Dead Brains, Living Stories: Life After Death or Brain Stuff?

The 1-in-5 Mystery: NHS Life After Death, Weird DMT Entities and Deluded People. 

Is that really ecto-plasm or is the spectre haunting us somewhat too rigorously? 

The dead brain shouldn't be working. We know how near-death experiences are often dismissed, we scoff at them as another 'Unsolved Mysteries' feature. Almost everyone, even medics put them down as hallucinations. 'It's the brain's self defense, according to Joe Rogan; a natural DMT hit that makes us see the entities'. Despite all the speculation, the NHS numbers might show, well. . . let's just crack on and see, shall we? 

The mystery is quite simple: patients are clinically dead. Yes, no heartbeat, sometimes no breathing, there's even been no measurable brain activity. They report similar weird experiences, funnily enough, a bit like those Joe Rogans DMT entities (was on to something?). Look, a brain with no oxygen shouldn't be capable of generating anything, what gives? 

Dr. Sartori's Discovery

Dr. Penny Sartori was an NHS Nurse doing her PhD studying NDE phenomena, guess how that panned out? Approximately one in five patients who briefly died of a heart attack told strikingly similar encounters of leaving their bodies, floating, seeing a light etcetera. It's like an echo chamber here! The themes are so well-done they're blackened, but please, do carry on reading, somebody's gotta do it!

Years ago, after some genuine e-mail correspondence with Ms. Sartori, she shared some of her methods with me. One in particular helped her validate those post-life vertical ascensions. She placed symbols on coloured cards high above the patients. To be honest, I was only interested in the spooky stories at the time. Looking back at it logically, if I died in her ward, cards would be the least of my concerns if I was saturated in divine light and wafting around with dead relatives like a lingering odour.

Her work garnered more interest, as you can see by clicking here. 

20% Bollocks

Another ratio to consider is that, let's say, one out of five fantasists/grandstanders suddenly seeing past their own bullshit - they experience what I call a 'Near Life Experience'. Those fleeting moments of revealed truth endured by the garden variety NPC, the regular artificial prevalence, the clueless know-it-all, it is still life changing revelation! I guess all of this is touching on expanding awareness, be it talking with DMT entities, NDE light beings or real people who show you that you're a twat. It doesn't really matter. 

What a Neurologist Found

Professor Peter Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth documented countless near-death experiences in their book 'The Art of Dying' (not the most cheerful of books). Throughout his medical career, Peter Fenwick's mind was changed from skeptical materialist to a believer of consciousness and it's passing on after bodily death. He worked as a consultant neurologist at the Maudsley and John Radcliffe hospitals. Fenwick observed phenomena difficult to explain and to be fair, he was a clever fucker. 

Impossible Observations

Fenwick's joyous book details information like recollections of conversations in operating theaters by dead or nearly dead patients. Some of them claimed they watched medical staff while hovering above looking down at them (Morbid isn't it? Surely you'd superman around instead?). Generally, a copious amount of written examples exist on this subject. Plato's republic describes the near death experience of a soldier! This means it's very old hat but largely ignored. 

Alternatively, going back to near life experiences, a freshly qualified teacher I know managed to turn her nephew's school struggles into a way of bragging about her teaching abilities! She pushed her educational greatness around the family dinner table, eventually quoting a price to teach her sisters son. Eagerness to earn a few quid on a family disadvantage isn't the full picture, she felt happy to score one up on her sibling. It was the disapproving looks that delivered her moment of horrific realisation, especially from her mother who she hoped to impress! Ouch. Now she knows she's a c*** and has a mountain of self betterment to climb. I wish her well. 

The Visitors No One Expected

There's a common theme of people being visited by recently deceased loved ones. These encounters can involve some form of farewell or reassurance just after death. Those regret based Dickinsian ghostly visitations hold a similar vibe; flavoured with past mistakes like dinner table screw ups, they bring guilt and a strong need for atonement. The Christmas Carol was a psychological breakdown of a miserable bloke's ego, that ego made monsters of his own hard truths - a war for Ebeneezer's soul. Charles Dickens was a gifted man. 

