People Experience ‘New Dimensions of Reality' When Dying, Groundbreaking Study Reports

Reported by By Becky Ferreira for Vice:

During an expansive multi-year study led by Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor and an associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone Health, researchers observed 567 patients in 25 hospitals around the world as they underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after suffering cardiac arrest, most of which were fatal.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed that episodes of heightened consciousness occurred up to an hour after cardiac arrest. Though most of the patients in the study were sadly not resuscitated by CPR, 53 patients were brought back to life. Of the survivors, 11 patients reported a sense of awareness during CPR and six reported a near-death experience.

Parnia and his colleagues suggest that the transition from life to death can trigger a state of disinhibition in the brain that “appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality—including people’s deeper consciousness—all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective,” a finding with profound implications for CPR research, end-of-life care, and consciousness, among other fields, according to a new study published in Resuscitation.

Read the full article here.

I doubt the results of this study will surprise many end-of-life doulas, chaplains, or anyone who's sat vigil while a loved one was actively dying. And yet how each one of us interprets these findings will likely be shaped by our own understanding of consciousness, and by our own thoughts about what (if anything) happens to our souls at the moment of death.

One thing we might all agree on is that this study makes clear the dying person is likely to experience a heightened consciousness at the moment of death. Let it be a reminder for all of us who enter into this sacred space to care for the dying to do so mindful of all our presence might bring to the situation.