Life After Death: What's it all about?

The discussion of if there's life after death is usually prompted and/or ended by talks of near death experiences, so we'll start there.

I want to begin with the actual medical definition of near death experience (NDE):

1. Person is physically compromised to the extent that they are clinically dead (no pulse, no respiratory movement and no corneal reflex)
2. At the time of clinical death, they have a generally lucid, highly organized experience

On the surface, it sounds crazy. I mean, the dead can't see, hear, or experience anything. How do the clinically dead make new memories? Because, guess what, they do. There are numerous cases where people put into a clinically dead state for surgical purposes, wakes up knowing intimate and accurate details of the procedure. All the way to conversations between the clinical staff they overheard.

You know science, though. There has to be a non-metaphysical explanation to this. So, let's take a moment to go over one of the dominant scientific theories for NDE. Scientists theorize NDE is actually the sleep disorder rapid eye movement (REM) intrusion. During this REM intrusion, the mind wakes up before the body, triggering hallucinations and the sensation of being detached from the body. (The REM state is where we enter the dreaming part of our sleepy time...in case you didn't know.)

But, if our brain is officially considered dead, how can this be? Well, the area of REM intrusion is located in the brain stem, so can operate independent from the executive organ residing within your skull. Sounds plausible, right? So, based on this, no spirituality or post physical body reason involved.

Whoa, but what about when we factor in the out of body experience (OBE), where people have watched and could describe actions the surgical team did during the surgery? You guessed it, science has a theory for this to: temporal parietal junction (TPJ) misfires.

When the TBJ misfires and becomes crossed it gives the sensation of being outside your physical body. Test subjects have proven this. That's all good and nice, but guess what? The TBJ area is controlled by the higher brain, which in the NDE is clinically dead. Where are those kind of test subjects?

If it sounds like I'm mocking science, please believe me I'm earnestly not. As a science fanatic, I love all the discoveries science makes on a daily basis. My restraint comes when science finds the reason for how something happens and closes the book without exploring why something happens. The REM intrusion and TBJ misfires during NDE explain the how, but doesn't explain the why.

The why can literally be explained in thousands of ways. You have each religion and spiritual movement explaining the why in their own way. Then each human takes their own twist based on their religious or spiritual belief merged with their life experiences.

For me, the movie Flatliner's was an interesting take on the subject. The angle of each med student needing to come to terms with their own life trauma was intriguing. Imagine, you croak and find yourself in an experience/memory maze, having to tie up all the loose ends of your life to get to the beyond point.

I do wonder if REM is truly the door to our spirituality, and not only just our subconscious mind. When you think about it, it is our subconscious that processes our conscious thoughts and actions to turn them into beliefs and our core moral and ethical structures.

Personally, I was both relieved and disappointed that I missed out on the NDE and OBE experience during my craniotomy in early 2011. Relieved because, hello, knocking on death's door. The tad of disappointment surprised me until I drilled into it (of course).

I'm not just a sci-fi geek, I'm a science geek and a bit of a spirituality geek. Having a near death experience would've been the ultimate of ultimates in merging both science and spirituality in a single adventure. Now that I think about it, maybe it was a good thing I didn't. With my curiosity, I would've gone towards the damn light and then where would we be, huh? Definitely not blogging about life after death today, that's for sure.

The argument will continue, there's no doubt about that, but beyond the experiences of a few, no one will ever know until our hearts actually stop, our brain nerves cease sparking and the docs can't bring us back.

I don't know about you all, but I'm not in a hurry to find out. So, what are your thoughts on the whole life after death thing?

Sources:
"Is There Such a Thing as Life After Death?" by Laura Fitzpatrick http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1955636,00.html
"Has science explained life after death?" by Josh Clark http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/science-life-after-death.htm