It's a mystery that has been boggling humans for thousands of years: is there life after death? Is it true that consciousness continues after the physical body stops working?
A study aims to answer that, and their results may be considered controversial as they point out that such an idea may not be 100% untrue after all.
A group of researchers led by Dr. Sam Parnia of the State University of New York conducted a 4-year study called Awareness during Resuscitation, aptly abbreviated Aware. The University of Southampton, where Parnia is also a fellow, acted as the project's sponsor.
In the study, the researchers worked with over 2,000 cardiac arrest cases across 15 hospitals located in 3 countries including the United States. Around 16% of these patients from 21 to 94 years old had survived and over 40% of them were willing to share their experience and participate in the study.
To be considered for the project, however, the participants should be clinically dead-that is, they should have remained unresponsive while being resuscitated. Clinical death is also described as the cessation of breathing and blood circulation, two things that are necessary for the continuation of life.
From the interviews, the researchers discovered that around 2% of the survivors can be described as having complete OBE (out of body experience) since they can recall details they may not have seen or heard while being clinically dead.
Around 39% claimed to have some sense of awareness, although they cannot really specific information. Most of them had mental recollections. In one particular case, a man can vividly recall all the events that happened while he's being operated on. He described the experience as similar to standing in a corner and seeing the healthcare workers doing their work.
For Dr. Parnia and the rest of the team, the study is indeed significant since it's been conventionally believed that these near-death experiences are only hallucinations. Moreover, based on their study, these participants experienced these events for as long as 3 minutes after being clinically dead. The brain's survival lasts for only 20 to 30 seconds after the heart stops.
While the study doesn't provide concrete proof of the realness of the events since only 2% has a complete visual awareness, it also doesn't disprove the concept of hallucination, and thus, it warrants more study.