From the first trip to the underworld to the last
Is there any other material world besides the material world visible to all of us? The one in which souls dwell? Common sense dictates that there is no way to answer this question.
However, scientists, surprisingly, have a different opinion. They think there is a way to figure it out. And it is provided by people who have experienced clinical death. That is, resurrected.
Especially from among those who believe that they have been in the next world, and when they return, they remember what they saw. Near-death experience is the name of this phenomenon.
In 2000, doctors – Dutch cardiologist Pim Van Lommel and his British colleague Christopher French from the London Center for the Study of Abnormal Psychic Phenomena – undertook the first large-scale and serious study of this very NDE with the participation of 344 cores who went on otherworldly tours from 10 hospitals. The results shocked the public.
Especially atheists. Doctors admitted that they failed to find convincing evidence that there is no afterlife. And according to their data, temporarily dead patients did “approach his gates.”
In 2008, the restless Sam Parnia followed in the footsteps of the Dutchman, who first worked at the University of Southampton and now works at the University of New York (State University of New York).
With him, he carried about 40 other colleagues who undertook to check one of the most famous phenomena that accompany NDE.
Namely, out of the body. After all, about a quarter of the revived dead assure: they saw themselves from the side when they were unconscious. As if something left the body and looked at him from the height of the ceiling.
Lingered in that world
It was assumed that 25 hospitals in England, the USA and Canada would take part in the study. With the assistance of resuscitators, scientists examine 1,500 patients who have experienced clinical death.
And they will record whether one of them actually left the body. To do this, shelves will be installed in the wards – right under the ceiling.
And they will put special test pictures on them – so that they are not visible from the beds. The resurrected will be asked what they saw. If people soar, as expected, under the ceiling, they will answer.
According to the plan, the research should have ended in 2011. But they dragged on. Sam Parnia and colleagues summed up some results only in October 2014, publishing the results in the journal Resuscitation.
As a result, there were more examined – 2060 patients, and fewer hospitals: 15 in the UK, USA and Austria.
All examined patients had cardiac arrest and clinical death. Survived after it 330 people. Some 140 people reported NDE, just under half. And 26 patients said they went out of the body.
Parnia does not say if anyone saw the very notes placed under the ceiling. 13 percent of patients described the experience of separation from the body.
Personally, in order to believe in the existence of both the soul and the other world, one correct answer would be enough for me. And it is, but received differently.
Scientists have documented the testimony of a 57-year-old social worker from the UK, who was in a state of clinical death for three minutes.
He accurately described what was happening at that time around, including the actions of the doctors involved in resuscitation, and the sounds of the equipment. It periodically gave signals.
However, scientists are cautious with scientific conclusions. In the report, they emphasize that so far they can only talk about the fact that consciousness persists for at least three minutes after death.
Already something. Quite a serious allusion to the existence of the other world. But, of course, it cannot be called convincing.
Is a longer “life after death” possible? No answer.
Just one twist
The out-of-body phenomenon is the last stronghold of mysticism. All other phenomena accompanying the “journey” to the next world and back are explained to one degree or another.
It seems that they have physiological reasons associated with the quirks of the brain’s work at the moments of its on-off: both the tunnel through which the dying are rushing, and bright light, and life scrolled in a split second, and meetings with ancestors, and peace.
There is only one hypothesis about the opportunity to look at oneself from the outside. But she doesn’t look very convincing.