Thought is Never Now
Awareness never Flows through Time and Space
Awareness After Death
Category: Death / Dying
Contrary to popular belief, death is not a moment in time, such as when the heart stops beating, respiration ceases, or the brain stops functioning. Death,rather, is a process—a process that can be interrupted well after it has begun. Innovative techniques, such as drastically reducing thepatient’s body temperature, have proven to be effective in revitalizing both the body andmind, but studies show they are only employedin approximately half of the hospitalsthroughout the United States and Europe.
In Erasing Death, Dr. Sam Parnia presents cutting-edge research from the front line of critical care and resuscitation medicine that has enabled modern doctors to routinely reverse death, while also shedding light on the ultimate mystery: what happens to human consciousness during and after death. Parnia reveals how medical discoveries focused on saving lives have also inadvertently raised the possibility that some form of “afterlife” maybe uniquely ours, as evidenced by the continuation of the human mind and psyche in the first few hours after death. Questions about the “self” and the “soul” that were once relegated to theology, philosophy, or even science fiction are now being examined afresh according to rigorous scientific research.
With physicians such as Parnia at the forefront,we are on the verge of discovering a new universal science of consciousness that reveals the nature of the mind and a future where death is not the final defeat, but is in fact reversible.
Dr Sam Parnia is one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of cardiac arrest, death and near-death experiences. He is director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, USA and an honorary fellow at Southampton University Hospital in the UK where he received a PhD in cell biology.
He is a former fellow in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York and Hammersmith Hospital in London. Dr Parnia directs a number of international studies focusing on the quality of brain resuscitation following cardiac arrest. His work has featured in many newspapers and magazines all over the world including the Guardian, Telegraph, GQ, Psychology Today, Time, Newsweek, as well as on the BBC and CNN. He also contributes regularly to TV and radio discussions and divides his time between hospitals in the UK and US. He is the author of What Happens When We Die?.
JOSH YOUNG is a best-selling author whose works spans entertainment, business, politics, science and natural history. He has co-authored five New York Times best sellers and two additional national best sellers. He is the co-author of comedian Howie Mandel’s HERE’S THE DEAL: DON’T TOUCH ME; of YOU’RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR NEXT ONE with Mike Medavoy; of Dr. Sam Parnia’s ERASING DEATH: THE SCIENCE THAT IS REWRITING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, and of THE LINK: UNCOVERING OUR OLDEST ANCESTOR with Colin Tudge, which has been translated into five languages. He is the co-author of entrepreneur/actor Wayne Rogers’ MAKE YOUR OWN RULES: A RENEGADE GUIDE TO UNCONVENTIONAL SUCCESS, and the author of DINO GANGS, the story of renown paleontologist Phil Currie’s quest to uncover the mystery of how dinosaurs behaved.
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Listen here to Terry Gross interview Dr. Sam Parnia here (MP3)
Transcript
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. What happens when we die – wouldn’t we all like to know? We can’t bring people back from the dead to tell us but in some cases, we almost can. Resuscitation medicine is now sometimes capable of reviving people after their hearts have stopped beating and their brains have flat lined. And some of those people report being conscious during the period after their heart stopped, before they’ve been restarted.
These experiences are popularly known as near-death experiences. But my guest, Dr. Sam Parnia, prefers to call them after-death experiences. He’s a critical-care doctor who is the director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. He’s conducting research into optimal cardiac arrest care, and into the experiences some cardiac arrest patients report they have brought back from the other side of death. He says whether these experiences are psychological phenomena or actually happen, they’ve been reported so routinely they warrant further study. Dr. Parnia is the author of the new book “Erasing Death.”
Dr. Sam Parnia, welcome to FRESH AIR. As a doctor who specializes in resuscitation research, what is your interest in what people have experienced after they technically died; after cardiac arrest, when their heart has stopped?
SAM PARNIA: Well, I’ve been interested in this field for many years now. And the reason I got interested, really, was because I had a patient who I had taken care of, who – when I was a medical student, many years ago, now – who I saw essentially die; have a cardiac arrest in front of my eyes, and nothing could be done to save this person. And I remember thinking to myself, what is this person experiencing as they’re going through this period of death?
Now, this was more than 15 years ago, and at that time there was very little work carried out in this field. But as I have begun to grow in this field myself, I have come to realize that we have a very strong need to study what happens to the brain after people die, because R-remed(ph) – a physician like myself, who specializes in resuscitation science – R-remed is to bring people back to life after they’ve died.
And therefore, inadvertently, we have to study what happens to the brain in the minutes to hours after someone’s dead but also, not forgetting that there’s a human being in there; and that they have a consciousness, they have a mind, what classically used to be called the psyche or the soul. And what does that person experience, and what’s it like for them? And that’s why we combine both together.
