Although no one knows what awaits us after life, the numerous stories of survivors of clinical death create a stable view on this matter. We are already mentally prepared for a long tunnel and an extraordinary radiance at its end. The stories of those who have returned from the other world sound encouraging, although, of course, they describe only the first stage - “foster peace” and the general feeling of a pleasant bright place. Or is it an idea of him? The idea that lives in us already in this world?
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Polish artist Alicia Zentek, who experienced clinical death during pregnancy, describes in her memoirs: “I could see, hear and feel the world around me, but people from this world did not see, hear or feel me! Then a shining white ray appeared. He descended to me without blinding or burning. I realized that the ray is calling to itself, promises release from isolation. Without hesitation, she went to meet him. I moved along the beam, as if to the top of an invisible mountain."
For believers, such stories serve as proof of the existence of God and the other world. For psychologists and culturologists, it is evidence of how deeply religious and mythological archetypes are rooted in our psyche. After all, if we assume that the narrator, who has returned to life, describes a meeting with God, then we must admit that everyone describes God and his abode according to the ideas of his culture.
Muslims talk about illuminated doors decorated with ornaments, like in a mosque, Indians - about meeting the god of death Yama. Since all kinds of tattoos have long been widespread in India, those who have returned "from the other world" often claim that after a temporary death new signs appeared on their bodies. Children, for whom the ideas of the supreme being are still fabulous or mixed with the image of an authoritative strict adult, talk about a meeting with a wizard, teacher or doctor.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENS AFTER A HEART STOP?
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It is important for neuropsychologists to understand what processes occur in the human brain after cardiac arrest. For about ten minutes after the onset of clinical death, the brain is still alive, but is in a state of severe functional disorder caused by oxygen starvation due to cardiac arrest.
Oxygen starvation can lead to hallucinations and even euphoric feelings. Hallucinations can also explain the feeling that a person leaves his body and hovers over it. The same feeling occurs in women during childbirth: almost every tenth at some point feels the exit from the body and begins to see itself as if "from under the ceiling." In this sense, there is nothing surprising in the flights that the human consciousness or its soul makes during clinical death - they have a completely scientific explanation.
The temporo-parietal node of the brain is responsible for light effects during clinical death.
Recent experiments by the Belgian neurologist Stephen Laureis show that the temporo-parietal node of the brain is responsible for the light effects during clinical death. Usually he is busy processing visual and tactile signals and determines the location of the body in space. When, in extreme situations, this node does not have time to process the received information, it can send wrong signals to the brain.
During the experiment, Laureis found out that the temporo-parietal node remains active even during coma and at the time of cardiac arrest. But why this is happening, the scientist could not explain.
Numerous evidences of the "omniscience" of the dying remain inexplicable - or rather, their awareness of some extraneous circumstances that in no way could be accessible to their sight.
Someone, lying on the operating table, "flies" home and sees how their daughter broke a cup, someone looks out of the window of the ward and notices a lost shoe, which later, thanks to a hint from someone who has returned from the other world, can be found.
Science cannot travel with a dying person on a journey beyond life
Of course, these stories cannot be tested experimentally. Science cannot go with a dying person on a journey beyond life. The most that she is capable of is trying to fix what happens to him in the first minutes of dying, when the brain is still able to send signals.
For example, Dr. Lakmeer Chawla of George Washington University was able to use an electroencephalogram to identify high-frequency waves in dying people, arriving at the very moment when blood pressure can no longer be measured. Chakla suggested that these waves may be a neurological correlate of what a person sees during clinical death.
Science, studying the phenomena accompanying clinical death, does not try to argue with religion. She simply studies and records what she is able to learn today. However, regardless of whether we believe in the other world or not, we can expect that something interesting awaits us after death. At least in the first minutes.