My Spiritual Evolution (full text)
~8000-word essay.
Granta published my essay “My Spiritual Evolution.” Read it here. I started writing this last December. I probably spent more time on this, per word, than anything else I’ve written, especially if including research. It’s currently the last essay in my in-progress essay collection Reasons to Live. Below are most of my references for it.
Alfred Hallowell, “The spirits of the dead in Salteaux life and thought,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1940.
Barbara Rommer, Blessings in Disguise: Another Side of the Near-Death Experience, 2000.
Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, 2021: 182-183 (Tom).
Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times, 1988.
Christopher Timmerman et al., “DMT Models the Near-Death Experience,” 2018.
Dannion Brinkley, Saved by the Light, 1991.
Eben Alexander, “Neurosurgeon Discusses his Near-Death Epxerience, consciousness, Meditation, Survival, & much more,” Unraveling the Universe.
Eben Alexander, “My Experience in Coma,” ebenalexander.com, 2014.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Life after Death, 1991.
Gregory Shushan, Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions, 2018.
Jeffrey Long, Evidence of the Afterlife, 2011.
Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper, “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision,” Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1998.
Lisa Luan et al., “Psychological and physiological effects of extended DMT,” Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2024.
Melvin Morse, Closer to the Light, 1991.
Natasha Tassell-Matamua et al., “Does Learning About Near-Death Experiences Promote Psycho-Spiritual Benefits in Those Who Have Not Had a Near-Death Experience?” Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 2016.
Noonautics, “DMTx Breakthrough Panel Moderated By Graham Hancock, Dr. Andrew Gallimore & Dr. Rick Strassman,” YouTube, May 23, 2023.
Pam Reynolds, The Day I Died, BBC, 2002.
Pam Reynolds, “Pam Reynolds Last Interview,” https://neardth.com/pam-reynolds-interview.php, 2010.
Pam Reynolds, “Pam Reynold's Near Death Experience,” YouTube, 2003.
Pam Reynolds, “NBC interview about her Near Death Experience,” ????.
Raymond Moody, Life After Life, 1975.
Robert Christophor Coppes, Impressions of Near-Death Experiences: Quotations From Over 100 Experiencers, 2023: 99 (guinea pig), 52 (isolated island).
Robert Monroe, “Robert Monroe. Interview by Guido Ferrari and Julie Mazo, 1992,” YouTube.
Robin Gordon Brown and James Ladyman, Materialism: A Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, 2019.
Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival, 1991.
This Past Weekend, “Near-Death Experience Expert Dr. Jeffrey Long,” YouTube, 2024.
Tim Scully, “Nick Sand,” Erowid, 2017.
Titrus Riva et al., The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences, 2016.
wow. the moth story is mind and world expanding. sry, not sure how to say that but thank you.
Thank you for writing this Tao. I love everything you wrote. I’m reflecting on some NDE experiences I learned about in the documentary “After Death”—which I have some doubts about due to it’s Christian overtones—in which people who seemed to commit really horrific things in life or died in a place of extreme darkness, end up experiencing a kind of prolonged fall, sometimes arriving into an underworld populated with demon like creatures, only to receive a sort of salvation by the angel/light being/god through crying out for help to god/proclaiming their love to god. All of the people in the doc eventually went on to experience the usual NDE events, only after this experience of the terrifying fall.
I actually wonder if not all deaths result in the ultimate-loving-freeing of the embodied soul, even if it’s a small minority who don’t, or don’t right away. I wonder if some souls cannot accept the light, and end up in a sort of limbo, but perhaps not the dogmatically bleak and oversimplified version of “limbo” popularized by so much human myth and religion.
I am curious to see you research and write about things like ghosts, demon beings, tormented souls… because these things appear to be very real. They are at least part of the story of the afterlife. Though perhaps these things aren’t ensouled beings but energy imprints of suffering during life. Who knows! We shall see.