Like it or not, death comes to us all. In fact, one of life’s biggest mysteries remains what happens to us after we finally shuffle off this mortal coil.
While many accounts exist of what it’s like to be dead — shared by people who have had their own brush with the Reaper and lived to tell the tale in what’s known as a near death experience — the reality is we won’t know for sure until it’s our turn to meet our maker.
But now, according to Finnish-based researcher Pekka Rechardt, there’s a possibility your consciousness could continue even after your brain stops working.
Yep, we’re baffled too. Rechardt based his theory on the accounts of people who had suffered cardiac arrests and were able to recall vivid experiences during a time when they were recorded to have shown little or no electrical brain activity.
He argued that some near-death experiences can occur during a time an EEG (electroencephalogram) showed a flat recording, Daily Mail reports.
Rechardt suggests that consciousness may therefore not depend on brain activity, because the near death experiences presented three clear signs of awareness; a sense of being present, vivid sensations, and the ability to experience events coherently.
He puts forward the analogy of someone walking along a sunny beach and experiencing everything that comes with it, saying that different parts of the brain process all the information separately but the person feels them all at once, showing consciousness is more than the individual brain processes involved.
‘This empirical consideration supports life after death being a credible option,’ he says.
Rechardt went on to argue that describing physical events in space and time does not explain the personal sense of presence, likening it to detecting a brain response to a colour, and explaining what the colour feels like when the person sees it.
He pointed out that while death might end the connection between the brain and consciousness, that might not mean awareness ends completely, in much the same way, as he explained, as destroying a painting wouldn’t destroy the person looking at it.
However, the continued existence of awareness would depend on any framework which doesn’t rely on the brain to exist.
As for NDEs? Well he suggests those could offer ‘a glimpse’ of what awaits us after death has occurred, and bodily functions keeping us alive have ended.
While the mysteries of the death are set to remain just that, others working in end-of-life care have revealed what some of her patients experience right before they die.
End-of-life expert Catherine Duncan said on TikTok that people might see relatives who have died before them, or some even say they are ‘going on a trip’, that loved ones are waiting for them or that they can hear music.
Others report that they’ve been speaking to a relative who has told them ‘it’s time’ to go.
‘Sometimes the permission they need doesn’t come from us. It comes from someone on the other side,’ Duncan explained.
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