Science Figuring out what happens to us when we die

Does anyone think that someday, maybe in the near future, maybe in the distant future, that scientists could possibly find out what happens to us when we pass over?

Everyday, it seems like, science is getting closer to figuring out what everything is all about. Especially in quantum physics.


Just something I thought of wanted to get some other opinions.
What do you guys?

As far as I know, science already has an answer. Now, whether it will change with new information, remains to be seen.

As far as science is currently concerned, when we die, all biochemical reactions in our bodies cease and then we rot. There isn't anything more that has any empirical evidence to support it.

Personally, I find it all to be a bit of a relief, to be honest.

Ah, but you are forgetting a cardinal rule! Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Guess all we have are theories at this point, untill the time when we can talk to dead people I doubt modern science can solve this one. Someday, though.

My personal beliefs are that our souls move up into the next dimension every time we die in our current one. That's a whole new thread though

[removed quote of entire previous post]
Mod Edit: Quoting – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 14-7-2007 by sanctum]

Or maybe this happens: After you die you fall to the ground smashing your teeth out as blood runs into the thick shag carpeting. Your hands twitch as synaptic nerves are still firing, your eyes eerily opened, as you stare into the kitchen area. The cat runs by your body knocking over the potted plant that you skillfully kept alive the last 7 years.



[edit on 13-7-2007 by carnival_of_souls2047]

Science as MMF stated, only mentions rotting in the ground as your final resting place.

I would say none of us really knows as we can't see the dead or talk to them as an earlier poster mentioned.

If you read up on OOBE (out of body experiences) and NDE (near death experiences) you will find more than meets the eye. Typically when this happens, a rush of '___' is released from the pineal gland. '___' is referred to as the 'God' molecule.

I'll get you some research on this subject of NDEs, gimme a minute or two .

Sources:

www.near-death.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

www.mindspring.com...

www.nderf.org...

skepdic.com...

www.aleroy.com...

www.iands.org...


Material:

Personal experience (not my own, but I have had a few )

There was my body, still swimming toward shore, moving as straight and smooth as a motor boat. I watched for a while, indifferent to the plight of my body. I was far more concerned with trying to figure out where I was.

I noticed a light coming from somewhere behind me. It was a peculiar light. It had feeling. When I turned to see where this light was coming from, it would remain behind me. Somehow though, I managed to get turned around so I could look right into the light.

The light was delicious. I soaked it up like a dry sponge soaks up water. I felt like I had been sealed up in a vacuum packed jar for as long as I could remember. Now the jar was opened and the pressure was gone. I could breathe again. I could feel energy flowing into me, loosening and softening parts of my being that I did not even know I had. My whole being thrilled with well-being and joy. A feeling that I had known before, though I could not remember where or when.

Time itself seemed to be softening. For as long as I could remember, the minutes, days and years of my life seemed to be fixed, like the markings on a steel ruler. Now, the measuring stick of time was becoming soft and flexible. I could return to events of my past, examining them with greater clarity and detail than when they had originally happened. But then, when I would return to where I was, it seemed like no time at all had gone by. Deep into episodes of my personal history, and then back into the light.

Centuries would condense into seconds. Millenniums would shrink into moments. The entire civilization that I was part of passed by in the blink of an eye.

From: www.near-death.com...

Many people who die (or nearly die) and come back to life have an experience. The experiences have a lot of common elements. Many if not most of these experiences are not considered real or important by the experiencer, but there are many experiencers who consider their experience to be real and they are profoundly changed by the experience. Sometimes they want to share it with others. This page seeks to gather unbiased information about NDEs. The unfiltered collection of experiences here are from around 1997, about 20 years after the topic first started gaining interest in the U.S. The experiences seem highly varied, despite the common elements. Please keep in mind that even these experiences are filtered in the sense that those who do not think the experience carried any significance are not likely to report it.

From: www.mindspring.com...

It is a common element, unique to the NDEs experience, to report seeing deceased beings. Frequently, those seen on the other side are religious beings or deceased relatives. This study analyzes the beings that were seen on the other side. The datum is broken down into the categories of familiar beings and unfamiliar beings. Of the 302 people who responded to the survey, 29% (88) saw familiar beings and 25.8% (78) saw unfamiliar beings. Of the 166 people who saw beings, 53% saw familiar beings, while 47% saw unfamiliar beings. The highest percentage of familiar beings seen were blood relatives (25.9%), followed by religious figures (22.9%). Implications are discussed against the backdrop of consciousness and the Soulmate myth of popular culture

From: www.nderf.org...

