First Hint Of 'life After Death' In Biggest Ever

charlie

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First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study


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.

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

SaltGirl

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There are so many interesting things going on that most mainstream scientists run away from and deny. Most likely in fear that if they acknowledge a phenomenon they might be inadvertently changing their own philosophical view of the world.

However, my guess is that this will pop up on skeptic networks over the days and it being brushed aside as "flawed", "shitty controls", "fake pseudoscience", or whatever vernacular they are currently attracted to.

I mean, it's been ages since Ian Stevenson did his research(along with Erlendur Haraldsson) and that's dismissed as just noise regardless of how well Dr. Stevenson tried to prevent any erroneous reporting. :(
 

jaa

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I would love for life after death to be true. But I don't know that this study is hinting at that. For starters, these experiences can be related to a huge release of DMT, or some other concoction of neurotransmitters. The fact that the experiences are not consistent and seem to have a cultural bias make me a bit skeptical of the life after death claims. I think it would be more accurate to name title the article something like "First Hint of Expansive Awareness at Near Death" or "First Hint Consciousness Lasts A Little Longer Than Brain Activity Suggests". Which brings me to my other bit of skepticism, these experiences rely on subjective experiences in an altered state.

"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."

It's easy to envision a scenario where the man misinterpreted hearing 2 beeps, and therefore the 3 minute timeline is incorrect. Also, the article does not mention than this man's brain activity was being monitored, so the average 20-30s after heart stopping may not apply to him and there could have been some activity after the 3 minutes.

Almost everyone wants life after death, and these headlines are sure to get views, but I don't think the interpretation here is correct. And I say this as a person who thinks I will likely experience some form of awareness after I leave this body.
 

Blossom

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I've had several people tell me of their personal near death experience. This is anecdotal but I was very moved by the genuine nature of their reports. One gentleman self published a book about his experience and came back to the hospital where the NDE happened and handed out free copies. I have no way of explaining what happened but I do think very few people would make up such stories. It's similar to talking about aliens or ghosts there's no quicker way to be labeled a kook than to start telling a near death experience. You also notice many people have similar phenomena occur toward the end of life under hospice care. It's quite common for people to start talking to and about deceased friends and relatives who have come to visit and some talk about preparing to leave. I suppose what really happens will remain a mystery until it's our turn.
 

jaa

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I think almost all NDEs that people talk about experiencing are genuine and doubt anything but a small % are fabricated. I just don't believe they count as evidence for life after death. A suggestion perhaps, but nothing that moves my belief more than a few percentage points.
 

SaltGirl

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That's why most of the stuff is considered "evidence" and not "proof". Even the name of the post here is "hint".

In short, we have various phenomenons(NDE, past life memories) going on that we can't understand the mechanism of and therefore "hint" at a much larger(and therefore complex) system. It's alright to be skeptical and no one is asking anyone to believe anything outright. However, this seems to be worth researching more rather than brushed aside which is much more common to things that are considered "unacceptable". That's the attitude of a pseudoskeptic.
 

SQu

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Consciousness, awareness - I have had several experiences with family members in comas who in spite of complete unresponsiveness, heard what was said at their bedside. My husband discussed funeral plans in earshot of his unresponsive mother. I was uncomfortable as I knew she was 'there' and later she spoke of it. Then later she went into a coma again. I said 'I know you can hear me' and her eyebrows shot up in alarm. Seconds before, doctors could get absolutely no response from her. My impression is that this awareness extends beyond our physical boundaries and condition, and time too. And I am not someone who was looking for or wanting experiences of this kind to prove anything.
 

jaa

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SaltGirl said:
That's why most of the stuff is considered "evidence" and not "proof". Even the name of the post here is "hint".

In short, we have various phenomenons(NDE, past life memories) going on that we can't understand the mechanism of and therefore "hint" at a much larger(and therefore complex) system. It's alright to be skeptical and no one is asking anyone to believe anything outright. However, this seems to be worth researching more rather than brushed aside which is much more common to things that are considered "unacceptable". That's the attitude of a pseudoskeptic.

I am certainly open to further research into NDE and life after death. I just get annoyed when claims are made that aren't supported. For example, there is no evidence the guys brain was offline during his NDE. That would be huge, and that's what the article claims, but there's nothing to back it up.

sueq,

In your example, your mother-in-law was alive and I assume there was brain activity. I see no reason to extract an awareness beyond physical boundaries based on that example.
 

