Experiencing ego death psychedelically would be like having a near-death experience, in that case. I can see it preparing a person for death or motivating the person to get all she can out of life. But I can also see it being debilitating. There are good trips and bad trips, after all.

I agree with Terence McKenna who said we should treat peak states of consciousness religiously, not recreationally. The point of having these experiences isn't to keep having them over and over, consuming them as replacements for ordinary life. The point, rather, is to respect and even fear them, to learn from them, mining the ocean of weirdness and bringing back nuggets of wisdom or artistic inspiration.

If you like, you can already read about my sleep experience, since I wrote about it soon after it happened, on my blog in 2014. I'll just be reworking that article for Medium within the next few weeks.