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Can Life Transcend The Death Of The Body?
Author: Renaissance Brother
We’re so used to experiencing ourselves in terms of time and history, of having a beginning and ending of things coming into existence and going out of existence, that we find it hard to believe in a reality that transcends these conditions! Everything that exists is temporary; temporariness is the essence of what time and history are all about. Temporariness is another name for eventual death.
So the question is, is there an existence not bound by history or time that transcends the experience of temporariness?
The answer some ancient religions and philosophies gave to this question was a resounding yes! Their aim was to experience this timeless, trans-historical life while still in the body.
Yoga means to join or to yoke. Religion means to restrain or tie back. Both contain the idea of rejoining or bringing the personal self back to the source self by constraining those things that interfere with this process. (Yoga: From Sanskrit: literally, yoking, from, yunakti, he yokes. akin to Latin jungere to join — more at Yoke. Date: 1820, Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary). ( Religion from Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
These systems say that we are immortal now, even while in the body, but our source self has become so immersed and identified with the processes of the body, that we mistakenly think that our true existence is temporary, like the body’s, when its actually permanent (immortal)
They seek to reawaken us to the experience of that immortality that we already potentially are. (Like awakening from a dream so vivid you thought you were awake, until you awaken to find that you were really only dreaming!) By awakening from the illusion of being a body, we liberate ourselves from all of experiences associated with mortality. This is done by eliminating, all the things that interfere with our experience of immortality.
“Osiris, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and the same royal highway of final bliss, nirvana. Mystical Christianity teaches self-redemption through one’s own seventh principle, the liberated paramatma, called by the one Christ, by others Buddha; this is equivalent to regeneration, or rebirth in spirit, and it therefore expounds just the same truth as the Nirvana of Buddhism. All of us have to get rid of our own Ego, the illusory, apparent self, to recognize our true Self, in a transcendental divine life.” (The Maha Chohan: The Diamond Sutra”, “Vajrachchedika”, (1983). Raghavan Iyer, General Editor, Concord Grove Press.)
This awakening to the identity of the finite mind with the infinite mind, of the everyday mind with the transcendent mind, of sangsara with Nirvana, this getting rid of the illusory, apparent self so we can experience our source self, leads to the direct experience of transcendental liberation or immortality while still in the body.
Buddha called this experience of immortality the unborn,
“There is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed. If there were not this Unborn, this Unoriginated, this Uncreated, this Unformed, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed, would not be possible. But since there is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, therefore is escape possible from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed.” (Buddha, “Sermon after his enlightenment” Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, Mircea Eliade, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1970.)
Individual experience is predicated on there being a subject and an object, a me, a you, a this and a that, something to experience and someone to experience it. Without this basis, there can be no experience of time, history, life or death, or individuality, because there would be nothing to experience and no one to experience it.
Here’s a contemporary scientific report that sheds light on the question of immortality
“Research body will shed more light on near death experiences
16 February 2001
Dr Sam Parnia, Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton.
Doctors who found the first scientific evidence supporting the possible existence of an afterlife have launched a charitable foundation to further the study of the human mind at the end of life.
University of Southampton researchers have just published a paper detailing their pioneering study into near death experiences (or NDEs) that suggests consciousness and the mind may continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function and the body is clinically dead.>
The team spent a year studying people resuscitated in the city’s General Hospital after suffering a heart attack. The patients brought back to life were all, for varying lengths of time, clinically dead with no pulse, no respiration and fixed dilated pupils. Independent EEG studies have confirmed that the brain’s electrical activity, and hence brain function, ceases at that time. But seven out of 63 (11 per cent) of the Southampton patients who survived their cardiac arrest recalled emotions and visions during unconsciousness.
Dr Sam Parnia, a co-author of the study, is one of four trustees of the Horizon Research Foundation. He said: “The aims of the charity are twofold. Firstly we want to be an educational resource both for professionals and for people who have had or who want to find out more about end of life experiences and issues.
‘We will be sending out an information pack and for a £10 annual fee members will be kept up to date with the latest developments in the field through regular newsletters and our website.’ ‘We will also be organizing seminars and conferences to educate those interested. Any money raised will be used for more scientific research into the study of the human mind at the end of life.’
In the Southampton study 63 heart attack survivors were interviewed within a week of their cardiac arrest and asked if they remembered anything during their period of unconsciousness. Seven of the survivors reported some NDEs features and four patients (six per cent) reached the strict Greyson criteria used to diagnose NDEs. They recalled feelings of peace and joy, time speeded up, heightened senses, lost awareness of body, seeing a bright light, entering another world, encountering a mystical being or deceased relative and coming to a point of no return.
This raises the question of how such lucid thought processes can occur when the brain is dead. Dr Parnia, a University clinical research fellow and registrar, said: ‘The main significance of the NDE lies in the understanding of the relationship between mind and brain which has remained a topic of debate in contemporary philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.’ ‘Very little is known scientifically about the subjective experience of dying, the nature of the human mind and its outcome during ‘clinical death’. This is becoming a very important issue in medicine.
‘Our findings need to be investigated with a much larger study. But if the results are replicated it would imply that the mind may continue to exist after the death of the body, or an afterlife. Accounts of NDEs have been found in many different cultures and throughout history and it is estimated that six per cent of people suffering a cardiac arrest will have such an experience.’
There are currently three explanations for these accounts. The first is physiological; that the hallucinations patients’ experience is due to disturbed brain chemistry caused by drug treatment, a lack of oxygen or changes in carbon dioxide levels. In the Southampton study none of the four patients who had NDEs had low levels of oxygen or received any unusual combination of drugs during their resuscitation. A second explanation is that out of body experiences and vivid encounters with tunnels, lights or deceased relatives are constructed by the mind to ease the process of death.
Dr Parnia added: “The features of the NDEs in this study were dissimilar to those of confusional hallucinations as they were highly structured, narrative, easily recalled and clear.”
The third possible explanation is transcendental, an event indicating the continuation of life after death. All four Southampton study patients who reported an NDE were Christians but none described themselves as practicing – one said he was a Pagan – and nor did they see religious-type figures during their experience.
Dr Parnia added: “During cardiac arrest brainstem activity is rapidly lost. It should not be able to sustain such lucid processes or allow the formation of lasting memories.
“We need a large, definitive study to tell us whether the mind is produced by the brain or whether it is a separate entity. If it is the latter this will have almost unimaginable implications.”
Note for editors: The Horizon Research Foundation can be contacted by phone on 08703333722 or by writing to Mailpoint 888, Southampton General Hospital, Tremona Road, Southampton SO16 6YD.
The Foundation website address is www.horizon-research.co.uk. The Southampton study is published in this month’s issue of the medical journal Resuscitation.
For further information:
Dr Sam Parnia, Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton (tel:023 8079 5026 e-mail parnis@soton.ac.uk).
Kim d’Arcy, External Relations, University of Southampton (tel: 023 80594993 e-mail kimda@soton.ac.uk).
(Diamond Way Buddhism Network www.diamondway-buddhism.org/ 01/07/2002)”
I guess we won’t know if life can survive death until we die! Or until we open up to that experience while we’re alive; because if life transcends the death of the body, it transcends it right now, We just have to wake up to it.
So the question is, can life survive the death of the body in a transcendent state of eternal being? And your answer to that question is a resounding…?
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/new-age-articles/can-life-transcend-the-death-of-the-body-4762250.html
About the Author
I enjoy writing and thinking deeply about the important experiences of life. I’m also a guitarist, bassist, songwriter and have a B.S. in counseling psychology
bass.reeves@yahoo.com
http://www.blackmerda.com
May 10th, 2012 
