I feel like it’s safe to say everyone on planet Earth has given at least some thought to what happens after we die. There’s a reason it’s a massive fear for so many people.
Death is the one thing we don’t know about in a world where information about literally anything is available in seconds.
RELATED STORIES
Much of what we believe happens after death is based on our cultural or religious beliefs.
Some people believe in a non-religious afterlife, some people believe in heaven and hell, and some people believe that our death is the end of the road, period.
Now I’m not sure where the ghost hunters of the world fall in these categories, but let’s just say they’re strong believers in an afterlife of some sort.
Thankfully, we have people like Dr. Sam Parnia who are doing the hard work for us and trying to figure out what happens when we die.
Dr. Parnia, an associate professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre, has been studying patients who have been resuscitated after their heart stops beating for nearly THIRTY YEARS!
I know, right? Things are about to get intense.
“Many millions of people all over the world have gone through this early phase of death and been brought back to life again,” he told Times Radio, as per The Daily Mail.
“We’ve studied this in many thousands of people using many different scientific methods.”
“Incredibly, [patients] consistently report that even though from the outside perspective there looks like there is no consciousness and they’re supposed to be dead, internally they go through a new experience,” he explained.
“They feel that their own consciousness, their selfhood, becomes suddenly vast and it becomes more lucid and more sharp.”
“They are able to gather information about what’s happening to them as doctors and nurses are trying to revive them,” Dr. Parnia continued.
“They gather this information almost in 360 degrees and they come to recognize that ‘it looks like I’m dead.'”
So basically, it seems like we’re watching our own life flash before our eyes like a MOVIE.
“What’s really remarkable is that in this state, they then start to relive every single moment of their lives, every interaction they’ve had with others — not only from their own perspective but also the other person’s experience and perspective,” he explained.
“For example, if they had done something to hurt someone, they relive the exact same pain the other person has had.”
“If they’ve done something that’s caused happiness in other people, they relive the same happiness.”
As for how he feels about his discoveries, Dr. Parnia understands how much of this has depended on the modern medical ability to revive people who have died.
“Nothing about this is what we expected it to be. We weren’t supposed to be able to reverse death. We weren’t supposed to investigate what happens beyond death,” he told Times Radio.
“You and I can’t remember more than a fraction of our lives now if they asked us to,” he added.
Now that is true, I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone anything I did before the age of 25!
While this information is exciting and a little bit scary, it’s also pretty cool.
Go science!
