What happens when you die? Doesn’t everybody have an opinion about this question? Some think that, scientifically, when you die it’s ‘lights out’ and that’s it. Here one moment and gone the next! Others believe that something lives on and people who have had near death experiences have experienced this ‘after life’ – if only briefly. Actually ‘science’ doesn’t know as Dr. Wilde, a research psychologist at Nottingham Trent University attests:

There is some very good evidence here that these experiences are actually happening after people have medically died. . . . We just don’t know what is going on. We are still very much in the dark about what happens when you die and hopefully this study will help shine a scientific lens onto that. (National Post)

Other scientists will argue that these experiences are hallucinations of a dying mind that can function after the heart stops beating. Or these ‘after death’ images are made in an instant when the resuscitated mind comes back to life to explain it’s own ‘absence’ so to speak;

Christopher French, a psychology professor at Goldsmith’s, University of London, doesn’t doubt that people have “profound experiences, sometimes including the out-of-body component, when they are in life-threatening situations”—but he explains them as a “complex hallucinatory experience.” The accounts described by Parnia’s patients, French says, may come from people who aren’t really unconscious: They “may well reflect nothing more than patients regaining consciousness and forming a mental image of what is going on based upon what they can hear.” Parnia’s argument rests on the assumption that the brain can’t go on without the heart, but, according to French, doctors aren’t so sure. “We do not know how long the brain can carry on functioning and even maintain some form of consciousness after the heart has stopped beating,” he says. Whatever Parnia—and the public—may want to believe, a few extra minutes of consciousness does not answer any existential questions. (Alice Rob, New Republic)

The only problem with the ‘hallucinatory’ explanation of near death experiences are the number of accounts where details of sounds, conversations and actions of those around the dead person which can be hallucinations because they happened. The National Post article cites such an instance;

They found that nearly 40% of those who survived described some kind of “awareness” during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted. One man even recalled leaving his body entirely and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room. Despite being unconscious and “dead” for three minutes the 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, recounted the actions of the nursing staff in detail and described the sound of the machines. (National Post)

For many ‘scientifically’ close-minded people the question has already been answered – ‘When you die that’s it – you’re done.’ But what if there is a slim possibility that there is life after death? And if so what is it like? How long does a person exist after death and for what purpose. Many, many people find no meaning to life on earth. What could the meaning be to life after death? Many others live only to satisfy their bodily desires – what satisfactions could there be for a personality without a body? Is life after death something to be afraid of or something to look forward to? How could a person prepare for life after death?

Where can people get reliable and truthful answers to those questions?

Apparently not from science!