So what happens when you die? Today I ran across an interesting article on Yahoo! pointed out to me by my father. Dr. Sam Parnia, one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of death, had been conducting a study on what happens when you die.
According to the study Dr. Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project will researched the biology behind “out-of-body” experiences. And they intend to examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest from 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S.
In the article release on Yahoo! Dr. Parnia states;
“…10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they’re able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn’t functioning.”
That’s rather interesting because he’s indicating that something is perceiving after the body is considered brain dead. He went on talk about how this might go against what is socially expected or thought of as fact but he brought up some good points in relation to that.
“…we’re pushing through the boundaries of science, working against assumptions and perceptions that have been fixed. A lot of people hold this idea that, well, when you die, you die; that’s it. Death is a moment - you know you’re either dead or alive. All these things are not scientifically valid, but they’re social perceptions.”
In Scientology one of the basic principles is that you are not your body and you are not you’re mind, but rather you are a being. So in Scientology we call you, this being, a Thetan - which comes from the Greek letter theta which means though or spirit. We use the word Thetan so that it does not get confused with other ideas of a spirit or sole (watch the video to understand more). Therefore if we take a look back at what Dr. Parnia was finding you’ll see its actually going along with what we know in Scientology.
To learn more about the basic principles of Scientology view this video on The Parts of Man.
The yahoo article can be found at here, What Happens When We Die?.
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