My Story
I grew up orthodox Jewish and I've seen first hand how fear of death and irrational stories about the afterlife can drive whole societies to self harm and abuse of others. My hope is that by practicing mindfulness and learning about psychedelic science larger parts of society can learn to accept our mortality. And with that acceptance we can start prioritizing our current life on this planet instead of an unlikely afterlife.
I grew up being told that every year on a specific day (Yom Kippur), god judges people based on the set of rules in the Jewish books and decides who lives and who dies that year. I was taught that until I was 12, it was my parents that would be judges for my sins. If I had a penis my parents would be responsible for my actions for one more year until I was 13. On Yom Kipur when I was 6, I spent a whole day in synagogue praying in terror, afraid my parents would be killed for my sins. Even at that young age I resented god and realized what a sadistic cruel creature he was. While my friends, who didn't know how to read were playing outside, I was being punished for my intelligence and coerced to pray all day to prevent my parent’s death.
The brand of jewish I grew up in didn't have a heaven and hell. If god judged you worthy, when the messiah came you would be resurrected to a reality where Jews ruled all the land and if you were not worthy you would be gone forever. By the time I was 7 I had decided that either all the adults around me were idiots or they were all lying to me. Either way, I had stopped believing in god and secretly began living a secular life exploring all the things that were forbidden for instance turning on lights on Saturday.
However my fear of death did not subside, it had started years earlier. I remember the exact moment I realized me and everyone I cared for would one day be dead. I was around 4 and we were on a family outing in a hotel. I was sharing a room with my sister. I was in bed trying to sleep when it suddenly hit me like a brick of wall. Everyone would be gone. I would be gone.
Usually children's awareness of death is gradual but for me it was very sudden. I began crying and shaking hysterically, utterly mortified. I'm not sure what triggered the thought. It's likely I had been watching violent tv inappropriate for my age. When my mom checked in on me to see what was wrong she tried to comfort me by telling me not to worry "It won't happen for a very long time" she said. This did not help my 4 year old brain calm down and I remember crying until I was so fatigued that I fell asleep.
All throughout my childhood and adolescence I would suffer from bouts of terrifying death anxiety, mostly before sleep. This would include heart palpitations and cold sweats, just about a full on panic attack. But after that first night I never told anyone again. Most times, after the initial panic subsided I would be left with a crippling terror in my stomach. I would sneak out of my room and from a hidden corner watch whatever dumb comedy my parents were watching on TV to keep myself distracted. Distraction was my main tactic of getting through this. Forcing myself to do something all the time so there would be no time or space for the terror to come. Once in my early 20's this happened while I was driving and I needed to stop the car on the side. I remember being well aware of the irony and internal conflict in that moment as I also suffered from suicidal ideation. How can I both want to die and be so terrified of death?
Before starting my master's in cognitive neuroscience I spent 3 months at my dad's apartment on the beach in Cyprus catching up on the basics of neuroscience and reviewing my previous math studies. This was also when my mindfulness journey began. The many hours of various meditation training I was exposed to via my martial arts practices over the year were not benefiting me. I needed a deeper scientific model of how my brain and body interact to construct reality to actually start being mindful.
The Science
The brain is an amazing multiple processor with 86 billion neurons that are organized in various sub networks with different specialities. That's why we can be in conflicting states. Different parts of our vastly complex network can be wanting, needing and optimizing for different things. Striving for a harmonic network where each part can at least communicate its processing to the global stage is how I define mindfulness. As babies being socialized we learn to inhibit our needs. We learn to hold in our pee or poop until we get to a bathroom. We learn to inhibit our hunger, our need for touch and later also our horneyness. For many people, myself included, this inhibition can become too strong fragmenting our neural network creating dissociation. The bottom up signals coming from our body can become so weak they are almost lost to the rest of the brain that could potentially make changes and act on these signals. This can lead not only to mental health problems but to physiological problems as well. For a great book on the subject I recommend the Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate.
I remember how proud my mom was that she told people she had potty trained me by the age of one. Later in life between my religious upbringing and martial arts training inhibition and disassociating became a way of life. Over the last decade a combination of psychedelic, mindfulness and somatic therapy has put me on a different path. For me, Mindfulness started in those 3 months of preparing for my master's while taking short daily meditation breaks. I noticed some thoughts were totally encompassing "I” was fully in the story. Other thoughts would allow for some parts of the brain to do different things. "I" could maintain a distance.
Today I call this resource awareness. Instead of perceiving an average calculation of everything that is going on "I" am more able to perceive how my processing power is distributed amongst various calculations. “I” am more able to notice which parts of my brain-body networks are doing what. How filled is my bladder? How do different parts of my body relate to each other in space? How much am I mimicking the person I'm communicating with? How many fast automatic processes are taking place and whether these processes are based on a past traumatic event? Notice the brackets around the “I”? Part of my mindfulness journey is learning how to quiet the verbal self processing networks.
Our ego-self can be compared to the loudest kid in class that is also the slowest. Our ego-self often jumps up shouting "I have the answer" while the rest of the brain has moved on to the next question. Inhibiting this part is not recommended but finding ways for this network to do what it does best (meaning making and storytelling) while not interfering and trying to control the rest of the networks can be incredibly helpful.