Blinkyrocket

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Comprehend life NEVER ending for a little longer than it takes to say "I don't wanna die, I wanna live forever" comprehend it until you're saying "But, life NEVER ending? What the crap does that mean? that means you NEVER die, that means it NEVER stops." How the crap could anyone WANT that?

Great, now I'm thinking about this again :oops:
 

SaltGirl

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Blinkyrocket said:
Comprehend life NEVER ending for a little longer than it takes to say "I don't wanna die, I wanna live forever" comprehend it until you're saying "But, life NEVER ending? What the crap does that mean? that means you NEVER die, that means it NEVER stops." How the crap could anyone WANT that?

Great, now I'm thinking about this again :oops:

I've always considered Alan Watts' approach to be very interesting.

Alan Watts
 

dd99

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My view of life after death is explained in this scene with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy from the film Waking Life by Richard Linklater:
Waking Life said:
EH: You know they say that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain activity after everything else is shutdown. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that's infinitely longer than a waking second. You know what I'm saying?

JD: Oh, yeah, definitely. For example, I wake up and it is 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and I have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's ... 10:13.

EH: Yeah, exactly. So then six to twelve minutes of brain activity, I mean, that could be your whole life.
I think when we die, it's like a dream that stretches to infinity. The speed of time is different for the observer and the person dying.
 

jaa

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Interesting you say that dd99. A study on rats hinting at that was published in Nature last month.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/bra ... l_surge_in

Interestingly, the authors even suggest that the level of activity observed during the final active death stage (CAS3) not only resembles the waking state, but might even reflect a heightened state of conscious awareness similar to the "highly lucid and realer-than-real mental experiences reported by near-death survivors". This is a pretty bold claim that critically depends on their quantification of 'consciousness'. They argue that in the final stage of brain death there is actually more evidence for consciousness-related activity than during normal wakeful consciousness. But how can we quantity ‘consciousness-related activity'?

Nevertheless, as the authors note, this research demonstrates a surge in brain activity after death that is consistent with active cognitive processing. This suggests that a neural explanation for these experiences is at least plausible. They have identified the right kind of brain activity for a neural explanation of near-death experiences, yet it remains to be verified whether these signatures do actually relate directly to the subjective experience.

Future directions: The obvious next step is to test weather similar patterns of brain activity are observed in humans after clinical death. Then it will be important to show that such activity is strongly coupled to near-death experience. For example, does the presence or absence of such activity predict whether or not the person would report a near death experience? This second step is obviously fraught with technical and ethical challenges (think: The Flatliners), but would provide good evidence to link the neural phenomena to the phenomenal experience.

I wonder what purpose that final surge of brain activity serves. It seems like a dead/dying creature would want the lights shut off ASAP. Maybe it's just an accident of evolution. It is nice to think that it could be some kind of final reflection/consolidation period for a superintelligent or simulation creating being like in the short story the egg.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
 

dd99

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Jaa, thanks for that - loved the story!

jaa said:
I wonder what purpose that final surge of brain activity serves. It seems like a dead/dying creature would want the lights shut off ASAP. Maybe it's just an accident of evolution. It is nice to think that it could be some kind of final reflection/consolidation period for a superintelligent or simulation creating being like in the short story the egg.
Perhaps it's related to the slowing down of time people experience during accidents? Apparently, that's caused because the brain is processing so much information at once. Perhaps time slows down for the person dying because they are reliving their entire lives in an instant...or because it's being downloaded? :)

Interestingly, the next bit of dialogue in Waking Life was about reincarnation and species memory.

Waking Life said:
JD:...Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come from over time. Everybody always say that they've been the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander the Great. I always want to tell them they were probably some dumb **** like everybody else. I mean, it's impossible. Think about it. The world population has doubled in the past 40 years, right? So if you really believe in that ego thing of one eternal soul, then you have only 50% chance of your soul being over 40. And for it to be over 150 years old, then it's only one out of six.

EH: Right, so what are you saying? That reincarnation doesn't exist, or that we're all young souls like where half of us are first round humans?

JD: No, no. What I'm trying to say is that somehow I believe reincarnation is just a - a poetic expression of what collective memory really is. There was this article by this biochemist that I read not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where we inherit our instincts.

