It
started innocently enough. We were
sitting outside on the porch watching the ocean and playing a game of
Rummy. While chatting about nothing in
particular, my mom decided to tell us her secret.
“I love
that show ‘Long Island Medium,’” she announced.
My
sister started laughing, but I smiled.
It’s the only dang show on TLC these days so I’d seen it more times than
I’d like. I said that I couldn’t watch
it for too long because I found the loved ones’ stories to be too emotional for
me. Oddly, we did not then discuss if we
felt Theresa was real or full of it, but instead her nails, her demeanor, and
her relationship with her family.
Looking back, I’m surprised that we skipped that elephant in the room in
that conversation, but the idea of mediums has stuck around in the back of my
head since that day.
I
started simple. I polled some friends about
their experiences with mediums, ghosts, and near-death experiences. Immediately after asking them their thoughts,
I felt silly. I assumed everyone’s
response was going to be “My goodness – mediums aren’t real.” Fascinatingly, I received the exact opposite. The vast majority believed in mediums, that
those we lost in this world are still nearby, and that some kind of consciousness
can transcend biology.
Anyone
who reads this blog knows that I’m a biological chemist. My entire existence is firmly rooted in the
reverence of DNA, proteins, cells and atoms.
However, the topics of death, life, the brain, and self-awareness are
ones that baffle me. I think about them
from time to time and wonder if we are ever going to be able to understand
them. Just reading “The Boy Who Came
Back from Heaven,” a story about a young boy who was severely injured in a car
accident but survives to tell some amazing things, blows my mind. While in graduate school, a lab member died
very unexpectedly and thoughts of “where is he now?” consumed me for
weeks. I never could make any sense of
it all.
I next
turned to a place where I thought a paucity of information would be found. However, just like conversations with my
friends, I was surprised by what did turn up on PubMed about the study of consciousness,
parapsychology and the apparent disconnect between the mind and the brain.
From
1988 to 1992, a study was performed at ten Dutch hospitals. Researchers interviewed every person to
survive cardiac arrest, a time that has been shown to result in no diastolic pressures
(with very low systolic pressures due to chest compressions) and inadequate
cerebral perfusion (blood flow).
Clinical death is defined as the unconsciousness due to lack of oxygen
in the brain because of no blood circulation or breathing. Within ten minutes of symptom onset, brain
cells will become damaged and die, leading to death of the patient. 344
patients who were defined as clinically dead and then resuscitated were
interviewed for their memories during the near-death experience and their
outlook on life. 18% reported
remembering parts or all of their cardiac arrests with 30% of this group
reporting the classical tunnel vision and visitation with dead relatives and
25% experiencing an “out of body” occurrence.
Not one of these patients said they felt negatively or scared about what
they encountered.
Why did
82% not experience anything like this?
The researchers don’t know. They
can’t find a common thread among them including length of cardiac arrest,
length of unconsciousness following the arrest, use of intubation, degree of
anoxia, medications, and even religious views.
A similar study carried out in the United States had 15.5% experiencing
a near-death experience during cardiac arrest but those researchers were also
unable to explain it by looking at the same similar factors. Disturbingly (or not), these experiences can
also not be pinned on the moments when the patient is either losing or gaining consciousness
because the patients’ stories of what was happening to their bodies can be corroborated
by those doctors and nurses who were present during the clinical death.
The
paradox is well summed up in these two quotes from Parnia et al. and Satori,
respectively.
…when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is
deeply comatose, those cerebral functions, which underpin subjective experience
and memory, must be severely impaired.
Complex experiences as reported in the [near-death experience] should
not arise or be retained in memory. Such
patients would be expected to have no subjective experience, as was the case in
the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest, since all centers in
the brain that are responsible for generation conscious experience have stopped
functioning as a result of lack of oxygen.
…according to mainstream science, it is quite impossible to
find a scientific explanation for the near-death experience as long as we ‘believe’
that consciousness is only a side effect of the functioning brain. [Near-death experiences are] difficult to
reconcile with current medical opinion.
This brings us to the two different
modes of thought to explain consciousness.
One. Consciousness is a result of cerebral activity
Two. Consciousness is a separate entity that can’t be
further explained with what we currently know about brain processes
Both
are a bit heavy, huh? The large Dutch
study I discussed earlier goes on to further explain out of body experiences,
flashing of one’s life before the eyes, meeting previously deceased relatives,
and how consciousness returns to the body.
I’ll explore these topics in my next post, but let me leave you with
this even further out-there idea. What
if consciousness does arise from our brain matter or from some other as-yet
unexplained scientific way, then we must conclude that it came from this world,
which was created by the Big Bang.
Everything we touch, hold, and are was made from the initial bang of
matter into this place. If so, then “…we
are entangled with everything and this would allow us to communicate with the
mind and body of others.”
Just
mull it over while eating some turkey.
Maybe those who have left us are not really gone. Maybe they are just beyond our physical world
watching us, waiting for Theresa to come along and pass a message. The truth is that I have no idea.
REFERENCES
Dutch study: van Lommel, P. “Near-death experiences: the
experience of the self as real and not as an illusion.” Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences. (2011) 1234, pgs 19 – 28
Background, cardiac arrest information: Parnia, S. “Do
reports of consciousness during cardiac arrest hold the key to discovering the
nature of consciousness?” Medical Hypotheses (2007) 69, pgs 933 – 937
Sartori, P. "The incidence and phenomenology of near-death experiences." Network Review (Scientific and Medical Network) (2006) 90, pgs 23 - 25.
Big Bang togetherness: Bonilla, E. “Mind-body connection,
parapsychological phenomena and spiritual healing. A review.” Investigacion clinica (2010)
51(2), pgs 209 – 238 (in Spanish, PMID: 20928979)
