Life After Death
We've had to talk about death a lot in the past few years, whether as referring to the number of casualties in a war or as the number of victims of a virus. Although we primarily discuss it within the context of our society, we understandably still keep death at arm's length. This is a coping mechanism to keep us going. If we dwell on the thoughts of our mortality too much, it can consume us and prevent us from going about our daily lives.
What is the point of life if it all just simply ends? When we sit with the prospect of our own end, it often fills us with anxiety. It overwhelms us with questions about the prospect of finality. What happens when your brain shuts down? Will it be a heavenly release, or will it feel more like torture? Is it nothingness, and if it is, what does that even feel like? We don't have any experience of this potential nothing to draw on.
Most of us wish deep down that we could just go on. We hope that there's some kind of experience after death. We want our consciousness to continue in the same way. We don't want to be separated from loved ones for eternity. But is there any connection between our intense desire to go on and some spiritual truth? Is there life after death?
In recent decades, how we think about consciousness and dying from a scientific perspective has changed significantly. New research on what happens when you die has challenged many assumptions about our notion of death. When your life ends, your heart stops beating, and your lungs stop working. Your brain is no longer receiving oxygen, and normal brain activity stops. You are technically dead. But people have survived past this point.
According to several studies, one in ten people claim to have had a conscious experience while they were non-responsive. We call them near-death experiences because we believe that what is truly dead will remain dead. In reality, at least according to all our current definitions of the concept, it would be more accurate to describe these as back-from-death experiences. Semantics aside, these are remarkably similar among those who recall them after resuscitation.
They often involve visions of traveling through a tunnel. Some claim to have had an out-of-body experience or see their whole life flash before their eyes. They meet spirits or familiar persons that speak with them. Many report a strong sense of peacefulness and ease, which should bring comfort to those of us who are particularly anxious about death. But what exactly is going on in that dying brain? If a person flatlined, they shouldn't be aware of anything at all.
Is it possible they are experiencing consciousness without a functioning brain? If you struggle with your own mortality to the point where it's getting in the way of your living, then I highly recommend you consider seeing a therapist. Therapy can help you make peace with your mortality and help to ease the anxiety that comes with thinking about death. If you don't know where to start, you should check out BetterHelp, the sponsor of today's video.
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Back to our story: Chimo Boren, a professor of neurology at Michigan State University, studied the record of electrical activity in the brains of women who were just taken off life support. What she discovered is changing how we all think about the dead. Her findings suggest that death shouldn't be considered a point in time but rather a process. The organs don't immediately fail. The heart can be restarted, and full brain function can return.
The dying process is sometimes reversible. Hours after someone has been pronounced clinically dead, they can, in rare circumstances, be resuscitated. These instances are not a divine miracle; just a result of death being a much slower process than we think. In one infamous 2008 case, 59-year-old Belma Thomas was clinically dead for 17 hours and 10 minutes after being taken off a ventilator, with her body being prepped for organ removal for transplantation. She woke up, alert, and immediately asked for her son.
The claim up until recently has been that there's no brain activity between cardiac arrest and resuscitation, or the period after someone flatlines. For near-death experiences to take place, they have to happen in this period. There has to be a conscious experience. When Boren looked at the dying brain, she saw that it was surging with high-frequency electrical signals known as gamma waves. The areas in the brain associated with consciousness were incredibly lively.
When oxygen was cut off, the brain waves synchronized in a way usually associated with heightened attention and memory. Areas of the brain that are active when more conscious and awake were communicating with areas connected to memory. From one hypothesis, it is suggested that the system that filters different brain functions goes offline when a person is dying, giving them access to their entire consciousness all at once. This would explain why people often see their lives flash before their eyes and remember things that happened when they had no active memory.
Do you remember everything from your toddler years? That's what we're talking about here. So what does this say about the brain and consciousness? Does this new insight suggest that the physical brain isn't necessary for a conscious experience, or that the brain is just very resilient when it comes to oxygen deprivation? It could just be the body's attempt to keep itself going for as long as possible in case the heart and lungs resume functioning again.
There's a lot more to be discovered about consciousness in the dying brain as the scientific horizons of its functionality continue to evolve. For now, there's one thing we should start doing differently for those who are pronounced dead. It's something you might be compelled to do anyway in a state of grief. When we sit with the dead, we should speak to them. We know that there's brain activity after cardiac rest and that the mind potentially has some awareness of the space around it.
Patients who have been resuscitated sometimes describe out-of-body experiences and are able to detail things around them that they wouldn't have had access to while in a conscious state. They hear what those around them have been saying. In one instance, a woman described a shoe placed on a nearby window ledge that she wouldn't have been able to see from her hospital room. If we speak to the dead, they may be able to hear us.
