The concept of life before your present existence and that after it, is one which has made us brood for ages. Some are of firm belief that existence is energy in a form we do not understand yet so given the thermodynamic laws, the body, which is the vessel, only perishes; the sentience or the consciousness lives on. In what form and where, what is its purpose, is it more spiritually at one with the universe than our mortal form? Here are a few recent scientific statements that will push the envelope on your understanding of what lies across the Great Beyond.
Afterlife is also loosely interpreted as the term used to describe the experience one has in that period of transition where their heart has stopped, their brain is in the last throes of sending electrical signals and all organ function is about to cease. Given the raging inconsistencies, influences drawn in from religious beliefs and all the hearsay, there is lack of faith in any one form of explanation. So, we turn to the one aspect which does not operate without proof: Science. The conjecture of afterlife is tackled by Dr. Sam Parnia, an assistant Professor of Medicine at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. The good doctor has authored the book “Erasing Death”.
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In the video, Dr. Parnia explains how a section of those who have come back from the verge of death confessed to having an out-of-body experience where they saw their own clinically dead husk being operated on by medical staff! The same experience has also been documented to be experienced by those who have ingested substances like LSD and DMT, where the chemical has said to have an effect on the pineal gland. Dr.Parnia has however gone the extra mile and spoken to sober individuals who comprise over 2000 medical cases documenting hints of an ‘afterlife experience’; these cases were verified with auditory tests, were sanctioned if the experience lasted over 5 minutes for the said person and all of them were medically recorded as brain-dead.
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About 40%, which is a staggering number in itself, of these cases had the subject state that they had awareness of what was going around them even though declared to be clinically brain-dead. Another 10% of these case studies also cited ‘near-death experiences’ which is the label given under natural conditions to someone who experiences the highlight reel of their life flashing before their eyes, concluding with the lights coming on at the end of the reel, ergo, the light at the end of the tunnel if you will. 3% of this group reported full consciousness of surroundings and accurate descriptions of events where they were said to be also brain-dead.
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5-minute was the minimum time span for any of these experiences to be considered for after-life study. All of these individuals have had their brain signals fade out within 2-20 seconds. The experiences they recounted were longer than that time span, and again accurate if they recounted awareness of their environment. Dr. Jerry Long, a Radiation Oncologist who has published books and journals about experiments in the same field, however suggests that the pattern discovered in the 4000 individuals he interviewed and tested all recounted experiences that involved ‘love’ and ‘peace’, the well-known reunion with deceased family and friends and a feeling of ecstasy, included.
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Dr. Parnia did go a mile further by devising a precise method of separating fact from fiction. He has provided mechanisms to hospitals where an ear-piece would transmit specific auditory samples to the patient and a visually interactive medium would be placed high above them, such that someone who only has an over the view surroundings, I.e. the field of vision from someone encountering afterlife as an out-of-body experience. Should the person miraculously feel their body start functioning again, they should be able to sift the truth from muscle memory once conscious.
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The reason we believe that the out-of-body rumor can be a knee-jerk reaction from muscle memory is because skeptics believe those tested subjects only hallucinated these from details they heard from others about afterlife, throughout existence. Under natural conditions, many have surmised that it is a moment of peaceful reflection on your life, good or bad or otherwise, and in those final moments is when you realize what is going to become of you; will there be activity in the afterlife or pitch blackness? Sometimes, folks who have been at the brink of death and have survived miraculously to live another day have all given different interpretations of it. The word of their mouth is the best first hand description of afterlife we have on any medium.
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Make no mistake the video only proves that Dr. Parnia has stumbled across a fool-proof way of validating the concept of coming back from death, or afterlife if there is any, there still exists no evidence of afterlife. If there is any such testament that is unearthed any time soon, then it shall further our understanding of ‘rebirth’. For afterlife would mean that you have a good amount of memories from your previous chapter in another mortal coil, just waiting for some experience to unlock the memories for you. Also, existence comes with the virtue of fear of death; all living beings have a natural urge to exist, even when they are voluntarily ending their life. However, this is in conflict with the individuals who have ‘experienced’ afterlife as they have then gone on to lead reckless death-defying lifestyles. A person if they are reborn again post-afterlife, is again in fear of death; shouldn’t they feel as death-defiant who have cheated death and come back to tell the story?
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Afterlife, a tunnel with a light at the end promising serenity; or a never-ending void waiting for your consciousness to join it at death only so it can be ripped away from the former again to be put into another infant for whom life is about to start a new chapter? Alas, we do not have the answer, but are one step closer than we were to finding it.