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1. Implications for Understanding Consciousness and Death
The profound overlap between NDEs and psychedelic experiences raises philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, life, and death. Do these altered states provide genuine insights into what happens after death, or are they merely the result of brain chemistry and perception under extreme conditions? Some researchers propose that both NDEs and LSD may offer a glimpse into the fundamental nature of reality, where consciousness is not confined to the brain but is part of a larger, interconnected cosmic whole.
While scientific evidence does not definitively explain these experiences, the parallels between psychedelic experiences and NDEs suggest that they may share a common mechanism—whether rooted in neurobiology, spiritual dimensions, or a combination of both.
2. Albert Hints’ Psychedelic NDE
The following is Albert Hints’ NDE testimony sent to Kevin Williams by email.
About two months ago, I had what I can now categorically state was an NDE.
That night, I had done two pills. I do hallucinate on ecstasy. To give you a background, I had never hallucinated on it until I did more than one pill in a night about six months ago. Since then, I’ve done two 3.5 pills in the space of four to six hours on around five separate occasions. This produces a good level of hallucination which I love. Typically, it’s the “mood” of the vista you have that seems to take on a whole new dimension with the purple / blue / yellow lights of a club transforming into a kind of mellow “haunted house” kind of vista, typically with leaves covering walls – walls which sometimes appear from nowhere. Sometimes people walking around without heads on. “Peoples’ faces melting and general “magic eye” type dual or triple interpretations of individual objects or entire scenes. But I would never do acid as I’m aware of the danger in my enjoyment of hallucination and therefore elect not to dabble in a stronger hallucinogen for fear of liking it too much.
It was about 5 a.m. I have done two, or two and a half pills. I often get tired around that time and was sitting on the podium. I leaned forward with my hands dangling by my calves and my head slumped down by my waist. I close my eyes for about four minutes.
Then, out of nowhere, I see a tiny pin prick of very bright white light in the middle of my field of (closed) vision. Slowly, over five seconds, the light gets bigger in its circular, tunnel like nature. It is tremendously pleasant and literally “attractive” – even SEDUCTIVE.
So I am going down the tunnel and the light is now huge after about five seconds. Then, just about a second before it would have encompassed my whole field of vision, there is a bright flash and two things happen.
Firstly, I physically felt that my cornea has been stimulated in the same way as if someone shone a very bright light suddenly into my eyes following a period of darkness.
Secondly, and most impressively, an electric-like force (That is the only way I can describe it), seemed to instantaneously “possess” my entire body. I felt my shoulders hunch inwards involuntarily and my mind completely and instantaneously was “clicked” into a hypnotic-like (I have never been hypnotized, but this is how I would imagine it to feel) state of complete tranquility and peace – like your mind has had all of the gunk extracted from it. Like the cornea sensation, the mind (and of course the body), physically felt influenced by something.
Now for the disappointment. That’s all that happened I’m afraid.
It is very difficult for me to be certain about the length of time I was in that state. If I were to guess, I would say thirty seconds max.
I came out of the state gradually and fully consciously before the “electricity” seemed to slowly ooze back out of my body. I opened my eyes back to the reality of a dance floor, in a slight haze.
The more I think about it though, I wonder if actually I did see “the realm” I have since read about on the web. But whether the memory has been (potentially – deliberately) erased from my human life memory, I also believe there’s a strong likelihood that there was some kind of knowledge gift to me during the end of tunnel flash.
I’m an inventor. In the weeks following my experience, I came up with phenomenal numbers of what I believe to be very valuable ideas. I also experienced two separate million-to-one synchronicities, a phenomena I have since learned about. In addition to the synchronicity that in the WEEK following my experience, I was reading a book I did not know at point of purchase to contain information on NDEs, which over ten pages convinced me I had experienced one by its description.
My aunt had passed only several weeks before. I wondered whether the NDE was some kind of gift she was permitted to offer to alert me – a spiritual non-believer if ever there was one – to the afterlife realm.
In a word, I would say I instantly perceived the experience as the most important of my lifetime. I instantly knew I had witnessed some kind of spiritual phenomenon. I just knew. I now do not only NOT fear death, but I even believe if I ever have knowledge that I am about to die, I will be at peace in my own mind with no fear – well, LESS fear! There are bound to be overwhelmingly sentimental emotions at that time.
Yes, I was on drugs. But last week I submitted the story to the NDERF website. They haven’t posted the story. In my writing to them, I included similar arguments to the ones you present in “How to have an NDE.”
Not that I have knowledge of brain chemistry.
Mainly, I base this on the fact that I, remote of any stimuli about other peoples experiences by the tunnel of light interpretation, experienced what many other NDErs have experienced.
The other thing here that is a personal belief is that I personally do not believe there is any such thing as synthetic. The word is purely a human abstraction. I don’t believe you can divide nature in any way. People will refer to spider webs as nature, but then describe a human home made of bricks as outside of nature. I believe this is incorrect. The nuclear bomb is nature too because it happens to be a by-product of nature-occurring human potential for abstract thought. You can’t factor out “synthetic” creations in the criteria of the assessment of validity of “reality” of a drug-induced experience for example. For the human mind is obviously nature and the human mind’s creations are therefore surely also nature. The spider’s web is the same as the human’s home. So we should not see one as “nature” and one as not.
