Cases of the incredible after the death of relatives. Is there life after death: evidence of the existence of the afterlife

All living things obey the laws of nature: they are born, reproduce, wither and die. But the fear of death is inherent only in man, and only he thinks about what will happen after physical death. It is much easier in this regard for fanatical believers: they are absolutely sure of the immortality of the soul and the meeting with the Creator. But today scientists have scientific evidence of whether there is life after death, and evidence real people who have experienced clinical death, showing the continuation of the existence of the soul after the death of the body.

Historical facts

When faced with an inexorable death that takes away a loved one in the prime of life, it is difficult not to fall into despair. It is impossible to come to terms with the loss in this case, and the soul requires at least a tiny hope of meeting in another life or in another world. At the same time, human consciousness is structured in such a way that it believes facts and evidence, therefore one can only talk about the possible rebirth of the soul based on eyewitness testimony.

Scientific researchers from almost all countries of the world have scientific facts about the soul after death, since today even the exact weight of the soul is known - 21 grams, obtained experimentally. It can also be said with confidence that death is not the end of life, it is a transition to another form of existence with the subsequent rebirth of the soul after death. Facts inexorably speak of constantly repeating earthly incarnations of the same soul in different bodies.

Scientists - psychologists and psychotherapists believe that many mental illnesses have their roots in past lives and carry their nature from there. It is great that no one (with rare exceptions) remembers their past lives and past mistakes, otherwise real life would be spent correcting and correcting past experiences, but there would be no real spiritual growth, the purpose of which is reincarnation.

The first mention of this phenomenon is in the ancient Indian Vedas, written five thousand years ago. This philosophical and ethical teaching considers two possible miracles that occur with the physical shell of a person: the miracle of dying, that is, the transition into another substance, and the miracle of birth, that is, the appearance of a new body to replace the worn-out one.

Swedish scientist Jan Stevenson, who has been studying the phenomenon of reincarnation for many years, has come to a stunning conclusion: people who move from one earthly shell to another have the same physical characteristics and defects in all cases of rebirth. That is, having received some kind of flaw on his body in one of his earthly rebirths, he transfers it to subsequent incarnations.

One of the first scientists to talk about the immortality of the soul was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who argued that the soul is an atom of the Universe that cannot die, since its existence is due to the existence of the Cosmos.

But to modern man Just statements are not enough; he needs facts and evidence about the possibilities of being born again and again going through the entire earthly path from birth to death.

Scientific evidence

Duration human life is steadily increasing as the efforts of scientists around the world are aimed at improving the quality of life. But at the same time, along with an understanding of the inevitability of death, the inquisitive mind of a person requires new knowledge about the afterlife, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. And this new thing in the science of life after death appears to convince humanity: there is no death, there is only a change, the transition of the “subtle” body from the “rough physical” shell into the Universe. The evidence for this statement is:

It cannot be said that all this scientific evidence proves with one hundred percent certainty the continuation of life even after the end of the earthly path, but everyone tries to answer such a sensitive question on their own.

Existence outside of your body

Many hundreds and thousands of people who have experienced coma or clinical death recall an amazing phenomenon: their etheric body leaves the physical and seems to hover above its shell, watching everything that happens.

Today we can definitely say that there is life after death. Eyewitness evidence equally answers: yes, it exists. Every year, the number of people who confidently talk about their amazing journeys outside the physical shell and amaze doctors with the details noticed during their adventures increases.

For example, Washington-based singer Pam Reynolds spoke about her visions during a unique brain surgery that she underwent several years ago. She clearly saw her body on the operating table, I saw the doctors’ manipulations and heard their conversations, which after waking up I was able to convey. It is difficult to convey the state of the doctors who were shocked by her story.

Memory of past births

IN philosophical teachings Many ancient civilizations put forward the postulate that each person has his own destiny and is born for his job. He cannot die until he has fulfilled his destiny. And today it is believed that a person returns to an active life after a serious illness, because he has not realized himself and is obliged to fulfill his obligations to the Universe or God.

