Deathnauts: Strange Scientific Journeys Into the Afterlife
One of the
great frontiers of human experience and the unknown is that of what happens to
us when we inevitably die.
It is perhaps the final frontier we face, and certainly the most mysterious.
What happens to us when we pass on? Do we simply blink out of existence? Are we
reborn into new bodies? Does our soul transfer to another plane of existence?
Do we even have a “soul” as we like to think of it at all? These are some of
the many questions concerning the afterlife which mankind has pondered since
time unremembered.
The realm of
death is a complete cipher to us, a place into which we can only make a one way
journey and which lies in an obscured, unexplored territory more inaccessible
than the highest mountain or deepest undersea abyss, indeed more remote than
the furthest edges of the solar system and even the edge of the universe as we
know it. What becomes of us after death remains a complete mystery to us which
we have long been frustratingly unable to explore to any appreciable degree
without making that one way journey for ourselves.
Yet, with
the advent of science and technology, and our increasing abilities to explore
the outer fringes of our understanding, there has arisen a new question: can we
scientifically prove and verify what happens to us after death? Can we use our
advanced knowledge and technology to settle the age old debate of scientists,
philosophers, and lay men alike once and for all? In this era of discovery,
where we are ever relentlessly unlocking the secrets to our planet and the
universe, pushing out into the boundaries past all that was known before, there
have indeed been attempts to scientifically study what lies beyond our demise.
These are the efforts of those who would penetrate that last frontier and come
back with the answers we seek.
Those who
would scientifically attempt to delve into the afterlife have long been plagued
by dogma, ridicule, and misunderstanding. In one 1982 poll, it was found that a
mere 16% of top scientists from various fields questioned believed that there
was an afterlife at all, and only 4% thought we would ever be able to
conclusively prove it. This general dismissive attitude and air of disinterest
by the scientific community has hampered efforts for those who would seriously
try to study the afterlife, as funding is rarely granted for such projects and
those who pursue this avenue of research risk ridicule and derisive scorn from
their peers. Interestingly, the rate of belief in an afterlife among medical
doctors is significantly higher, with a 2005 poll showing that 59% of American
medical doctors believed in an afterlife, which is a dramatically higher
percentage than any other scientific profession.
Perhaps this
stronger belief in something going on beyond the domain of life has to do with
medical doctors’ experiences dealing with those who have experienced what are
called near death experiences, or NDEs. These are reports by people who have
claimed that after clinical death they have retained some form of awareness, no
matter how tenuous, and have often reported similar phenomena in this state,
regardless of religion or whether they believe in any kind of afterlife or not.
These experiences are reported by a staggering number of people, around an
estimated 200,000 people per year in the United States alone and untold
millions worldwide. Commonly reported NDE experiences include leaving one’s
body to observe the room and their own form, seeing a bright light, a feeling
of peace or love, or even meeting long dead friends or relatives.
Although reports
of NDEs may seem to be wholly subjective and the result of mere hallucinations,
the remarkable similarities between them, as well as the sheer number of people
who report them hint at an underlying phenomena with elements that may be
possible to be objectively and scientifically measured and quantified. One
serious study conducted by a team of scientists led by a Dr Berthold Ackermann
collected reports of NDEs from hundreds of patients and came to the conclusion
that the uncanny parallels between a vast number of accounts from people of all
walks of life claiming to have retained consciousness after death suggested
that the phenomenon was worth further study. Ackerman said of these
similarities:
"Most
common memories include a feeling of detachment from the body,
feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of
absolute dissolution, and the presence of an overwhelming light."
The presence
of these visions in people who were clinically dead, and which remained fairly
consistent across faiths and ideals, has convinced some groups of researchers
that there is something going on beyond current paradigms, and that it could
possibly even point to the existence of some currently unknown duality between
the physical brain and consciousness itself, or at the very least some physical
process which we have yet to understand. This points squarely at a
scientifically provable answer that merely lies beyond our grasp and current
tools to fully quantify.
