation to
quantum physics (Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy), the use of psychedelics
during love making to perpetuate mystical experiences (Sex and Drugs);
the dogmatic and sometimes religious restrictions of the scientific
community (The New Inquisition); and, of course, numerous volumes on a
certain secret society that may or may not be pulling the strings in the
great puppet show of history. From U.F.O.s to psychology to politics,
Wilson seems to have covered it all. If you haven’t read any of his
books, get over to your local bookstore and pick some of them up. They
are mind fuck literature at its finest. Doctor
Timothy Leary, famous for being the man who told the world to “Turn on,
tune in, and drop out” during the sixties by experimenting with various
consciousness expanding chemicals, was still extremely active in the
area of rapid brain change and altered states of awareness when this
interview was conducted. His attention was focused more on the digital
revolution rather than on drugs, and the amazing amounts of potential
that await each of us in the years to come as technology enables us to
better create, form and manipulate our own realities. He had not changed
his view on psychedelics, which he still saw as an invaluable tool for
personal enlightenment, but he wasn’t living in the past. He was
consistently looking forward and embracing the changes within the world
with an optimistic perspective, seeing innovations in the last few years
of his life such as the world wide web as great stepping stones for the
human race. His classic books The Politics of Ecstasy and The
Psychedelic Experience, along with his fascinating biography Flashbacks,
all the way up to his video work with digital artists Retinalogic (How
To Operate Your Brain) provide us with a body of work so vast and
brilliant that it was no surprise that he had gained the esteem of so
many generations of artists, writers, and thinkers.
I met Robert Anton Wilson back in 1992 when I was working on a
project that was going to be a large multimedia event in Prague in what
was then the newly formed Czech Republic. The project fell through, but
Mr. Wilson was gracious enough to grant this interview to me a few years
later. Mr. Wilson has had his share of experience with death in the
last decade, tragically losing his longtime friend and writing partner
Robert Shea as well as his wife of many years, Arlen, in the years
after this interview took place. It makes one really reflect on his
answers to this little query and how they may relate to those events.
I was lucky enough to work with Tim Leary during the last few
years of his life and was present at his home when he shuffled off this
mortal coil. About two months after this interview was published, he was
diagnosed with terminal prostrate cancer. When he announced the
findings to us, he told me he was secretly relieved. In this interview
you will see that Tim felt that he had lived a full and happy life and
was ready to experience first hand what would or would not come next,
even suggesting an assisted suicide if the cancer had not hit him. This
shocked me at the time, since I was his friend, but I couldn’t help but
to admire how Tim dealt with his own death. Not once did I ever see him
act afraid or feel like he was a victim of a terrible tragedy. He was
always optimistic that he would be experiencing something wonderful. To
read more about it, check out his book A Design For Dying, which
chronicles in more detail what his views were on the subject of his own
mortality. Anyway, here is the interview, one
that I am very proud of and consider to be the best thing I ever did for
Ben Is Dead.
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HH:
The only thing we are fairly certain of is that death is a change. Do
you think it is a change into Nothingness or a change into something
else? TIMOTHY LEARY:
Nothingness or something else? (laughs) I think the way you approach and
navigate your own death or de-animation is the most important thing you
have to do in life. I’m delighted that this issue is becoming public.
It’s of interest to me because I’m 73; and living in the 20th century as
I have, I suddenly find myself, in my senility, right on the frontier
of what’s become a new public issue involving individual choice as
opposed to state and religious control. One of my students at Harvard,
Ralph Von Ekarthburg, died about six months ago. He wrote essays about
dying which moved me deeply. One of the points he was making, and I
certainly agree with it, is that immortality is, in a sense, leaving
some living aspects of yourself that are replicated from generation to
generation. For example, the funeral is a time when people come to
re-animate the corpse… in the extent that: See here I am talking about
this person now… He lives and is being recorded into this electrical
appliance. Ralph Von Ekarthburg made that obvious point. That’s not
Nothingness. That’s something else.
ROBERT ANTON WILSON: Well, my answer to that is like what a Zen
Master I heard about from Wavy Gravy once said. Somebody asked the Zen
Master, “What happens after death?” He said, “I don’t know.” And they
said, “But you’re a Zen Master!” He said “Yes, but I’m not a dead Zen
Master!” Confucious has a similar remark in which he says, “First we
should try to understand the living before we try to understand the
dead.” I’m working on trying to understand the living. HH:
Do you feel that other cultures prepare their societies for death
better than Western cultures do? That certain cultures such as the
Tibetans or Egyptians, for example, promote a more positive outlook on
death by bringing it out into the open more and not establishing such a
fear of the unknown?