GROSS: So since we’re talking about what people experience after cardiac arrest, after their heart has stopped, and then they are subsequently revived – so what they experience between the time their heart has stopped, and the time that they’re resuscitated – how has medicine changed the length of time you can be technically dead after cardiac arrest but still be resuscitated?
PARNIA: Traditionally, when somebody died – and that’s true of today – when somebody died it was really the point where the heart has stopped beating. And as a consequence of the heart stopping beating, a person would stop breathing immediately and would lose consciousness immediately. And the reason for that was that there was no blood getting to the brain, and the brain would stop functioning.
So today when we define someone as being dead, we look at those three criteria – no heartbeat, no respirations, and we check the pupils of the eye for a reflex that when it’s absent, it tells us that the brain stem and the brain is no longer functioning. The person is motionless – and they’re dead, and we define them as dead.
However, what we’ve now discovered – in the past decade or so – is that actually, it’s only after a person dies. So in other words, when someone has actually reached that point and they’ve become a corpse, that the cells inside the body start to undergo their own process of death, and that the period in which the cells die is variable depending on the organs, but it certainly goes on to hours of time.
So for instance, brain cells will die at about eight hours; again, there is some variation, but around eight hours after a person has died. And therefore, our work in resuscitation science is to try to study the processes that are going on in a person after they’ve died, but before they’ve reached the point of complete, irreversible and irretrievable cell damage such that no matter what we do, we can’t bring them back.
And if we manage to restore oxygen and nutrients back to those cells before they’ve reached that point, we are able to successfully bring someone back to life. And that’s why today, with numerous advances that have taken place in the field of resuscitation science, we have managed to push back that boundary to well beyond the 10-, 20-minute time frame that had been perceived in the past, into many hours of death.
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Related links to Sam Parnia’s works.
Working as a medical examiner, Dr. Janis Amatuzio has found that by listening and talking to loved ones of the deceased, she can offer them a sense of closure. In doing so, she has heard — and here retells — extraordinary stories of spiritual and otherworldly events surrounding the transition between life and death.
As in her first book, Forever Ours, Dr. Amatuzio presents the amazing, heartfelt accounts told to her by grieving family members, patients, doctors, nurses, clergy, and police officers. Along with these stories, she shares her own story — reflecting on the course of her career, the bonds she has formed over the years, the lessons she has learned, and her conclusion that “Everything truly is all right.”
This powerful book honors the mystery of life and death, exploring the realms of visions, synchronicities, and communications on death’s threshold. Told in the voice of a compassionate scientist who sees death every day, these stories eloquently convey the patterns of truth Dr. Amatuzio has found in what she sees and hears. Beyond Knowing explores the wisdom the living might find in these accounts and shows how that wisdom changes lives.
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Magraw Fuller Lecture with Janis Amatuzio at the University of Minnesota
Known as the “compassionate coroner,” Janis Amatuzio is an internationally recognized authority in forensic medicine. She serves as coroner and provides forensic pathology services for several counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Trained at the University of Minnesota, the Hennepin County Medical Center and the Medical Examiner’s Office in Minneapolis, she has been in the field of forensic medicine for nearly twenty-five years.
The bestselling author of Life After Life, Raymond Moody, offers a stunning, myth-busting memoir of everything he has learned in a lifetime studying “the other side” and our connection to it. The grandfather of the NDE (near death experience) movement, Raymond Moody has, in the words of Dr. Larry Dossey, author of The Power of Premonitions, “radically changed the way modern humans think about the afterlife.” Paranormal, essential reading for fans of Dannion Brinkley and Jeffrey Long, is “a thrilling and inspiring literary experience. Anyone who is not grateful for Moody’s immense contribution to human welfare ought to check his pulse.”
Book Description
From the bestselling author of Life After Life and pioneer researcher and leading authority on near-death experiences comes Paranormal, an intimate look at a lifetime spent fearlessly wrestling with humankind’s most important and perplexing question:
What happens when we die?
Paranormal begins with a harrowing account of Moody’s suicide attempt—due to an undiagnosed illness that led him into depression—and proceeds to explore his lifelong fascination with life beyond our bodies. Moody traces the roots of his obsession with the point of death and how, at age twenty-three, he launched the entirely new medical field of near-death studies. He went on to explore the world of past lives and possible reincarnation before stumbling into the fascinating realm of facilitated visions.
Moody’s rural research center, Theater of the Mind, dramatically advances paranormal research by melding ancient and modern techniques to arouse many of the transformative elements of the near-death experience in people who are still living.
After more than four decades of studying death and the possibility of an afterlife, Moody still sees endless promise in the fringes of psychological sciences, where he continues to seek answers to what happens to our souls after death.
