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222. * THE SESSIONS on observing and remembering what was going on. Within a few minutes, the DMT started wearing off, and they reentered their bodies. Certainly, if their out-of-body state lasted much longer than a few minutes, and if we actually were making efforts to resuscitate them, a more "classic" NDE might have developed. However, our volunteers were undergoing experiences probably only inexperienced and unprepared individuals would have interpreted as death or near-death. Let's first proceed to several volunteers’ sessions that make passing refer- ence to death themes. In them, they almost casually referred to the "death- like" nature of the high-dose DMT experience. Then we'll look more carefully at Willow's and Carlos's sessions, in which death and near-death themes took center stage. Elena's high-dose DMT sessions partook of many elements of a spiritual enlightenment experience. We will hear about them in the next chapter. For now, however, I will share a comment she included in a letter she sent to me a year after finishing her DMT study: More than once, the DMT sessions gave me the gift of truly subjectively knowing the phenomenon described in "Introductions to the Dead" in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Even greater is the gift ofknowing that I have had practice dying and returning. Elena's comments were not the only time we heard reference to The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In this centuries-old text, Tibetan Buddhist practitioners have "charted" out the various bardo states that one enters along the path from dying to rebirth into one's next life-form. Bardo is sometimes defined as "intermediary state," that is, between life, death, and rebirth. Many descriptions of the bardos echo unerringly reports gath- ered from those who have had an NDE.” Sean, whose spiritual enlightenment experience we also examine closely in the next chapter, made this remark on one of the days he helped us develop the dosage schedule for the tolerance study: It's sofar out, so weird, so out ofcontrol, you have to learn something.