A black tunnel, at the end of which you can see the light, the feeling that you are flying along this "pipe", and something good and very important awaits ahead - this is how many of those who survived describe their visions during clinical death. What happens to the human brain at this time? Is it true that the soul of a dying person leaves the body? The famous neurophysiologist Natalia Bekhtereva studied the brain for more than half a century and watched dozens of returns "from there", working in intensive care.
Weigh the soul
Natalya Petrovna, where is the place of the soul - in the brain, spinal cord, in the heart, in the stomach?
- It will all be fortune telling on the coffee grounds, whoever answers you. You can say - "in the whole body" or "outside the body, somewhere nearby." I think this substance needs no space. If it is, then in the whole body. Something that permeates the entire body, which is not interfered with by walls, doors or ceilings. The soul, for lack of better formulations, is called, for example, that which seems to leave the body when a person dies.
Consciousness and soul - synonyms?
- For me - no. There are many formulations about consciousness, one worse than the other. The following is also suitable: "Awareness of oneself in the world around" When a person comes to his senses after a fainting spell, the first thing he begins to understand is that there is something nearby besides himself. Although in an unconscious state, the brain also perceives information. Sometimes the sick, waking up, talk about what they could not see. And the soul … what is the soul, I do not know. I tell you how it is. They even tried to weigh the soul. Some very small grams are obtained. I don't really believe it. During dying, a thousand processes occur in the human body. Maybe it's just losing weight? It is impossible to prove that it was “the soul that flew away”.
Can you tell exactly where our consciousness is? In the brain?
- Consciousness is a brain phenomenon, although it is very dependent on the state of the body. You can deprive a person of consciousness by pinching his cervical artery with two fingers, change the blood flow, but this is very dangerous. This is the result of activity, I would even say - the life of the brain. That's more accurate. When you wake up, the second you wake up. The whole organism "revives" at once. As if all the lights are on at the same time.
Sleep after death
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What happens to the brain and consciousness in moments of clinical death? Can you describe the picture?
- It seems to me that the brain dies not when oxygen does not enter the vessels for six minutes, but at the moment when it finally begins to flow. All products of not very perfect metabolism "pile" on the brain and finish it off. For some time I worked in the intensive care unit of the Military Medical Academy and watched how this happens. The most terrible period is when doctors take a person out of a critical state and return to life.
Some cases of visions and "returns" after clinical death seem convincing to me. They are so beautiful! Doctor Andrei Gnezdilov told me about one thing - he later worked in a hospice. Once during an operation, he watched a patient who had experienced clinical death, and then, waking up, told an unusual dream. Gnezdilov was able to confirm this dream. Indeed, the situation described by the woman took place at a great distance from the operating room, and all the details coincided.
But this is not always the case. When the first boom in the study of the phenomenon of "life after death" began, at one of the meetings, the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences Blokhin asked Academician Arutyunov, who twice experienced clinical death, what he saw after all. Arutyunov replied: "Just a black pit." What is it? He saw everything, but forgot? Or was there really nothing? What is a dying brain phenomenon? This is only suitable for clinical death. As for the biological one, nobody really returned from there. Although some clergy, in particular Seraphim Rose, have testimonies about such returns.
If you are not an atheist and believe in the existence of the soul, then you yourself do not feel fear of death …
- They say that the fear of waiting for death is many times more terrible than it itself. Jack London has a story about a man who wanted to steal a dog sled. The dogs bit him. The man bled out and died. And before that he said: "People slandered death." It is not death that is terrible, but dying.
Singer Sergei Zakharov said that at the time of his own clinical death he saw and heard everything that was happening around, as if from the outside: the actions and negotiations of the resuscitation team, how they brought a defibrillator and even batteries from the TV control panel in the dust behind the cabinet, which he had lost the day before. After that, Zakharov ceased to be afraid to die
- It's hard for me to say what exactly he experienced. Maybe this is also the result of a dying brain. Why do we sometimes see our surroundings as if from the outside? It is possible that at extreme moments in the brain, not only ordinary vision mechanisms are activated, but also mechanisms of a holographic nature. For example, during childbirth: according to our research, several percent of women in childbirth also have a state, as if the "soul" goes out. Women giving birth feel themselves outside the body, observing what is happening from the side. And at this time they do not feel pain. I don't know what it is - a brief clinical death or a brain-related phenomenon. More like the latter.
