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What happens when we die? It’s one of the single greatest questions in the history of humankind, silently driving science and religion for centuries. The standard reductionist model says consciousness simply ceases after death. Lights out. Thank you, next. However, this fails to explain phenomena like near-death experiences (NDEs), where people experience something profound often bright lights, tunnels, or hearing voices of deceased relatives when they’re close to death……Continue reading….

By: PopMech Editors

Source: Popular Mechanics

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Critics:

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 with the express intention of investigating phenomena relating to Spiritualism and the afterlife. Its members continue to conduct scientific research on the paranormal to this day. Some of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of phenomena relating to an afterlife were conducted by this organization. Its earliest members included noted scientists like William Crookes, and philosophers such as Henry Sidgwick and William James.

Parapsychological investigation of the afterlife includes the study of haunting, apparitions of the deceased, instrumental trans-communication, electronic voice phenomena, and mediumship. A study conducted in 1901 by physician Duncan MacDougall sought to measure the weight lost by a human when the soul “departed the body” upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable.

Although MacDougall’s results varied considerably from “21 grams”, for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul’s mass. The title of the 2003 movie 21 Grams is a reference to MacDougall’s findings. His results have never been reproduced, and are generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit. Frank Tipler has argued that physics can explain immortality, although such arguments are not falsifiable and, in Karl Popper’s views, they do not qualify as science.

After 25 years of parapsychological research Susan Blackmore came to the conclusion that, according to her experiences, there is not enough empirical evidence for many of these cases. Mediums purportedly act as a vessel for communications from spirits in other realms. Mediumship is not specific to one culture or religion; it can be identified in several belief systems, most notably Spiritualism.

While the practice gained popularity in Europe and North America in the 19th century, evidence of mediumship dates back thousands of years in Asia. Mediums who claim to have contact with deceased people include Tyler Henry and Pascal Voggenhuber. Past life regression is a method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations.

The technique used during past-life regression involves the subject answering a series of questions while hypnotized to reveal identity and events of alleged past lives, a method similar to that used in recovered memory therapy and one that, similarly, often misrepresents memory as a faithful recording of previous events rather than a constructed set of recollections.

However, medical experts and practitioners do not agree that the past life memories gained from past life regressions are truly from past lives; experts generally regard claims of recovered memories of past lives as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation, because the use of hypnosis and suggestive questions can tend to leave the subject particularly likely to hold distorted or false memories.

There is a view based on the philosophical question of personal identity, termed open individualism by Daniel Kolak, that concludes that individual conscious experience is illusory, and because consciousness continues after death in all conscious beings, you do not die. This position has allegedly been supported by physicists such as Erwin Schrödinger and Freeman Dyson.

Certain problems arise with the idea of a particular person continuing after death. Peter van Inwagen, in his argument regarding resurrection, notes that the materialist must have some sort of physical continuity. John Hick also raises questions regarding personal identity in his book, Death and Eternal Life, using an example of a person ceasing to exist in one place while an exact replica appears in another.

If the replica had all the same experiences, traits, and physical appearances of the first person, we would all attribute the same identity to the second, according to Hick. In 2008, a large-scale study conducted by the University of Southampton involving 2,060 patients from 15 hospitals in the United Kingdom, United States and Austria was launched. The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study examined the broad range of mental experiences in relation to death.

In a large study, researchers also tested the validity of conscious experiences for the first time using objective markers, to determine whether claims of awareness compatible with out-of-body experiences correspond with real or hallucinatory events. The results revealed that 40% of those who survived a cardiac arrest were aware during the time that they were clinically dead and before their hearts were restarted.

One patient also had a verified out-of-body experience (over 80% of patients did not survive their cardiac arrest or were too sick to be interviewed), but his cardiac arrest occurred in a room without markers. Dr. Parnia in the interview stated, “The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated.” The AWARE study drew the following primary conclusions:

1. In some cases of cardiac arrest, memories of visual awareness compatible with so called out-of-body experiences may correspond with actual events.
2. A number of NDErs may have vivid death experiences, but do not recall them due to the effects of brain injury or sedative drugs on memory circuits.
3. The recalled experience surrounding death merits a genuine investigation without prejudice.

Studies have also been done on the widely reported phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDE). Experiencers commonly report being transported to a different “realm” or “plane of existence” and they have been shown to display a lasting positive aftereffect on most experiencers.

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