Many of the
studies that have delved into observing and objectifying NDEs, and therefore
understanding more about life after death, have relied on investigating victims
of cardiac arrest. After all, these are people who are at the mercy of a fully
controllable environment, and stand a chance of being pulled from the clutches
of death. One such study conducted by lead researcher Pim van Lommel, of the
Hospital Rijnstate in the Netherlands, in 2001 and published in the British
medical journal Lancet,
focused on 344 patients who had suffered heart attacks to the point of being
clinically dead, and then being successfully resuscitated.
The study
meticulously and methodically questioned patients within a week of dying and
being brought back to life, and found that 18% of these patients were able to
describe some form of awareness from the time when they were declared
clinically dead, meaning that their brain had completely shut down due to lack
of blood flow and therefore making it technically not physically possible for
them to be conscious of anything. 12 percent of those in the study reported
classical NDE experiences such as tunnels of light or seeing dead friends and
relatives. The extremely sharp, lucid, vivid, and detailed recall of these
events seemed to point at factors other than that they were some sort of
hallucination or false memories.
Although the
study did not make any concrete proclamations of the existence of an actual
soul or an afterlife, nor does it lay out a precise way to measure the
existence of a life after death, it does suggest that something very strange is
going on. The people in the study had been technically brain dead, meaning that
they should not have had any memories of anything at all, and if the phenomena
had been caused by a purely physical effect, such as cerebral hypoxia, also
called anoxia, which is damage to the brain caused by prolonged lack of oxygen,
then it should have been reported by a higher percentage of patients in the
study, if not all of them. This convinced van Lommel that there was perhaps
something more going on than a purely physical or cellular effect, saying of
these NDEs in a Washington Post interview:
"Compare it
with a TV program. If you open the TV set you will not find the program. The TV
set is a receiver. When you turn off your TV set, the program is still there
but you can’t see it. When you put off your brain, your consciousness is still
there but you can’t feel it in your body."
Another
similar study was carried out in 2003 by a Dr Peter Fenwick, a
neuro-psychiatrist and senior lecturer at at King’s College, London, who
investigated the experiences of cardiac arrest patients in England with the
Institute of Psychiatry. During the study, over 60 cardiac arrest patients at
Southampton General Hospital’s coronary care unit were interviewed about what
they had experienced while technically temporarily brain dead. Of these
patients, 7 of them recalled having classic NDE experiences, such as out of
body experiences, entering a realm of peace and love, meeting lost loved ones,
or journeying through a mysterious tunnel of light. In these cases, the
patients had been clinically dead for up to several minutes, which hints that
these sensations were not the result of mere normal physical processes or
tricks of the brain. Fenwick explained the significance of this thus:
"After a
cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds
the brain’s rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility
of the brain creating a model of the world – so the brain is down.Yet whenever
we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was
during unconsciousness. If that’s true, their experience was occurring when
there was no blood flowing through the brain – and consciousness would appear
to exist outside the brain."
Fenwick came
to the conclusion that there was something unusual going on that went well
beyond a purely physical explanation, and even suggested that it could be
potential evidence that the mind in some form operates outside of and
independent of the physical brain. He likened this connection to a TV playing
programs transmitted over airwaves. He said of his findings:
"There is now
convincing evidence to challenge the current theory that consciousness can only
exist inside the brain – and if you can have consciousness without associated
brain function, that is enormously important for our understanding of the mind."
Another
extremely ambitious scientific study was launched in 2008, and called the AWARE
study (“AWAreness during REsuscitation”). Led by Sam Parnia, an assistant
professor of medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
and frequent collaborator with Dr. Fenwick, the study was aimed at trying to
use the unique perspective of those who had stepped over to the other side and
come back to tell the tale in order to peak through the window of the unknown
to determine the existence of some form of life after death, or at least clues
to the true connection between body and mind. The largest study of its kind
ever attempted, 2,060 people who had suffered from major cardiac arrest were
examined over a period of 4 years at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria.
Throughout the whole study, strict scientific methodology was observed as much
as was reasonably possible in order to weed out claims that were based merely
on impressions and thus insufficient for use as evidence, and to maintain as
much objectivity as was possible.