RAW: I distrust cross-cultural comparisons. I think every
culture has certain virtues and certain defects. Our culture is not
unanimous. We have what historian Crane Brinton called “Multanimity.” We
have evolved into this from the time the Papacy started breaking down
when Luther hung his 95 Theses on the door of the church. From that
point on Western civilization has been breaking more and more into
Multanimity rather than Unanimity. We have lots of people who are
Humanists, Secularists, etc. We have a lot of people who are still loyal
Catholics, 150 different kinds of Protestants and we’ve got an
increasing Buddhist population in this country. There are more Buddhists
than Jews! This rather surprised me. Everybody says
Catholic-Protestant-Jew are the three major religions, but it’s not true
anymore. Catholic-Protestant-Buddhist are the top three, and Agnostic
is coming in fourth place. I’m delighted that I got into 4th place! The
Jews are 5th. With this kind of Multanimity, I don’t see what you can
say about our attitudes towards death. Define our. The Salvation Army
refers to death as promotion to glory, and I think that’s the basic
Western attitude, except of course for those that are afraid of Hell…
and the tiny minority who feel we enter oblivion, and the Buddhist
minority who feel we enter joyous oblivion.
TL: I think other cultures prepare their societies for death
better than Western culture does. It’s because monotheistic religions
like Judaism, Christianity and Islam are religions of control,
domination and totalitarianism. So naturally they are going to train us
to think that if someone is severely injured, you call the ambulance,
and if the person is Catholic, you call the priest. They come like black
vultures circling around the corpse. To make sure that the Catholic
church controls the conception, they control choice… abortion… and they
fanatically control dying… Prolonged death. Sacrament. HH: In what way do you feel that death is related to enlightenment?
TL: I have written about this for 25 years. It’s cliché to
repeat the ancient perception that people who have a near death
experience report that their life flashed through their consciousness as
they came close to this bright light… they entered the tunnel and
sensed not a tragedy, but a sense of triumph. This is interesting
because these are people who would interpret neurologically the body
sending signals to the brain saying “Hey, we’re turning off here! We’re
dying!” At that moment, like a computer, your dying program clicks up.
At that moment you’re out of your mind. You’re out of your body , and
your brain is delighted! Because your body’s been such a drag all these
years… shitting and feeding and all that. What that means is just as
people say during a psychedelic experience, you relive billions of years
of evolution, with mystic experience it’s the same thing. It seems
obvious that many people, when their bodies are signaling their brains
to fall over, have a full blown classic mystical experience. You have a
hundred billion neurons saying VROOM! Suddenly you’ve got all this stuff
going on in your brain that would confuse you if you had to drive cars
or get toilet paper to wipe your ass. That’s one of the obvious things
about any experience that knocks out the mind and the word processing
system to get Timelessness. The Tibetan Book of The Dead was the first
insight I had into this, which we re-did in 1964-1965. This book tells
you the stages of de-animation.
RAW: There is some kind of similarity. I think every kind of
extreme expanded consciousness, or degrees of expanded consciousness,
partakes a lot of what people who have had near death experiences
describe. The film Fearless (with Jeff Bridges) is a fascinating study
of someone who has been through a near death experience. It leaves Jeff
Bridges’ character in a state that is very similar to that of advanced
mystics, only not quite, because he wasn’t in the mystical context of a
lot of training. So he’s got his own weird slant on it, which is what
happens to a lot of people who get shoved into those altered states
unexpectedly and have to figure out for themselves what it means. I
think being threatened by death is a really horrible learning
experience. Dr. Johnson said that “…Being sentenced to death centers
your mind like no other experience.” HH: Do you feel there is a relation between death and orgasm?
RAW: Obviously. The Elizabethan’s – Shakespeare, John Donne – a
lot of them use death as a metaphor for orgasm. Orgasm was called
“Little Death”. Yes, there really is a similarity between near death
experiences, orgasm and drugs like LSD. They all knock out your usual
ego into non-ego states of awareness.
TL: What do you mean by orgasm? If you’re talking about the
climax of sexual experience, then the orgasm is a brief period of
convulsive mindlessness which causes great pleasure. There are many
kinds of orgasms. Basically it’s a neurological state which can knock
your mind out. You’re out of your mind with sexual pleasure. The
plumbing involved with orgasm is a wonderful thing. The great thing
about the orgasm is that (ideally) it involves two or more people. If
you’re lying in bed dying or if you’re in the Himalayas having a
religious experience, you’re usually alone. The great thing about orgasm
is that it’s a lovable and wonderful thing to do with somebody else. A
basic of all quantum physics and Socratic philosophy is: Do it with a
friend! There’s nothing as sad as someone having an orgasm by
themselves. Whether it is mental or neurological… do it with a friend!