• Some psychoanalysts believe that only people who do not believe in God or reincarnation, and who constantly feel the fear of death, do not realize that they are dying and, after finishing their earthly journey, find themselves in a “gray space” in which the soul is in constant fear and misunderstanding.
• If we recall the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and his teaching about subjective idealism, then according to his teaching the soul passes from body to body and remembers only some especially memorable, vivid cases from past births. But this is precisely how Plato explains the emergence of brilliant works of art and scientific achievements.
• Nowadays, almost everyone knows what the phenomenon of “déjà vu” is, in which a person physically, psychologically, and emotionally remembers something that did not actually happen to him in the first place. real life. Many psychologists believe that in this case, vivid memories of a past life emerge.

In addition, the series of programs “Confession of a Dead Man about Life after Death” was successfully shown on television screens; several popular science films were filmed documentaries and many articles have been written on a given topic.

This burning question still worries and worries humanity. Probably only true believers can confidently answer this question positively. For everyone else, it remains open.

If we look at the history of mankind from afar, we will notice: Each era had its own prohibitions. And often entire layers of culture were formed around these prohibitions.

The ban of Christianity by the pagan rulers of Europe resulted in the incredible popularity of the teachings of Jesus Christ, which gradually destroyed paganism as a belief.

Theories about the central position of the sun and round earth appeared in the strict Middle Ages, where it was necessary, under pain of the Inquisition, to believe only in the opinion expressed by the church. In the 19th century, the topics of sex were taboo - Freudian psychoanalysis arose, overwhelming the minds of his contemporaries.

Is it possible to believe in life after death?

Now, in our century, there is an unspoken ban on everything related to death. This primarily concerns Western society. For the deceased rulers of medieval Mongolia, mourning was observed for at least 2 years. Now, news of disaster victims is forgotten literally the next day; grief for relatives lasts only among their closest descendants. Reflections on this topic should only be done in churches, during national mourning, and at wakes.

Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran once remarked:"To die is to cause inconvenience to others." If a person seriously thinks about whether there is life after death, then this becomes a note in the psychiatrist’s notebook (study the DSM 5 psychiatry manual at your leisure).

Perhaps this was all created out of fear of world governments being too smart people. Anyone who has recognized the frailty of existence, believes in the immortality of the soul, ceases to be a cog in the system, an uncomplaining consumer.

What's the point of working hard to buy branded clothes if death multiplies everything by zero? These and similar thoughts among citizens are not beneficial to politicians and transnational companies. That is why the general repression of themes of the afterlife is secretly encouraged.

Death: the end or just the beginning?

Let's start with this: whether there is life after death or not. There are two approaches here:

• this life does not exist, a person with his mind simply disappears. The position of atheists;
• there is life.

In the last paragraph, another division of opinions can be discerned. They all have a common belief in the existence of the soul:

1. the soul of a person moves into a new person or into an animal, plant, etc. This is what Hindus, Buddhists and some other cults think;
2. the soul goes to specific places: heaven, hell, nirvana. This is the position of almost all world religions.
3. the soul remains in peace, can help his relatives or, on the contrary, harm, etc. (Shintoism).

Clinical death as a way of studying

Very often doctors tell amazing stories associated with their patients who experienced clinical death. This is a condition when a person’s heart has stopped and he is as if dead, but within 10 minutes he can be brought back to life with the help of resuscitation measures.

So, these people talk about different objects that they saw in the hospital, “flying” around it.

One patient noticed a forgotten shoe under the stairs, although she had no way of knowing about it because she was admitted unconscious. Imagine the surprise of the medical staff when a lone shoe actually lay in the indicated place!

Others, thinking that they had already died, began to “go” to their home and see what was happening there.

One patient noticed a broken cup and a new blue dress on her sister. When the woman was revived, that same sister came to her. She said that indeed, while her sister was in a state of near death, her cup broke. And the dress was new, blue...