Of the
victims surveyed, 40% of those who had been resuscitated and had survived the
cardiac arrest reliably reported some form of consciousness after they had been
declared technically dead and had ceased to display any clinical signs of being
conscious. Despite this complete lack of any measurable brain activity, these
patients were reporting a lingering awareness and consciousness, which should
have been impossible. The form this consciousness took varied somewhat from
individual to individual, with some describing a sense of awareness but no
specific memory, while others reported bright lights, the sensation of floating
or conversely sinking, or the feeling of being dragged through water, as well
as heightened senses and the sense of time slowing down or speeding up. Many of
the patients described an overall sense of peacefulness throughout the ordeal.
In the more dramatic accounts, patients described the images of animals, family
members, or some form of “mystical being.” There appeared to be little
measurable difference between ages or genders when it came to these
experiences.
Additionally,
13% of those examined claimed to have separated from their bodies during their
deaths, with some of these accounts being rather striking. In one case, a
57-year-old social worker reported that he had floated around the room and
witnessed hospital staff trying to bring him back to life. So vivid was his
recollection of these events that he even keenly remembered the physical
appearance of the doctors and nurses, as well as the distinct beeping and
noises of the various different types of machines in the room. Interestingly,
the man had been declared dead for 3 minutes at the time, which should have
made any awareness completely impossible and rule out the possibility that it
could have simply been hallucinations, yet during this time the man was
apparently well aware of the scene around him from outside his body.
Parnia
suspects that although only 40% of the patients reported any sort of after
death consciousness, it is quite possible that the others had indeed
experienced these phenomena, but were simply not able to remember them due to
the effects of sedatives, drugs, or brain damage. Although the study is unable
to unequivocally rule out the possibility that the reports were subjective, and
not able to concretely prove that these things really happened or what actually
caused them, Dr. Parnia believes that the sheer size of the sampling and the
findings of the study are significant, have shed light on the phenomenon, and
shown that it warrants a need for further investigation. Of the completed
study, Dr. Parnia has proclaimed:
"The evidence
thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is
not annihilated. Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know, but right
after death, consciousness is not lost. We know the brain can’t function when
the heart has stopped beating. But in this case conscious awareness appears to
have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t
beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after
the heart has stopped. This is significant, since it has often been assumed
that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions,
occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been
successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with ‘real’ events
when the heart isn’t beating."
The presence
of a form of consciousness or awareness separate from the physical brain is a
recurring theme of such experiments. In another study conducted by a Dr.
Alexander Batthyany at the University of Vienna, it was found that in some
cases patients with advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease briefly returned to
a state of complete lucidity just before death, despite suffering symptoms so
severe that their brains had been rendered more or less practically incapable
of functioning at all. The study covered 227 patients, and in 10% of the cases,
people who had up until that point been completely lacking any mental
functionality at all had displayed briefly before death a sudden bright flash
of awareness and memories from before, which should have been impossible if
there was no “soul” that existed beyond simply the physical construct of the
brain.
In the
future, ever innovative technologies may allow us to not only observe these
NDEs and other phenomena, but actually venture forth into the land of the dead,
much as astronauts have journeyed into the far reaches of the cosmos. This is a
theme that has been covered in popular culture before, most notably the 1990
film Flatliners,
in which 5 medical students conduct secret experiments to induce death and
explore what lies beyond, along with its mystical near death experiences. Such
an outlandish idea is perhaps not so far from reality, and we are on the cusp
of technology that may allow us to not only study NDEs, but to experience them
for ourselves.
Researchers
at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, have developed a revolutionary procedure to put animals in a
state of limbo between life and death, a sort of state of suspended animation
fluttering over the abyss on the edge of death. In the experiments, dogs are
drained of all blood and their veins filled with a frigid saline solution.
Their body temperatures lowered to around 7 degrees Celsius (37 F), the animals
cease all biological activity and are for all purposes technically dead. After
3 hours in this state, the blood is replaced and a mild shock administered,
which jolts them back to the land of the living. The process is not without its
problems, as some of the dogs have been reanimated with serious physical or
behavioral aberrations, which have caused some critics to accuse the team of
creating soulless “zombie dogs.”