Arthur Kessler, a Hungarian writer who was in Nazi prisons and Stalin’s
prisons, he wrote a great deal about evolution and about
self-deliverance and he and his wife died at the same time in each
other’s arms. They left a note to the maid on the door saying: “Don’t
bother coming up” as they were planning their suicide. HH:
Do you feel that the Judeo-Christian ideas of “Redemption” and
“Salvation” might be attributed to the individuals’ ability to let go of
Ego without fear at the moment between life and death? If not, what are
your opinions on these concepts? Is there a Heaven and Hell?
TL: Oh, that’s an impossible non-issue there! It’s all bable
words anyway! Number one, when you say Judeo-Christian, you should say
Judeo-Christian-Islamic, because those are the three monotheistic
religions, and they all stem from Judaism. It’s not considered correct
in America to say “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” because you’re granting the
Arabs a plot to have a religion of their own with different code
numbers. Even though throughout most of Christianity they’ve been very
anti-Semitic, Judeo-Christian is still considered a “politically
correct” statement. All three of these religions say you must totally
submit to the One God. The very word Islam means “submission”. The word
monotheism means totalitarianism: God and the priests control every
aspect of your life; conception, pregnancy and dying.
RAW: I very much doubt a Hell because it sort of makes a bad
joke out of life. Who created Hell? Presumably God, or the Devil did it
with God’s permission and supervision. I don’t believe in that kind of
God or that kind of Devil. Who’s in Hell anyway? The universe has so
many, as Carl Sagan says, “billions and billions” of galaxies with
“billions and billions” of star systems, most of which probably have
planets with all sorts of life forms… why would God (presuming there is
some sort of God behind all of this) pick us out of the whole universe
and decide that if it didn’t like our behavior it’s going to torture us
for an infinite number of years? I can’t believe in that. I mean, the
ordinary Sadists get tired after a certain period of time and have to
rest. The idea of a Divinity so sadistic that it can go on for an
infinite number of years torturing creatures from one planet is
obviously the delusion of some kind of paranoid and unbalanced
individual. There’s still a lot of nuts around, and they start
religions. People who get unbalanced in certain ways get followers who
believe in their paranoid visions, but I don’t. If you left it up to me,
I can’t think of anybody I would put in Hell. There are some people I
would put in prison for life because they are too dangerous to be
allowed to wander loose, but I wouldn’t put them in Hell for an infinite
number of years! That’s unbelievably sadistic! Even the Marquis de Sade
read books, wrote books, went to the opera, etc. He didn’t spend all
his time torturing people, which is what this God is supposed to be
doing. HH: In what ways do you feel the media has shaped our perception of death?
RAW: The movies, television, popular novels… the popular media
entertainment fiction tends to accept the Judeo-Christian belief, with
very little emphasis on Hell and a lot on Heaven. Every now and then
they toy with reincarnation. The news media tends to be Coverse
Humanist, and they regard death as absolutely the end, falling into
oblivion, extinction… lights out. I think it tends to give people a
sense of ruthlessness and alienation. The kind of attitude you tend to
get in a lot of modern European writers like Beckett and others from the
more absurdist school. I felt that way up until I took LSD, and then
suddenly it seemed to me that all beliefs are uncertain and for all I
know I might go on after death in some other form. I just don’t know!
Maybe I’ll become extinct. Maybe I’ll transform into something else that
I can imagine… like a cow. Or something I can’t even imagine… like a
point of light in infinity.
TL: Media is the modes of communication and the words used. All
three totalitarian religions have totally censored the words you use.
The Islamics put five million dollars on the head of Salman Rushdie
because he said three or four sentences in a book printed in English
about Allah. Yes, the control of words and the control over the modes of
communication… media… is what totalitarian religions hope to establish.
The LA Times, in the front page article by their
medical writer, said that tobacco is the Number One Killer. It attacked
tobacco, it attacked another “culprit”… alcohol. Turns out cocaine is
way down on the list. They use words like “culprit,” “preventing death,”
“fundamental”… What they were basically saying was that sex, drugs and
rock and roll kill you, and you can prevent death… HH: By avoiding sex drugs and rock and roll.
