Hint of life after death in scientific study

[RocketMan]

It seems The Telegraph has managed to block copying and pasting, so here is the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... study.html

The "first" in the original title seems to me a bit ungenerous to brave researchers who took on the subject long ago.

[justdrew]

here you go...

First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study
Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible
Death is a depressingly inevitable consequence of life, but now scientists believe they may have found some light at the end of the tunnel.

The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely.

It is a controversial subject which has, until recently, been treated with widespread scepticism.

But scientists at the University of Southampton have spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria.

And they found that nearly 40 per cent of people who survived described some kind of ‘awareness’ during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.

One man even recalled leaving his body entirely and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room.

Despite being unconscious and ‘dead’ for three minutes, the 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, recounted the actions of the nursing staff in detail and described the sound of the machines.

“We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York, who led the study.

“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.

“The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals. So we could time how long the experienced lasted for.

“He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”

Of 2060 cardiac arrest patients studied, 330 survived and 140 said they had experienced some kind of awareness while being resuscitated.

Although many could not recall specific details, some themes emerged. One in five said they had felt an unusual sense of peacefulness while nearly one third said time had slowed down or speeded up.

Some recalled seeing a bright light; a golden flash or the Sun shining. Others recounted feelings of fear or drowning or being dragged through deep water. 13 per cent said they had felt separated from their bodies and the same number said their sensed had been heightened.

Dr Parnia believes many more people may have experiences when they are close to death but drugs or sedatives used in the process of rescuitation may stop them remembering.

“Estimates have suggested that millions of people have had vivid experiences in relation to death but the scientific evidence has been ambiguous at best.

“Many people have assumed that these were hallucinations or illusions but they do seem to corresponded to actual events.

“And a higher proportion of people may have vivid death experiences, but do not recall them due to the effects of brain injury or sedative drugs on memory circuits.

“These experiences warrant further investigation. “

Dr David Wilde, a research psychologist and Nottingham Trent University, is currently compiling data on out-of-body experiences in an attempt to discover a pattern which links each episode.

He hopes the latest research will encourage new studies into the controversial topic.

“Most studies look retrospectively, 10 or 20 years ago, but the researchers went out looking for examples and used a really large sample size, so this gives the work a lot of validity.

“There is some very good evidence here that these experiences are actually happening after people have medically died.

“We just don’t know what is going on. We are still very much in the dark about what happens when you die and hopefully this study will help shine a scientific lens onto that.”

The study was published in the journal Resuscitation.

Dr Jerry Nolan, Editor-in-Chief at Resuscitation said: “Dr Parnia and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the completion of a fascinating study that will open the door to more extensive research into what happens when we die.”

[Ben D]

But what they can never prove using the scientific method is that awareness can continue, under certain circumstances, even when the dead body has been cremated...

[coffin_dodger]

"Life after death" is such an utterly lazy and imagination-free way of describing the state of existence after life (yeah, the afterlife is a better description, but still falls well short of sounding appealing - after all, life may have been shit or not meeting expectations, so why would you want more of it after death? ).

I like to think that the state of consciousness beyond mortal life is so profoundly fucking unbelievably excellent that no one has ever, ever wanted to come back. Or even considered it.

[Ben D]

^ It is my understanding that there is a state that we may apply the concept of excellence/heavenly/etc. to,....except in that state there is not the duality of separation such as is implied with the idea of an experiencer and the excellence experienced....the experiencer and the excellence have merged to become one and the same.

However I may add that it is my understanding that only those who have realized the state of liberation, free from the maya of dualistic physical experience, will merge with this heavenly state, reincarnation to gain further understanding of what and who they are in the context of cosmic existence is the lot of others.

[Iamwhomiam]

"Life after death" is such an utterly lazy and imagination-free way of describing the state of existence after life (yeah, the afterlife is a better description, but still falls well short of sounding appealing - after all, life may have been shit or not meeting expectations, so why would you want more of it after death? ).

I like to think that the state of consciousness beyond mortal life is so profoundly fucking unbelievably excellent that no one has ever, ever wanted to come back. Or even considered it.

Ah, the eternal problem with labeling the unknown!

I would appreciate incorporating the term "continuity of consciousness" to replace the obviously incorrect "life after death."

I agree, Ben. However, most of our "living" only recognize their individuality as continually reinforced by other "individuals" during what we call our lifetime.

Take for example, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer should be, No, Cain, you are your brother."

Matthew 5:43 to 48 - "Love thine enemy...";

Matthew 7:12 - "Do unto others..."

I could go on, explaining the eastern roots of Christianity, through Brahma"s (Abraham's) migration to the middle east, to Egypt, Moses being Akhenaten and on, but it would take me a week or more to compose nowadays, due to my near endless editing seeking coherence from my failing mind. Sometimes it seems to me all I write could be rewritten better by an elementary school child.

Kinda like the Hesse quote, too.

