What Happens When We Die?
The Mind is the Biggest Mystery
I first got interested in it when I was a medical student fifteen years ago. When you’re dealing with life and death issues on the wards, doctor’s decisions [on whether to resuscitate a patient] are based on subjective opinions, and there’s a lot of a gray area. I was taken aback by that because there’s no real science about when you get to that real point.
At the end of my training as a medical student, there were a number of patients who had gone into cardiac arrest and died. There was one case in particular, a patient that I got to know personally. I left him one day when he appeared to be well and 30 minutes later, there was a cardiac arrest call. Unfortunately, it was him, and the doctors were working to bring him back.
I remember seeing him in a flat lined state, thinking to myself, “What’s happening to his mind and consciousness? Can he hear us or see us?” I had heard of people who had near death experiences, but there was no scientific answer. That was the defining moment.
Even as a medical student, I was interested in understanding what is the mind and its relationship with the brain. Why are we unique as individuals with personalities, feelings, emotions? I used to believe it was all cut and dry until I started to look into it in more detail. It’s the last completely undiscovered area of science.
What do you personally believe the mind is?
Right now, of course, I don’t have an answer for you. The mind is the biggest mystery. One possibility is that although most of us produce electrical activity, no one’s been able to show an experience or a plausible, biological mechanism.
If I tell you to look at a brain cell down a microscope, and I say, “This brain cell is now thinking of tired,” you’d say to yourself, “He’s crazy. It can’t produce a thought.” What happens if you connect two or 100 or 1,000 or 1 million brain cells? Where do thoughts come from? No one knows. No one can explain this. This led to the problem of consciousness.
There are two camps out there. One camp is more conventional, who says it’s electrochemical activity in the brain, but they can’t explain how. The alternative group says that it’s an undiscovered scientific entity that can’t account for the known processes of the brain. It’s like math or gravity. You can’t break down gravity. Gravity is gravity.
Ninety-nine percent of the time in life, you cannot separate mind and brain from each other. But in rare circumstances, you can separate them out because the brain stops itself and you can observe what happens to the mind. If the former is correct – that it’s activity of brain cells – when you shut the brain off, the mind should go away. It’s like a light. When the switch is off, it goes away. When it’s on, it comes back on. Alternatively, if we switch it off and the light is still on – that means that that isn’t the source of it. It’s a new scientific entity. It’s so exciting because it may once and for all answer this question that goes back to the ancient Greeks. They’ve all debated this through every civilization in the world. They’re still debating the same thing, and the camps are still the same.
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Thrasher263 03:59:39 PM Sep 29 2008
actually only part of us was in our father, part in the mother. and those parts were divided smaller and smaller as you go through the generations, and not even parts of us just the genes or chromosomes or whatever they are (dont know that much about biology) that would eventually have came together to make us
Maninches 01:47:12 PM Sep 29 2008
One thing is for sure. Weve always ben physically here on this earth. Many people have never thought about this I bet you,. :Where were you before you were born?You were a sperm in your father's sack. Where were you when your father was a sperm? You were very small somewhere inside your father,.And you were maybe smaller than a blood cell...And where were you when your fathers 's father was a sperm? You were inside your father, Him inside his father, and him inside his father, etc, etc, etc.So we were here from the first cavemen. We have always been inside one another...Bet none of you had ever thought about that...
CCase9 11:40:13 AM Sep 29 2008
Isn't it likely that when we die it will be the same as before we were born? Didn't those however million years before we were born go fast? If my spirit (mind) contimues after death I hope it escapes those dreams where I spend all of my time trying to get somewhere but can't seem to no matter what and stays within those dreams that I enjoy the most. I can broad jump a 100 yards or so in my favorite dreams. I see friends I haven't seen in 30 years in some others. Too cool. The question is: Will the spirit (if it continues to exist) contimue to learn and expand or will it only be able to replay my life experiences? And what are the odds that the next 100 million years might produce the same chemistry that produced me this time? Why can I see some things before they happen and get so surprised by other things that happen? "In time, you'll find that some things travel faster than light. In time you'll recognize that love is larger than life and praise will come to those who's ki
ScholzenF 06:48:24 AM Sep 29 2008
No One REALLY knows what happens! That's why it's such a mystery people!Personaally, I hope and pray there is a heaven and I'm going -but it's not my call!
SDMARTINTC 05:49:49 PM Sep 28 2008
I view the brain and the mind as two different entities, like a computer. As in a computer, I consider the brain as hardware and the mind as software. I think the brain needs the mind to function, just as a computer needs a certain software called the operating system. Science has found that the brain functions much the same way as a computer's CPU, where all the data manipulation takes place. Our mind actually programs our brain. So the brain and mind are different, but need each other to function.
Jsphzhng 02:33:08 PM Sep 28 2008
my guess, the brain and our body is like a machine. Our mind is like a form of energy. ex, brain and body is a car, our blood is the gasoline, our mind is the electricity that starts the car.
Kbsmasbesthalves 01:20:46 PM Sep 28 2008
My partiing thought would be "I told you I was sick"!
Sagr4sg2 01:03:35 PM Sep 28 2008
My parting thought? Damn............ I should have chosen the salad for dinner.
Sagr4sg2 01:02:11 PM Sep 28 2008
I remember very clearly the tunnel and the light at the end of the tunnel, and hearing everything that was being said around me - but that was on a highway through a mountain in the north-eastern part of the US.