TL: Exactly. I’m always amazed at how respectable, fairly
intelligent publications like The LA Times could splash an article like
this one, which is totally non-specific. Scientists never use words
like “culprit”. See, they’re personalizing. Demonizing. Turns out that
there are two kinds of substances that can cause death. One is something
immediate, like the overdose on heroin or a gun or a car crash, which
are the leading causes of death. But nobody’s ever overdosed by smoking a
cigarette. People rarely overdose on alcohol. What tobacco and alcohol
do is lower the lifespan. Smokers are affected day to day, so smokers
will die at 75, and the intelligent smoker realizes that those are going
to be the five years of your life you’re going to be in a basket
anyway. I heard this argument in my debate with the head of the DEA:
“Don’t say that marijuana is a personal thing. The taxpayer has to pay
for the Amtrak train which was wrecked. The taxpayer has to pay for all
of the lung cancer.” So, in other words, it is their business because
they have to pay the cost when you’re hooked up in tubes… which is
called “Health Care”, which I call the ultimate humiliation.
Cigarette smokers, because they die five years younger, end up
saving the taxpayers $250,000 for so-called Health Care. You can attack
this argument the other way around.
When I signed my living will, it said I cannot be kept in a hospital
longer than 48 hours. I absolutely will not have any of that so-called
government health care. My lawyer said to me: “You just saved the
taxpayers probably a million dollars!” I intend to de-animate when the
quality of my life is such where I cannot think or emote. This is a
normal desire for human dignity and freedom.
The way the article is twisted, that these “Culprits”,
“Sinners”, who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol and get involved in
reckless sex, end up costing the government lots of money… but they
don’t. They just eliminate the 1 to 50% or more of health money that
goes to people in their terminal years.
Now this study that says “Tobacco kills, #1 killer” is a total
lie. Guns kill. Accidents kill. AIDS kills. It is simply lapping off
the last terminal, senile years. This is done, by the way, by government
researchers. You would think that any intelligent person, including the
editors of the LA Times, would know that nay research done by
government scientists, paid for by the taxpayers, is going to come out
with results that will support government policy. The way the government
is demonizing tobacco smokers and drug users and alcohol… it’s more
flagrant than anything done in the Puritan days.
I have a table as to the behaviors or the factors that lower
the lifespan. Tobacco: Five years. Alcohol: Probably five years. The
statistics say that people who die prematurely are mainly poor people
and they may be black people. That’s the cold, blunt, horrible fact.
They did mention something which I’ve known for many years; that the #1
behavior that lowers the lifepan and causes inflation of health funds is
gluttony. I would say that the average American is dangerously
overweight. This is known in Europe. They laugh at Americans because
they see a busload of tourists that are all fat, and they know they’re
Americans. Can you imagine the problems in the heart of a 250 pound
middle class women? The strain on her heart pumping blood and oxygen
through a body that is swollen twice its size? The thin person… well, as
William Burroughs would say: “You never saw a junkie with a head cold.”
I must confess to you, Howard, for two days I’ve suffered one
of those sudden enlightenment insights… that our government and all of
our mass media are as bad as the Stalinists were. What puzzles me is
how aware they are… consciously… of the way they are manipulating the
news. The big issue coming up is about death and the right to choose
your own de-animation. It turns out people like Dr. Kevorkian got the
majority of people in the country on his side, but of course government
people… the District Attorneys and the Public Health people are
literally throwing him in prison. This is based on certain religious
assumptions which they may not even be aware of. The patients whose
suffering he alleviates are (no question of it) desperate, not to
mention humiliated… Having to have their diapers changed, not being able
to think. That’s of course the scariest thing --- Alzheimers and all
that. With the approval of the family and videotapes and discussions and
several weeks of planning, Doctor K. just helps them to deliver
themselves. He is considered to be a demon. The bottom line which the
bureaucrats never admit: Doctor K. is saving the taxpayer, with the 19
people he has helped deliver, millions of dollars! Not to mention the
thousands of people that de-animate consciously and voluntarily that
rarely get in the papers. HH: What would be your ideal death? How would you want to be handled after you die? RAW:
I think the ideal death is to go on living. The ideal death is
temporary, psychedelic experience, then you have all the advantages of
death and you still come back to enjoy life some more. I’m really in
favor of abolishing death. It’s the #1 killer and it’s time we made a
concerted effort to wipe it out.