Life after death Confession of a dead man

Scientific evidence of life after death

Until recently (by the way, for good reason. Astrologers talk about the coming era of control of minds by Pluto, which arouses people’s interest in death, secrets, and the synthesis of science and metaphysics), scientists answered the question of the existence of life after death in the unequivocal negative.

Now this seemingly unshakable opinion is changing. In particular, quantum physics speaks directly about parallel worlds, representing lines. A person constantly moves through them and thereby chooses his fate. Death only means the disappearance of an object on this line, but its continuation on another. That is, eternal life.

Psychotherapists give the example of regressive hypnosis. It allows you to look into a person’s past, and into past lives.

Thus, in the USA, after a session of such hypnosis, one American woman declared herself to be the incarnation of a Swedish peasant woman. One could assume a clouding of reason and laugh, but when the woman began to speak fluently in an ancient Swedish dialect unknown to her before, it was no longer a laughing matter.

Facts about the existence of afterlife

Many people report dead people coming to them. There are many of these stories. Skeptics say that this is all fiction. That's why let's look at the documented facts from people who were not prone to fantasy and insanity.

For example, Napoleon Bonaparte's mother Letitia reported how her tenderly loving son, imprisoned on the island of St. Helena, once came to her house and told her today's date and time, and then disappeared. And only two months later a message came about his death. It happened exactly at the same time when he came to his mother in the form of a ghost.

In Asian countries, there is a custom of making marks on the skin of a dead person so that after reincarnation, relatives can recognize him.

A documented case of a boy born, who had a birthmark in exactly the same place where the mark was made on his own grandfather, who died a few days before the birth.

By the same principle, they are still looking for future Tibetan lamas - leaders of Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama, Lhamo Thondrub (14th), is considered to be the same person as his predecessors. Even as a child, he recognized the things of the 13th Dalai Lama, saw dreams from a past incarnation, etc.

Another lama - has been preserved in an incorruptible form since his death in 1927. Medical experts have proven that the composition of mummy hair, nails, and skin have lifetime characteristics. They could not explain this, but they recognized it as a fact. Buddhists themselves speak of the teacher as having passed into nirvana. He can return to his body at any time.

By the way, there are other similar mummies, but their location is known to a very narrow circle of people.

Neurophysiologist, academician Natalya Bekhtereva, who studied the brain all her life, wrote that she saw the ghost of her husband after his death. He shared thoughts for his unfinished book. It is difficult not to trust a world-famous scientist.

Conclusion

I would like to end the article with a quote from the ancient Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius.

“Where I am, there is no death. And where there is death, I am not there. Therefore death is nothing for me."

Titus Lucretius Carus

Therefore, you should not be afraid of the topic of death and the afterlife. Thinking about it disciplines the mind and prevents it from slipping into idleness unworthy of a person.

There is life after death. And there are thousands of evidences of this. Until now, fundamental science has dismissed such stories. However, as Natalya Bekhtereva, a famous scientist who has studied the activity of the brain all her life, said, our consciousness is such matter that it seems that the keys to the secret door have already been selected. But behind it there are ten more... What is behind the door of life?

“She sees right through everything...”

Galina Lagoda was returning with her husband in a Zhiguli car from a country trip. Trying to pass an oncoming truck on a narrow highway, the husband sharply pulled to the right... The car was crushed by a tree standing by the road.

