Psychedelics warping interpretation?

[SanteriSatama]

Hi Bernardo,

Thanks for all your work I'm a huge fan! Your work has really helped me recover from a lifelong fear of death. Forgive me - I am just a inconsequential young man from Scotland, so I hope you don't mind me posting here.

I have a question if you don't mind, and it's regarding the role of neurotransmitters in the psychedelic experience and their subsequent impact on how we translate experience beyond the ego, and therefore death.

I have experienced the blissful relief of ego dissolution from a psilocybin trip, and the feeling of peace from identifying as a more "cosmic" version of myself. This led me to believe that the after death state could likely be as blissful and euphoric. However, whilst tripping one is also flooded with strong neurotransmitters that must majorly have an impact on the translation of experience. This has made me wonder whether the experience itself is being too "filtered" to adequately depict dying or dissolution of the ego.

For example, I remember feeling so euphoric whilst psilocybin that I thought it would be absolutely fine if I died right where I was...but when I reflect on this afterwards, I realise that, whether ultimately illusory or not, it would have caused a lot of suffering for my son and my wife, and therefore wouldn't have been absolutely fine. This showed me how neurochemistry can warp our perceptions.

My question is whether psychedelics give us a false sense of security about death, and that upon the death of the body (and therefore the absence of these "happy" chemicals flooding our system) we would experience no peace or bliss, and instead just dull benign awareness...or even our subjectivity existing in an unpleasant state without an ego to buffer us from raw reality.

I've heard you imply that beyond death there is probably bliss (after the uncomfortable dissolution process). So on what do you base this possibility of it being blissful?

Many thanks.

Healing from fear of death, as well as coming to better and less self-important terms of attached love and the saddness of our close ones for their loss, is not in anyway warped, IMHO. The psychadelic trip can expand from the focal duratian to both before and after with different feel.

In healing process, the blissful duration allows to deal with the hardest and most difficult stuff with least pain, but the real thing is integrating the healing and lessons learned with everyday life. Sounds like you been doing really fine.