2C-B Trip Report
By Leo Gura - June 5, 2017 | 27 Comments
Experiencing physical death on 2C-B
Bernardo says: Do you see this breakthrough with 2cb at the same level of the breakthrough you had with 5meo? Or would you say it was even beyond because of momentum and other factors…?
Quite impressive experience for a light psychedelic with normal dosage. I feel optimistic for you, it seems to me that complete sober liberation from the ego it’s not far away for you anymore. Congratulations!
Leo Gura says: This experience, and my breakthrough 5-meo experience were definitely the two most important experiences in my life. Hard to compare them to each other. They were both different and important.
Like I said, the trips shouldn’t be looked as independent experiences, but part of a larger arc. You see that your whole life has been leading up to it.
vintoni says: wow Leo. Got a serious contact high listening to this. Really enjoy your highly descriptive accounts of these experiences. Your basis of an openly conscious mindset has allowed some truly amazing insights which continuously lead to a more heightened awareness. A pleasure to watch you grow and share.
neil byrne says: its great to hear you are eating a plant based diet its so important for someone who is doing the things you are doing
Annie says: I love your each videos Leo, your awesome!
gary says: Hay Leo Great video! to put it mildly – question : Did not Martian Ball reach permanent enlightenment through the entheogenic path ? similar to you,but he no longer needs to use psychedelic drugs ,because he now holds it for ever,and if so – what has ,or did he do differently from you,or others ?
Gary G.
Leo Gura says: So he claims, yes. I think it’s possible. It just requires lots of deep trips and contemplation. He did a lot of tripping. My first priority is not my personal enlightenment but to explore the field of psychedelics. If I wanted to go straight for enlightenment, I would blast 5-meo every week and not explore anything else. There are pros and cons to doing that.
All of my work with Actualized.org is slower because I’m not just looking for the most direct path. I am looking to explore lots of stuff and develop a big picture understanding of reality which is far beyond enlightenment alone. I see myself as a researcher. I don’t like how narrow-minded most enlightened people are.
Bernardo says: I agree completely. Best strategy to follow, it’s really the path of a modern sage.
Brett Miller says: Leo,
Yes, it bothers me too that many masters seem to be quite specialized in their views…but then, would you re-fetter the freedom of your model of Enlightenment? I doubt it. So within such (at least Epistimic) freedom, one can manifest as anything at any time with any view.
You may, at this point for all we know, be safe from Kensho distracting persuits, but I know intellectualism/concept is one of the ubiquitous wagging carrots for my mindstream.
Metta,
-b
Jj says: Playing devils advocate. As real as all this feels Leo, isn’t it only possible because you have a brain. When the brain dies I’m assuming you die along with these experiences. Maybe it’s nothing more than that? The brain can create all these sensations including ego death and it feels “realer than real” and that we’re all one etc, when in reality it’s just an amazing experience created in your mind. How do you know the brain isn’t capable of giving you this experience? I’ve read the easiest person to fool is yourself (even if it feels your self has gone away haha) and I don’t mean that in any disrespectful way. Now, I know you’ll probably say less talk and more action and you have me there lol and obviously you’ve probably already thought of what I’ve said before, still just seems more logical to an outsider that it could all be explained by a neuroscientist someday. Love your work!
stephanie says: Hmmm…seems your mind finally gave you what you wanted – experiencing physical death! Now you can finally move on…where to Leo?
walt says: I was talking to a friend this morning about the primary “human problem”, namely that we’re mammals and social creatures. Therefore, we live in a world where the “other” can be a mirror, but just as easily a threat. And to the human animal, this is the curse of life that we defend ourselves against death (and enlightenment) because we really don’t know life as anything other than something to preserve.
The ego death through spiritual practice takes a long time and most people don’t even bother undertaking such an arduous journey. Psychedelics would be the simplest path here but their illegality makes them inaccessible to most people. So, here we are thinking about what is unsatisfactory about “normal” consciousness when it’s also the first step to enlightenment. Maybe we’re much closer than we really know. To act “as if” you enclose that possibility is the birth of compassion and humility. You are the “source” (and so is everyone else). You may never consciously experience ego death, but you carry that seed of pure potential wherever you go.
Bernardo says: Sadhguru in one of his talks say that ve can sit without any thoughts for days, and that he uses that indian hat (don’t know the name) to give his head some substance because normaly is just empty. He say on other talk that for most of enlightened beings, the moment of enlightment is same of leaving the body, and just a being which haves a mastery over their bodies can get a hold on them. Sadhguru uses as example how Ramakrishna, a great enlightened master, created strong conscious desire for food to hold on to his body and reality, until he refuse food one day saying “time has come, i have three more days”…three days later he attained mahasamadhi. Amazing.