Researchers believe that neurophysiological processes must play some part in NDE. Similar experiences can be induced through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe (and hence of the hippocampus) during neurosurgery for epilepsy, with high carbon dioxide levels (hypercarbia), and in decreased cerebral perfusion resulting in local cerebral hypoxia as in rapid acceleration during training of fighter pilots, or as in hyperventilation followed by Valsalva manoeuvre. Ketamine-induced experiences resulting from blockage of the NMDA receptor, and the role of endorphin, serotonin, and enkephalin have also been mentioned, as have near-death-like experiences after the use of '___', psilocarpine, and mescaline. These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past. These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.

Thus, induced experiences are not identical to NDE...

From: skepdic.com...



You decide for yourself what's real, and after all, we'll all find out when our hearts stop beating right? So enjoy the ride till then.

[edit on 13-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

They reproduced the NDE with experiments with ketamine.

To some people that would confirm life after death.

To me and to most scientists, that confirms that NDEs are simply a chemical reaction in the brain upon dying, an attempt to ease the fear of knowing you're going. Once the NDE stops, you're gone, and I'm not prepared to think that we end up going somewhere else.

MMF:
skepdic.com...

Ketamine-induced experiences resulting from blockage of the NMDA receptor, and the role of endorphin, serotonin, and enkephalin have also been mentioned, as have near-death-like experiences after the use of '___', psilocarpine, and mescaline. These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past.

These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.

Thus, induced experiences are not identical to NDE...

Read the last line. 'Induced experiences are not identical to NDE.'

'The experiences consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review of a NDE.'

I believe there is life after life. I wouldn't say life after death because death is merely another part of life.

This life itself is an illusion. One can never really be sure if one's dreaming or awake.

We use four different brain wave states: beta, alpha, delta, theta.

Brain Wave Functions





How do you know you're not dreaming right now?


Remember the kid's nursery rhyme?

'Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily,

life is but a dream.'

[edit on 13-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

[edit on 13-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

Originally posted by MajorMalfunction

Personally, I find it all to be a bit of a relief, to be honest.

Really? you dont want to live on? Why?! I want to live forever.
Whats the point of living if you were to die and lose all memories, and be gone forever, as if it never happened, it wouldnt make sense.

Originally posted by biggie smalls
could you provide the source link, biggie? it really matters where information comes from before I'll accept it. Nothin' personal, my man.

Originally posted by _Phoenix_

Really? you dont want to live on? Why?! I want to live forever.
Whats the point of living if you were to die and lose all memories, and be gone forever, as if it never happened, it wouldnt make sense.

That's the thing, it's not meant to make sense. It's just nature in action and because we have consciousness we need to tell ourselves there is something more than we have proof exists.

I'm perfectly fine with ceasing to exist upon death. That's why life is so important NOW. That's why you should live your best and be the best person you can NOW, because there is no second chance. Instead of living well because some guy in the sky is keeping score to see if you've been naughty or nice, I just live well because this is all I am certain I'm going to get.

MMF, that was from the post before I just wanted to emphasize my point

But here it is anyway.

skepdic.com...

[edit on 13-7-2007 by biggie smalls]

Seriously though, does anyone honestly want that one be-all end-all answer to death? As much as it intrigues me I think I would be to afraid to find out for sure. I mean, what if the answer is something that you have either no faith in or do not want at all? Then what? How would something like that affect the rest of your physical existence?

I believe that life does go on but I am not in the position to offer any ideas of any credible capacity. I am not religious by any means but I do believe in races/beings/whatever that are more evolved and/or higher on the evolutionary scale then (wo)man. As intrigued as I am and as much as the answer fuels my imagination, I'm quite enjoying life in the now, bad mojo and all. Isn't that what it's about in the end anyway?

We need someone to stand still so we can have a control test subject on our life after death project. The line forms to the left.

Watch this and you'll understand that people are experiencing things even when their brain doesn't function:

Google Video Link

This is what I believe:
When you're inside a car that doesn't mean that YOU'RE THE CAR, and the same rules applies to our body, I'm not a human; I'm a soul inside a human.