TL: I’ve given this a tremendous amount of thought. I intend to
press a button or to make a decision which is going to lead to my
de-animation. It’s a very complicated and tricky thing because I want to
do it in such a way that doesn’t put a burden on or embarrass my family
and the people who love me. But I intend to de-animate in this home.
There’s no way you’re going to get me out of this little plot of land
here… high in the hills. I hope to die… or to put it bluntly… kill
myself… under the circumstances of the greatest harmony, the greatest
dignity, with the least amount of physical suffering to me and those
that I love. I would say in two or three years from now.
I’m a disabled veteran so I’ve got total access to veteran’s
hospitals, I’ve got Medicare and I’ve got SAG and all these health plans
coming out my ears! I can run up a bill of about 1 million dollars;
getting tubes, implants, staffs of people who will carry me to the
toilet and change my diapers and wipe the drool off my chin. Yeah! Nothing
is more scary to me than a government administering health care. That
is the ultimate oxymoron. The bureaucrats in Washington and all the
institutions and hospitals, the Senior Citizens homes and all that.
About three years ago there was a front page article in the LA Times
that said there was between 60,000 and 80,000 senior citizens who are
physically tied down in homes. Physically by bonds and of course by
narcotic drugs. So here’s a vegetable with Altheimers who can do nothing
but drool and shit and is not conscious. I have a great sympathy for
people who are forced economically to work in a place where you have to
take care of these vegetables. That is the bottom bottom bottom of the
economic food chain. If they are callous I can certainly sympathize with
that.
I have the greatest admiration for families who, faced with
the intolerable suffering and loss of dignity with a loved one, father,
mother or grandparent, and who in violation of the state and violation
of religion and common morals, accept and support the dying person in
his or her suicide. I have great respect. When you read the stories
about the relatives of Doctor Kevorkian’s patients, I have not failed to
be impressed by the deep sincerity, by these middle class people in the
mid-west who are faced with the ultimate issue and out of love and
wisdom choose to have their sister go along with what is called a
criminal act. I admire these people a lot. HH:
Do you feel that we as a species can evolve beyond death? Is
immortality possible? If it is, in what ways do you feel we would have
to adjust as a society to deal with eternal life?
RAW: I think it’s worth aiming for. Maybe the only way we can
do it is by transferring our consciousness into silicon chips. Maybe we
can transfer our consciousness into lasers. Maybe we can find a way to
have the biological body regenerating and rejuvenating itself. These are
all interesting areas of speculation and there’s actual research going
on that may yield some answers to this. I don’t think we should just
accept death with equanimity any more than slaves accepted slavery. We
should rebel against it. It’s degrading! It’s insulting! It’s painful! I
think it’s one of the things we need to get rid of. If life does become
eternal, I think we’re going to to have to become an interplanetary and
interstellar species, because longevity will make the population crunch
get even worse if we stay on one planet. With longevity looming and
immortality a theoretical possibility, we’re going to have to start
exploring extra planetary living. There’s so much energy/resources out
there, that will quickly solve all our energy/resource problems. I think
it’s a coincidence, or more than a coincidence, that interplanetary
travel and longevity are dawning at about the same time.
TL: There are two issues here. One is the preservation of the
brain. Your brain is put in a brain bank and when nanotechnology has
reached the point, say in 40-50 years, when they can hook your brain up
to a body either through cloning or through brain implants… It’s
inevitable. There’s a tremendous taboo here. A tremendous taboo about
dying. I have a silver bracelet here which is my Alcor Cryonics ticket
to have my brain frozen and possibly put in a brain bank. It’s shocking
to most adults when I say that I’m having my brain put in a brain bank,
so if some poor person has a healthy body but they’re brain dead, they
can put my brain in their body. That taboo which you intersect here is
almost inevitable. So the sensible thing to do is to have someone
preserving your body or certainly preserving your brain. Then the
question is: If they can hook your brain up to a body or a series of
robotic behavior movers, what about memory? What about soul? I have
written about 200 pages about scientific preservation of the soul. I
consider the soul, and I don’t think the brain is the soul. The brain
hangs around the soul. If you’re gonna find the soul you’re going to
have to get involved in operating your brain. In a way you might say
that your soul is your own personal software which programs your brain
and is totally unique to your computer brain, and the differences
between your brain and mine, even though you and I are as close in
harmony as two humans can be who are not lovers… are totally unique and
that’s as close as you come to defining the soul. The problem is: How do
you maintain memories? Well, if you were to go out into my garage right
now, you’ll see over 100 cartons containing records --- just of the
last 5 years. I have probably 1000 cartons in places all over the
valley, San Francisco and here. Every record which has anything to do
with my own personal life, anything I put my handwriting to, letters
that have come to me… I also save any papers I get of causes, charities…
Most of them I get are counter-culture: AIDS, women’s liberation,
various forms of non-monotheistic religions. I’ve got the largest
collection of counter culture records probably than any other person in
the world. Which means if and when I come back, I’ll be able to access
my memory bank. It seems almost ludicrous that I have every restaurant
check that I’ve signed. I’ve got a record of April 1962 that I had this
and that at a restaurant on the Italian Riviera. It’s not that I
consider myself that important, but I consider myself a record keeper. I
think that with computerized/digitized record keeping and lingusitic
acceleration, anyone will be able to access my memory bank and know more
about what it was like to live in the counter-culture of the last 40
years.
