In all those discussions about dangers of plant medicine, what seems to be avoided is honest recognition, that it is not only much safer way of learning to deal with extreme fear, without actual risk to physical existence, as in case of extreme sports for example, which no one proposes to ban, but also a way to learn from experience as extreme and unaccessible in ordinary life ( save for a few of extremely skilled and experienced meditators ) as transition of death. What is below, can be equally applied to practice of entering the bardo and actual end of this life in Buddhist tradition, and the rare gem that can be found in ayahuasca explorations. The value of it goes beyond mere curiosity, ticking off bizarre adventures of the mind – it allows habituating onself in skillful, graceful letting go, being present with whatever little remains, and so releasing attachment to stimuli feeding sense of permanent self existing in objective world. It will be of use in daily life, not just in its final stage, when we experientially get to know and slowly allow ourselves to stay longer, in that state – that it was less of “ego death”, and more seeing beyond the illusion of ego’s existence.
In the dying process, there will come a point when the respiration stops, so mindfulness of breathing will no longer be feasible.
But even after the breathing has ceased and the physical senses
have shut down, you can continue to meditate, for mental events
continue to occur. In this phase of the dying process you can practice the second technique of observing the domain of the mind:
images, thoughts, memories, emotions, and impulses. Instead of
fearing death, take an interest in the events occurring in the space
of the mind and in the nature of that space itself. Your mind is now
about to disappear, for the brain is shutting down, but the substrate consciousness will remain. And it’s possible to rest in that
dimension of awareness with bliss, luminosity, and nonconceptuality. Even when all mental activities cease, you can continue to
remain vividly aware of the vacuous space of awareness into
which all those activities vanished.