Biography
Raymond Moody
Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D. is the bestselling author of eleven books which have sold over 20 million copies. His seminal work, Life After Life, has completely changed the way we view death and dying and has sold over 13 million copies worldwide. His latest book is GLIMPSES OF ETERNITY: Sharing a Loved One’s Passage from this Life to the Next.
Dr. Moody is the leading authority on the “near-death experience”–a phrase he coined in the late seventies. He is best known for his ground-breaking work on the near-death experience and what happens when we die. The New York Times calls Dr. Moody “the father of the near-death experience.”
Dr. Moody has enlightened and entertained audiences all over the world for over three decades. He lectures on such topics as: Near Death Experiences, Death With Dignity, Life After Loss, Surviving Grief & Finding Hope, Reunions: Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones, The Healing Power of Humor, The Loss of Children, The Logic of Nonsense, and Catastrophic Tragedies & Events causing collective grief response.
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PARANORMAL: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife by Raymond Moody
Uploaded on Feb 2, 2012
The bestselling author of Life After Life, Raymond Moody, offers PARANORMAL: a stunning, myth-busting memoir of everything he has learned in a lifetime studying “the other side” and our connection to it. The grandfather of the NDE (near death experience) movement, Raymond Moody has, in the words of Dr. Larry Dossey, author of The Power of Premonitions, “radically changed the way modern humans think about the afterlife.”
PARANORMAL: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife
By Raymond Moody
What can we expect after we die? – Dr Raymond Moody, US
Published on Sep 22, 2012
Raymond Moody (born June 30, 1944) is a psychologist and medical doctor. He is most famous as an author of books about life after death and near-death experiences (NDE), a term that he coined in 1975. His best-selling title is Life After Life.
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
Based on this article, Bronnie has now released a full-length book, titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying – A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. It is a memoir of her own life and how it was transformed by the regrets of dying people. It may be ordered through bookstores worldwide or from Balboa Press. Details for wholesale orders may be found on Bronnie’s official website.
Overview
After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or experience, she found herself in palliative care.
Over the years she spent tending to the needs of those who were dying, Bronnie’s life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog about the most common regrets expressed to her by the people she had cared for. The article, also called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, gained so much momentum that it was read by more than three million people around the globe in its first year. At the requests of many, Bronnie now shares her own personal story.
Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse past, but by applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for people, if they make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this book, she expresses in a heartfelt retelling how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a story told through sharing her inspiring and honest journey, which will leave you feeling kinder towards yourself and others, and more determined to live the life you are truly here to live. This delightful memoir is a courageous, life-changing book.
5 Regrets of the Dying with Bronnie Ware 05/13 by VonGoodwin | Blog Talk Radio
5 Regrets of the Dying with Bronnie Ware 05/13 by VonGoodwin | Blog Talk Radio.
Does life end at death? The answer is no!
The nearly 2,000 cases of departing visions and visitations from deceased relatives and friends collected by the author prove that there is life after death. At the moment of physical death, departed loved ones return to the dying to ease travel from this life to the next. Friends, family, and healthcare workers also report seeing these loving spiritual travel guides.
Such encounters–reported by individuals from a wide variety of cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds–clearly illustrate that the personality, soul, or consciousness does not disappear or “die.”
To live our lives to the fullest, we must relieve ourselves of the false notion that death is the end. Departing visions help us do this.
Heavenly Hugs will introduce you to both historical and modern-day departing visions, proving:
The dying have been reuniting with the departed–for centuries
Departed loved ones escort the dying to the other side or next dimension
Something has often been seen leaving the physical body at the moment of death
Famous people have experienced beautiful departing visions
Carla Wills-Brandon has published 13 books, one of which was a Publishers Weekly best-seller. A licensed marriage and family therapist and grief expert, she has worked with individuals impacted by the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, the bombing of the World Trade Center, Holocaust survivors, and veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, among many others. Wills-Brandon is one of the few researchers focused on the departing vision as proof of life after death. Having researched nearly 2,000 such encounters for more than 30 years, she is a sought-after lecturer and has appeared on numerous national radio and television programs.
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Heavenly Hugs: Comfort, Support and Hope from the Afterlife
We live in a very death phobic society. When we lose someone we are expected to get over our grief in a matter of months. Not only has Carla Wills-Brandon been working with clients suffering from grief for several decades, but she also investigates the departing visions of the dying. Learn why physical death isn’t the end.
Deathbed/Departing Visions & Near Death Experiences
Deathbed visions/Departing visions are often confused with Near death experiences. Though similar, they are different. Many authors confuse the two. Carla Wills-Brandon is theauthor of 13 books.
Working as a medical examiner, Dr. Janis Amatuzio has found that by listening and talking to loved ones of the deceased, she can offer them a sense of closure. In doing so, she has heard — and here retells — extraordinary stories of spiritual and otherworldly events surrounding the transition between life and death.
