Doctor Shares Research Of Connection Between Psychedelics And Near Death Experiences
What Researchers Found
The Story
Rachel Harris, a retired psychologist, experienced a shared near-death experience in 1999 while her father was dying at home on hospice. As she walked toward his room, she left her body and zoomed up through the roof into a vast universe with twinkling stars and black void. She felt scared that she might not return, so she intentionally pulled herself back into her body. The walls around her rippled like in an earthquake. Her father died 36 hours later. This event shook her, and she regretted her fear, wishing she had trusted the process and gone further. Six years later, during her first ayahuasca ceremony in 2005, she replayed the experience, had a final loving conversation with her father, and again left her body into the starry sky, experiencing ego dissolution. This resolved her unresolved feelings about her father's death, deepened her understanding of dying as a transition, and reinforced her lifelong pursuit of spiritual and psychological growth through psychedelics. She continued ceremonies, wrote books on entheogens, and integrated these insights into her work, shifting her focus to service, relationships, and preparing for her own mortality.
“life but felt shaken and my dad died I think it was 36 hours later and I always”
The transcript describes a subjective shared death experience with out-of-body sensations but contains no veridical perception claims of specific, verifiable real-world events or details that could not be known through normal senses. Lacks any verification attempts or corroborated perceptions, resulting in minimal evidential strength.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.
Are you here because someone you love has died?
These accounts were gathered because death may not be the end. Thousands of people have experienced something beyond — and come back to tell us about it.
What Researchers Found
The transcript describes a subjective shared death experience with out-of-body sensations but contains no veridical perception claims of specific, verifiable real-world events or details that could not be known through normal senses. Lacks any verification attempts or corroborated perceptions, resulting in minimal evidential strength.
Score reflects verifiable perceptions reported. A low score indicates the experience was primarily spiritual or subjective, not that it didn't occur.
Score reflects transformation as described. Domains scored 0 indicate the topic was not discussed, not that no change occurred.