Ive always believed that we are energy and instead of dying, energy is just transfered or moved from one place to another. This "energy" could be what most people believe is the soul.
So what i think is that either we are able to choose what we want to do when we die, (roam the universe) which is my hope or we are just put into another body. that we cannot choose, we are aware of our existence but have no idea that we existed before. Personally, that is my least favorite theory because by the time i reach old age I'm sure that this one life will be more than enough for me and I'll be ready to move on to a higher plane (if it exists)

Originally posted by carnival_of_souls2047
Or maybe this happens: After you die you fall to the ground smashing your teeth out as blood runs into the thick shag carpeting. Your hands twitch as synaptic nerves are still firing, your eyes eerily opened, as you stare into the kitchen area. The cat runs by your body knocking over the potted plant that you skillfully kept alive the last 7 years.
[edit on 13-7-2007 by carnival_of_souls2047]

Yes yes...........dont stop now.....Im getting excited

Science proved a long time ago that there is life after death. Its called the NDE.

Even when persons are completely void of electrical activity in the brain, they somehow still manage to have an experience in this state, then if they are fortunate enough they come back, and can tell of their experience.

The simple fact that people have had experiences whilst their brains have be effetively "off" proves there is more to life after death, that consciousness lives on.

Science proved it along time ago.. but the mainstream never caught up, because it does not conform to our current paradigm/the mindset the elite want us to have.

About 2 years ago my heart stopped and I quit breathing for about 5 minutes or so. It happened once at my home, once in the ambulance and again in the ER. They could resuscitate me fine but my heart wouldnt stay beating, finally they had to use an adrenaline shot in the chest to keep it beating.
The only thing I remember about it was the sense that I was alone and VERY cold.
The cold part is especially memorable for some reason. I distinctly remember the point that I was resuscitated at least two of the times and the feeling of being so cold was almost overwhelming. It wasnt the same as being cold like were used to, I was cold on the inside, hard to explain but I dont recall any bright light or seeing dead relatives etc...

The Phantom, here is one of a four piece interview with Michael Roll that you might find interesting

The Scientific and Rationalist Case for Life After Death - 1



and a H/T to etshrtslr for providing this link

The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (formerly the Human Energy Systems Laboratory) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or personality or identity) of a person survives physical death.

veritas.arizona.edu...

or all four can be viewed in a thread I started a while ago.

ATS
Michael Roll: The Scientific and Rationalist Case for Life After Death

I'm really baffled by the mind set that for something to be a so-called “mystic experience” it must be some kind of scientifically unexplainable magic. Maybe what we think of as god and soul and spirit are just as subject to the laws of nature as anything else? Maybe they even are the laws of nature themselves. My point is, I believe everything can be explained scientifically regardless of it's nature. It's just a matter of science getting to the point where it can understand it all. So just because there's a chemical process involved in the brain during the transition between life and death doesn't make that process devoid of spiritual value.

As for what happens at death. I'm certainly no scientist, but from what I understand of science our mind and bodies are made up of pure energy at their most basic level. Even our thoughts and memories are stored and transmitted in energy form between the synaptic junctions of the neurons in our cerebral cortex. Perhaps it is this very core energy that makes up our soul.

Science tells us that energy can not be created or destroyed it can only change forms. It seems logical to me to assume that since the most basic level of our being is made up of pure energy and science says energy can not be destroyed that we do indeed survive physical death. The question in my mind is what happens to that energy once we die? Does it stay together, retaining our memories and consciousness indefinitely? If so what holds it together? Does it change form? Does it eventually disperse into the universe and become a part of something else?

I'm just speculating now but there are enough reports of OBE's and NDE's throughout history to give us reason to believe that our consciousnesss and memories may remain in tact once we die, at least for a short period of time anyway. What happens then, I can't say, but I do think it's encouraging that most NDE's report seeing loved ones who have previously passed on. I wonder how long the longest reported OBE and NDE have lasted. Assuming that this speculation is correct, knowing that would tell us that our cconsciousness is able to continue in tact for a least “X“amount of time. I've heard it said that the Buddha Boy from Nepal is probably out of body while he's meditating. If so, that would mean it may be possible for the consciousness to remain in tact for months outside the physical body.

I do have to agree with MajorMalfunction though when he says it's important to live life now. Regardless of whether we continue on after death I think it's important to cultivate our awareness and get the most out of every moment we're here. There's far too many opportunities happening right now to spend all of our time speculating about the future.

[edit on 14-7-2007 by Mitzella]