Nevertheless,
the team has grand plans to one day test the procedure on humans, which could
be groundbreaking in the field of putting victims of serious injuries,
especially those incurring massive blood loss, into a type of stasis while they
await treatment. Such a tool could be invaluable in places like faraway
battlefields, or other situations where immediate medical care is not
available. Regardless, there have been considerable moral questions raised,
such as the idea that any humans subjected to the experiments may wake up
without souls, with an essential, key part of them missing. However, the
research has mostly been seen as hopeful, with one of the directors saying they
are merely pushing back the boundaries of what is considered dead, stating:
"The
definition of death depends on the technology you have to revive the subject.
As medical technology gets better, the limits to being dead are pushed into
more extreme physiological states. Death is really when a doctor says: ‘I can’t
do any more."
One can most
certainly see how such a procedure would be alluring for those who want to
research what happens past the veil that separates us from death. Imagine what
could be gleaned about the afterlife from someone who spent hours there or even
more. We can only wait to see if there is ever a trial on human beings, but one
team of psychologists and medical doctors associated with
the Technische Universität of Berlin have claimed that they have already
done something similar. The researchers have claimed that by using a
sophisticated mixture of potent drugs such as
epinephrine and dimethyltryptamine, they have managed to induce
clinical death in patients for intervals of up to 20 minutes, after which they
are revived with a specially designed CPR machine without any ill effects.
The process
has already been allegedly tested on around 944 volunteers over 4 years, with some
people reportedly dead for up to 40 minutes to an hour. It is unclear what sort
of NDEs any of these people may have experienced, but it definitely offers an
avenue of pursuit for anyone brave enough to try and find out. Are we on the
cusp of having the know-how and abilities to allow adventurous souls to make
this once one-way journey into realms unknown and allow them to come back, just
as astronauts delve into space to plummet back to Earth with wondrous stories
to tell? It is an intriguing notion to be sure.
For all of
the promising research done on NDEs so far, and all of the potential ways our
technology may allow us to further and more deeply explore this mysterious
phenomenon in the future, there is still a lot of skepticism aimed at this type
of study. For many, the results found so far don’t count because they are
adamant that any sort of awareness after death is indicative that the person
was never really truly dead at all, despite any measurable amount of brain
activity. Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, has said of the
matter:
"There’s a
reason that these events are called ‘near’ death experiences. The people who
have [near death experiences] are not actually dead. In that murky
grey area between life and death, the brain is still functioning on some level
and can therefore experience something."
This
sentiment has been shared by others, who say that there is very little concrete
evidence to suggest that any of the NDEs actually occurred at a point when the
brain was fully non-functional. Therefore, they say, the studies of NDEs thus
far are deeply flawed. Dr Chris Freeman, consultant psychiatrist and
psychotherapist at Royal Edinburgh Hospital has said:
"We know that
memories are extremely fallible. We are quite good at knowing that something
happened, but we are very poor at knowing when it happened. It is quite possible
that these experiences happened during the recovery, or just before the cardiac
arrest. To say that they happened when the brain was shut down, I think there
is little evidence for that at all."
The idea
that these experiences are caused by merely a malfunctioning brain has been
somewhat corroborated by the discovery in recent years of what has been deemed
“The God Spot.” In 2000, Swiss researchers at at the Geneva University Hospital
were presented with a 43-year-old woman who was admitted for surgery for
profound epileptic seizures. An interesting effect was noticed when electrical
stimulation was applied via electrodes to the area of the brain responsible for
spatial cognition, called the angular gyrus, found in the right cortex.
Neurologist Professor Olaf Blanke and colleagues accidentally found that by
stimulating that area of the brain, the woman reported having vivid out of body
experiences, in which she reported floating about the room above her own body.
Blanke concluded that OBEs, and thereby NDEs in general, could be possibly
explained by some malfunctioning of the brain rather than an actual soul
leaving the body. It nevertheless shows that OBEs are a very real physical
phenomenon that deserves further study, no matter what the cause.
