Do We Get Out Alive?

 I think, when we speak in terms of consciousness and the experience of biological death, what nearly everyone (at least there in the West) wants to know is this: what happens when we die? 

On the surface, of course, we know the textbook answer.   Our hearts cease their beating, our lungs stop their breathing, and our brainwaves zero out.  Rendered as an image, it looks something like this:

Heartrate of someone near death. Image courtesy of the Conversation. 

There is some debate, of course, about when/how physicians declare the individual deceased, but that's beyond the scope of this post for now.  I am illustrating that this data that is rendered as an image is what is quantified as biological life, and when the values move to zero, biological death occurs.   

But of course we want to know what happens. After all, none of us are getting out of here alive, are we?    We know we are all going on the same trip eventually.  Use whatever metaphor makes sense to you, it really doesn't matter.  There are spiritual traditions the world over that have given rise to ideologies that define what happens at the moment your meatsuit breaks down, and stories like this one that provide a more personal narrative of near-death-experiences (NDEs), but we cannot, as of yet, say anything for certain about that ever-approaching moment except this: our biological functions will end. 

But what happens after that?   There is no sure answer yet, of course.  And that uncertainty - that not knowing - is what most drives the fear of this moment.  That is why in the West death is currently referred to as mostly a loss - it is viewed as the loss of biological life. But we may be on the edge of an understanding of sorts about what happens next.  

Dr. Sam Parnia, a renowned physician specializing in end-of-life therapies and resuscitative measures, here describes his observation/measurement of the qualities of consciousness that extend beyond biological death.   Here is a bit of the interview where he talks of this: 

There are no hard conclusions yet made.  He only goes so far as to say that there are exchanges that happen immediately beyond the threshold of measured death.  He admits that he cannot extrapolate any data beyond a certain point, and therefore cannot scientifically ascertain what happens beyond that.    But it is worth noting that he is, at least, measuring this; that consideration is being given to this.   

If we can ever truly qualify consciousness, we may then figure out what happens when our consciousness separates from our biology (which is the moment we currently label as death). 

I'm very excited by this!  I believe that understanding these fundamentals might prove to the be most important observation we have ever made as humans: but I suspect there are cultures long vanished who discovered it before us.   

It's my hope that we can relearn some of these forgotten concepts, and it may help us reimagine our views on death and dying.