Death And Near Death
??? ??? ??????? ??????????? ?????? ??, ….
(Those who strive by resorting to me for
becoming free from old age and death, …..)
— BG, VII-29
Death is the inarguable end for all activity of the body-organism. Many fear death but we find few books written on what death actually is. People at large generally consider it to be inauspicious even to discuss it.
Man, perhaps ever since he has known the inevitability of death, wished, hoped and prayed for immortality. Elixirs were prepared, potions were concocted, nectars were conceived and intricate shamans devised in order to defeat death, but all in vain. “He was alive and kicking a minute ago; but is gone now” — words of desperation we hear so often, uttered in despondency at our total inability to conquer death (of the body).
Many regard death as an event that happens in a moment. We think that life goes away like the bulb that stops glowing the instant the switch is turned off. But that is not true. Death is a ‘process’ that takes time. Different organs and tissues in the body take different times to die when fresh supplies of oxygen are not any more available. Generally bone is the most tolerant of lack of oxygen and may stay alive up to four days. Though the rates vary depending on the ambient conditions, ‘skin may survive up to twenty four hours, fat up to thirteen hours and nerve cells and brain tissue up to eight hours’ in the absence of fresh oxygen. There are also reports of electromagnetic waves having been recorded up to one week from dead bodies. This clearly establishes that death is not an abrupt black and white phenomenon.
What then exactly is death and when can we say that one is dead? The answer was simple and straight forward until 5-6 decades ago. Stoppage of the heart was considered to indicate the death of a person. Associated with it were two other markers: absence of breathing and dilated unmoving pupils. Whether it is the heart or the lungs that stopped first, it would cause cessation of flow of blood and stoppage of oxygen supplies to all the organs in the body.
Scientists realized by the mid-twentieth century that ‘a period of time is available after death in which the organs and cells in the body remained viable and not yet become irreparably damaged, and hence death could be reversed.’ Thanks to the progress in medical science, death is now recognized as something ‘that can be interrupted well after it has begun.’ It means that ‘there is a significant period of time available for us to bring the cells back to life.’
Consequently, it has now become difficult to define what death is!
Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (manually or by machines), ventilators, defibrillators, hypothermia (cooling the body to 320 C), Extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation machines (a type of heart-lung bypass devices), enzymes to slow the process of cell degeneration, freezing blood circulation and so on are the techniques that now help doctors in the revival of a patient whose heart has stopped.
In 2011, Mr. Arun Bhasin was walking home from a party in London in 100 C weather when he collapsed on the roadside. He was moved to a hospital and was being treated for the excessive fall in his body temperature when he suffered a cardiac arrest. He remained dead for three and half hours before he could be revived by the resuscitation experts at the hospital using modern equipment that automatically administered consistent and high quality chest compressions. Though it sounds as a miracle, this incident demonstrates the successful advances in resuscitation science.
Recounting such cases, Dr. Sam Parnia becomes sentimental thinking of the 1,514 passengers declared to have been dead in the cold sub-zero waters of the Atlantic ocean when the ill-fated Titanic ship sank on the night of 15th April 1912 – a hundred years ago. He says: “Watching all those lifeless bodies floating as depicted by James Cameron in his classic movie Titanic, I couldn’t help but think, when exactly did those unfortunate people die?” As we now know, cold temperatures actually help preserve the brain cells and those floating bodies could have been revived without suffering any cognitive damage, if rescued, as happened in the case of Mr. Bhasin.
Therefore, even after severe cardiac arrest which is regarded as synonymous to death (because of the presence of the three classic markers – no heartbeat, no breathing and fixed dilated pupils), one cannot declare a patient to be dead. But unfortunately, no uniform criteria are followed across different countries in the world to define death. Medical professionals feel the absence of global consensus with regard to the detailed diagnostic criteria for the determination of death in clinical practice. A conference this month (June 2013) in Spain is calling for international agreement on “clear and unequivocal criteria for the diagnosis of death, knowing the emerging ethical implications.”
Senescence or aging is another thing considered by all of us as natural and inescapable like death. Statistics tell us that about 150,000 people die each day worldwide and two thirds of them because of aging alone. Scientific research is going on in several fronts not only to arrest aging, but also to reverse the aging process. Aging appears to be a side effect of living due to accumulation of damage happening to the body cells. By instituting timely maintenance and repair mechanisms, our bodies can be saved from decay. Dr. Aubrey de Grey, British researcher on aging, claims that we have already got today necessary technology to defy death and extend our longevity up to 1,000 years. His presentation at a recent Conference (Apr 2013) can be watched at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAwnA5WvLc
A number of philosophical questions raise in our minds about a patient who is clinically dead, say due to cardiac arrest as he lies on the table with no heartbeat, while the doctors struggle to make him alive again: ”What happened to his self, his mind and consciousness and his memories? Where are these now for, undoubtedly, he has already entered ‘the sunless void of existential nothing’ for all practical purposes? Was he aware of what was happening to him?”
Dr. Sam Parnia writes in his recent book, Erasing Death, 2013, that “While concepts such as consciousness, soul, or the afterlife have traditionally been considered nonscientific, scientific progress – and in particular the quest to save lives and understand death and hence conquer it even after it has set in – has made us re-evaluate some of our perceptions and try to understand what happens scientifically. Today it is becoming much more difficult to define or understand death without considering a person’s consciousness or soul.”
Dr. Parnia also observers that, “People have now regularly died, come back to life, and told us what they have experienced in that early period of death. Their experiences have been fairly uniform and share many common factors. Their lives have been enhanced by the experience, and as a result they describe themselves as being more altruistic and less materialistic, less self-centered and less afraid of death.” He cites the case of Mr. Tiralosi, a patient in the New York Presbyterian Hospital, who recalled one detail during the time his heart was not working. He said that “he encountered some sort of spiritual being that had no mass or a shape. It was luminous, loving, and compassionate and gave him a loving feeling and warmth.”
Such stories generally go under the name of Near Death Experiences. Dr. Parnia prefers to call them Actual Death Experiences. It is significant to note, however, that persons who had attempted suicide, but revived, described some very unpleasant traumatic and painful experiences.’ Nothing pleasant for them!
The scientific community is vertically split in its opinion on what the so called near death experiences signify and where exactly consciousness comes from. “The codiscoverer of DNA and Nobel Prize winner, Francis Crick supported the view that everything we consider the ‘self’ or soul arises from the brain – that when you die the body stops functioning and, therefore, the soul is extinguished. Neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles considers the essential reality of the human psyche or soul to be separate entity from the brain and body and believes that, when you die, the psyche or soul continues as a different type of matter much like an electromagnetic wave.”
We know ‘we are all thinking conscious beings. It is our thoughts that lead to our daily actions.’ But Science has no answers, as yet, to the questions like: Where do thoughts come from or how do they come about? How does the passage of electricity across a cell lead to feelings? How does a physical collection of cells give rise to conscious experience? How the billions of individual brain cells at any one time can bind into a single unitary sense of self that leads to the notion of “I”?
Maybe by the next millennium or the next we will all be living routinely a 1000 years and science will be able to crack the code of consciousness in the brain. Would this in any way reduce the ‘veiling power’ of maya?
