One of the most debated spiritual topics is whether there is life after death, and there’s never been concrete scientific evidence proving one side or the other.
But a new study – the most extensive of its kind - suggests that a person’s consciousness does not immediately vanish upon death.
Researchers at Britain’s University of Southampton spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the U.K., U.S. and Austria. Their results found that nearly 40 per cent of survivors described having some form of “awareness” at the moment they were declared clinically dead.
It is currently assumed that the brain shuts down within 20 to 30 seconds after the heart stops beating - and that it is not possible to be aware of anything once that occurs.
But the new study cites compelling evidence that patients experienced real events for up to three minutes after their heart had stopped beating - and were able to recall them accurately once they had been resuscitated.
Of those who survived, 46 percent reported a broad range of mental recollections, with about nine percent having experiences compatible with traditional definitions of a near-death encounter, and two percent exhibiting full awareness with explicit recall of “seeing” and “hearing” events.
‘The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated. Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know, but right after death, consciousness is not lost,” said Dr. Sam Parnia, a former Southampton University research fellow now based at the State University of New York, who led the study.
Comments