Scientists Reveal How It Feels To Be Dead – And It’s Pretty Scary

What does it feel like to die? It seems that scientists can finally give an answer to this question!

The biggest ever study dedicated to near-death experiences found some truly disturbing results from 2,000 people whose hearts have stopped. When seeing a light and a tunnel may be the popular perception of death, there are many other very different strange experiences.

-Only 9% had any sort of near death experience;
-Just 2% had visual ‘out of body’ experiences;
-Nearly half of patients – 46% – remembered some of their experiences;

Dream-like or hallucinatory scenarios that the patients expereinced were categorised into eight major themes:

-Fear
-Seeing animals or plants
-Bright light
-Violence and persecution
-Deja-vu
-Seeing family
-Recalling events post-cardiac arrest
-Feeling of peace or pleasantness

What concerns consciousness – it doesn’t stop 20 to 30 seconds after the heart does – instead, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat, thet means patients can recall real events when doctors have assumed they are dead. Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and director of resuscitation research says,

“While it is definitely clear that people do have experience at the time that they’re dead , how ndividuals actually choose to interpret those experiences depends entirely on their background and pre-existing beliefs. Someone from India might return from the dead and say they saw Krishna, whereas someone from the Midwest of the US could experience the same thing but claim to have seen God.

All of these things – what’s the soul, what is heaven and hell – I have no idea what they mean, and there’s probably thousands and thousands of interpretations based on where you’re born and what your background is. It’s important to move this out of the realm of religious teaching and into objectivity. Anyone with a relatively objective mind will agree that this is something that should be investigated further.We have the means and the technology. Now it’s time to do it.”

So far, the team of researchers has uncovered no predictor for who is most likely to remember something from their death, and explanations are lacking for why some people experience terrifying scenarios while others report euphoric ones. Parnia also points out that it’s very likely that more people have near-death experiences than the study numbers reflect.

Parnia and his colleagues are already planning follow-up studies to try to address some of these questions. They also hope their work will help broaden the traditionally diametric conversation about death, breaking it free from the confines of either a religious or sceptical stance. Instead, they think, death should be treated as a scientific subject just like any other.

Posted by Editor on March 13, 2015. Filed under LIFE & STYLE, STYLE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.