While Death is compulsory to every human being, no sober living person has ever admitted to be proud of the fact that he/she will pass on. And, many die without ever surrendering the mentality and hope that there can happen a miracle to prolong their lifespan beyond the maximum human capability.
The relationship between Life And Death
Life is the state distinguishing living organisms (plants, animals, etc.) from inanimate matter, characterized by processes like homeostasis, metabolism, growth, response to stimuli, and reproduction, encompassing the entire span from birth to death, and also refers to the experiences, meaning, and quality of existence.
Death is the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism.
Therefore, anything that has life, is subject to death—the end of life.
The Art Of Death
When you’re born, you grow up a little, you love someone, maybe give birth to a few more people and then before you know it, it’s time for the next part: death—The inevitable disappearance of our being.
There are various ways that lead to death. It is often due to heart disease or cancer, but there are about 600 victims of asphyxiation due to respiratory failure, or most people, death is not entirely instantaneous.
Scientific Study Of The Death Moment
Modern science tells us about the conditions of those end times.
In the final stages of death, people are often unconscious, so we tend to think of the event as sleep, a fading consciousness in life.
But other experiments tell a completely different story.
In 2013, scientists at the University of Michigan measured the brain activity of dead laboratory mice, and something very interesting happened.
After the mice suffered a cardiac arrest, without a heartbeat or breathing, their brains showed increased global activity and lower levels of gamma waves that were more evenly distributed throughout the brain than in the mice’s normal waking states. And surprisingly, that specific type of brain activity has been linked to people’s perception of consciousness in previous research.
In the very study, the mice experienced something while they were undergoing physiological and brain death. The experiment challenged the notion that the brain is inactive at the time of death.
Instead, it seemed that before complete loss of consciousness there might be a period of greater awareness.
What were rats getting when they died? Could this be the same for people?
Humans have larger and more complex brains than mice, but a fascinating study conducted at Imperial College London in 2018 sheds light on how humans might feel at the time of death.
The Near-death Experience
Scientists wanted to examine the similarities between two different events. On the one hand, near-death experiences (NDEs), are dreams that occur in about 20% of people who have been resurrected after a medical death.
On the other hand, visions caused by DMT, a psychedelic drug (which in turn produces a wide range of individual effects on human brain functions, including cognition, affect, and perception).
So they gave the people they studied a dose of DMT and once they returned to reality, they asked them to describe their experiences using a standard checklist widely used to assess near-death experiences. And they were surprised to see the incredible amount of common ground.
NDE and DMT experiences included feelings such as “the passage of time and space” and “oneness with objects and people nearby.”
The near-death experience turned out to be similar to a powerful hallucinogenic drug. The Psychedelic End (Augmented Consciousness).
When we think of death, we think of it as a negative process. But science asks: what if it is psychedelic?
We asked Dr Chris Timmermann, who led the study at Imperial College London, what this experiment can tell us about death.
“I think the main lesson of the research is that we can infuse death into life and life experiences,” he said.
“There are also specific areas in the brain, such as what we call the medial temporal lobes, areas that are involved in memory, sleep and even learning that may be related to that experience as well.”
“In a way, our minds are somehow simulating a kind of reality.”
Approximately 20% of people who have been declared clinically dead and are alive report an NDE.
Is it that everyone goes through it and only a few remember it or that this experience is very rare?
“It is very likely that there is a lack of recall due to various reasons,” Timmermann explained.
“What I think is happening is that the situation is so new, that it’s inexplicable or difficult to put into words. “When an event exceeds the ability to describe it in language, we have difficulty remembering it. “But it could also be that some people don’t have experience with it.”
He was asked; What further research from there can help our understanding of death?
“It’s really amazing what’s happening these days with brain research and how we can find out what’s going on in the brain, how it translates into experience,” he replied.
“So, it’s possible that at some point our brain imaging techniques will become so advanced that we can read people’s minds so that we can get a closer understanding of what brain systems underlie these strange and unusual experiences.
“Hope The science of death is a fascinating subject, but what we already know paints a surprisingly hopeful picture.
For example, we know that people who have had near-death experiences often report feelings of calm and show a decrease in stress associated with death.
We also know that near-death experiences (NDEs) are described as painless for many, meaning that the increased awareness we can gain about death is also likely to be painless.And maybe it’s a little fun.
Research also shows that people tend to lose their emotions in a specific order. First hunger and thirst, then speech and vision. Hearing and touch seem to last a long time, meaning that many people can hear and feel their loved ones in their final moments, even when they appear unconscious.
A recent brain scan of a near-death epilepsy patient showed activity related to memories and dreams, leading to speculation that there may be some truth to the “light of life flashing before his eyes.”
Finally, we know from these experiments that experiencing a near-death experience can be associated with heightened consciousness, possibly visual. One final human journey before anything else.
“In a society like ours, where we tend to deny death and try to hide it, I think this is one of the biggest lessons that psychological research can give us: how to incorporate it into our lives,” Timmerman concluded.
Eventually, we will all die. But these experiments showed that the transition between life and death can be a more intense and emotional experience than we might expect.
We are programmed as animals to fear our own mortality, but understanding death in more depth helps us calm down a little. Those final moments may not be scary. They are just part of an inevitable journey to an unknown, perhaps painless, place.