Cristina says: Leo, do you still find any excitement in the ordinary life? Would you find any pleasure in travelling,falling in love, sports or any other normal things we enjoy in life?
It seems you’re ready to leave this “world”at all costs, physically or not. As you said, you’re willing to “open” to such an extent that it may actually kill you. Is this life so worthless?
It’s awesome to enjoy life to the fullest and as you say “to get the most juice out of it” but have you actually taken into consideration that you might not be able to return to the boring everyday little things and find meaning in them? I’m not talking about understanding, cause I’m sure you observe and feel life/reality more than the average person, but about really enjoying the stupid little things.
You’d have to find people like you, smart and special in a way that you could enjoy them around, cause otherwise you’d feel quite lonely and isolated from the rest of the ordinary people.
When you talked about realizing the physical death it brought tears to my eyes. It must be emotionally painful. I find it interesting how we’re willing to “kill” our mind which we refer to as the ego, but when about the body , the experience becomes painful. I think that’s why we fear death so much, because of the physical pain. Everyone I think prefers to die in a car accident than by cancer.
Thanks for sharing this emotional experience you had. I see how you become more human and have this transparency that gives you such an inner power, you become in a way, impenetrable. All the love and positive energy to you.
Bernardo says: You overlooked how joyfull, life becomes when there’s nothing, not even an “I” to cling to. Reality stays the same, in fact, very still, BUT enlightenment AND mastery of mind, body, energies and emotions makes you ecstatic every single moment. Loneliness and other dramas of ego are not real, every problem created by the self goes away . The comentary above yours shows how conscious and ecstatic a human being can be; ordinary life will become a rather small happening but never less joyfull.
I am not enlightened, i can be wrong.
Leo Gura says: Life can only be appreciated when you’re dead inside.
Cristina says: I think that’s extreme and sad. Life isn’t just a show/ a play you’re attending. You chose to came here to enjoy the experience of life, not to be a dead observant, an outsider. I hope you’ll find happiness or whatever you’re looking for.
Sophie OShea says: Leo, I love hearing about your trip reports, I find your insights particularly inspirational when coming from them. However, I have a few points to make, how can you ever be sure that what you’re experiencing isn’t just coming from your brain, as in the rendering of reality from the brain that I’ve heard you talk about. I’m suppose I’m trying to get to the point of, if you were actually brain dead, you wouldn’t be having this experience would you?
Also when you talked about lying on the floor and you experienced physical death, what came to mind was, if you were doing this experience under a clinical trial for example they would not have at any point said that you were physically dead would they or are you saying that you did become brain dead and your heart stopped temporarily and then you came back? Wasn’t this just all in your mind? As real as it may have seemed? How can we ever know what reality actually is? How can we ever really know what physical death is like unless we actually physically die?
Leo Gura says: You’ll never understand until you go through it yourself.
What you call the brain is just a temporary surface. Mario’s brain isn’t what’s rendering his body in a video game. Likewise here.
This goes WAY beyond brains.
Bernardo says: Nicely put. It goes even beyond the rendering, englobing every singularity in the process which made the game even possible.
sophie oshea says: Wow, ok that’s a head fqck! I’m going to ponder that for a while, thanks!
Wasim says: If you think about life as moments. Each a single film cell nfinitely stacked on one another. Then if you take this hallucinogenic and your “thoughts” slow down to a point where you’re able to precieve the space between the surfaces, you would ascend from this reality and “die”. The reason we go back to ego and the body, is because to be able to enter that world we would really have to leave our physicality behind and actually die. You would un-avatar so to speak.
…………
the dots are the stacked cells. leo visited the space between the dots.
I’ve never taken psychedelics to this level before, but so I don’t understand it as a reality. This is more an understanding of a concept that’s existed forever.
Tia says: I have to admit, I rarely watch your episodes concerning psychedelics, because I am not in that scene anymore and I have little kids so its not practical right now.
However, this fucking blew me away. Especially the part about needing to die in order to become immortal. From this perspective, its almost absurd that we mourn the dead. We should be celebrating for them. What a fantastic new perspective.
Christine says: Love you Leo. You are my modern-day Aldous Huxley.
Christine says: Hi Leo,
At 17:40ish you said, “And then I started coming back.” Can you explain what happened at that point? Was their any “decision” involved? Or was it just a feeling or witnessing that you were in fact returning?