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226 * THE SESSIONS the DMT state. I'm reading them in such a familiar manner.* Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once. I don't know if the beings today were saying "Try death once" or "Try life once." That place is so full and so complete that the idea of this place is to try and be as com- plete as possible. Yet when Icame back into my body it was so heavy and so confining. Also, time here seems so strange. Eternity is an attribute ofthe place. It would have to be. While it's never a good idea to call anyone's experiences on DMT "classic," I think it's not too far afield to use that term in describing Willow's near-death experiences. Her consciousness separated from her body, she moved rapidly through a tunnel, or tunnels, toward a warm, loving, all- knowing white light. Beings helped her on the way, and some even threatened to drag her down. Beautiful music accompanied her on the early stages of the journey. Time and space lost all meaning. She was tempted not to return, but realized she needed to share the incredible information she received with this world. There were spiritual and mysti- cal overtones to her joining with and basking in the white light. Willow's dawning awareness of a "light down below, the world's light" also reminds us of one of the last bardos in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is the stage in which the soul starts looking for a new body in which to incarnate, sees the lights of the world, and starts its descent. Her comment about everyone committing suicide if they knew how great the "afterlife" is points out another similarity between Willow's ex- periences and those of "naturally occurring" NDEs: That is, those who have had an NDE do not rush off to suicide. Rather, they reside in the knowledge that there is "life after death," and that transition loses its sting. Thus, they are able to live life more fully, because the fear of death that drives so many to distraction is now so much less. I was interested to hear that she found reading popular books de- scribing the near-death experience to be like reviewing her own DMT sessions. I needed little more validation to believe we were on the right track in relating high levels of DMT to the NDE. Carlos was a challenge. Exuberant, outspoken, and playfully confronta-