Intravision

Galina was brought to the Kaliningrad regional hospital with severe brain damage, ruptured kidneys, lungs, spleen and liver, and many fractures. The heart stopped, the pressure was at zero. “Having flown through black space, I found myself in a shining, light-filled space,” Galina Semyonovna tells me twenty years later. “In front of me stood a huge man in dazzling white clothes. I couldn’t see his face because of the light beam directed at me. “Why did you come here?” - he asked sternly. “I’m very tired, let me rest a little.” - “Rest and come back - you still have a lot to do.” Having regained consciousness after two weeks, during which she balanced between life and death, the patient told the head of the intensive care unit, Evgeniy Zatovka, how the operations were carried out, which of the doctors stood where and what they did, what equipment they brought, from which cabinets they took what. After another operation on a shattered arm, Galina, during her morning medical rounds, asked the orthopedic doctor: “How is your stomach?” From amazement, he did not know what to answer - indeed, the doctor was tormented by abdominal pain. Now Galina Semyonovna lives in harmony with herself, believes in God and is not at all afraid of death.

"Flying like a cloud"

Yuri Burkov, a reserve major, does not like to remember the past. His story was told by his wife Lyudmila: - Yura fell from high altitude, broke his spine and received a traumatic brain injury, lost consciousness. After cardiac arrest, he lay in a coma for a long time. I was under terrible stress. During one of my hospital visits I lost my keys. And the husband, having finally regained consciousness, first of all asked: “Did you find the keys?” I shook my head in fear. “They are under the stairs,” he said. Only many years later did he confess to me: while he was in a coma, he saw my every step and heard every word - no matter how far I was from him. He flew in the form of a cloud, including to where his deceased parents and brother live. The mother tried to persuade her son to return, and the brother explained that they were all alive, only they no longer had bodies. Years later, sitting at the bedside of his seriously ill son, he reassured his wife: “Lyudochka, don’t cry, I know for sure that he won’t leave now. He will be with us for another year." And a year later, at the wake of his deceased son, he admonished his wife: “He did not die, but only moved to another world before you and me. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

Savely KASHNITSKY, Kaliningrad - Moscow.

Childbirth under the ceiling

“While the doctors were trying to pump me out, I observed an interesting thing: a bright white light (there is nothing like that on Earth!) and a long corridor. And so I seem to be waiting to enter this corridor. But then the doctors resuscitated me. During this time I felt that it was very cool THERE. I didn’t even want to leave!” These are the memories of 19-year-old Anna R., who survived clinical death. Such stories can be found in abundance on Internet forums where the topic of “life after death” is discussed.

Light in the tunnel

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, pictures of life flashing before your eyes, a feeling of love and peace, meetings with deceased relatives and a certain luminous creature - patients who returned from the other world talk about this. True, not all, but only 10-15% of them. The rest did not see or remember anything at all. The dying brain does not have enough oxygen, which is why it is “glitchy,” say skeptics. Disagreements among scientists have reached the point that the start of a new experiment was recently announced. For three years American and British doctors will study the testimony of patients whose hearts stopped or their brains turned off. Among other things, the researchers are going to put various pictures on the shelves in the intensive care wards. You can only see them if you soar right up to the ceiling. If patients who have experienced clinical death retell their contents, it means that consciousness is really capable of leaving the body. One of the first who tried to explain the phenomenon of near-death experiences was academician Vladimir Negovsky. He founded the world's first Institute of General Reanimatology. Negovsky believed (and the scientific view has not changed since then) that the “light at the end of the tunnel” was explained by the so-called tube vision. The cortex of the occipital lobes of the brain dies off gradually, the field of vision narrows to a narrow strip, creating the impression of a tunnel. In a similar way, doctors explain the vision of pictures of a past life flashing before the gaze of a dying person. Brain structures fade and then recover unevenly. Therefore, a person manages to remember the most bright events, deposited in memory. And the illusion of leaving the body, according to doctors, is the result of a failure of nerve signals. However, skeptics reach a dead end when it comes to answering trickier questions. Why do people who are blind from birth, at the moment of clinical death, see and then describe in detail what is happening in the operating room around them? And there is such evidence.