A similar
physical induction of classical NDE effects has been shown through the use of
the drug ketamine, which affects receptors in the brain for the
neurotransmitter glutamate. This uncontrolled, totally legal drug can, in the
right doses, produce an altered state of consciousness and many of the reported
experiences of NDEs, such as out of body experiences, communing with mystical
beings, reliving of life events, and traveling through tunnels of light, to the
point that one researcher has deemed the use of ketamine to be “experiments in
voluntary death.” This has caused skeptics to conclude that all NDEs must be
purely the result of misfrings of brain chemistry, but those who have
experienced true NDEs are adamant that this is something more. Regardless of
who is right, this is yet another case that shows that NDEs are a real
phenomenon worthy of further scientific study and not a complete fabrication.
Skeptics
remain convinced that these after life experiences are solely the realm of the
physical, some last desperate firing of a dying mind. To them this is just
psychedelic dreams and euphoria conjured up by chemicals in the brain during
death, to which we give unreasonable spiritual weight if we survive the ordeal
to return to life. This could describe all of the events of NDEs, including the
ubiquitous tunnels of light, which skeptics say could be caused by frantically
firing brain cells reacting to a lack of oxygen. Susan Blackmore, a psychology
professor at the University of the West of England in Bristol and notable NDE
skeptic says of the phenomenon:
"I think
what’s happening is that people are trying to validate their experience by
making these paranormal claims, but you don’t need to do that. They’re valid
experiences in themselves, only they’re happening in the brain and not in the
world out there."
Interestingly,
some of these skeptics have come around once they experienced life after death
for themselves. Cell biologist Joyce Hawkes was once just such a skeptic, and
did not put much thought into the possibility of an afterlife, until one
fateful accident changed her mind forever. Hawkes fell out of a window and
sustained life threatening injuries that put her into a state of clinical
death. During this time, she claims that she had an experience that did not fit
any of her preconceived paradigms and which she remains at a loss to explain.
Hawkes said of the incident:
"I think that
part of me — that my spirit, my soul — left my body and went to another
reality. It just was not part of the paradigm in which I lived as a scientist.
It was a big surprise to me to have this sense of something different than the
body — a consciousness different than the body — and to be in this wonderfully
healing, peaceful, nurturing place."
So is there
anything to these NDEs? Is this a peek into realms unknown or merely the
physical effects of a gasping, dying brain; our last feverish dreams before
slipping into nothingness? What lies beyond the curtain of the death that awaits
us all, and will we ever be in a position to scientifically find out waits
beyond? It seems in a world in which we are finding ways to detect ever more
bizarre and weird phenomena such as quantum physics and the strange particles
and inner working of our universe there may soon come a time when we may
conquer the answers to the perplexing questions of the afterlife as well.
Perhaps at some point we will delve out into these badlands just as we journey
out into space or the farthest reaches of the deep blue seas, and embark on a
journey that will bring with it wondrous discoveries of the unknown which lie
on the fringes of our understanding. Until then, we are confined within these
flesh prisons of ours, waiting for it to finally be revealed where that final
journey will take us.
- Scroll down
through ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section
Do you LIKE this uniquely informative site?
Hours of effort by a genuinely incapacitated invalid are
required every day to maintain, write, edit, research, illustrate, moderate and
publish this website from a tiny cabin in a remote forest.
Now that most people use ad blockers and view these posts
on phones and other mobile devices, sites like this earn an ever shrinking
pittance from advertising sponsorship.
This site needs your help.
Like what you see? Please give anything you can -
Contribute any amount and receive at least one
New Illuminati eBook!
(You can use a card securely if you don’t use Paypal)
Please click below -
And it costs nothing
to share this post on Social Media!
Dare to care and
share - YOU are our only advertisement!
And see
New Illuminati’s OWN Youtube Videos
-
DISGRUNTLED SITE ADMINS PLEASE NOTE –
We provide
a live link to your original material on your site (and links via social
networking services) - which raises your ranking on search engines and helps
spread your info further!
This site
is published under Creative Commons (Attribution) CopyRIGHT (unless an
individual article or other item is declared otherwise by the copyright
holder). Reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged - if you
give attribution to the work & author and include all links in the original
(along with this or a similar notice).
Feel free
to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you
never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember
attribution!
If you
like what you see, please send a donation (no amount is too small or too large)
or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…
Live long
and prosper! Together we can create the best of all possible worlds…
