After Life 

  On more than one occasion, I have experienced heart failure and was medically resuscitated. I don't tend to discuss my experiences, because I'm not in the habit of trampling over the beliefs (comforts and reassurances) of others. For the majority of people, death is the great unknown- something that nobody can ever describe with any guarantees of accuracy. Thus, having faith in an afterlife offers some hope that the spirit will continue after the physical body expires, decays and decomposes. If this concept provides comfort and reassurance to those who believe in it and it causes no harm, who am I to deride such ideas and deprive an individual experiencing possibly the single most terrifying episode of this life, a modicum of peace in a theory that essentially harms nobody?

   For those who are open to an alternative explanation, I will relate my experiences here, along with a brief discussion of the most commonly held ideas about the mysteries that occur in the event of our death. I am happy to answer any questions you may have, to listen to reported experiences of others and to engage in a discussion of any ideas I raise in this article.

   Firstly, I wish to establish the following facts. On no occasion has there been any "white light", voices calling, or loved ones beckoning to me from the beyond and I did not find myself looking down on my physical body from above. There was darkness. Black, silence. Emptiness. Nothingness. Something worth noting is that arriving in this state after being in a state of extreme pain and trauma, all that was gone. I sometimes describe it as a state of "bliss" and I have spoken to others who have described it in remarkably similar terms.

    Returning to consciousness, I will honestly say that I was furious. While it had been a place of nothingness, there had been no desire to leave and return to this life, with all the chaos and pain, where normality reigns. Those same people who had described their time in the void, had those exact same feelings of anger at being forced to return to reality.

    It's been suggested that I might simply not have been "gone" for sufficient time, to meet with the other worldly occurrences so frequently detailed by believers. I don't deny that this could be a possibility, although the most recent incident caused such extensive hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain), that upon waking, I had literally lost all motor function and comprehension of language. In fact, the reason I regained consciousness was because the doctor was removing the ventilator, as once the body regains the ability to breathe independently, such equipment must be withdrawn. So, to my thinking, if that's not sufficient time to have the full experience, I doubt it ever would be.

  I'm aware that there are theories that upon physical death, the brain is flooded with DMT. This is a hallucinogenic substance which occurs naturally in the brain (and in nature, within a large number of species and environments). It's believed to play a major role in the dreams that occur during sleep. As such, it's not impossible that a large quantity of DMT might cause hallucinations in the mind, during a NDE (near death experience). It's also not outside the realms of possibility that already having a degree of familiarity with accounts of others, that their own hallucinations might be of a similar nature.

   It's important to bear in mind how the human brain often allows us to see the very things that we want to see. We are constantly discovering new and astonishing examples of the immense power this organ wields over the body. More complex than any computer, relatively little understood by the finest neuroscientists, much of its capabilities remain a mystery to this day.

   Yet concerning the concept of an afterlife, with around 120 billion people having passed from this life, might it not be rather crowded? What of our animal friends? Why would we be entitled to this eternal existence and they are not? Imagine the struggle for space under those circumstances. Are we to trust in the notion of both a heaven and a hell? In which case, who decides whether each individual meets the required criteria? Are the Muslims correct in their beliefs? Or the Jews? Perhaps it's the Buddhists? Maybe it could even be the Scientologists?

   Providing such peace of mind to the millions of frightened people, each and every one of whom know the day will come, when they will stand at the edge of the great abyss, is a very profitable business. As hard as they try and as many trillions of dollars are thrown at it, there's no cheating death. But one certainty remains. That is how we all have the opportunity to make the best we can of our time here, in this world. Our experiences, values, perspectives and goals will undoubtedly vary, but to a greater or lesser degree, we have some control over the direction out lives will take. Don't waste this, depending on an uncertainty in a future that may not be ours to behold.