Sophistication of concept is inversely related to materiality as well. Therefore, when looking at the universe as a whole, we should forget the separation of abstract thoughts from physical creations and instead put them all in the same bucket. The relevance being that if for a moment we do this, we see information – piece one in the bucket with information – piece two and NOT information – piece one, a physical entity – and information piece two, an abstract entity. So if we were observing the world from a distance with no capacity to understand the difference between an abstract and a physical property, and no capacity to see the difference between a synthetic and “naturally occurring” phenomenon, and we had only the capacity to view each piece of information unprejudiced about its superficial origin, then we would not make the comment that drug use creates “false” NDEs.
I just think accessing the realm is all about reaching a deep state of subconsciousness which happens to be easier, (a) on drugs, or (b) most commonly when dying!!!
I’ll e-mail you the stuff about how I’m trying to access the realm in a few days. I also have one question. I wonder if you know the answer to why is it that ecstasy enables me to very lucidly see images for several seconds with my eyes closed. I scan the image by moving my eyes physically as well. I have reached epic proportions with this to the extent that I can now READ DOCUMENTS with my eyes closed – documents I have never seen before. Usually they appear ancient.
I also believe that I am seeing images in real time sometimes, though admittedly this is only a hunch, but a strong one.
The problem is that as you try to relax your mind and close everything off, the images appear, it seems, almost when you are not trying to make them appear. Typically what happens is as follows:
You see the image for one half to four seconds and it is ALWAYS unrelated to any conscious thoughts you have (i.e., totally random image)
Frequently, the image metamorphisizes into a chain of images – a tiger turns into a country landscape which turns into a cloud which turns into a garden etc.
The main PROBLEM is that typically the image spontaneously appears while your eyes are closed. It is so beautifully lucid that you get excited. While excited, you consciously are telling yourself to try to remember what you are seeing. This suggestion to yourself typically interferes with prolonging the image(s). The second problem is that as the image appears, typically your eye tries to focus on one part of the image which is almost impossible to suppress that tendency. Again, this is conducive to difficulty in prolonging the experience, especially if I can see text is present in the image. I will try to read it as this is potential proof of telepathy. I have managed to read words that appear, but usually no more than one sentence before the image disappears.
Can you explain this? Presumably all that is happening is that you are effectively caught in the unusual territory as seeing as lucidly (or more so) as in a dream while retaining normal consciousness and thus having capacity to remember. It is brilliant though. I am 70% sure there is some kind of telepathy going on as names have appeared to me. I have the feeling these are potential murder victims. I know that’s bizarre and quite probably false.
I hope you find this interesting email. I know it’s not a very big NDE experience but definitely was one. I thought you might like to know ecstasy produced this for me. I came across your page by typing into a search engine “near-death experience drugs” and your page was the first to answer this question. I was pleased that after reading it, it seems to lend extra-legitimacy to my certainty that I saw the beginning of the realm.
3. Kevin Williams’ Response
l have never done ecstasy, but I know it can create out-of-body experiences and even near-death experiences just as LSD can. Your description of seeing an image out of the corner of your eye and it changes when you look at it sounds like a principle I learned about quantum physics.
A photon of light is both a particle AND a wave. Before you look at it, it is a wave. But the moment you look at it, it collapses into a particle. This means that you can measure the velocity of a particle, but at the same time, it is impossible for you to know what its position is. When you measure the position of the particle, it is impossible to know what its velocity is.
It is as Neils Bohr once stated in reply to Einstein’s statement that God doesn’t play dice, “Not only does God play dice, He hides them from you when He throws them.”
Quantum theory suggests that things do not exist as you know them until it they are observed and that reality is really in the eye of the beholder.
Principles such as this are a part of the magical universe that is quantum reality. It suggests that the laws of the universe are really the laws of our own mind.
Ecstasy, as well as acid and ketamine, probably triggers your mind to expand into this quantum reality. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect this is the case. Certainly, your description of looking at images and they change when you do, sounds like principles of quantum mechanics.
This is the only answer I can think of. If you want to understand a simple, “Complete Idiots Guide to Quantum Mechanics,” I suggest you read a certain book by Fred Alan Wolf entitled Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists. This is the best way to understand quantum mechanics without having to understand the extremely complicated mathematics involved with it. Understanding quantum theory may give you more insight into your ecstasy experience. Even if it doesn’t, this kind of physics is close to understanding all the dimensions of reality, which so far, ten dimensions of quantum reality are known. Personally, I believe these dimensions are the various realms that make up the afterlife. The Gnostics experienced near-death experiences that involved ten heavenly realms. When you take psychedelic drugs, perhaps you are influenced by these dimensions in ways that not taking them can.
