In the largest such study ever
conducted, researchers have found evidence that consciousness continues
even after brain activity has ceased. This evidence of life after death
came from a study led by researchers from the University of Southampton
and published in the journal Resuscitation.
“Contrary to perception, death is not a
specific moment but a potentially reversible process that occurs after
any severe illness or accident causes the heart, lungs and brain to
cease functioning,” lead researcher Dr. Sam Parnia said. “If attempts
are made to reverse this process, it is referred to as ‘cardiac arrest’;
however, if these attempts do not succeed it is called ‘death.’ ”
Nearly 40 percent of those interviewed
recalled experiencing some form of awareness after cardiac arrest (being
pronounced clinically dead).
Wide diversity of near-death experiences
The AWARE (AWAreness during
REsuscitation) study sought to use the scientific method to investigate
the experiences typically described by the imprecise termsnear-death experience (NDE) and out-of-body experience
(OBE). Researchers interviewed 2,060 patients who had survived cardiac
arrest from 15 hospitals across Austria, the United Kingdom and the
United States.
“In this study we wanted to go beyond
the emotionally charged yet poorly defined term of NDEs to explore
objectively what happens when we die,” Dr. Parnia said.
The researchers found that 39 percent of
cardiac arrest survivors interviewed described a sense that they had
been “aware” following cardiac arrest. But many had no specific memories
associated with the perception.
“This suggests more people may have
mental activity initially but then lose their memories after recovery,
either due to the effects of brain injury or sedative drugs on memory
recall,” Dr. Parnia said.
Of those who reported a perception of awareness, only 2 percent described an experience consistent with the popular idea of an OBE, such as seeing or hearing events taking place around their bodies. Nine percent reported experiences consistent with the popular idea of an NDE, such as feelings of warmth or the presence of a light. Forty-six percent, however, reported experiences that were not consistent with either an OBE or an NDE, including fearful or persecutory experiences.Clinical confirmation of out-of-body experience
Perhaps the study’s most significant
finding was what may be the first-ever clinical confirmation of an OBE.
In this case, a 57-year-old social worker accurately reported things
that were happening around him after his brain activity had ceased.
“This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation todeath
are likely hallucinations or illusions,” said Dr. Parnia said,
“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.
“In this case, consciousness and
awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was
no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases
functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t
resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the
detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent
with verified events.”
The man’s memories were not only accurate but even helped the researchers place his experience in time.
“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 [experience] lasted for,” Dr. Parnia said.
“He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”
“The researchers 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,” wrote Dr. Jerry
Nolan, editor-in-chief of Resuscitation.
The theory of biocentrism describes reality as a process that fundamentally involves our consciousness. Robert Lanza’s scientific theory explains how, without consciousness: all matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability, time has no real existence and space is just a concept we use to make sense of things.If we look towards neuroscience and quantum mechanics to further fill in the blanks and shortcomings of biocentrism, all that we are left with are quantized states of consciousness. Reality, how we know it, does not exist. And if it had any sort of existence that we could visualize, it would look something like an endless sea of static, of information in which all probabilities exist. Imagining all these probabilities within a zero-dimensional space without time is not easy. But it is perhaps as close as we’ll ever come to imagining what reality really is.
The theory of biocentrism describes reality as a process that fundamentally involves our consciousness. Robert Lanza’s scientific theory explains how, without consciousness: all matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability, time has no real existence and space is just a concept we use to make sense of things.If we look towards neuroscience and quantum mechanics to further fill in the blanks and shortcomings of biocentrism, all that we are left with are quantized states of consciousness. Reality, how we know it, does not exist. And if it had any sort of existence that we could visualize, it would look something like an endless sea of static, of information in which all probabilities exist. Imagining all these probabilities within a zero-dimensional space without time is not easy. But it is perhaps as close as we’ll ever come
Any perception of time or continuity is actually an illusion. This is one of the reasons why Robert Lanza’s recent biocentric universe theory was considered to be “a wake-up call” by NASA’s astrophysicist David Thompson: when we look at the big bang or when we observe how quantum particles jump back and forth in time, we have the arrogance of assuming that time simply moves forward in a straight line and we then go on to see these time-anomalies as unusual and counter-intuitive. But there is no indication that our perception and memories define the arrow of time.All of this seems to suggest that our reality would completely disintegrate or, at the very least, become highly inconsistent and random at any moment. Butthe reason why we experience a rigid world with deeply structured laws of nature is because consistent patterns evolve according to mathematical principles. Since every possible pattern can exist within infinity, the only connection between two independent quantized moments of consciousness is the information that overlaps. Smaller or more compressed units are more common and the laws that we are subject to naturally emerge and bring about our consistent reality as it is the most probable one.Patterns can be found in any type of chaos and since very complex structures are required for consciousness to exist, the reality that we experience evolves along the probable branches of its own specific pattern. If neural disorders such as Capgras syndrome have taught us anything, it’s that we have an incredible ability to rationalize the oddities in our reality. There is one claim though, that becomes hard to refute: that the pattern of quantized moments of experience is inherently infinite and, statistically, an afterlife is inevitable.
