We Know We Have Died . . . And Then What?

Sam Parnia via the AWARE study determined that there is electrical activity in the brain that suggests (how, I am not sure) that we are aware of our physical death for at least 20 seconds and possibly much longer after our hearts have stopped beating and our lungs have given up the ghost, so to speak.

Of course, nobody is touting this as proof that our consciousness survives death, as the definition of “death” has become rather . . . fuzzy. If you have electrical activity in your brain, then you are not, technically, dead; and, of course, the assumption here is that the activity that is recorded in your brain is CAUSING your awareness, not simply possibly CORRELATED with it. And as we all know, correlation is not causation. What that brain activity means, and whether or not it is measuring your awareness or creating it, well, who knows. All we do know is what patients who “come back” tell us.

As I have written about before, I was one of those patients who found herself on the ceiling during an operation. This is how I found out that the doctor who had promised not to put me to sleep with a mask had indeed done just that, because I saw it over my face, a fact which upset me no end, even though I was floating above my body. I had no problem with the idea that I was “up here” and “down there” at the same time. I was able, even at five years old, to memorize details of that scene and relay them back to the very befuddled and confused doctor after I woke up from surgery. Yes, I confronted him about the broken promise, and he had nothing to say, of course.

No, I wasn’t ‘dead’. My heart had not stopped, nor had my lungs stopped breathing. But I was still able to experience consciousness without a body, and it seemed the most normal thing in the world to me. I had no idea that my experience was not “supposed” to happen; it did, and it seemed quite ordinary to me. Doctors, scientists, and researchers become quite outraged at the idea that consciousness is not created or caused by brain activity. I am not sure why, except for the purposes of defending a materialist world view. The problem is that we consider ourselves to be “one thing”, one body, one consciousness, some kind of unique awareness that only exists in a particular vessel.

For a while now, I have believed that what is missing is a view of ourselves that embraces the multiplicity and diversity of being, of existing. The Christian concept of the trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is, as I see it, a metaphor for the different aspects of our consciousness: we are soul, spirit, and body. The soul is our essential self, the eternal expression of who we are; it exists outside of space and time as the energetic pattern of our identity. It is not bound by circumstances or events and functions as our ‘blueprint’ for all the incarnations governed by spirit. Our spirit animates the multiple versions of us that come into being via reincarnation or repetition of some slightly different version of us that the “many worlds” interpretation of reality supports (I am me in infinite ways, as every new decision creates another universe where I live out the consequences of countless paths not taken). The body is the vessel, housing and expressing the particular circumstances of one life, the one we are currently aware of, the only one that most of us care about and believe in.

One identity can be expressed in many ways, which explains why I do not believe that the child ghost that cries in a corner of a haunted house is doomed to eternity to relive a traumatic experience. That is one aspect only of that child, that person, and in the Block Universe, that child is in all states of life and death at once, and only this one, particular instantiation of that personality is playing out. Remember, there is no time when we talk about ultimate reality, so that person is also enjoying a college physics class, waking up next to her cat as an old lady, and everything else that the impossibly rich block universe allows her to experience. That “dead” child is also alive in another part of the Block.

However you choose to look at this issue, whether through the lens of physics or Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, the self is not one, not solitary, not a one-time manifestation of a singular personality, but the result of an enormously complex play of consciousness on the backdrop of an infinitely complex universe. I knew that as a child and have forgotten it as an adult. No, not intellectually; I can write to you all day about the multiplicity and the eternity of our selves, our conscious awareness, but I become trapped by a culture that doesn’t “believe” such things and will not, therefore, even consider these points. The idea that we are meat robots, simple bodies animated by random and incomprehensible brain activity, is the most reductionist, sad, cruel, and ignorant of theories that has led to despair and depravity; it’s the philosophy of a reality drained of human experience over millennia.

We contain multitudes. All the major religions know this, but cloak the information behind power plays and fear tactics. Physics knows this, but is terrified of the implications, and often refuses to discuss the existential and ontological implications of their own Block Universe and Multiverse theories. Consciousness is fundamental to the structure of reality, and death does not apply or even have meaning in such a space.

Dr. Parnia is one of many scientists and medical professionals who are daring to step cautiously outside of the materialist paradigm. But he treads with great caution, lest he end up an object of ridicule, as has happened to Eben Alexander and Robert Lanza, both of whom make a strong case for the eternal nature of consciousness, Alexander through a stunning near-death experience and Lanza through a consideration of biocentrism (we create the Universe, not the other way around). I hope that those courageous voices will continue to speak up, for the opposition is fierce.

The truth shall set us all free, and yes, we can handle the truth.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD