Recent experiments by scientists may undermine faith in the afterlife.
Go to the server of the Lord God
Polls currently being conducted in Russia show that the proportion of those who believe in the existence of the soul and life after death is surprisingly increasing. In 2005, there were 11 percent of them, in 2008 - already 34, and in 2011 - 54 percent. We are just one percent behind God-fearing Americans, 55 percent of whom believe the afterlife is not made up.
Perhaps the increase is due to the fact that in our age of high information technologies, faith acquires an almost scientific basis. People are beginning to compare themselves to computers - information carriers. Soul - with this information itself. Imagine that she does not disappear after physical death. And in some way unknown to modern scientists, it is formatted and sent to the "universal server", which the backward ancestors dubbed the afterlife.
In addition, as you know, hundreds of souls, leaving mortal bodies, fly to the next world every day. And they return, stomping on its doorstep. At least, the travelers themselves from among the unconscious and nearly dead do not doubt this. The Internet is full of their countless stories about the so-called near-death experience (NDE - in English abbreviation).
Interest in the problem is also fueled by the many times republished book “Life After Life” by the famous psychiatrist Raymond Moody. He was the first to notice that the stories of "people from the afterlife" are for some reason surprisingly similar:
"Dying, a person … feels that he is rapidly rushing through a long dark tunnel …"
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People cannot lie so persistently and massively, scientists believe. And they admit: NDE really exists. Medical fact.
But are the visions connected with the afterlife? Recent experiments refute this.
They breathe carbon dioxide in paradise
“It is a mistake to think that amazing stories about travel to the afterlife appeared only in the 20th century thanks to the success of resuscitation,” says Kevin Nelson, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, USA). - Written NDE certificates are over 2 thousand years old. This means that there must be some kind of biological mechanism due to which people have faced the same phenomena for centuries.
Just the other day, the German scientist Alexander Wutzler offered his explanation. His research team found in the brains of dying people increased doses of serotonin, one of the main neurotransmitters that controls many functions in the body and affects the perception of pain, creates a feeling of euphoria. Serotonin is also called the hormone of happiness.
It was this hormone that Wutzler blamed for the visions before his death. True, he experimented with rats. And it was in these dying people that he discovered a threefold increase in serotonin levels. But the scientist is confident that he will find a similar phenomenon in the brains of dying people.
“Don't tell anyone that rats have near-death visions,” warns colleague Jacob Howie at Monash University in Australia.
For the first time, the physiological causes of NDE were discussed last year. One of them came across Zalika Klemenc-Ketich from the University of Maribor in Slovenia.
Zalika monitored the condition of patients with acute heart failure. 52 of them died but were resurrected. While the patients got to the other world, stayed there and came back, the researcher took their blood for tests.
Of the resurrected 11 people reported on the NDE - the tunnel, light, angels and other miracles. This is just under 20 percent. Which corresponds to the world statistics.
Then Zalika looked at how the blood of those who saw and did not see the afterlife fundamentally differs. It turned out to be only one: the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide. For NDE survivors, it rose sharply. It turned out: if the near-death visions are hallucinations, then their carbonated blood causes. Just…
By the way, sensations similar to NDE, up to visions, are sometimes visited by both high-altitude climbers and divers who dive to great depths without scuba gear. They also have problems with carbon dioxide in their blood.
Last year, colleagues recognized Zaliki's research as very convincing. But it was believed that the cause of the NDE she discovered might not be the only one. And so it turned out: Wutzler found another one.
The mystics continue to insist: physiology is only a consequence, a kind of side effects. And the root cause is still in the soul …
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY