A coup in medical science?
British doctors claim to have found evidence of the independence of human consciousness from brain activity. In their opinion, consciousness continues to live when a person has died, and all processes in the brain have already stopped.
In a state where a person is between life and death, many have unusual visions and sensations. Patients report them after resuscitation. The memories of people who returned from the afterlife were carefully studied. For those who have gone through clinical death, there is a special term - "near-death experience."
More than one book has been written on a similar topic - "Life After Life" by R. Moody, "Life After Death" by A. Ford, "The Mystery of the Transmigration of Souls" by V. Erkov. Collected a huge number of facts. But a number of questions remained that the specialists could not answer.
British physicians from Southampton Central Clinic conducted research in this area. They examined more than 63 patients who were in a state of clinical death after myocardial infarction, and then returned to life.
56 patients do not remember anything - they lost consciousness and woke up in a hospital bed. Seven have only vague memories. Four people remembered well and described in detail everything they experienced during their clinical death. These four experienced happiness and peace. They all felt that they had freed themselves from their bodies and found themselves in another dimension, where time flows much faster, and all sensations intensify.
“Our patients experienced their amazing states at a time when the brain was no longer able to function and therefore was unable to recall any memories,” writes Dr. Sam Parnia, research director at Southampton Central Hospital. The doctor concludes that human consciousness works independently of the brain and can exist without it: "When we examine the brain, we clearly see: gray matter cells in their structure, in principle, do not differ from the rest."
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Two experiences
One American woman named Marilyn was brought to the hospital by ambulance with a diagnosis of myocardial infarction. She felt that the pain in her chest suddenly disappeared: “I kind of fell out of my own body and, without feeling heaviness, soared up to the ceiling,” she later recalled.
“I noticed that the lamps were covered with dust, and I thought,“What a mess in this hospital! Dust needs to be wiped off! I looked down and saw the doctors bending over the body stretched out on the table. Suddenly it dawned on me: it's me!
Then I noticed my children and other relatives who were in another room. They wept bitterly. I wanted to console them and tell them that I was fine, but they did not see or hear me. Suddenly it dawned on me: I can't leave small children! I have to take care of them. Marilyn is not dead.
Another example - a person is given the opportunity to look into hell. A person whose life path was unworthy is shown his mistakes and given a choice: either you return to life, or you “finally” die.
A man injured in a car accident talks about his journey to another world: “I was all alone in the endless space. I heard strange sounds, human sighs and groans, but people were not near, but rather far away, and I looked at them as an outside observer. They wrapped themselves in some kind of robes, and all had … their heads cut off! They suffered terribly. The unfortunate ones made signs to me with their hands so that I would approach them. Suddenly it struck me like a thunder: I too will have to stay here! Then I learned from somewhere that I could choose to stay here or return."
So, consciousness continues to record events when the human brain is unable to function.
Visions occur when the brain stops working
Dutch scientists led by Pim van Lommel came to similar results. They published in the renowned medical journal LANZET the results of 10 years of research into the study of brain function. Using their own method of working with patients who were in a state of clinical death, scientists questioned one of the basic postulates of physiology: consciousness is an integral function of the brain. The researchers say that when the brain has ceased to function, consciousness continues to be active.
But that's not all. American psychiatrists are also reporting new research results on this problem.
Russian specialists in the field of neurology, in particular, the candidate of medical sciences, leading researcher at the Research Institute of General Intensive Care of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Galina Alekseeva, writes: “The state of clinical death sometimes has an unusual effect on a person, causes hidden reserves. One of our patients, a 17-year-old girl after clinical death, felt like a completely new person for 2-3 weeks. It was a state of extraordinary enlightenment and spirituality. She had a gift of acute foreboding of events, she could see through and through, including people, she could even identify a sick human organ. Then this state passed."
Purity of experiment
But back to the research of Dutch doctors. Van Lommel and his associates are convinced that consciousness can exist independently. They base their claim on their experiments. When investigating this problem, the maximum purity of the experiment was observed. In order to exclude cases of false memories, religious exaltation and the like, scientists have carefully studied all the factors that can affect the messages of patients.
All observed were absolutely healthy mentally. Among them were people of different ages - from 26 to 92 years old, men and women, with varying degrees of education and religiosity, who had heard about near-death experiences or not, who had experienced clinical death once or several times. Van Lommel's conclusions are unconditional: near-death visions occur precisely at the moment the brain stops working. They cannot be explained by physiological reasons - oxygen starvation of brain cells, etc. The visual impressions of blind patients practically do not differ from the impressions of the sighted.
Clinical death, as you know, occurs as a result of cardiac arrest, accompanied by respiratory arrest and hypoxia (oxygen starvation) of the brain. Ten seconds after the heart stops, the brain shuts down - the electroencephalogram turns into a perfectly straight line
Van Lommel set himself a specific task - to find out with maximum certainty whether the state of near-death experience was really experienced by the patient during clinical death, with an absolutely flat line of the electroencephalogram, and not at the moment when the brain was already "turned on". And he claims that he succeeded. This means that consciousness exists independently of the work of the brain.
“Not every patient who has experienced clinical death can remember something - about every fifth. Our patients tell about the same thing: light, tunnel, rainbow visions. Everyone notes that it is physically very difficult to "return": the body is as if filled with lead. I think, says Galina Alekseeva, that these visions and sensations are the result of a special mental state that can be provoked not only by clinical death. Psychiatrists, in particular, are well aware of such cases - surprisingly realistic hallucinations caused by profound changes in the psyche or severe disturbances in the brain after suffering hypoxia."
However, Van Lommel insists that if the near-death condition were caused by physiological changes in the brain or cell dying as a result of progressive hypoxia, or a fear reaction to impending death, or a consequence of drug exposure, then cases of visions of the afterlife should visit every patient who has experienced resuscitation. But the statistics obtained by his team over 10 years of research are different. Of 344 patients who underwent 509 resuscitation, only 62 people (18%) reported some kind of memories.
And yet there is a soul, and it is immortal
The studies of Pim van Lommel, as recognized by many scientists from around the world, allowed the Dutch scientist to come closer than others to the proof of the "immortality of the soul."
However, back in the last century, Archbishop Luka of Simferopol, an outstanding surgeon in the world, Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky, proved the existence of the soul, that is, consciousness, solely on the basis of his own richest surgical practice. And he outlined his conclusions in the work "Spirit, Soul and Body".
“Man is a huge and little-studied space, his brain contains and stores not only the modern information accumulated during his life, but also the experience of literally all past generations, our distant ancestors. When we study a person, we will know everything about the world,”concludes Galina Alekseeva.
Author: Irina Rudskaya