I think there's something comforting about the idea of sending a last message to your loved one, even if they're unable to respond in kind. It's not always possible to be in the room when someone important to us dies. You could consider it an opportunity to say something important you never got a chance to tell them. But what do you say exactly? Do we tell them we love them? Do we share memories? Do we show strength or weakness? Should we be philosophical or spiritual?
You may have heard of Bardo Thodol, otherwise known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It's a popular text about the experience of dying from a Buddhist perspective, specifically Tibetan Buddhism. It's a book like no other for one obvious reason: it's intended to be read to those who have passed on. It's also meant to be read in advance to prepare oneself for death.
The myth surrounding the text is that it was written in the 8th century by a Buddhist mystic named Ham Sumova. He didn't write anything down himself; he dictated the book to a princess Yi So, who is believed to be the first Tibetan to achieve enlightenment. As the story goes, Hu Sova didn't believe that the book was right for his time, so he hid the text in a cave in Tibet. He prophesized that it would be discovered 500 years later, and in 1341, a boy named Karma Linka found it by following instructions from a dream he had the night before.
It was a dark time in history as the Black Death swept across Asia and Europe, making the text highly relevant. The Tibetan Book of the Dead promises that death isn't just the end of consciousness, but an opportunity. During the period after death, reciting the text is intended to give the deceased a more favorable rebirth. This isn't a life filled with riches, but one that's more conducive to ending the cycle of rebirth and achieving Nirvana.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the cycle of birth, suffering, death, and then rebirth is endless unless we do something about it. We need to become Buddha-like to liberate ourselves. This involves ending the primary sources of suffering within us, those being craving and clinging. Through living ethically and training the mind like the Buddha, we can put an end to craving, clinging, and ultimately our suffering. We become like the Buddha in the end cycle of rebirth. And if we don't nail Buddhahood in this life, there's always the next one.
About 15 years ago, 4-year-old Ryan Hammond would spend hours directing imaginary movies in his room. He was a creative and imaginative boy. Around the same period in time, Ryan would get night terrors. He'd wake up clutching his chest, claiming that his heart burst in a dream that took place in, of all places, Hollywood. Shortly after some of these night terrors, Ryan claimed something extraordinary. He told his mother that he used to be someone else. He had a white house with a pool in Hollywood.
Ryan insisted that he had three sons but was very distressed when he couldn't remember their names. His mother grabbed some books about Hollywood from the library, filled with pictures from film productions, and flipping through the pages, the boy recognized a man immediately, referring to him as George. He was right about the name. The man Ryan pointed to was an actor named George Raft, a forgotten movie star from the 1930s. Ryan also pointed to another man near George, and with excitement, Ryan insisted that he had found himself.
With the help of University of Virginia psychologist Jim Tucker, the family identified the man in the photo as Martin Martin. They were able to confirm that he did have three sons as well as a daughter. The daughter agreed to meet Tucker and Ryan, where they were able to confirm numerous other details about his life, such as his career dancing in New York and his work as a Hollywood agent. There are thousands of documented stories of kids roughly between the ages of 2 and 5 claiming to remember their past lives.
On numerous occasions, children and their parents have been able to confirm the identity of their supposed past life and many details of their memories. Pieces are stronger than others. This phenomenon has been studied mostly by a small group of psychologists led by Tucker's 20 years of experience in 25,200 cases. While they have the evidence that this hints towards the validity of the claims, they can't exactly prove reincarnation either.
Tucker made a rough hypothesis on how reincarnation could be explained using quantum physics. Workers suggest that the material world may be derived from consciousness. This would suggest that consciousness doesn't require a world to exist or a living brain; it could continue after death onto the brain of another mind. The problem with this theory is that the observer effect doesn't require consciousness to alter the observation, making the leap to suggest that the world could be dependent on consciousness would need more evidence.
It's only fair to treat the notion of past lives with skepticism. It seems unlikely that these are elaborate hoaxes, as the adults involved don't really get anything out of it by coming forward. Most of the families are also reluctant to seek help to begin with and wish to remain anonymous. It's impossible to say how far wishful thinking can drive things such as these. The truth is we're drawn to the idea of consciousness continuing because we fear its permanent end. It's just so hard for us to grasp a life without a perspective. Non-existence makes little sense to an existing being.
As exciting as the idea of rebirth is, it still doesn't give relief to the heaviest burden of death: separation. Even if there is some truth to the stories of past lives, the burden of death is still heavy. We ultimately have to say goodbye. Our clinging to others inevitably leads to pain. When the children who remember past lives get older, they tend to move on from these memories. They bring them up less and less, and eventually they forget them. When Ryan met the daughter of Martin Martin, he was struck with how her energy had changed. He became quite shy around her.
After their meeting, Ryan was less interested in his past life. The Tibetan Book of the Dead isn't intended to excite us with the prospect of more life, but the possibility of escaping it. Regardless of what perspective you view, life and death is an opportunity. Think about the life you want to flash before your eyes in your final moments and live that life today.
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