Spirit In The Sky

Reports of near-death experiences -- the white light, the tunnel, the disembodied observer floating above the crash scene -- serve, to some, the glimpse of life after life. Given the existential implications at stake, the big question becomes what happens to consciousness after "death." One researcher has suggested that "the evidence so far is that it (i.e. consciousness) doesn't die when you and I cross over (to death)." Perhaps the question of an eternal afterlife is at least worthy of a one-hour Member Monday discussion.

That researcher's reference to the word "evidence" opens the subject matter from the exclusive province of metaphysics onto the provisional world of science and medicine, more in our collective grasp.

Enter our focus article The Afterlife Is In Our Heads. We might start with a simple key definition i.e. that of death. Death defined, say, as the point of cardiac arrest where the brain no longer receives blood and oxygen might take us down one path i.e. the near-death experience of a brain in extremis as explained in physiological terms. A different definition of death, say the total cessation of brain activity, would have absolutely nothing to say about any such near-death experience presaging eternity and would place the entire matter squarely into the world of pure faith, the supernatural and the mystics. A free dessert to anyone with a confirmed case.

Back to somewhat firmer ground, neuroscientists offer physiological explanations for virtually all the reported after-death experience biggies i.e. those previously mentioned together with out-of-body experience, loss of fear of death, return to the body, even a heightened sense of consciousness. None of this is meant to denigrate the experience, for the experience is as real as an altered brain state, much of which can even be accomplished by artificial means such as through a ketamine trip. May we, though, perhaps draw a distinction between the content of the experience and some claim about the nature of the universe -- after all, some philosophical traditions hold that life itself is but an illusion.

We might enjoy sharing some of our own near-death experiences. The article's mention of the phenomenon being triggered by an acute fear of falling -- say off a mountain -- brought to mind a personal example. Early Autumn 1976, a CMC-sponsored (billed as non-technical) climb up Pyramid Peak, drizzle turning to sleet as the mountain became shrouded in fog with perhaps six-foot visibility, inching along the rock face on narrow ledges, woman in the group being struck in the face by a small rock dislodged from above, someone suggesting we turn back only to hear (couldn't see) the most blood-curdling words from our so-called guide "we're lost and the only way I know how to get back down is from the summit."

The relevance of the account -- only now realized some forty-seven years later -- is that the experience had all the hallmarks of an out-of-body experience, evidenced by a paradoxical feeling of abject terror mixed with a calm fearlessness about the idea of death itself. Difficult to explain, until now, was that palpable temptation to simply jump and end it all that day having nothing to do with some suicidal impulse but rather a kind of near-death episode.

Your turn.