The USA, England and Canada have embarked on the world's largest experiment to study the mystical phenomena accompanying the state of clinical death. It will last for three years.
Many of those who have experienced clinical death claim that when their body was in an unconscious state, they left it and, hanging from above, saw themselves and what was happening around them, describing it in detail.
It is known that clinical death occurs as a result of cardiac arrest, accompanied by respiratory arrest and brain hypoxia (oxygen starvation).
10 seconds after the cardiac arrest, the work of the brain also stops, which is recorded by the recorders of encephalographs, drawing a straight line. In young people it can last up to 10 minutes, in the elderly - up to 5, after which death occurs, and during the "return" post, the person talks about what he saw. And yet his narrative is largely the same as the versions of other people.
It turns out that consciousness at this time worked independently of the brain. In this regard, the Dutch cardiologist Nim van Lommel states: "When the brain stops functioning, consciousness continues to exist." That is, the brain is not "thinking matter" ?!
Beyond
Scientists from the research team of Pim Van Lommel in 10 hospitals interviewed 344 patients who underwent 509 resuscitation, immediately after coming out of a coma. Of these, only 62 people (18%) told about what they saw and experienced, reporting that they left the body and saw what was happening around. They all returned to their bodies in the same way: through a funnel that sucked the separated soul into a lifeless corpse. The remaining 82% did not remember anything.
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The memories of those who have been "beyond the border" have been repeatedly studied; they are termed NDE -near-death experience (near-death experience). There are several theories about the origin of NDE. Each is based on psychophysiological reasons: the death of brain cells as a result of oxygen starvation, the reaction of fear to the approach of death, the consequence of drug exposure - however, in this case, visions should visit every resuscitated person.
An analysis of the statistical data obtained by Lommel's group over the past 10 years completely destroys the theory that brain hypoxia is the cause of NDE, since in this case 100% of respondents would talk about visions.
“So,” says the cardiologist, “it's not the oxygen deficiency that causes the images of the tunnel and shining light. This is our most important conclusion."
The main conclusions of scientists regarding NDE-visions:
- they occur when the brain stops working;
- they cannot be explained by physiological reasons;
- they depend on age and gender (women experience deeper feelings than men);
- those who have experienced the most profound experience of death within 30 days after resuscitation die;
- the visual impressions of the blind do not differ from the impressions of the sighted.
The classification of memories helped to find out their combinations and variations: 56% experienced positive emotions, 50% were aware of the fact of their own death, 32% had met the dead earlier, 31% moved through the tunnel, 29% watched the starry sky, 24% saw themselves from the sidelines, 23 % observed a blinding light, 13% saw a flicker of their entire past life, 8% saw the border of the worlds of the living and the dead. Nobody reported unpleasant or frightening experiences. The ratio of 18 to 82 Lommel comments only tentatively: “In a state of coma, consciousness leaves the body. Perhaps, in 18% it could go away completely, and in 82% it did not have time and blocked visions."
Case from practice
The patient was brought to the clinic in a coma. Artificial respiration, cardiac massage and defibrillation did not give results - the brain died: the electroencephalogram stretched out in a line. Then the resuscitators decided to use intubation - to insert a special tube into the larynx through the mouth to eliminate the breathing disorder. The patient had a denture in his mouth. To keep it out of the way, the nurse took it out and put it in a drawer of a mobile table.
After an hour and a half of compulsory ventilation, the patient's heart rate and pressure returned to normal.
A week later, when the same nurse was delivering medicine to the wards, the man saw her and exclaimed: “You know where my prosthesis is! You took my teeth out and put them in a drawer of a table on wheels! Please give them back to me! " It turned out that at the time of death this man saw himself, the doctors, the ward. He described the behavior of everyone in detail and admitted: “I was very afraid that doctors would stop resuscitation. I was desperate to let them know I was alive!"
This example only proves the assertion that a person's consciousness lives even when the person himself can already be considered dead.
Three-year experiment
Simultaneously with the Dutch, British researchers from a clinic in Southampton made similar conclusions. Christopher French of the London Center for the Study of Abnormal Psychic Phenomena says: "It may happen that consciousness is not only a product of higher nervous activity, but something else." Several years ago, Welsh doctors observed 39 patients who survived clinical death and made their own conclusions.
The main difficulty in examining posthumous memories is that neither patients nor doctors can trace exactly when the experience occurs.
Today scientists no longer doubt that the NDE phenomenon really exists at the level of sensations. The Dutch scientist van Lommel came closest to proving the immortality of the soul. He calls for a serious and comprehensive discussion of the problem, continued research and a radical revision of traditional views on the possibility of life after death. Therefore, it was decided to start the experiment. The project is led by a scientist from Cornell Medical Center - Sam Guys.
The goal of the research is to scientifically test the evidence of near-death survivors to answer the question of whether the soul actually exists. With a positive result, another question about the existence of an afterlife will be resolved by itself. According to Guys, the brain, if it is deprived of oxygen, will not be able to remember anything, but if this happens in reality, then the consciousness or soul can exist outside the brain.
Research will be put on a strictly scientific basis. 25 hospitals in England, USA and Canada will take part in them. With the assistance of resuscitators, scientists from several universities are examining 1,500 patients who have experienced clinical death, and will testify if any of them left the body. For this, a special technique was developed, which required the proper re-equipment of the experimental chambers.
Meanwhile, back in 1949, Archbishop Luke of Simferopol - in the world the outstanding Russian surgeon Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky (1877-27-04 - 1961-11-06) - in his famous work "Spirit, Soul and Body" has already proved the existence of the soul solely on the basis of his own rich surgical practice.
System failure
Out of the body is the most phenomenal and mystically colored phenomenon that accompanies a person on his journey to the next world and back. However, there is a hypothesis, Olaf Blanke, a doctor from a university hospital in Geneva, described an experiment with a 43-year-old patient with epilepsy. In order to study the disease, the doctor implanted electrodes into the woman's brain that stimulate the right temporal lobe. This accidentally led to the excitation of the angular gyrus located there, associated with the organs of vision, touch and balance. As a result, the patient left the body and saw herself from the side.
On this basis, Blanke suggested that the dying brain, but still retaining neural connections with the body, also somehow excites this gyrus, sending information about the position of the body in space to the visual cortex. She perceives it, mixing with the information received before the loss of consciousness, and projects it onto the retina. And a person deprived of normal signals and sensations at the same time seems as if he sees himself from the outside.
What is the soul
According to the Bible, animals also have a soul, however, unlike a human, it is not immortal. It follows from Kabbalah that initially each soul was a part of the essence of the Creator. According to Blavatsky, the soul - psyche, or nefesh - is the life principle, or the breath of life.
Aristotle called it the first entelechy of a viable body - the force that turns opportunity into reality (in other words, to be alive, a person needs a soul), believing that only a rational soul is immortal and can be separated from the body.
E. Zhdanovskaya
“Interesting newspaper. Magic and mysticism №18 2013
