Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Science: first hint of "life after death" in study

Wisdom Quarterly; Sarah Knapton, Science Correspondent, Telegraph.co.uk, "Life after death"

The Buddha-to-come, Maitreya, sitting in Himalayas as he sits in Tusita (DevonPucel/flickr)

Holy cow, the other worlds are really, they're actually real, countless worlds on 31 planes!

Life after death, world of the Thirty-Three

Death is a depressingly inevitable consequence of life [not because we'll die but because we will be reborn again again and again], but now scientists believe they may have found some light at the end of the tunnel.

The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely.

Even good Mahavira could see rebirth

It is a controversial subject which has, until recently, been treated with widespread skepticism.

But scientists at the University of Southampton have spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US, and Austria.

And they found that nearly 40 per cent of people who survived described some kind of "awareness" during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.

[We are certainly not our bodies, yet ultimately we are not our spirits, life force, or minds either, but that too big for most of us to wrap our heads around, what the Buddha introduced as the truth of anatta, "egolessness," without the realization of which there is no enlightenment, no nirvana, no final liberation from rebirth and suffering.]

Some cardiac arrest patients recalled seeing a bright light; a golden flash or the Sun shining

Move toward the light! Scientific study says there is life after death after all.

One man even recalled leaving his body entirely and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room.

Despite being unconscious and "dead" for three minutes, the 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, recounted the actions of the nursing staff in detail and described the sound of the machines.

[This is common and has been reported many times in hospitals all over the world, but it is very difficult to isolate under scientifically empirical conditions.]

“We know the brain can’t function [without blood, oxygen, glucose, and electrical impulses] when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr. Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York, who led the study.

“But in this case, conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped.

“The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals. So we could time how long the experienced lasted for.

“He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”

Of 2,060 cardiac arrest patients studied, 330 survived, and 140 said they had experienced some kind of awareness while being resuscitated. More