Leaving the body is a defensive reaction

It is curious, but many scientists do not see anything mystical in the fact that consciousness can leave the body. The only question is what conclusion to draw from this. Leading researcher Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Spivak, a member of the International Association for the Study of Near-Death Experiences, assures that clinical death is just one of the options for an altered state of consciousness. “There are a lot of them: these are dreams, and drug experience, and a stressful situation, and the consequence of illness,” he says. “According to statistics, up to 30% of people at least once in their lives have felt leaving the body and observed themselves from the outside.” Dmitry Spivak himself examined the mental state of women in labor and found out that about 9% of women experience “leaving the body” during childbirth! Here is the testimony of 33-year-old S.: “During childbirth, I had a lot of blood loss. Suddenly I began to see myself from under the ceiling. The pain has disappeared. And about a minute later she also unexpectedly returned to her place in the room and again began to experience severe pain.” It turns out that “leaving the body” is a normal phenomenon during childbirth. Some kind of mechanism embedded in the psyche, a program that works in extreme situations. Undoubtedly, childbirth is an extreme situation. But what could be more extreme than death itself?! It is possible that “flying in a tunnel” is also a protective program that is activated at a fatal moment for a person. But what will happen to his consciousness (soul) next? “I asked one dying woman: if there really is something THERE, try to give me a sign,” recalls Doctor of Medical Sciences Andrei Gnezdilov, who works at the St. Petersburg hospice. - And on the 40th day after death, I saw her in a dream. The woman said: “This is not death.” Many years of working in a hospice have convinced me and my colleagues: death is not the end, not the destruction of everything. The soul continues to live." Dmitry PISARENKO

Cup and polka dot dress

This story was told by Andrey Gnezdilov, Doctor of Medical Sciences: “During the operation, the patient’s heart stopped. The doctors were able to start it, and when the woman was transferred to intensive care, I visited her. She complained that she was not operated on by the same surgeon who promised. But she could not see the doctor, being in an unconscious state all the time. The patient said that during the operation some force pushed her out of her body. She calmly looked at the doctors, but then she was overcome by horror: what if I die before I can say goodbye to my mother and daughter? And her consciousness instantly moved home. She saw that the mother was sitting, knitting, and her daughter was playing with a doll. Then a neighbor came in and brought a polka dot dress for her daughter. The girl rushed towards her, but touched the cup - it fell and broke. The neighbor said: “Well, that’s good. Apparently, Yulia will be discharged soon.” And then the patient again found herself at the operating table and heard: “Everything is fine, she is saved.” Consciousness returned to the body. I went to visit this woman’s relatives. And it turned out that during the operation... a neighbor came in with a polka dot dress for a girl and the cup was broken.” This is not the only mysterious case in the practice of Gnezdilov and other workers of the St. Petersburg hospice. They are not surprised when a doctor dreams of his patient and thanks him for his care and touching attitude. And in the morning, upon arriving at work, the doctor finds out that the patient died during the night...

Church opinion

Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate: - Orthodox people believe in the afterlife and immortality. IN Holy Scripture There is a lot of confirmation and evidence of this in the Old and New Testaments. We consider the very concept of death only in connection with the coming resurrection, and this mystery ceases to be such if we live with Christ and for Christ’s sake. “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” says the Lord (John 11:26). According to legend, in the first days the soul of the deceased walks through those places in which it worked the truth, and on the third day it ascends to heaven to the throne of God, where until the ninth day it is shown the abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. On the ninth day, the soul again comes to God, and it is sent to hell, where wicked sinners reside and where the soul undergoes thirty days of ordeal (tests). On the fortieth day, the soul again comes to the Throne of God, where it appears naked before the judgment of its own conscience: has it passed these tests or not? And even in the case when some trials convict the soul of its sins, we hope for the mercy of God, in whom all deeds of sacrificial love and compassion will not go in vain.

In 2013, a question was asked on a popular forum: If you had a clinical death experience, what do you remember?

There were about four thousand responses. We have selected some of the most interesting stories.

1.My football coach had a heart attack right on the field, and he remained dead for 15 minutes.

When asked what he remembered about death, he replied that he remembered “absolute nothingness.” He did not have amnesia - he just, according to him, was in absolute emptiness.

