Is there life after death?

The experience of near death, earlier dismissed as unserious, has entered the realm of scientific inquiry and evidence building, encouraging us to be open-minded on the issue.

Searching in a neighborhood kiosk recently I found a book whose title Life After Life catapulted me to my childhood in India when intriguing stories of reincarnated individuals were widely covered captivating us the same way space wars and travel time movies mesmerize our youngsters.
Among reported cases was a striking one of a little girl in a town near New Delhi who protested being called a child instead claiming she was an adult member of another family. She cried incessantly until she was escorted to that “earlier” house which she entered with ease, astounding everyone with her familiarity with facts and relationships, which could not have been known to her or her present family. While some dismissed her past life story as a hoax, many more found the child’s recall of events credible and pleas to be restored to her previous family compelling.

My encounter with the book led me to impressive material on death and its relationship to life. I was especially heartened to come across reports of American children similarly affected by near-death experiences (NDE) and past life memories.
In Return to Life, Dr. Jim Tucker reports that many of the children he studied with memories of past life grieve being away from their previous families; about 70% were able to describe how they died, and around 20% reported having memories of an intermediate time between death and their next life. As Indians, we hear paranormal or unusual anecdotes from friends and relatives, making us less skeptical of out-of-body encounters.
My own experience at age 17 with a dream of a tragic accident that paralleled what actually occurred defies “normality”. In the dream whose grim details I immediately narrated to my mother, I saw an engine rolling down a sloping track and ramming into and killing a worker who had his back to the engine, only to find that a distant cousin’s engineer husband I had never known or met who was supervising a road building project in faraway Kabul was killed by a road roller in exactly the same manner.

Death ends life but survival continues

That the mind (consciousness) is extraneous and exists beyond the body is an unresolved issue that grips and challenges us. Science can solve the mystery of the universe’s beginning or the planets’ birth and death, and explain life’s genetic beginnings. Still, it is less able to come to grips with what is mind, how it differs from brain, what sustains it beyond the physical parameters of the body, and whether it dies along with a person’s death or simply operates outside of that person and that life.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Indigenous people’s and Tibetan faiths, and Eastern philosophy generally believe in the finality of physical death but the indestructibility of soul. In this view of ‘life’, death annihilates the body but not consciousness which passes on to operate in another realm. The Hindu belief that atman (self or soul) outlasts the material person is echoed in Western scholarship, making some researchers, such as Dr. Brian Weiss (Many Lives, Many Masters), to suggest that the “soul transcends the physical body”, and “our soul is far greater than our physical body; it’s not limited by our constructs of space and time”.
In Life After Life, Dr. Raymond Moody Jr.’s NDE research sparked skepticism and scientific curiosity, fueling further research.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Indigenous people’s and Tibetan faiths, and Eastern philosophy generally believe in the finality of physical death but the indestructibility of soul. In this view of ‘life’, death annihilates the body but not consciousness which passes on to operate in another realm. 

Questioning death’s irreversibility and perceiving NDE a possibility

Across time and cultures, as a recent article notes, death was considered an irreversible event, forcing us to accept that nothing could restore life. “We were conditioned to view death as an endpoint to the experience of life,” says Dr. Sam Parnia. “However, advances in resuscitation science and critical care medicine have challenged assumptions about the finality of death.” His work as Director of the Critical Care & Resuscitation Research Division at Langone Medical Center suggests how “death is not an absolute, but a process, enabling patients to share their insights of experiencing death”.

A common belief until recently was that death occurs when the heart stops beating, breathing stops, and the brain shuts down, causing all life processes and vital functions to cease. While modern medicine extends heartbeats, it also reveals a nuanced timeline of cellular death. That has made the medical fraternity more open to the possibility of some kind of survival after death.

In a 2022 panel presentation, psychiatry professors Tucker and Penburthy who have studied near-death experiences of children and adults, and after-death experiences and communications with loved ones, shared their research-based conviction that there is “a consciousness beyond our physical reality”. Eschewing afterlife debates, researchers listen to and document NDEs, analyzing these narratives for credibility and scientific patterns.

Other researchers from India and elsewhere have shown the same disciplined and credible diligence. Among them is Satwant Pasricha – clinical psychologist and Head, Department of Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru, India, whose investigations of reincarnation and NDS are widely published and well-received including her co-authored 2011 book Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences. In this book, global experts guide this exploration of NDEs in physiology, psychology, and medical aspects. This knowledge is valuable for medical professionals and spiritual caregivers supporting those who have experienced NDEs.

