Why we need to talk about death
A few years ago, I became obsessed with death.
I'm not sure what brought it on. No one near me had died. I hadn't yet been diagnosed with cancer. But for months, it was all I could think about. I'd lie awake at three in the morning, heart racing, confronting the one certainty we all share: this will end. Me, you, everyone we love – all of it, gone. And what disturbed me most wasn't the inevitability of it, but the silence surrounding it. Why did no one ever talk about it?
We live in a death-denying culture. The philosopher Irvin Yalom names death as one of the four existential fears – or 'ultimate concerns' – of the human being (along with freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness). The fundamental anxieties we must confront to live an authentic life. And yet we've become remarkably skilled at avoiding the conversation entirely.
This wasn't always the case. Death used to be woven into the fabric of daily life. In the past, we would have witnessed the action of death directly. It was everywhere – in our homes, our streets, our consciousness. Children saw their grandparents die in the room next door. Communities gathered to wash and prepare bodies. Death touched us constantly, and perhaps because of this proximity, it held a different kind of meaning.
Today, death has been sequestered to hospitals and hospices, sanitised and professionalised, tucked away out of mind and sight. We've created an elaborate system to keep it at arm's length, and in doing so, we've lost something essential. The absence defines us more powerfully than the presence ever did. We hold a nameless fear for the unspeakable, and that fear shapes how we live – or more accurately, how we avoid truly living.
The little deaths that teach us
There's a profound wisdom in cultures that have maintained ritual relationships with death – and with the plants and medicines that allow us to rehearse it. In Bwiti tradition, Iboga is known as "breaking open the head" – a death and rebirth that happens not at life's end, but as a transformative passage within it.
Many who've journeyed with psychedelics have known ego-death: that terrifying, liberating moment when the self you've always known dissolves completely. You're convinced you're dying. And then – if you can surrender to it rather than fight it – something extraordinary happens. You discover that you can die and still be here. The ego can shatter, and awareness continues.
And when you come back? The ordinary world – this physical, breathing, tangible reality – becomes almost unbearably precious. You've touched the void and returned, and nothing looks quite the same.
This is the gift that these experiences offer: not an escape from death, but a practice run. A chance to feel the fear, to let go of control, to discover what remains when everything falls away.
Without death, what is life? Without scarcity, how do we value anything? Without endings, how do we savour beginnings? Every moment becomes precious because there are only so many of them. Every connection matters because it won't last forever.
The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: "You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?"
Without sorrow, what is joy? They're not opposites but companions, two sides of the same coin. To feel one deeply is to have the capacity to feel the other. Our grief is proportional to our love. Our fear of death is proportional to our attachment to life. When my cancer diagnosis came, suddenly the philosophical became visceral: death wasn't something to fear but the very thing giving my life direction and urgency.
This is the paradox: we find death not by turning away from life, but by diving deeper into it. And sometimes, we find it in those medicine journeys, those rattling diagnoses, that let us die a little, so we can learn how to live more fully.
An Invitation to Go Deeper
If these questions stir something in you – if you've felt that same pull toward the unspeakable – then perhaps it's time to lean closer rather than turn away.
On Saturday, 8th November, The Psychedelic Society is hosting Death and Transformation: All-Day Conference and Evening Celebration at The Bath House in East London. It's a rare opportunity to move beyond our culture's silence and explore death as a teacher, not just an ending.
Following the Samhain weekend, we'll bring together researchers, ritualists, explorers, and futurists for a day-long journey through death's many faces. You'll hear from Bruce Parry, the renowned filmmaker who lived with Indigenous peoples and participated in their death rituals, speaking about living and dying in community. Rosanna Ellis, a palliative care nurse with fifteen years in end-of-life care, will reimagine contemporary dying. Aluba Fenix will share the Bwiti art of life through death with Iboga – that profound medicine tradition that teaches us how to die before we die. Herbalist Kaz Goodweather will explore European pagan death rituals and henbane, connecting us to our own ancestral wisdom around death and transformation.
We'll venture from sacred ancestral practices to the cutting edge – creative technologist Batuhan Bintas will ask whether we can cheat death with AI, while African healer Yaw Fosu delves into what our past lives reveal. Expect talks, panel discussions, gentle ritual, and space for reflection. There will be a chill room with tarot and books, time to simply sit with what arises.
And then, as darkness falls, we'll shift from depth to celebration. The evening transforms into Dance with Death – a space of joy, embodiment, and release. Ancestral West African rhythms from Dembis Thioung will open the space, followed by dance and ritual movement with ceremonialist Mira Khanya. At 10:30pm, we'll experience a live Bwiti concert streamed directly from Gabon, before closing together in mantra and collective release – alchemising grief into joy and happiness.
This isn't just an intellectual exercise. It's an immersive experience designed to shift how you see life, death, and transformation.
The secret lives in the heart
Maybe this is what it means to confront our existential fears: not to overcome them or transcend them, but to integrate them. To let the reality of death inform how we live. To make friends with impermanence. To practice the little deaths so we're less afraid of the big one.
Because in the end – and there will be an end – what matters most is that we were here. That we loved fiercely and felt deeply. That we found beauty not despite the brevity, but because of it. That we learned, perhaps through medicine or meditation or simply paying attention, to die and be reborn in the same lifetime – again and again.
The secret of death lives in the heart of life. And the secret of life, perhaps, is learning to hold both at once.
Death and Transformation: All-Day Conference and Evening Celebration
Saturday, 8th November 2025
The Bath House, Eastway, London
