It is the statement of Dr. Sam Parnia, the director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City. Bliss, light, magnet, comfort, love, compassion, feeling welcomed, not wanting to come back. Those were all words to describe the experience of death in Dr. Parnia’s vast experience with people that faced death.
Given that medicine has evolved so much that it can bring back people who died, death can be treated as a scientific object and not just a philosophical and/or a religious one.
The scientific process of dying is simple. First, oxygen doesn’t get to the brain anymore and people go into cerebral death. Their hearts might still be pumping, but they are brain dead. Then, and most of the time pretty rapidly, the heart stops pumping, so blood doesn’t get to the rest of the organs.
The Science Behind Death
But medicine can revive the heart by resuscitation and more so, it can restart your brain by freezing it and arresting the process of dying brain cells. Doctors earn time to solve whatever is wrong with the system that stops your brain from being oxygenized.
People from all over the world who got the chance of being brought back to life share a common experience. An experience that the rest of us, the neophytes fear the mist. And they say there is nothing there to be frightened about. Dying is a soothing process and many of those experiencing it confess they didn’t feel like coming back.
The light seems to be at the center of all the experiences. Even in the form of a lamp, as a child experienced it. A bright lamp with which you are connected by a cord. “An it’s the cord that gets cut when you go,” related Dr. Parnia.