As in her first book, Forever Ours, Dr. Amatuzio presents the amazing, heartfelt accounts told to her by grieving family members, patients, doctors, nurses, clergy, and police officers. Along with these stories, she shares her own story — reflecting on the course of her career, the bonds she has formed over the years, the lessons she has learned, and her conclusion that “Everything truly is all right.”
This powerful book honors the mystery of life and death, exploring the realms of visions, synchronicities, and communications on death’s threshold. Told in the voice of a compassionate scientist who sees death every day, these stories eloquently convey the patterns of truth Dr. Amatuzio has found in what she sees and hears. Beyond Knowing explores the wisdom the living might find in these accounts and shows how that wisdom changes lives.
Janis Amatuzio, MD, trained at the University of Minnesota, the Hennepin County Medical Center, and the Medical Examiner’s Office in Minneapolis before founding Midwest Forensic Pathology, P.A. Board-certified in anatomic, forensic, and clinical pathology, she is a recognized authority in forensic medicine and has developed many courses on topics such as death investigation, forensic nursing, and forensic medicine in mortuary science. Dr. Amatuzio serves as the medical examiner and a regional resource for multiple counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A dynamic speaker, she is frequently requested to speak on her experiences. She lives in Minneapolis.
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Dr. Janis Amatuzio author of FOREVER OURS
What Really Matters chronicles the life transformations experienced by Dr. Karen Wyatt and her patients and their family members during hospice care. This book of beautiful and uplifting stories about the lessons learned from the dying is also a guidebook for those who are feeling lost or hopeless about their lives in this contemporary world.
What Really Matters reveals how the confusing maze of the suffering and pain at the time of death can lead to the ultimate destination of meaning, purpose, and growth for both the dying and the living. Read this book-it has the power to change the way you see everything about:. the meaning of suffering. recognizing life’s priorities. letting go of limiting beliefs and past traumas. the true purpose of existence. the key to unlocking the flow of grace. transcending fear
What Really Matters – Book Trailer.m4v
http://www.whatreallymattersbook.com This world is rapidly changing before our eyes as the planet and its societies enter a state of upheaval. Our old values of materialism and success can no longer sustain us through this crisis as we seek to discover what really matters for our lives.
“What Really Matters” is a book of stories from people at the end of life to teach us how to live and where to focus our energy. These are spiritual lessons that can help us navigate troubled times, embrace our suffering and live in the present moment. Music: “Rising” by Kevin MacLeod Photos Courtesy of NASA, US Navy, US DOE, and numerous photographers generous enough to share their work on the public domain. Thank You!
Karen M. Waytt M.D. – What Really Matters
The archetypal and symbolic qualities of mystical states of consciousness are ineffable, timeless, and fleeting, but they act as powerful reminders that it is possible to transcend our limited understanding to glimpse a unified eternal reality, which we are part of. The pilgrimage of life ends in death–there is no denial of this fact, but in Immortal Yearnings, we are asked to consider whether by giving the symbolism from universal imaginings a voice, we can use our perception to enrich our myths about death.
Immortal Yearnings invites the reader on a voyage through the mysterious shape shifting world of archetypes and symbols that manifest in illuminating epiphanies during mystical states of consciousness, including that of the NDE. Exploring these constant recurring patterns of death and rebirth reveals how they not only provide the foundation for ancient religious and spiritual traditions, but remain hovering on the edge of human consciousness to inspire the transcendent functioning of the Imagination in literature, poetry, works of art, and architecture that reflect the sacred essence of this dynamic living symbolism.
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Annamaria Hemingway, Ph.D., is a writer, speaker, and spiritual counselor in the practice of conscious living and dying. A personal quest to discover a deeper purpose to the pilgrimage of life led her on a path to study world religious and spiritual traditions, ancient rites and rituals, mystical states of consciousness, and universal cultural mythologies surrounding death and dying. She received an MA in Consciousness Psychology, and was also granted an MA/PhD in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis on Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has worked in hospice care, and is a member of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Annamaria became fascinated in tracing how the primordial affirmation of death and rebirth, signifying the transformation of consciousness, is encapsulated in ancient resurrection myths, the practices of many diverse spiritual traditions, and alchemical symbolism Her research, detailed in Practicing Conscious Living and Dying, Myths of the Afterlife, and the soon to be published Immortal Yearnings, reveals that this same affirmation is still vitally alive and manifests in spiritually transformative experiences, including contemporary near-death experiences and deathbed visions, which reaffirm the ancient belief in the posthumous journey of the soul.
Rediscovering this great legacy of invaluable knowledge provides guidance on how to realign with the divine aspect of human existence in our materially driven culture and weaves a tapestry of hope that physical death may be just a transition into an eternal continuum of consciousness.