One final thing I have to say about issues of immortality and
suicide… killing yourself, reanimation, memory retrieval, nitrous oxide
overdoses (laughs)… You’re dealing with very heavy concepts here. You
gotta keep a sense of humor. You gotta keep a sense of humor which means
a sense of humanity. I really don’t care that much if I come back, but I
want to leave a model because I was lucky enough to have lived in this
century. To see the arrival of computers and telepresence and
television… an enormous explosion of knowledge and information and
communication. The Alcor Cryonics
people are extremely serious. They have to be because they are
personally responsible every minute of every day for the bodies and
brains of about 19 people. So there’s a lot of technical heavy hacker
here they have to deal with to keep the current going. I’m tremendously
impressed by their intelligence and by the fact that they’re all
Libertarians. I deeply believe in the principles of Libertarianism,
which is Humanism, but most of the people involved in the Libertarian
movement have no sense of humor. That’s one of their problems. They’re
so fucking RIGHT! (laughs) HH:
Have you had any personal experiences with the paranormal in relation
to death? For example, have you ever seen ghosts, had past life
regressions, contacted or channeled spirits? If not, do you feel this
type of experience is possible?
RAW: I have never had the experience of contacting the dead. I
have had experiences that I estimate… that I evaluate as ESP. They can
always be explained away as coincidence, and it’s an endless argument,
but to me it seemed like ESP. I’ve had a lot of synchronicity, much more
than most people who study Jung. Everybody who studies Jung has some
synchronicities, but I seem to get them in boatloads.
One psychic told me I sometimes channel a medieval
Irish bard; another told me I sometimes channel an ancient Chinese
Taoist philosopher, an alchemist. I think every writer channels
“Entities” and I suspect we all have thousands of “Entities” within each
of us that can function as they were independent spirits. I don’t
believe in the single ego. I think we have multiple egos and when one
starts communicating we’re likely to think it’s the spirit of the dead
or something like that, but it’s just another part of ourselves. HH: Have you had any “near death experiences?” If you have, describe them. Did they affect your outlook on life? TL:
I have a “near death experience” every morning when I wake up! (laughs)
I review the whole situation and I groan, until I get a cup of coffee
and a cigarette. Many experiences that I’ve had with LSD and Ketamine
have been out of the body. The most powerful aspect of any altered state
experience is alienation. That’s what the “bad trip” on LSD is about,
when you’e totally alienated. Alienation. The totalitarian monotheists
say that Hell is being alienated from God. In a way they’re right, but
to me divinity is in every human being, so the ultimate Hell for me is
to be alienated from other human beings.
RAW: Yes. I’ve been in two auto crashes and the outstanding
thing that struck me was how calm I became when I thought I was about to
die. I think Hollywood generally gives the wrong picture of how people
behave under stress when there’s a plane disaster in a movie and
everyone’s screaming. I don’t think anybody has energy to scream. You go
very much into yourself and you get very calm. At least that is what
happened to me when I was in the car accidents. I’ve had experiences
with Ketamine that definitely suggested to me that I had left my body
and entered another form, which is rather vague but I don’t want to be
dogmatic about it by saying I was traveling in the astral plane or
something like that. All I know is that it was a non-body experience. I
think that occurs much more often than we used to think – like the
out-of-body experiences that people have on operating tables or when
they are wounded in the war. It happened to Hemingway in World War I
when he was wounded. Those things are very interesting and very
suggestive and give me the feeling that if I don’t live long enough to
see the Longevity Revolution, I still may survive in some other form.
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We talk about death. We don't really know about death, though. Death isn't talking to us, at least we don't appear to understand death, yet, so the talking hasn't evidently gotten started about really, "what is death?"
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