“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” – Mark Twain

How we become detached from reality…

Physically, we begin as a manifestation of the elements that make up our environment. The carbon in our bones is no different to that found in your grandmother’s (special occasion) tea set.

However, as we gradually become conscious by growing a brain and all that, we find that the raw nature of the world around us is far too overwhelming. Therefore, our brain developed a clever mechanism of separating what it feels like to be ‘us’ from our environment. Our minds trick us into thinking that we are not all that connected to everything and everyone surrounding us; including that tea set.

How does it do this?

Researchers found the brain to have two modes of attention. An extrinsic mode that becomes active when we’re focussing on external tasks, (e.g. milking cats) and an intrinsic (default) mode that becomes active when we reflect on ourselves and our emotions (e.g. when daydreaming about milking cats). Like a seesaw, when one rises, the other drops down. This gives us a sense of separation from our environment.

However, a study conducted by Dr. Josipovic allowed for a curious discovery. He found Buddhist monks and other experienced meditators are able to keep both modes active simultaneously. Their minds draw a connection between them and other. This explains where their sense of oneness comes from as they become aware of their environment whilst also aware of themselves.

As you’ll see, this awareness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is critical in a meditator’s induced ‘death’… but not clinically, instead egotistically.

Returning to non-existence

The only true freedom we get in life ironically comes with death. What I mean here by ‘death’ is death of the ego.

To ‘die’ egotistically doesn’t mean to die physically. Therefore, even you can experience death as an event. A ‘death adventure’ if you like. All aboard the bereavement bus!

During this pseudo-death, we find a oneness with everyone and everything, without in-built barriers and biases (almost like a return to your pre-socialised, child-like self). We find that when the thoughts and feelings (that we usually identify with) recede, our awareness continues. We discover it to be limitless and boundless, beyond thought and feeling.

The mind detaches from its training wheels and begins to cycle into the unknown.

What’s going on in your brain space during this meditative experience?

Well you know that classic scene in the matrix where Neo limbers his way past flying bullets in slow-mo? That’s basically a visual representation of the brain during meditation.

A study by Harvard neuroscientists followed 16 participants over an 8 week period as they practiced ~30 minutes of meditation a day. As the participants were slotted into an MRI machine, the researchers found a reduction in information processing within particular regions of the brain.

This little infographic explains what effect this had on the brain:

So how does this compare to our closest experiences of death?

To understand how meditation could be like death, where better to look than to those lucky few who have come closest to death itself.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are our closest insight into how the brain behaves just before we kick the bucket. Coincidentally, the anecdotal evidence of those who experience NDEs show some freakish similarity to those who practice meditation.

An inquisitive doctor called Jeffery Long became intrigued by the legitimacy of NDEs. As an obsession, he became compelled to compile as many NDE stories as he could. At first, these came from his own patients, however, upon setting up a website dedicated to accumulating others’ NDEs, he soon became inundated with stories of close death from those of every continent.

It wasn’t long until he discovered some common experiential patterns in these NDEs that very much resembled the experiences of those who meditate.

For example, the feeling of oneness and connection with the external environment:

“I was one with the blades of grass and the rocks in the road…”

“…there was a connection between the air molecules and what I had become”

Mark. NDE from a car accident.



“… I could feel the spirit of all things living around me: animals, plants, the elements. I was one with them.”

Laurie. NDE due to drowning.

“…in some connection of oneness. I experience that connection in meditation frequently”

Joyce. NDE after a head blow from decorative ornament, (don’t ask, I have no idea either).

A feeling of intense love and belonging:

“I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of intense love.”

Teresa. NDE due to accidental overdose of aspirin.

And the feeling of seeing beyond reality:

“I knew that the life we live is an illusion… we are destined to return so as to merge once again in this original Oneness which our minds make us believe we have lost.”

Laurie. NDE due to drowning.

What’s happening in the brain during these NDE experiences?

It’s hard to say. NDEs usually occur following questionable life decisions, such as consuming copious amounts of suspiciously cheap ‘happy’ pills at Glasto… not when sitting quietly in an MRI machine.



However, that’s not to say that scientists haven’t wiggled their noses in the crevices of brain death research (aka necroneuroscience).

Initially, the psychedelic-like experiences of NDEs were believed to occur from a potential rush of DMT aka the ‘Spirit Molecule’. However, the following study discovered a curious alternative to this commonly held belief.

Scientists at the University of Michigan tracked the brain waves of 9 rats as they underwent anesthesia followed by cardiac arrest. Weirdly, after they were declared clinically dead with brain waves that dwindled to nothing, the rats experienced a sudden boost of gamma waves. Or as they put it “a global surge of synchronized gamma oscillations”.

These gamma waves have the highest frequency that we can physically produce (40-100 hertz) and are directly correlated with a highly aroused brain. Associated with a focused attention and enhanced information processing, they are found to bind our sense of perception from within and outside us. This supports the feeling of oneness that meditators experience with the world around them.

With this data, the researchers concluded that the mammalian brain “has the potential for high levels of internal information processing during clinical death”. So basically, this indicates that there’s a whole wild bustle of fireworks going off in our brains just before we enter death’s doors.

A hive of neural activity. It may even be the brain state that induces the highly lucid and realer-than-real mental experiences reported by near-death survivors.

Where else have scientists found a similar brain state??

Yeah you’ve probably guessed by now… it was in those who were meditating.

Induced by the meditating participants’ intense focus, high gamma waves were observed during EEG recordings. Unsurprisingly, it is not uncommon for those to who practice meditation to experience lucid-like illusions.

So at which point do meditators ‘kill’ themselves?

So as you can see, the meditator’s brain adopts quite a similar pattern of activity to those who are literally about to die. And for some reason, this feels good (where’s the evolutionary advantage in that?!). It gives the positive feelings as described above. And the explanation for this may come from what’s known as ‘ego death’.

“Back up, what exactly is the ego?”

The ego is basically defined as our self-esteem/image/importance. It’s what divides us into right/wrong, good/bad, those who cut their sandwiches into triangles and Satanists who prefer squares (how are they still getting away with that?).

Ego death is transcending this learnt identity. Not removing it, just understanding that you can still accept someone regardless of whether they love/hate marmite, or secretly milk their neighbour’s cats in their free time.

This ego death is expected to occur during an NDE. Reason being, upon experiencing a boundless awareness, NDE survivors often report an intense feeling of unconditional love for everyone and everything.

Therefore it makes sense that an NDE, like meditation, would provide a blank canvas (during pure awareness) that would reveal what is and is not you. Thus unshackling you from the chains of the self that seeks truth, pleasure, and love in any external place outside of yourself. Allowing ultimate peace and happiness.

Or as our boy Eckhart Tolle puts it:

“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die — and find that there is no death.” — (The Power of Now)

Meditation is basically a voluntary experience of death. Almost like a defrag mode for the brain. It just so happens that to achieve this deep ‘reset’ mode, we have to simulate a near-dead brain. How fun.

So get in that lotus pose and go ‘kill’ your-self… a.k.a. your ego.