Meditating while focusing on your breath does not mean your ego takes notes, or if you are like me, freaks out about every muscle twitch involved in the breathing process as you try to map them all out in a logical sequence. It is the exact opposite. Meditation and mindfulness allow for ancient breathing pathways in your brain to get the reigns and resonate to other brain networks, while your ego self takes a step back and observes in owe.
Ego Dissolution and Psychedelics
One of my main criticism towards scientific research around ego dissolution and psychedelics is the verbal questionnaires starting with "I experienced". My first ego dissolution experience happened in high-school and it wasn't due to drugs it was due to studying philosophy.
"When our perceptual inputs are removed, as in dreamless sleep, in a coma, in death or under general anesthesia, our consciousness is extinguished and we are no longer present in the world".
These are David Hume's words from Treatise On Human Nature. For my 16 year old self reading these words and fully experiencing them was enough to shut down the ego brain for a few moments. An ecstatic sense of oneness washed over me only to pass and leave me with a sense that I had experienced something I could never fully grasp.
The first time I tried psychedelics something similar happened, the verbal voice in my head went quiet. It was such a sense of relief. My brain and body were fully functional. It was easy to have conversations but when my experienced tripp sitter asked how I felt things turned strange. My verbal self was unable to answer. There were separate feelings and sensations being processed but the singular "I" networked that takes an average reading of these processes and invents stories about them was defused.
This has happened to me quite a few times since. My brain becomes unable to understand the abstraction of a singular self. There is no “you” or “I”. We are only able to perceive lower level processing patterns. This was such a mysterious sensation that I decided to focus my studies on understanding how psychedelics can cause this.
On stronger doses the sense of minimal self can disintegrate as well. Our brain's ability to differentiate what is our internal system vs what is our external world can break down. A massive sense of oneness or not being sure which hand belongs to which body is a common motif. Visiting this state can have immense benefits, reducing cognitive load, feeling connected to something bigger and even I believe increasing our learning my mimicking capabilities. Monkey see monkey do! Blending our sense of self with our community is the basis of how we learn and the basis of our empathy. However, it is not a sustainable state for a functional human. Often we need to be able to differentiate between ourselves and our environment in order to function.
The Healing Combo
While studying I continued to actively practice mindfulness as well as use cannabis and psychedelics to cultivate parts of my brain like a garden. Weeding out specific beliefs that were based on early trauma or my unhealthy upbringing and seeding beliefs and patterns coming from people around me that I admired. In one of those experiments I managed to gain some distance from the death anxiety pattern and perceive the calculation my brain was attempting to do. My brain was stuck in loops of Nothingness times Infinity in the brain of a 4 year old. With no understanding of abstractions of calculus this can be very anxiety inducing. Then, another day I was on a strong truffle trip in a little forest grove close to my university when I could feel the onset of the death anxiety pattern. I was terrified of the coming terror. Knowing what I know about psychedelics I was afraid I would re-traumatize myself or even totally freak out and require medical attention. But then, one of the seeds I had planted in my brain spoke to the rest of the brain very clearly. “You want to know what happens when you die? Here…” the voice said, while guiding my hand to touch the earth under me. “When we die we turn into this”. The rich texture of the earth filled my bottom up senses and my brain remodeled death.
Death is a process of in creasing our entropy. Bacteria and fungus break our molecules down to their basic building blocks and then with a little help from the sun's energy these building blocks get recycled potentially creating new life. I was part of this intricate and complex natural process and there was no uncertainties to be afraid of.
A few weeks later when I sensed an onset of the familiar death anxiety I knew what to do. I put my hands back on the earth and let the earth literally ground me. It’s been a decade since that last onset and I have not experienced any death anxiety since. I needed a story about an afterlife, I think we all do, but I could actually connect to the science story. The more physics, chemistry and biology I learn the more in awe I am of nature and my part in the larger system.
Throughout his interview, time and time again, Roland reminds the interviewer that his scientific and secular beliefs will not allow him to believe in a heaven, hell or even karma. He adds that his mindfulness training and psychedelic experiences are helping him be curious about his own death and stay away from crippling fear and depression. Roland was also incredibly authentic, admitting that he doesn’t know how long he will be able to maintain this state of joyful life. Dealing with pain, medication and the medical system is a difficult task even for healthy people. I’m rooting for Roland and for our society in general to find a way to gracefully face death.
Researches have linked the mystical experience with the strength of the therapeutic effect of a psychedelic trip. However, examples like Roland Griffith, Michal Pollen and myself show that one can get the benefits of psychedelics including a sense of connection and oneness while still maintaining our scientific outlook.
Hopeful Death Beliefs?
What happens in the process of dying? As a young teenager I used to believe upon death, some essence of me separates from my physical body but I outgrew that. My current hopeful story is that in the last moments of our life we experience a state of time dilation similar to what might happen on strong psychedelic trips. Our personal experience of time gets stretched to a subjective infinity as we jump from one memory to the other relieving parts of our life over and over. This motivates me to make awesome joyful memories and let go of painful ones. What we hold on to is what we are and the knowledge that we pass on is the gift we will leave to the world when we are gone.
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