Brought Back to Life

In class I talked about a hypothetical experiment where religious zealots could be given the means to kill themselves and then be brought back to life in order to get a glimpse of what the afterlife might look like. Obviously, this experiment is made up, but there is significant research going into the actual phenomenon of what happens when people die and then are brought back to life. These people have incredibly similar accounts that center around a long tunnel with a bright light at the end. They describe colors that they have never seen before and encounters and conversations with relatives and friends they have lost. They also describe the bright light as a strong but comforting presence. They note that things just feel right. Sometimes the relatives even tell them it is not their time and they return to the body and can even see their bodies on the table as if their spirit is hovering above. A single case of this might be dismissed but there are literally thousands of documented cases where people describe all of these same basic principles. These experiences lead to interesting and provocative questions about the after life. Many want to believe that these people are actually experiencing the journey to "heaven" and that bright presence is the god-like figure described in most religions. However, a theory that can be equally true is that the brain is in severe distress and during the time when the body dies the person has thought so intensely that death "should" look like a bright light at the end of the tunnel that this is what they actually see. They might not actually be "dead" because death is not a moment but a process. When the heart stops the brain is not necessarily completely dead, although brain death is very quick to follow. These results are some of the most interesting and some might say that experiments on terminally ill patients wanting to attempt to find god and further their religious sentiments should be able to try to explore this idea because they really do not put a price on finding out if there is an afterlife.