[Elvis]

I would appreciate incorporating the term "continuity of consciousness" to replace the obviously incorrect "life after death."

My thoughts exactly, thank you, Iam.

And please, if you will, go on about the roots of Christianity, I keep returning to that intriguing topic.

(Have you seen the "RI Book Group" discussion about Peter Kingsley's book, In the Dark Places of Wisdom? I think there's probably a connection.)

I haven't read the Bible, only bits of it, but I remember reading a few pages once and it seemed to me to clearly be talking about reincarnation (can't remember which Book). I asked a Christian friend about the passages and he just assured me that "as far as I know, the Bible says you only get one chance." That might depend, I replied, on the definition of "you." The subject pretty much ended there.

[Iamwhomiam]

Well, Elvis, I'm not sure I'll be able to be of much help. I was foolish not to have kept a journal, but I'll do my best to gather a few links for you that will expand on this. Please give me a while... next week is going to be very busy for me. I'll as well see what documents I've save that you might find informative. Try this for starters and then explore the results from googling Abraham Brahma. http://www.academia.edu/4540206/Brahma_and_Abraham_Divine_Covenants_of_Common_Origin

edited once to add,

and this, Dr. http://ahmedosman.com/history.html

Sorry. I forgot to reply to all asked.

I haven't read the Bible, only bits of it, but I remember reading a few pages once and it seemed to me to clearly be talking about reincarnation (can't remember which Book).

I've not thoroughly read it either.
It's interesting you mention this. I also understood the resurrection of Christ was a later corruption of the earliest church.
John 2:19 Reads in the King James version:

19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?

21 But he spake of the temple of his body.

Another document you might want to read would be the medieval document,
Lamentation of the Dying Creature which can be found in The Book of The Craft of Dying

Fortunately, it's now online, but this was indeed what sent me to the holy archives. Hope you find this interesting. I could use the company in Hell.

[Elvis]

Thanks!

[justdrew]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/the-hindjew-connection-why-israel-and-india-are-becoming-bffs/

[Iamwhomiam]

Interesting Drew. Before reading it I imagined that was the commonality between the two the article would relate ~ Slaughtering Muslims. Interesting but off topic, though worthy of a thread of its own.

[DrEvil]

I'm skeptical, but still, it's a fascinating study, even though it's not conclusive.

I'm still a little vague on the mechanisms behind it (but I guess everyone is), but would be fun if they rigged up some "ghost hunting" equipment. See if they can actually register or measure the consciousness leaving the body, or whatever is going on.

It does sound a little like what happens to those people who intentionally drown themselves to achieve 'maximum consciousness'. The mind does strange things when it realizes it's screwed.

My completely unfounded pet theory, off the top of my head, is that as the mind is dying, and it realizes it's dying, it starts running through more and more exotic survival strategies. One of them could possibly be to amplify the electromagnetic field surrounding the head, reaching out and possibly touching the "fields" of the other people in the room, in essence seeing and hearing through them.

[justdrew]

I'm skeptical, but still, it's a fascinating study, even though it's not conclusive.

I'm still a little vague on the mechanisms behind it (but I guess everyone is), but would be fun if they rigged up some "ghost hunting" equipment. See if they can actually register or measure the consciousness leaving the body, or whatever is going on.

It does sound a little like what happens to those people who intentionally drown themselves to achieve 'maximum consciousness'. The mind does strange things when it realizes it's screwed.

My completely unfounded pet theory, off the top of my head, is that as the mind is dying, and it realizes it's dying, it starts running through more and more exotic survival strategies. One of them could possibly be to amplify the electromagnetic field surrounding the head, reaching out and possibly touching the "fields" of the other people in the room, in essence seeing and hearing through them.

been done. 3 grams IIRC

probably the only thing I'd expect to be possible to "work" in terms of demonstrating post "death" consciousness would be to have a clone body standing by, which is somehow free of it's own consciousness and see if the person can 'get into it' - but I'm not sure how you could grow such a same-DNA piece of neural anatomy and not have it develop (or already have attracted) it's own consciousness 'rider'.

[DrEvil]

3 grams? Not quite following.

And yeah, a clone probably wouldn't work. Either it gets a mind of its own (developed or beamed in from elsewhere), or if it's kept in a coma to avoid developing a mind of its own (assuming the mind doesn't come from somewhere else), it won't be a match to your brain, unless making a carbon copy of a brain also duplicates the mind running on it. That of course assumes we could make a copy of a grown brain in the first place.

[Elvis]

For what it's worth -- and 'eyewitness' testimony of medical professionals must be worth something -- a relative is a long-time hospital nurse who's been at the bedside of many dying patients, and she tells me that on several occasions she's seen a diffuse body form rise up and float away from the just-dead body. She says other nurses saw it too ("Did you just see what I saw?"). When I followed up on another occasion with questions, she said, "We don't really like to talk about it."