What happens to us when we die? This is an intriguing question for most of us. There is no specific answer for this, however, a few medical doctors who are mostly in critical care has much to say about this, especially because they have seen people ‘almost coming back to life’ after a rigorous attempt to save them.
Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, said dying is “very comfortable”. He says people who have had a near-death experience sometimes describe encounters with deceased relatives but insists the sensation is not evidence of the afterlife.
Regarding the physical process, Dr Parnia says death is a process, not a black and white moment. “The final result is we have a deduction of oxygen that gets inside the brain when we are about to die and that causes our brain circuits to shut down and we become unconscious to the outside world.
“When the heart stops, all life processes go out because there is no blood getting to the brain, to the kidneys, and liver and we become lifeless and motionless and that is the time that doctors use to give us a time of death.”
But the doctor, who has authored several studies and books on the subject of death, said there is a mental process, which has left survivors of near-death experiences longing for death again. Dr Parnia, who has brought thousands of patients back from the brink, said: “When we die, that experience is not unpleasant for the vast majority of people.
“For those of us who die naturally, even if we were in pain before we die, the process of death becomes very comfortable, it is very blissful, peaceful. “People describe the sensation of a bright, warm, welcoming light that draws people towards it.
“They describe a sensation of experiencing their deceased relatives, almost as if they have come to welcome them. They often say that they didn’t want to come back (to life) in many cases, it is so comfortable and it is like a magnet that draws them that they don’t want to come back.
“A lot of people describe a sensation of separating from themselves and watching doctors and nurses working on them. They can hear things and record all conversations that are going on around them. “Some of them describe a sensation where they review everything that they have done.”
Perhaps the experiences doctors share lead us to the conclusion that death is absolutely not as dreadful as we consider. Maybe for those who lose their loved one, the emptiness could cost much, however, the experience of breaking all the bondages on earth and liberating from the body could be beautiful – wouldn’t it be?
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