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232 * THE SESSIONS such an interpretation. Carlos certainly would have seen little merit in it. Instead I simply dealt with the feelings that came through as he spoke. "You were surprised." A true surprise. Carlos did not have the type of near-death experience about which we hear so often in today's popular clinical literature. Willow's case exempli- fies this more contemporary version of the NDE. However, Carlos's high- dose DMT session did partake of many features that practitioners of shamanism report as part of the initiation into the more advanced realms of their practice; that is, the death-rebirth experience.” Carlos experienced himself as dead rather than dying. He saw his lifeless body lying on the bed, although not quite the way he left it, as he was wearing all his clothes before the spirit molecule entered his brain. As he was reborn, so was his universe reconstituted. Here again we see a mystical culmination of the near-death experience. He experienced cre- ation in a way similar to Sara's first high-dose experience in the last chapter, and to Elena's in the next: vast energy slowing to vibrations, finally result- ing in matter. Carlos, feeling like a newborn, marveled at his fingers the way an infant is fascinated with his newly discovered body. There is a progression from the personal to the transpersonal series of experiences DMT elicits. It's possible to work through one's own psycho- logical and psychosomatic problems with the spirit molecule's light and power. The near-death encounter spells what seems to be the end of those concerns by simulating or foretelling what it's like once our individual bodies fall away. Near-death experiences seem to have the greatest impact on those who take the next step within that mysterious experience—the leap to a mystical level of awareness. It was these realms, into which DMT might lead, that the volunteers and I believed held the greatest promise of sig- nificant personal transformation. It is into these fields of DMT's sight that we now enter.