Pascal Michael - Qualitative Analysis Results from a Near-death and Psychedelic Experiences

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Bards of the Bardos: Qualitative Analysis Results from a Survey of Experiencers of both Near-death and Psychedelic Experiences

Pascal received a BSc Hons (University of Aberdeen) in Neuroscience, where he identified the neurotrophic capacity of the Omega-3 fatty-acid EPA, and an MSc (University College London) in Clinical Mental Health Sciences, exploring the post-acute effects on wellbeing of DMT. He completed a PhD at the University of Greenwich with Dr. David Luke, using nuanced qualitative analyses to compare the DMT experience, based on the first conceived field study of DMT use, with the near-death experience (NDE). He is presently a lecturer in Psychology there, teaching and researching on psychedelics, survival, neuroscience and psychopathology. His doctoral thesis allowed him to delve into the paradoxical puzzle of why the human person seems to not only report experience at all, but profound mystical-type experiences at the precipice of death. The phenomenology of psychedelic experiences, as well as their anomalous and transformative effects, manifestly echo those of the so-called NDE. This might hint at the implication of endogenous psychedelics near-death, but may equally suggest neural correlates ultimately common to them both. The frontiers of psychedelic neuroscience, such as the entropic brain hypothesis or predictive processing, may shed invaluable light on these extraordinary human experiences which ‘manifest the mind’ at the time of a coma-like state. But he continually presents the question of – What does this all mean, anyway? Does it reveal clinical potential of psychedelics like DMT, such as in palliative care? How might it bear on ontological matters of the universal, religious conceptualisation of the ‘other world’? And beyond the transpersonal, what can we learn from this for our personal and inter-personal lives? Pascal has presented at conferences such as Breaking Conventions, has been invited to give talks such as with the Psychedelic Society UK, and his articles have appeared in journals such as Frontiers. He is a coordinator for the ALEF Trust’s certificate in Psychedelics, Altered States and Transpersonal Psychology, and is the 2020 recipient of the Parapsychology Association’s Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award. When he’s not researching academically, he relishes spending time writing blog articles or poetry pieces, about the synaptic junction (like in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam) lying at the nexus between the naturalistic and supernatural. He is also an amateur actor and drum player.