EH: I like that. It's like there's this whole telepathic thing going on that we're all a part of, whether we're conscious of it or not. That would explain why there are all these, you know, seemingly spontaneous, worldwide, innovative leaps in science, in the arts. You know, like the same results poppin' up everywhere independent of each other. Some guy on a computer, he figures something out, and then almost simultaneously a bunch of other people all over the world figure out the same thing. They did this study. They isolated a group of people over time, and they monitored their abilities at crossword puzzles, right, in relation to the general population. And they secretly gave them a day-old crossword, one that had already been answered by thousands of other people, right. And their scores went up dramatically, like 20 percent. So it's like once the answers are out there, people can pick up on 'em. It's like we're all telepathically sharing our experiences.
 

pboy

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the real question is do you want that dream to be beautiful or do you want it to be a nightmare of regret and missed chances and wrong doings

ive been to (nearly) that point, for 2 months after it I felt like I was in a different world, a rather bland place, the only thing that I could feel at all...literally feel at all, was actual heart felt love. Everything else was bland tasteless and seemed..it seemed like was all trivial and all that mattered was the heart. It was a trip, and keep in mind it was uncharted territory with no one to talk to, and people I did just kind of scoffed at me, I was really young like 21-22 or something so it was kind of scary too. I ended up re wiring my being in terms of..that moment shaped how I live now when I think back on it. It teaches you, that life is basically to prepare for that moment...all of life, every second every day...not like a burden, just in terms of the way you open and live. Life is the joy and purpose but also...you aren't really free, because death is always a fear in back of everyones mind, not free until you've actually satisfied yourself for that moment, which is...a monumental task, beyond monumental

id read the book Siddhartha before and didn't understand it that much but after that..and even more now, I really get it. Its a nice semi incomplete but very nice representation
 

Blinkyrocket

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SaltGirl said:
Blinkyrocket said:
Comprehend life NEVER ending for a little longer than it takes to say "I don't wanna die, I wanna live forever" comprehend it until you're saying "But, life NEVER ending? What the crap does that mean? that means you NEVER die, that means it NEVER stops." How the crap could anyone WANT that?

Great, now I'm thinking about this again :oops:

I've always considered Alan Watts' approach to be very interesting.

Alan Watts
.... I think you read my mind... I loved Inception and actually hope that the device is made sometime to be able to dream like that...
 
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Comprehend life NEVER ending for a little longer than it takes to say "I don't wanna die, I wanna live forever" comprehend it until you're saying "But, life NEVER ending? What the crap does that mean? that means you NEVER die, that means it NEVER stops." How the crap could anyone WANT that?

Great, now I'm thinking about this again :oops:

I used to freak out having this same thought when I was young, and dealing with anxiety and panic disorder. I had to continue through all eternity suffering like this?? Crap. Since then God, in His Mercy, has revealed himself to me, and He is Love and Forgiveness and Healing. Eternity for the saved in Heaven is without suffering. It's glorious Heaven after all! There is nothing to fear when we call out to God, our Heavenly Father.

I hope this helps Blinkyrocket! :angelic:
 

Pointless

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About 10 years ago, I studied NDE's very intensively. As others have pointed out, the evidence is very shoddy. The reports could be misinterpreted or made up. Any scientific studies could be hoaxes, because no one is independently verifying them. One guy wanted to prove that reincarnation was real, so he compiled these anecdotes about people remembering their past lives. Supposedly they verified the things that were reported, things that the subjects couldn't have possibly known about unless it was their past life... Only problem is that it was all made up.

On the other hand, something just feels so right about it. It turned my life around when I first heard about this. I've had many emotional experiences reading reports about people crossing over and telling their loved ones about divine love or the meaning of life. I went from a deep pit of despair to a purpose-driven human being. Even though it's a matter of faith, I truly believe it deep down. There is a meaning to this life with all of its suffering. There is a happy ending. And all of it is verified over and over again by countless people, though we aren't at the level that we can reliably measure or quantify it with scientific instruments. Honestly, even if you could PROVE it beyond a shadow of a doubt, it would be ignored and discarded because it's outside of people's mental frameworks. That's someone's signature...