He said it was the most peaceful moment of his life. Death is probably reminiscent of the movie “Inception” - when you build the world around yourself.

2. When I was 8 years old, I was riding a lawnmower and got caught in the motor with a string.

I fell under a lawnmower, which tore my skin, ripping out my large and small intestines, puncturing my right lung, breaking my spine in two places, and destroying my right kidney.

When I came to my senses, I was lying on the table, and strangers in white were standing around. Standing next to them was my grandmother, who died when I was 3. People revived my heart with small electrodes, and my grandmother calmed me down and told me that everything would be fine.

Suddenly I woke up - already stitched up and patched up. My parents said that I died three times. The first time - for 5 minutes. The second time - at a little over 12.

But the most amazing thing was the third time. My heart stopped for 20 minutes. The doctors thought I was finished, but my parents told them to continue shocking me.

Doctors said there was a 98% chance I would have permanent brain damage. Now I'm 25 and completely healthy.

3.When I was 15 years old, my schizophrenic uncle stabbed me in the stomach with a kitchen knife. I tried to crawl to the phone and call an ambulance, but passed out halfway.

I remember feeling like I was leaving a dark room and walking into the sun. The panic passed and a feeling of pure peace came over me. I was floating above a garden in which all the plants emitted light, and above me was a huge shapeless mass of all possible colors, including some that I had never seen and could not describe.

This mass seemed familiar to me, as if I was part of it, it beckoned me and filled me with pure ecstasy and understanding. Then a man who looked very much like Sleep from the Sandman comics (which I was reading at the time) appeared in the garden and said that I couldn’t return home yet because the time had not yet come.

I began to sob, but at the same time I had a feeling of complete understanding, as if I understood that I had to go back, even though I didn’t want to. This man, with tears in his eyes, took me by the hand and walked me back to my body, which was lying in the ambulance (my brother found me and called 911).

4.When my aunt was 18 years old, she once lost consciousness during an epileptic attack. There was no one nearby.

Then my grandmother found her, and the doctors managed to pump her out.

Aunt said that she was in a very bright and calm corridor. She walked along it aimlessly until she found a massive closed door at the end.

Aunt tried with all her might to open it: she knocked, pulled, and even kicked. But nothing came of it.

When she turned around, she saw that the corridor had turned into an intensive care unit. She lay on a gurney, and doctors and nurses brought her back to life. She threw the door, turned around and entered her body.

She died at the age of 42. We like to think the door has finally opened for her.

5.

My father told me what happened to him during open heart surgery.

Doctors had to stop his heart for 20-30 minutes while they inserted a mechanical valve. He was 20-something years old at the time and did a lot of things that he is now ashamed of.

Dad says that after “death” he found himself in a very dark place. He began to walk back and forth, and everywhere he came across creepy deformed people who were yelling at him. He huddled in a corner in horror and hid.

And these monsters had already surrounded him, when he saw his deceased grandmother above him. She reached out her hand to him and grabbed him. The next moment he woke up in the hospital.

The father is sure that it was hell. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it convinced my dad to change his life. He became a believer and returned to his family.

6.My father-in-law was in the hospital and had a cardiac arrest. He died, but was revived.

Then he mentioned heart surgery over and over again. Finally my wife says, “Dad, you didn’t have heart surgery.”

And he answers: “We did.” I remember when they pierced my heart with a diamond scepter and it started working.”

I don't know what he meant. A few days later he died, so he won’t tell.

7. To be fair, most survivors only remember emptiness or darkness, as in this story:

A year ago I hanged myself with a dog leash...

All I remember about the “Great Emptiness” (as I call it in therapy meetings) is nothing. It's hard to describe but best word— vacuum. There is no darkness, no you, nothing.

This is such a complete absence of something that it cannot even be called emptiness, because emptiness presupposes the possibility of filling. It’s difficult to even realize its existence, because it’s impossible to really perceive it.

