Dead But Awake: Is It Possible?

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Dead But Awake: Is It Possible?By Daithi O hAnluainhttp://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0%2C1286%2C55826%2C00.htmlTwo British scientists are seeking £165,000 ($256,000) to carryout a large-scale study to discover if clinically dead peoplereally have out-of-body experiences.Dr. Sam Parnia, senior research fellow at the University ofSouthampton, and Dr. Peter Fenwick, a consultantneuropsychiatrist at Oxford University, are both highly respectedresearchers.Near-death experiences are the most common experience and includeseeing a white light, while out-of-body experiences involveserenely observing one's dead body while medics work franticallyto resuscitate it. The researchers have founded a charitabletrust, Horizon Research, to promote studies in the field.Last year Parnia published a study indicating that 10 percent ofclinically dead patients who were later resuscitated reportedmemories while they were lifeless.Evidence includes patients recognizing hospital staff they hadnever met but who helped during their resuscitation. Others haverecalled conversations between doctors.According to known medical science, this should be impossible,given the absence of any brain activity.In the past, the theory has been scorned by the scientificcommunity. Even those who want to believe the truth is out therehave turned skeptical.Susan Blackmore was once the doyenne of British paranormalresearch. She has since retired, disillusioned, from the field.She concluded in her book about near-death experiences, Dying toLive, that near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences area result of anoxia, or lack of oxygen in the brain.While skepticism remains, scientists are coming to recognize thatmore research is necessary. In December 2001, a Dutchneurologist, Dr. Pim van Lommel of Hospital Rijnstate in Arnhem,Netherlands, led a team that published an article in The Lancet,the United Kingdom's highly respected journal of medicine. Thestudy showed that 18 percent of clinically dead patients, laterresuscitated, recalled near-death experiences years after theevent.Another study, this one conducted in the United States by thefather of near-death-experience studies, Kenneth Ring, used blindpatients, resuscitated from cardiac arrest, who likewisedescribed seeing their body while clinically dead, althoughslightly out of focus. The book Mindsight was inspired by thisresearch.Fenwick and others are not positing life after death per se,merely consciousness after death.Nevertheless, the implications are enormous. If near-deathexperiences and out-of-body experiences don't come from thebrain, where is consciousness based?"There are two ways to view the universe," says Fenwick. "Ourcurrent world model is that everything is matter."In other words, everything that we think of as "real" inscientific terms has a physical form that can be perceived by oursenses. But this model, which philosophers call "radicalmaterialism," cannot explain the existence of consciousness,which has no physical essence.So how do we account for consciousness? "There's a little(unexplained) miracle, and consciousness arises," Fenwick says ofthe current paradigm.However, another theory proposes that the basic building block ofthe universe is not matter but instead consciousness itself. Thisis described as the "transcendent" view, a perspective shared bymany of the world's religions."This second, transcendent, view of the universe makes it mucheasier to understand NDEs (near-death experiences)," saysFenwick, who believes that science will eventually replace thematerial view of the universe with the transcendent one.The advent of quantum mechanics, which posits that matter cansimultaneously have both a physical form and a wave form is astep in that direction, he says.So are scientific studies of the power of prayer, which suggestthat subjects benefit from the prayers of others even when theyaren't aware that someone is praying for them.These studies have been interpreted by some researchers as anindication that consciousness behaves as a field, much likemagnetism, which can be affected by other fields. If that's true,then it's possible one person's consciousness could affectanother person's.Now Fenwick and Parnia hope to add new near-death-experience andout-of-body-experience research to these findings. If they canraise the cash, they intend to study 100 reanimated heart-attackvictims who had near-death experiences. Research has shown that30 of them can be expected to have out-of-body experiences.Fenwick and Parnia plan to place cards above the patients' headsthat can only be seen from the ceiling, where those whoexperience out-of-body experiences claim to watch theirresuscitation.So will this convince the skeptics? "No, nothing will, but that'sOK," says Fenwick, laughing. "It's how science progresses. Anyresearch that says you have to have a major rethink in your worldmodel is always rejected. But it will prove that consciousness isnot in the brain."Another thing the research proves is that there's life left yetin speculating about the afterlife.********You can help us make a difference. Click here for details:http://changingplanet.supremalex.org/help.htmChanging Planet News - Where Ethics, Science and Spirituality BlendOn the web at http://changingplanet.supremalex.orgIf the article you want is cut short, changingplanet/messages