What, if anything, happens to human beings after death is a question that has plagued humanity for all time. From spiritual and philosophical perspectives to scientific ones, we have long sought answers about what might come next, and what happens to our consciousness after we have passed away.
It’s an area that has, for the last few decades, generated more and more scientific research – with some recent studies giving us at least a glimpse into what is actually happening to the body and brain at the moment of death itself.
Some people, who have been to the brink of death and come back after being resuscitated, even claim to have experienced visions or gained insight into what may come in the afterlife while in cardiac arrest. These kinds of experiences regularly capture our collective imagination, and when people come forward with their own stories – from the eerie to the comforting – they often generate a huge amount of conversation online.
One man, Dave Singleton, 85, from Nottingham, told the Mirror about his own near-death experience, which took place over 20 years ago, just ahead of his 65th birthday – and explained he actually found a lot of comfort from it.
Dave suffered from heart block, a condition where the heart beats more slowly or with an abnormal rhythm. At its most serious, it becomes a medical emergency. Not long before his near-death experience, he’d noticed that he was struggling to walk through the scenic hills he was visiting in Derbyshire, and felt his heartbeat slowing down.
One day, when he was back at home, he started to feel faint and asked his neighbour – a retired doctor – to help him check his pulse. When she discovered how low it was, she immediately called an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital.
“My heart had almost stopped beating so, like in medical dramas, I was wired up to several machines on a trolley and, surrounded by medical staff, raced through the hospital to the coronary care ward,” Dave explained. “I was transferred to the bed and immediately the sirens sounded as my heart stopped. For me, it appeared that the lights drew dimmer like a curtain was closing but, almost immediately, I was resuscitated using the paddles.”
Unfortunately, the trouble with his heart didn’t stop there. Dave, who is an artist by trade, says he had to be resuscitated several more times, which felt “like I had been pummeled by a heavy-weight boxer.” When the head of department was doing his rounds and deciding whether Dave should be fitted with a pacemaker, “the alarms went off. I turned to the next patient and exclaimed ‘Someone is copping it’. He replied, ‘Yes, it’s you’. Then the curtains came down and the lights went out.”
What came next for Dave was an incredible scene, where he was transported to a “wonderful place” during the time his heart had stopped. “I was sitting in a beautiful garden in the warm sunshine. There was a high hedge behind me and I could hear voices and laughter from the other side of the hedge. I knew that it was family and friends gathered there so it must have been a special event,” Dave said.
“I knew that all I had to do was stand and walk round the hedge to join them,” he added, “However, I stayed where I was because I was so comfortable and the view across the fields to the rolling hills in the distance was magnificent. I was so calm and peaceful and in a wonderful place. I was happy and contented.”
However, with the medical team working on Dave busy trying to resuscitate him, this beautiful, calming moment was brought to an abrupt end. “Wham, bang. I was back,” Dave explained, “I opened my eyes to see a group of busy medical staff around me keeping me alive. To be honest, I didn’t want to come back as it was most uncomfortable and noisy.”
Overall, Dave says he was in cardiac arrest for “about eight minutes” after which the medics quickly fitted Dave with a pacemaker – he has since had three of the devices that work to regulate the heartbeat. In the twenty years since the retiree has spent time travelling the world, and exploring his creative side as an artist, an avenue within which he “had some success”.
According to The Guardian, research has been conducted into who is most likely to report having some kind of vision during a near-death experience, or cardiac arrest, including raising the question of whether creative people – like artist Dave – or those who have experienced significant trauma might be more likely to experience them.
The outlet reports that between 10 to 20 percent of people who have been resuscitated come back with a story to tell about what they experienced, from other-worldly visions, to claiming to have seen their own body from above, which is “roughly 800 million souls worldwide who may have dipped a toe in the afterlife.”
There have been three major strands of research into what exactly happens to us when we die. Firstly, those approaching the topic from a purely biological point of view – the physicalists.
There are also spiritualist researchers who have looked into the topic, who tend to believe there is a literal afterlife, and often have religious beliefs in the divine, and that the stories people return with after resuscitation are actually providing glimpses into this.
Finally, there are parapsychologists, who often approach the question of what happens when we die by seeing the brain as a receptor through which we access consciousness, something that exists outside of ourselves.
None of these three types of research have ever produced a conclusive answer, so the question of what happens when we die still remains a mystery.
However, in 2015, research undertaken by neurology professor Jimo Borjigin showed in one patient an unexpected “surge of activity” taking place in her brain at the moment of cardiac arrest. “In particular, areas of her brain associated with processing conscious experience – areas that are active when we move through the waking world, and when we have vivid dreams – were communicating with those involved in memory formation.
“So were parts of the brain associated with empathy. Even as she slipped irrevocably deeper into death, something that looked astonishingly like life was taking place.”
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