For me, clinical death was to look into this vacuum, but not to enter it. There was enough life left in me to know about him, and not enough death to completely dissolve in him.

My inquisitive neighbor saw me through the window, broke it and cut the leash. I hung there for 10 minutes and was passed out for 3 days. Since then, my life has completely changed, but I am still haunted by the fear of the Great Emptiness - because one day I will still appear before it and lose.

And in order not to leave you with heavy thoughts, I’ll give you the best comment at the end:

All these answers about emptiness/lack of consciousness made me reconsider my life. If there is nothing after death, and life is our only chance to feel, learn and develop, then I would like it to mean something. I don't want to waste my time. I want to make the world a little better for others before my time comes.

And then I realized that I had been plugging into the forum for three hours already.

Have you heard about clinical death? Perhaps you even know someone who has experienced it?

Is there life after death - Facts and evidence

- Is there an afterlife?

- Is there an afterlife?
— Facts and evidence
— Real stories of clinical death
— A scientific view of death

Life after death, or afterlife - a religious and philosophical idea of ​​continuation conscious life person after death. In most cases, such ideas are due to the belief in the immortality of the soul, which is characteristic of most religious and religious-philosophical worldviews.

Among the main views:

1) resurrection of the dead - people will be resurrected by God after death;
2) reincarnation - the human soul returns to the material world in new incarnations;
3) posthumous reward - after death, a person’s soul goes to hell or heaven, depending on the person’s earthly life. (Also read about.)

Doctors in the intensive care unit of a Canadian hospital registered an unusual case. They removed life support from four terminal patients. For three of them, the brain behaved normally - it stopped working shortly after the shutdown. In the fourth patient, the brain emitted waves for another 10 minutes and 38 seconds, despite the fact that doctors declared his death using the same set of measures as in the cases of his “colleagues”.

The fourth patient's brain seemed to be in deep sleep, although his body showed no signs of life - no pulse, no blood pressure, no reaction to light. Previously, brain waves had been recorded in rats after decapitation, but in those situations there was only one wave.

- Is there life after death?! Facts and evidence

— A scientific view of death

In Seattle, biologist Mark Roth is experimenting with putting animals into artificial suspended animation using chemical compounds that slow their heart rate and metabolism to levels similar to those observed during hibernation. His goal is to make people who have suffered a heart attack “a little immortal” until they overcome the consequences of the crisis that brought them to the brink of life and death.

In Baltimore and Pittsburgh, trauma teams led by surgeon Sam Tisherman are conducting clinical trials in which patients with gunshot and stab wounds are lowered in body temperature to slow bleeding long enough to receive stitches. These doctors use cold for the same purpose that Roth uses chemicals: to temporarily "kill" patients in order to ultimately save their lives.

In Arizona, cryopreservation specialists keep the bodies of more than 130 of their clients frozen - also a form of "border zone." They hope that sometime in the distant future, perhaps a few centuries from now, these people can be thawed and revived, and by then medicine will be able to cure the diseases from which they died.

In India, neuroscientist Richard Davidson studies Buddhist monks who have entered a state known as thukdam, in which biological signs of life disappear but the body appears to remain intact for a week or longer. Davidson is trying to record some activity in the brains of these monks, hoping to find out what happens after the blood flow stops.

And in New York, Sam Parnia talks excitedly about the possibilities of “delayed resuscitation.” He says cardiopulmonary resuscitation works better than is commonly believed, and under certain conditions—when body temperature is lowered, chest compressions are properly regulated in depth and rhythm, and oxygen is given slowly to avoid tissue damage—some patients can be brought back to life even after their heart had stopped beating for several hours, and often without long-term negative consequences. Now a doctor is exploring one of the most mysterious aspects of returning from the dead: why do so many people who have experienced clinical death describe how their consciousness was separated from their body? What can these sensations tell us about the nature of the “border zone” and about death itself?

The material was prepared by Dilyara specifically for the site