User:Lkettelberger/sandbox

Science

• In general, scientists and philosophers tend to practice increased skepticism when it comes to beliefs of life after death.
• The scientific community has acknowledged that information concerning the human soul during death can only be discovered by those who are experiencing death.
• In an attempt to gain new information, a group of Tibetan Lamas relayed to their pupils the sensations experienced during the act of dying.
• A few recurring symptoms as relayed by the Lamas include:

1. a sensation of bodily pressure
2. clammy coldness and then feverish warmth
3. a feeling of the body being blown into atoms

• There are also more modern examples of people who have been pronounced clinically dead but have been revived.
• Those individuals, when asked to describe their observations, claimed that they lacked the words to relate what they experienced.
• Doctor Raymond A. Moody studied over 100 subjects who were victims of clinical death but survived and published his findings in Life After Life (1975).
• The results of his study revealed a few common features of the deathly experience. Individuals often described "out-of-body" experiences where the physical body and the spirit become detached and the individual views the world through their astral body.
• Fred Schoonmaker was a cardiologist who verified Moody's findings in 1979 with a study of over 2,300 patients who survived acute life-threatening situations.
• Sir William Barret, a well-known physicist published a collection of cases in 1926 with the title Death Bed Visions. The work included accounts of sickly individuals hearing music and seeing deceased loved ones.
• One particularly interesting case deals with an individual who, in an out-of-body experience, observed a deceased individual who at the time was not known to be dead.
• Many of these case studies have received criticism such as being outdated and relying heavily on the honesty of individuals. In addition, claims exist citing the out-of-body experiences as a result of decaying brain matter causing a hallucinogenic effect.
• Regardless of one's belief in life after death, the scientific community has been unsuccessful in definitively proving or disproving the existence of an afterlife.