Either way, human beings, especially family members and medical staff will always say they have sensed presences, unusual atmospheric changes, or inexplicable feelings of peace in the moments surrounding death. They always have. Nurses still open ward windows to let spirits free. It's cultural and very common.

Experts Say Phenomena More Than Hallucination 

A 2023 systemic analysis has been clear in downplaying them as hallucinations or neurological dysfunction. Isn't that saying something? It seems to be passing the buck to philosophy.

The discovery of gamma brain waves in dying patients sparked intense debate. I don't know why, given how the 'face still moves' after the guillotine! The eyes look around for a while, it's the residual brain activity – a biological process, not proof that the freshly decapitated are seeing a tunnel of light. Nothing in classical physics can prove invisible paranormal claims, so why go there? 

This highlights ongoing scientific and philosophical tension: what appears to be organized activity in a dead guy might still be a brain-generated 'echo'. It's stupid to prescribe a machine-measured brain-reading to a subjective experience of hovering around the ceiling.

The Evidence That Defies Logic

How does an unconscious brain even share precise visual information about events in different rooms? How do patients accurately describe medical procedures done to themselves? 

Similarly, what causes the anthrophobe stuck on autopilot, and half way through their seventh rewatch of Shameless to fully realise they aren't really living? 

Discrediting genuine claims is NOT resolving the problem for either case, especially reducing their experience to grey matter flatulence. So why do so many go through such similar life changing realisations?

Questions We Can't Answer

If awareness can persist during cardiac arrest, what does this tell us about consciousness itself? Is it sourced from functional biology like a byproduct? Could we be conscious beings temporarily occupying our crude physical bodies? Is everything fundamentally from a consciousness beyond the classical world of physical law like I wrote about here? We don't know yet. These rhetorical questions are just to make this section look smart. 

Either way, we are here. Yes, some of us are more aware than others, consciousness is having more awareness, a bigger world. I blame bad socialisation. Take those social media despots. Determined individuals who force themselves into being something they think they ought to be. Playing a role with the strategic authenticity of a door-to-door salesman who secretly hate selling doors. Self deception on this level kills the soul, but they do it anyway!

What Death Teaches Us About Life

Each documented case brings something to challenge assumptions about consciousness. This stuff isn't proof of an afterlife, as such, but evidence that consciousness operates according to levels we don't yet understand! It's the real mystery. If your socialisation inspires you to simply 'do' or 'play the game' one day, you will find yourself asking very philosophical questions like 'who am I?' and 'What's the meaning of life?' as Metallica said: it's sad but true. 

Can We Conclude Anything Here? 

Maybe such mysteries point to the same fundamental experience: ego death. In near-death experiences, patients report their sense of individual self dissolve, uniting with a greater 'oneness' beyond the human. The boundaries of 'me' disappear, after Buddhists have an enlightenment, and what remains is pure awareness observing without attachment. I subscribe to some of this but, as with everything - there's always a pellet of rabbit shit. 

The narcissist has his near-life experience in a remarkably similar way. They wake up from a particularly common and elaborate illusion about identity, persona and the roles and assumptions they put on themselves. In both the near life and death cases, what always stands out as unquestionably true, tends to be bollocks. Illusion.

The existential comedy is seen wherever people discover they've been impersonating their own ideas of who they think they are. Ego is just the flames of the world fire. We all have an ego, but some of us took extra servings.

Maybe, it's not death, but change of consciousness which is behind all this? Ignore proof of life after death or enlightenment about authentic living for a moment. The recognition that whatever is reading these words right now can imprison itself away, or even hide from higher truths or substantial realities is the crux of it all.

Heraclitus spoke about the one true permanence being change. If consciousness is fundamental but also unchanging, it will be out of sted with everything.

It isn't.