Posting from Little E-Man using the Doppleganger facility:
Hi, I’m currently reading your book "Is There Life After Death? The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When You Die" and noticed your note in the back and thought that I would get in touch.
I am currently on page 103 of your book and as such, and until you responded to me, I had no idea that you were interested in the ketamine experience. I would love to help you in any way that I can. You have my permission to use my e-mails in any way that you feel fit, I have a friend who also has experienced similar things as I have and will discuss with them if they would also like to contribute to your Blogsite.
I’ve been taking ketamine now for about 7 years. To begin with it was in the club scene at parties and raves and things of this sort but about 4 years ago I began to take ketamine on my own. I find if I cut off all my sensory inputs, e.g. turn off all light and sound and try to clear my head that the "trip" is much clearer and intense. some times there will be images from things I've done in the past replayed, sometimes I may be at work with my colleagues all around but I still know that I have been taking drugs but don't realise am not really there. (That is quite interesting :-))
The experience I had was that I would feel as if I knew some new amazing thing but I didn’t know what it was. It was as if I knew it and didn’t know it at the same time. it wasn’t until fairly recently that I have began reading books of a similar subject matter to yours that I have become to realise that this "new truth" that I hadn’t been able to put into words, or realise what I was thinking, was the subject matter of your book which I have now began to read. It wasn’t until I read these books that I (as much as the term “I” actually means) could comprehend what I had already knew through my ketamine experiences.
In my ‘experiences’ I feel an intense knowing of something, except you don't know. It’s like its right on the tip of your tongue and you just can’t get it out. Then as the drug wears off the knowledge drifts away until at the end I can hardly remember what I was even doing. I just know that it was something life changing. When I have taken the drug with my friend we have both experienced that there is a presence in the room. I have felt as though my hands were being guided by someone, like (I don't like to use this word but lack a better one) a spirit of some kind. When I move around it feels as though the whole room is full of energy; as if the air is thick like water. I usually shiver for a long time after the experience. Something else has just occurred to me when I received your reply to my initial email - I've been making a conscious effort to try to share my ketamine experience with someone for the benefit of their research - but only for the last couple of weeks or so and, then I found you by accident, by luck. Does make me wonder.........
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5 comments:
Welcome Little E-Man and thank you for this post.
As you are only at page 103 you still have a lot of information awaiting you and, I am sure, that you will be even more interested in the ideas behind CTF when you finish.
As you may or may not be aware, ketamine is very similar in molecular structure to another chemical known as Glutamate. Now this chemical is also the major neurotransmitter in the temporal lobes of the brain. In times of great stress this chemical floods the brain and in doing so facilitates what is commonly known as the Near-Death Experience. As such, and the work of Dr. Karl Jansen of the Maudsley Hospital in London backs this up, you, by taking ketamine are, in fact, reproducing an NDE in a non-NDE set of circumstances. As such everything you experience under the influence of this drug is experienced by many (if not all) people at the point of death. I argue that such an experience can also take place during deep hypnosis/trance states, yogic meditation, Kundalini Experience and as a side-effect of migraine and temporal lobe epilepsy during the pre-seizure 'aura' phase.
As such your experiences of a small past-life review that is ultra-real, your sensing of another presence in your head (I call this The Daemon) and a feeling of vast knowledge just outside your grasp (again, this is 'logging-in' to the awareness and knowledge banks of The Daemon) all support CTF. This 'super-awareness' is what the temporal lobe epilepsy 'experiencer' Fedyr Dosteovsky wrote about many times in his novels.
I am sure that I am not alone in looking forward to any further postings that you would like to make - and that goes for your friend as well.
Thank you again for sharing this with us.
Little E-Man,
I echo Tony's welcomes and thank you for such a personal post.
I'm very interested in the neurochemical workings of the brain and the Glutamate/Ketamine/Valproate effects therein.
Interesting to see Tony mention Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose two main characters through whom he relates some of his own TLE and time dilation episodes are Prince Myshkin in "The Idiot" and Smerdyakov in "The Brothers Karamazov". And indeed Dostoyevsky's own experiences relating to his facing the firing squad owing to his involvement with the Petrashevsky circle are worth reading.
This is an excellent post as its subject matter is intensely interesting and relevant to the CTF theory. I recall finding it odd that Susan Blackmore had used the ketamine experiences in her refutation of NDE phenomenom, while Anthony is able to accomodate them within the broader range of his own theories. And Karl, I agree that Dostoevski's TLE experiences are very much worth reading. I have recently come accross an essay proposing that Kierkegaard suffered from TLE as well, and was trying in his journals to set forth the odd feelings regarding time-dilation and the sensed presence. I have found that the grief experience itself must release some of these same chemicals and neuro-transmitters, for there is a marked increase in right-brain reactions, and often the sensed presence, and periods of un- bidden life review.
Precisely the point of my own research, Susan Marie, into Time Dilation in several Mental Illnesses. And your comments on right-brain reactions are remarkable given a play that I am currently writing and of which Tony is fully aware (I wonder if your comments made some hairs stand out on the back of his neck as they have just done to mine!!!)
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