Right now, until technology serves up a solution or something entirely unexpected happens to
our species… we’re all mortal. For every single one of us, our days on Earth are numbered. But,
of course, many believe that this Earthly life isn’t all there is; that there’s something else
waiting for us, whenever this is all over. But have we finally found evidence of that, as well?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question;
does this prove that there’s life after death?
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Heaven. Hell. The Underworld. The Afterlife. Cultural depictions of a time after the time
we’re alive right now, are many. And, in fact, there’s some argument that a
variation of life after death is the key ingredient to any major religion;
it needs to convince its followers that it can provide an answer to the unanswerable - what
happens when we die? In more recent times, however, the afterlife isn’t
only the domain of theology and Faith. Science has become increasingly interested in it, too,
with countless studies and theories making headlines. In just the last decade or so,
we’ve seen news that dying brains have been meticulously scanned, with researchers looking
for signs of a post-life something. There are also countless recollections of near-death experiences,
many of which are reportedly very similar - with white lights, tunnel vision, and a life review.
However, the cases that have really turned heads are those that have been clinically
tested and verified. And the AWARE study (or AWAreness During REsuscitation) is perhaps the
most comprehensive of all. Published in 2014, in the journal “Resuscitation”, it refers back
to a large-scale, four-year initiative started in 2008, involving 2,060 patients in hospitals
in the United Kingdom, the USA, and Austria. All patients were cardiac arrest survivors,
having gone without a heartbeat for varying lengths of time. Once brought back to the living,
the patients were extensively interviewed, and the findings still rank as some of the
most perplexing and intriguing in medical science in recent years.
Forty-six percent of those interviewed were able to report memories that researchers
then categorized under seven key themes; memories of fear, of animals and plants,
of violence and persecution, a bright light, of deja vu, memories of their family,
and finally of events happening after their cardiac arrest. Around two percent of those
interviewed - upwards of thirty people - reported a visceral awareness of their own resuscitation,
too. They could remember the physicians working over them, trying to get their heart to restart,
even after it had stopped. In most cases, these memories will have formed in an up to three-minute
time window after the initial loss of heartbeat… but the brain is known to cease functioning after
only thirty seconds or so without the heart. There was, then, up to two-and-a-half minutes (in some
cases) where the patient could have been deemed technically dead. Thankfully, they were brought
back… but, in the meantime, they had managed to create memories from somewhere. In some cases, all
physical signs of consciousness had disappeared… but, clearly, something was still happening.
In the context of the AWARE study, it was deemed that this kind of experience might
then contribute to feelings of post traumatic stress disorder after suffering a heart attack.
There are then some wider suggestions that even if you have a heart attack
and you can’t recall anything about the minutes that followed, whatever did happen might still
go some way to affecting your mental health in the future. However, more broadly still,
what could the study be showing us about the concept of an afterlife, in general?
Here, it would appear that conscious experience actually is being created even after the heart
has stopped beating, and potentially after the cognitive signs of consciousness have
faded out. One implication, then, is that it might be possible to miss consciousness in a
person believed to be dead. Move one step further down that road,
and might it be possible for that level of consciousness to just continue and continue,
indefinitely undetected? And isn’t that, really, what the afterlife would be?
Elsewhere, and around the same time as the AWARE study was made public,
reports emerged of a similar effort conducted in Berlin, Germany. Although details are today
scarce, it is alleged that more than nine hundred people were made technically dead,
under medical supervision, for twenty minutes at a time. During that massive window,
it’s said that those people formed memories - mostly of out of body experiences - that
they could then report back to researchers, upon their being brought back to life. Importantly,
this study doesn’t appear in any verified journals. But, ultimately, if the reports
are correct, then it would serve as simply an elongation of the results published by AWARE.
Again, it would seem that the end actually isn’t the end, in some cases.
In 2019, further work was completed to calculate the likelihood that any one
person would experience a near-death-experience. In an international study based out of Denmark,
Norway and, again, Germany, it was found that around one in ten people have them. More than
one thousand people were featured in the study, all with a variety of individual circumstances
surrounding their NDE. However, perhaps the most disturbing takeaway here was that almost three
quarters of those studied said that their NDE had been unpleasant. While the more archetypal
white light and warm fuzzy feeling may have seeped into our collective consciousness,
it would seem that, actually, this isn’t what we should expect.
In all studies mentioned in this video, the outer body experience (or OBE) was a
prominent feature. Some of AWARE’s heart attack survivors reported viewing themselves from above;
it’s said that some of those in the Berlin study were left feeling as though they had levitated;
and OBEs were regularly cited in the 2019 survey, too. As yet, science doesn’t really
have an answer for this particular aspect of death. It doesn’t seem to happen universally,
but it is one of the more common traits whenever anyone has clinically died,
is fortunately brought back, and has the memories stored of what they saw and felt.
What’s your verdict on this issue? Let us know in the comments! Is it perhaps
telling that despite the potentially profound implications that this research could have,
it still isn’t especially spoken about in the mainstream? No doubt there is a taboo
surrounding death. Despite its inevitability, not everyone is overly keen to talk or think
about it. But still, on this morbid but bleeding edge of science and technology,
there are those seeking answers. Verifiable evidence that there’s something else after we die.
For those behind the AWARE study, in particular, their results might be especially important
because they come from those who have been brought back after a cardiac arrest. While definitions of
the moment of death do differ from country to country, culture to culture, whenever the heart
stops beating we always know that the person is in serious trouble. Within seconds, their brain
will become starved of oxygen and, while the rest of their body will fight, it will also fail within
just a few short moments. It would appear that the same can’t be said of consciousness, however. It
would seem as though that might continue, even if science is as of yet unable yet to explain how. In
the AWARE study, more than 2,000 people suffered the unfortunate experience of a heart attack… but
almost half of them also tapped into some kind of energy, even when they were technically passed.
Of course, this takes us back to those various, ancient claims of many religions. It’s just that,
from a religious point of view, you usually needn’t have evidence that the afterlife exists,
you just need the Faith that it’s real. Science doesn’t work in the same way… but
it does accept that there are things that we don’t know. For now, the afterlife remains - to
a certain extent - one of those things. And, by definition, you can’t know unless you’re dead;
and you can’t reveal what you know if you are dead. It’s an impossible situation.
Nevertheless, work is ongoing, and the studies are bearing fruit. Bizarrely,
they rarely receive the global coverage that you might expect, but there is something of
a modern revolution going on when it comes to this particular, unknowable field. A favorite
space for science fiction writers for years, it’s now beginning to be a major point of interest for
academics, too. And that’s why we might already have proof that there is life after death.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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