Taken from" Moksha- Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience"--Park Street Press 1999 paperback edition p. 257 -266 article by Laura Huxley:
" The Tibetan Book of the Dead gives the greatest importance to the state of consciousnes at the time of death. he guide always addresses the dying person with the salute " O Nobly Born!" and urges: "Let not thy mind be distracted." The guide keeps reminding the dying person not to become entangled in visions, heavenly or hellish, which are not real, but which are only illusionary projections of his thoughts and emotions, fears and desires. The dying are exhorted" to go on practicing the art of living even while they are dying. Knowing who in fact one is , being conscious of the universal and impersonal life that lives itself through each of us. That's the art of living , and that's what one can help the dying to go on practicing. To the very end." (quoted by Laura from her husband Aldous' book Island.
Laura goes on to note that her husband died on the same day as JFK and she states : " ... no imagination could be vivid enough to conceive two ways of dying as antipodal as these. .... I reported the actual events of that day.... These are the facts..... What happened is important because it is a conclusion , better, a continuation of his ( Aldous) own work.
She administered LSD to Aldous at his request and she recorded the last moments of his life. At 3:15 pm she asked "Do you hear me ? " and " He squeezed my hand; he was hearing me." She writes, "Now from two o'clock until he died , which was 5:20 pm, there was complete peace except for once. That must have been three- thirty or four, when I saw the beginning of struggle in his lower lip....as if it were going to struggle for air. .... The twitching of the lower lip lasted only a little bit , and it seemed to respond completely to what I was saying. Easy, easy, you are doing this willingly and consciously and beautifully- going forward and up, light and free, forward and up toward the light, into the light , into complete love. The twitching stopped, the breathing became slower and slower and there was absolutly not the slightest indication of contraction, of struggle. It was just that the breathing became slower-and slower -and slower ;the ceasing of life was not a drama at all, but like a piece of music just finishing so gently in a sempre piu' piano, dolcemente...and at five-twenty the breathing stopped."
