What happens when we die?

I was lying awake in bed tonight, and i started to think about getting old, and time, and how short it is, as i tend to think about more than most people probably do.. And i ended up getting really freaked out, as i'm sure a lot of people do when they think about this mystery, of where we go when we die, and what happens to us when our brain shuts off. It's a really scary thought, and of course not knowing how we got here, makes it a lot scarier.


Sometimes i think it doesn't matter how we got here, and it won't matter how we die, because those are two things that we have absolutely no control over. It kind of irritates me that people tell me "i'm supposed to do the right thing" What the hell is the right thing?!?!?! Like since when did it become a "rule" that i HAVE to live a life with rules, so that when i die, i go "home"... It doesn't make sense to me at all... It doesn't matter to me where i go when i die, i will be dead. And in my opinion it's just a transfermation into another body, to experience something else. It's almost exciting sometimes to think about what i could be in my next life. Instead of dwelling on how i got here, and who i was in my past life, i like to think about what i could be in my next life, after all, that's more exciting to me, because i've grown, and learned.. and experienced. In my next life i will be stronger, and smarter.

After thinking these thoughts over and over again in my mind, and trying not to scare myself so bad that i would have an emotional break down, I went online to do some research, thinking to myself, Someone out there has to feel the way i do, and surely, they wrote about it. Well, it turns out that there are a lot of people who feel the way i do, and there are also people out there who claim to have died, and came back to life, and having an out of body experience. This really caught my interest, considering my current thoughts.. I started to read a few articles, and i came across one that was about a group of scientists who are going to be doing some research, over the next three years, with an experiment they plan on doing. The experiment, is that they are going to be studying the patients who claim they have had an out of body experience. Also, they will set up special shelving in resuscitation areas. The shelves hold pictures – but they're visible only from the ceiling. So that means that if any patients recall the images, it would be the first hard proof that out-of-body experiences are real. Dr Sam Parnia, who is leading the study at University of Southampton, said: 'If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity.

Many people have interviewed Dr. Sam Parnia, and asked some very interesting questions, it seems in my opinion that this is one smart person, and i can not wait to see what the experiment unfolds for the future. Weather it's good news, or bad news, it ends up being an answer regardless, and answers might make us rest more easy. To me, it's like even if i live a long life, and i'm lucky enough to have a family of my own, and even some grand children, maybe even some great grand children, i feel like i will still be afraid to die. Sometimes i think it's so sick that i feel like i'm under a large body of water with no idea when my oxygen will run out, it could run out at any time, and there are billions of others swimming around me, and i keep watching them lose there oxygen and float the the surface, in fear, wondering when i'm next...

I talk to a lot of people who claim that the end won't be so bad when we get old, because we will be so tired from this life, that wares us out so quickly, that we will be waiting for this rest that will last forever, and we will no longer be tired. But it just takes me right back to the one question that burns my every thought, Will i be left in the ultimate darkness? When i die, there will no longer be any thoughts and i'm sorry but that scares me!

When interviewed, here are some of the Q&A's
Between M.J. Stephey and Dr. Sam Parnia

What was your first interview like with someone who had reported an out-of-body experience?

Eye-opening and very humbling. Because what you see is that, first of all, they are completely genuine people who are not looking for any kind of fame or attention. In many cases they haven't even told anybody else about it because they're afraid of what people will think of them. I have about 500 or so cases of people that I've interviewed since I first started out more than 10 years ago. It's the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present who said these patients had told them exactly what had happened, and they couldn't explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles —not just the patients' side but also the doctors' side — and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.

How is technology challenging the perception that death is a moment?

Nowadays, we have technology that's improved so that we can bring people back to life. In fact, there are drugs being developed right now — who knows if they'll ever make it to the market — that may actually slow down the process of brain-cell injury and death. Imagine you fast-forward to 10 years down the line; and you've given a patient, whose heart has just stopped, this amazing drug; and actually what it does is, it slows everything down so that the things that would've happened over an hour, now happen over two days. As medicine progresses, we will end up with lots and lots of ethical questions.

But what is happening to the individual at that time? What's really going on? Because there is a lack of blood flow, the cells go into a kind of a frenzy to keep themselves alive. And within about 5 min. or so they start to damage or change. After an hour or so the damage is so great that even if we restart the heart again and pump blood, the person can no longer be viable, because the cells have just been changed too much. And then the cells continue to change so that within a couple of days the body actually decomposes. So it's not a moment; it's a process that actually begins when the heart stops and culminates in the complete loss of the body, the decompositions of all the cells. However, ultimately what matters is, What's going on to a person's mind? What happens to the human mind and consciousness during death? Does that cease immediately as soon as the heart stops? Does it cease activity within the first 2 sec., the first 2 min.? Because we know that cells are continuously changing at that time. Does it stop after 10 min., after half an hour, after an hour? And at this point we don't know.