Common pattern underlying narratives of NDE

A November 2022 report by Wesley Smith refers to a new scientific study of people who survived cardiac arrest and recalled their near-death experiences. Lucid descriptions by 20% of the survivors included a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including their actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others.
Typical NDE research highlights a recurring pattern: floating and viewing one’s body being deemed and declared dead and then being medically revived, and during that interval, experiencing pushing painfully through a dark tunnel, hearing loud deafening noises, experiencing being “out of the body”, encountering dead relatives and other loved ones, seeing a bright light or some kind of divine luminescence, and experiencing peace and quiet contentment, in some cases causing reluctance to return to life. Depending on one’s faith, some recall seeing Christ or other manifestations of God, and Satan.

Ineffability or indescribability is the most commonly reported feature. Whereas near dying enables the indestructible part of a person to experience the passage to a new formless existence or entity, that entity or state of being is so unique and unprecedented as to make it “indescribable” as “words simply do not exist to capture and convey it correctly”.

An interesting commonly recalled experience is witnessing one’s entire life played before one – similar to how pressing the replay button lets us see a recorded show. Surprisingly, science seems to support the notion of witnessing one’s entire life in one go. A recent study from the University of Louisville that analyzed brain scans reports that a dying man’s life flashed before his eyes.

Advances in resuscitation science and critical care medicine have challenged assumptions about the finality of death. Dr Sam Parnia’s work at Langone Medical Center in New York suggests how “death is not an absolute, but a process, enabling patients to share their insights of experiencing death”.  

Benefits from NDE

Their entire life, warts and all, laid bare, has shock value, inspiring most of them upon return to try and lead a better life. That is not the only gain from experiencing near death and briefly living a dimension of life outside the customary. Overwhelmingly, what researchers report is that fear of death is either reduced or goes away completely. “This experience is completely transformative for them,” as Tucker points out. “They say they have lost fear of death, because they know that life continues.”

Returning from the jaws of death is bound to make most of us less fearful of dying, and more accepting of how we can make best use of our time on earth. That is a precious knowledge to live with and a unique legacy to bestow on humanity.

Impact of denial versus open-mindedness towards NDE

Since ‘back to living’ is an uncommon experience, it is difficult for most to talk about experiencing it. There is fear of derision, dismissal, and being characterized as nutty, freaky, creatively imaginative, and just plain stupid. Making them open up requires empathy, and grasping and cataloging what they say they experienced requires open-minded doctors, psychologists, and social scientists. Even preachers and leaders of faith have to open their minds to the possibility that some genre of life continues after death is proclaimed.
With researched evidence piling up and more people willing to consider the possibility of life after death, we may better understand the phenomenon of existence. Penberthy’s hope “for their field of research to become mainstream, the same way meditation research — once dismissed as pseudoscience — has gained credibility over time” may well come true. The 2022 study cited earlier exemplifies progress in confirming the veracity of NDE. “Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress.”

Do the research and accounts of NDE prove that there is life after death? The answer may not be conclusive but like others have suggested, it is a body of evidence that can support that hypothesis. As authors of a recently published work contend, “Perhaps near-death experiences open a window to the concept of a universal consciousness that is free of time and space.”

How we as laypersons can approach NDE

While scientists pursue their search for conclusive proof that life happens even after death, we as laypersons can commit ourselves to accepting the legitimacy of those who have experienced what we have not, and to treat them and all others around us with greater respect and empathy. Shedding our anxiety over dying, we need to view death as the beginning of something else. The life we are now leading is the pond from which our “self” emerges just as a lotus does in all its stunning beauty, calming peace, and glory.

Dead, then alive: What Anita Moorjani learned on the other side

In 2006, amidst a four-year battle with cancer, Anita Moorjani slipped into a coma and was pronounced clinically dead by doctors. Yet, in the depths of oblivion, she embarked on a profound near-death experience (NDE). She soared beyond her physical body, witnessing her life unfold like a movie, understanding its purpose, and shedding self-doubt and fear. 

Moorjani later documented this transformative journey in her bestselling book, Dying to Be Me. She described traversing realms of pure love and acceptance, encountering deceased loved ones, and gaining profound insights into the interconnectedness of all beings. Upon returning to her body, miraculously recovering from cancer, Moorjani felt reborn. 

Her NDE wasn’t just a brush with death; it was a complete rewiring of her perspective. She embraced life with newfound appreciation, dropping limiting beliefs and prioritizing joy. “Dying to be me” resonated deeply with readers, offering hope and a glimpse beyond the physical world. Moorjani became a global speaker, inspiring others to live authentically, shed fear, and connect with the deeper essence of their being. Her story is a powerful testament to the transformative power of NDEs and the potential for deep healing.

Lead visual courtesy Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library