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Brainwaves: What happens between life and death?

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Exactly — Good article. The definition of "death" is different between jurisdictions. Over the years, a number of people have been reported as waking-up in the morgue. In the end, none of evidence justifies a belief in afterlives or continuity of consciousness ( let alone personhood ) after irreversible biological death has occurred e.g. post cremation. Yet — the phenomenon persists. So questions remain. To quote the article:

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So there was a great opportunity there to expand our understanding.
MARTIAL: Exactly.
 
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I'd like to make a brain proposal by drawing on a couple of threads - one is a scientific study over a decade old on dreams using tetris and people who were 24 amnesiacs (look it up - it's fun) and what was discovered is that dreams are basically the brain's way of trying to help us out with whatever it is we are trying to learn in the waking world. In this way, all our nightmares, blissful exchanges, premonitory events, and repetitive dream loops are all a direct response to whatever we've been devoting a lot of time or personal effort to during the day. I'm sure we can all relate to that.

The second thread I want to draw on is what happened to me during a car accident where it looked like i was going to die as our vehicle sped unimpeded towards a large cube van with the foot to the accelerator (the driver had fallen asleep in the car and woke up at the last second just as we launched into the air up the driveway ramp to collide into the van). I'm going to estimate maybe a second, maybe less, passed between my brain launching into la la land and then coming back to my body just before the crash, which we both survived without a scratch.

But in that second my brain tried to comprehend what was happening, which made no sense to my conscious mind, so when our car leapt up into the air it continued to climb and sailed right over the van and then up above the trees in the park behind the house and my brain said, oh, he's taking the shortcut home and we are going to fly over the park and land on the street outside our house. I remember looking down to the park below and seeing the treetops and the swing set and where we used to play baseball and then peacefully landed in the driveway beside our house.

Then I was suddenly back in the vehicle and my brain said to me: "Ok, we're going to crash. It's going to be a really bad scene but everything is going to be fine. You're both going to be safe." And then bang - we hit that van with full force, crumpled the entire front end of the vehicle and because, by chance one of us put on our seat belts before we left to go home that night the other did too, (this was pre mandatory seat belt laws) and so we both didn't go head first through the windshield.

My assessment was that my brain, which knows time differently than during waking, and can provide fantastic time compression with all these vivid details and events in the space of a second....provided me with exactly what my consciousness needed - reassurance.

I wonder how much of the near death events are just our brain using whatever files are stored in the synapses to provide us with the expectations we have about what death will be like? It's just a big movie theatre that is preprogrammed and front loaded to try and do the best it can for us. Perhaps the whole garbage in garbage out computer analogy tells us something about how our brains relate to consciousness and even why paranormal experiences may have the bizarre sheen they have. And that's why some meet with dead relatives, go to heaven or go to hell - it's all just part of our waking knowledge. The brain is just a processing tool.
 
And as an addendum to the above, I can see how across the history of humanity these kinds of experiences become charged with informing the tribe, building educational stories and creating the myths that become foundational, perplexing and fascinating for the whole group.

I have not forgotten a single detail of that car crash and my brain's flight of fantasy, nor have I forgotten any paranormal experience or any intense life altering experience. These have been imprinted on my brain and are part of my own personal culture and history.

Is this how the paranormal grows to become a part of human history, part of human wonder and folklore. Is this why there is so much built up around near death experiences in our culture when perhaps they are merely the brain trying to throw something up on the screen to help explain to us what the hell is going on during an unprecedented extreme moment.

Similarly some of our contact experiences with aliens prompt many to see angels or demons because that's what's already in our brain to begin with.

If only we could strip away our own personal/cultural sunglasses, so we could see more clearly exactly what that alien, hairy creature, sea monster, ghost etc. really is. That's kinda where I left off in thinking about what's at the core the phenomena and didn't get to pursue that any further or find a way to see the paranormal with more clarity.
 
Burnt State said:
I wonder how much of the near death events are just our brain using whatever files are stored in the synapses to provide us with the expectations we have . . .
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That's my take ( as in your quote above ). Having Looked into the documentation, particularly experiences reported by doctors and patients in hospital settings, patients often have a familiarity with how hospitals operate in both real-life and fictional settings — sometimes even customized by doctors and shared with patients beforehand, leading to expectations, that when combined with sensory information received by the brain at an unconscious level during the real life event, could IMO lead to the formation of a lifelike dream state that closely reflects what's actually going on at the time.

Also, thanks for sharing your experience again. Like I always say, the phenomena is real — even if some people's interpretations of it likely aren't accurate.
 
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SRL+ said:
Anyone aware of the AWARE study, or viewed the short film; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? It’s kind of trippy, and you may have to speed it up.


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Probably my favourite episode of the Twilight Zone - but it was purchased from a French production company as Rod Serling had run out of cash for episodes at the time. It is a brilliant Ambrose Bierce short story and I own a copy of the film on a 16mm print. It's one of my favourite short films of all time, and totally fits in line with this condensation of time event just before an extreme human moment. The film production handles this concept very deftly so I won't say anymore.

I'm surprised this wasn't in my brain when I was writing this up. 🤔 This film makes me laugh and cry all at once. It is sheer genius. Thank you for bringing this forward to our collective consciousness. I hope everyone watches it and is accompanying it with their favourite beverage or inebriant.

There's another twist to this near death experience dilemma that I remember hearing about I think on The Paracast, probably a tale recounted by Chris O'Brien. It involved a pilot thrown out of his seat as his small plane was going down, and how he preformed a series of manoeuvres that was considered physically impossible in the amount of time he had before the crash, but was able to execute them anyways in some bizarre time condensation moment of superhuman effort. Maybe someone else will remember this for me.
 
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