What I tell people is an experiment I read, but I can't find the source. There was a surgeon that heard so many NDE reports, and he was so impressed with the clarity of the experience and how it changed his patients. He even heard strange things, like his patients could know things going on in the operating room while they were put under. They could even know things happening in other places. So he designed an experiment to see if there was anything to it. He made pictures and put them way up high in the operating room, facing towards the ceiling. No one knew about the pictures, and you would only be able to see them if you were floating at the ceiling, looking down. In the end, patients were able to identify the pictures.

I've heard other stories from people. Someone told me a story about a person that had an NDE in a hospital and said there was a pair of shoes on the roof of the hospital. They went up and looked, and they found a pair of shoes there. There are so many stories like these, that it's impossible to ignore the empirical evidence for extra-bodily awareness. You could discard all this evidence as unfounded, but is that the best explanation for the evidence we have? The "dying brain" theory doesn't explain how a person could see things that they wouldn't even be able to see if they were awake. Unless dying people have clairvoyance, but that is just as difficult to explain.

The death of the body doesn't mean the end of conscious life. That's what it comes down to.
 

haidut

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While I like that study, I think the much more relevant evidence is in the so-called "suspended animation" trials. These are already being tried on humans. Here is the original article from Wired back in 2006.
Suspended Animation

You can Google for more info on "suspended animation". The bottom line is this - the animals and humans this is being tried on are not just brain dead. They are fully dead (legally speaking), both brain and heart not working, nor other organs. The questions about survival of organism's consciousness were raised almost immediately after these experiments were first performed and the response was that while these organisms were in fact dead, their sense of self and capacity for consciousness are actually stored in whatever brain "configuration" was there before they were dead-ed. In other words - their consciousness was contained in the cellular networks and connections between neurons of the brain that was still there. However, a recent experiment seems to falsify that. For obvious ethical reasons it was still done on animals but it is a matter of time before it is replicated in humans as the tests on pigs and rats were unequivocal. What the follow up experiment did was perform brain surgery on these animals while they were in "suspended animation" and remove most of their brain tissue except the brain stem. Then these animals were revived and while they did have cognitive deficits many of them recovered and had behavior that indicated they were still the previous animal, the previous "self". Oh, and btw these animals were suspended for days at a time and even weeks. So, only two options remain. Either the seat of consciousness is the brain stem, which was left uncut (but still somewhat damaged from the prolonged suspended animation), or consciousness is a process that does not necessarily reside in the body itself. The evidence is moving in the direction of the latter. I think Ray has hinted before that he is in favor of something like the scientific version of Hinduism (for a lack of a better comparison, so don't quote me on that) where consciousness is a property of the very fabric of the Universe and it manifests in various levels of complexity depending on the complexity of the structure (brain) available to channel it through like a flow of electrons. Actually, it may very well be a flow of electrons. What happens to this flow of electrons when the structure is not there is not yet clear, but there is no evidence that the electrons somehow "die" as well. Quite to the contrary, recent experiments claim that electrons may be eternal. Maybe consciousness just reverts back to its primordial state and waits for the next structure capable of supporting it. Like the Hindus say the consciousness "sleeps in stone, dreams in animals, and awakens in men". But it is always there, as a property of reality itself. It does not die and does not get born either. Just changes shape and complexity like the flow of a river.
 

jaa

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I lean towards consciousness being the brains interpretation of the universe via senses and thoughts. I am open to the idea of a universal consciousness, but I don't think these people's experiences really count as much evidence. These are self reported experiences during a time when the brain may be getting flooded with DMT and who knows what other spatial and time dilating craziness is going on.

Whatever consciousness ends up being, it's probably a smart idea to sign up for cryonics if you would like to live longer and have the resources even if you don't think the odds of revival are particularly high.
 

Pointless

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I lean towards consciousness being the brains interpretation of the universe via senses and thoughts. I am open to the idea of a universal consciousness, but I don't think these people's experiences really count as much evidence. These are self reported experiences during a time when the brain may be getting flooded with DMT and who knows what other spatial and time dilating craziness is going on.

Ah, so the universe evolves to the point where it can turn around and know itself? This is how many philosophers define "spirit".

Whatever consciousness ends up being, it's probably a smart idea to sign up for cryonics if you would like to live longer and have the resources even if you don't think the odds of revival are particularly high.

Then the "soul" would be trapped in your body without any life or experiences. Sounds like hell to me. Better to die.
 

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