Man after death. Scientific approach

The experience of death, or those who returned...

The development of resuscitation and intensive care in recent decades has made it possible to bring back to life a huge number of previously considered hopeless patients.

Thanks to this, many thousands of people who were brought out of a state of clinical death by doctors had what is commonly called the “death experience.” From there, because of the seemingly unshakable line separating life from death, people returned and talked about their feelings.

In the mid-80s of this century, the US bestseller list was topped by the book of the American doctor Raymond Moody, “Life After Life,” in which he analyzed the amazing testimonies of 150 people who experienced a state of clinical death. “The descriptions are so similar, so vivid and irresistibly true that they may forever change the way mankind views death, life and the afterlife of the soul,” wrote America magazine in June 1989.

In his book, Dr. Moody deduces a typical diagram of clinical death: when death occurs, the patient manages to hear the words of the doctor stating the death, then hears an unusual noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and feels that he is rushing at high speed through a long black tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside his physical body, sees light; his whole life passes before him; the souls of other people come to him to meet and help him, he recognizes in some cases his friends or deceased parents, and a luminous being appears in front of him, from whom emanates such love and warmth as he has never met. Then he feels the approaching border, due to which there will be no return, and... returns to life. The topic raised by Raymond Moody immediately found enthusiasts. Doctor of Psychology Kenneth Ring equipped an entire expedition to clinics in the state of Connecticut. The results of thirteen months of research showed that the phenomenon exists and is not associated with any pathology. Neither intoxication, nor dreams, nor hallucinations have anything to do with it. After analyzing 102 cases of clinical death, Dr. Ring stated: 60 percent of patients experienced an indescribable feeling of peace, 37 percent hovered above their own body, 26 remembered various panoramic visions, 23 entered a tunnel, lock, bag, well or cellar, 16 - before are still delighted by the enchanting light, 8 percent claim to have met deceased relatives. The indications are always the same, whether patients are from the USA, European countries or Burundi; atheists, Christians or Buddhists; whether they consider light a natural phenomenon or divine grace, everyone told the same things.

On the other side of the United States, a young cardiologist, Dr. Seibom, a rational and pedantic man, read Moody's theses, burst out with caustic ridicule and, in order to leave no stone unturned, conducted a systematic survey of emergency room personnel in Florida. When the results of his research completely coincided with the data of Moody and Ring, Seibom decided to devote his life to studying this phenomenon. He even developed a ten-step model of clinical death, which now bears his name.

So, this phenomenon exists and has received a special name “NDE phenomenon” (an English abbreviation meaning a state close to death). Even the International Association for the Study of the NDE phenomenon has been organized, the chairman of the French branch of which is Louis-Vincen Thomas, president of the French Thanatological Association (there is one!). An interview with Monsieur Thomas was published in issue No. 43 of the weekly magazine “Abroad” for 1990.

Modern researchers believe that a third of patients who experienced clinical death were in a state of NDE, but many experienced doctors who have worked all their lives in emergency services have never heard (or did not want to listen?) to any such evidence. This is explained by the fact that people who try to discuss their near-death experiences are most often faced with skepticism and complete misunderstanding. Almost everyone in such a situation begins to feel that they are somehow deviating from the norm, since no one has experienced what happened to them. These people withdraw into themselves and try not to reveal to anyone what happened to them outside of life.

However, the phenomenon of NDE should have been known for a long time, long before the advent of resuscitation, although perhaps not on such a significant scale as now. This is evidenced by isolated evidence scattered in various sources. Here, for example, is a description of the posthumous state of Blessed Fedora, borrowed from a 10th-century source: “I looked back and saw that my body was lying without feeling or movement. Just as if someone had taken off his clothes and looked at them, so I looked at my body, as if at clothes, and was very surprised at this.” This description repeats almost verbatim the numerous testimonies given in Moody's book.

In the library of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, which I was lucky enough to visit, there is a very rare book telling about how a certain Russian man visited “the next world.” The book is sewn from the pages of “Trinity Leaflet” No. 58, published in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in 1916. On its title it says: K. Inekul “Incredible for many, but a true incident.” The evidence presented in it also coincides with the symptoms of the NDE phenomenon that we have already described.

The painting “The Empyrean” by the Dutch artist Bosch, who lived five centuries ago, shows “the entry of the souls of the dead into the kingdom of heaven.” The amazing coincidence of what is depicted with the stories of people who have experienced clinical death is striking: the rapid rotating movement of souls along a long dark tunnel, at the end of which an inexpressibly bright light shines.

Undoubtedly, the work of many artists, poets, and writers was nourished by the experience of people familiar with the NDE phenomenon. Re-read “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - an amazing description of the NDE phenomenon!

And here is the scene of the execution of Admiral Kolchak from the novel by emigrant writer Vladimir Emelyanovich Maximov “Look into the Abyss”: “Strange, but the Admiral did not hear the shot and did not feel pain. Only something instantly cracked and broke in him, and immediately after this a spiral-shaped corridor with a blinding, but at the same time festively peaceful light appeared at the end, drawing him towards this light, and, illuminated from there by the oncoming wave, he joyfully and freely dissolved in it. The last thing he noted with his earthly memory was his own body stretched out on the blue snow, which suddenly became alien to him.”

The scenes of the clinical death of the main character in Eldar Ryazanov’s film “A Lonely Melody for a Flute” are also striking in their artistic accuracy. All components of the NDE phenomenon are presented there - unusual noise, movement along a long, darkened corridor; meeting with the souls of his deceased parents, trying to help him prepare for the transition to a new world; accompanying the hero are the souls of people who died at the same time as him - old people, Afghan soldiers, victims of the Chernobyl accident in special protective suits; and, finally, a bright light at the end of the corridor, where all the souls moving towards it disappear.

In his book Life After Life, Raymond Moody describes eleven clearly distinct phases, from the doctor's verdict of death to the return to life, although most "returnees" do not go through all of these phases completely. Let us take a closer look at some stages of the NDE phenomenon.

The NDE phenomenon seems to have already been well studied, and in each case there is always some explanation for it. But one thing still does not fit into any scheme: separation from the body or decorporation. How to treat patients who, after surgery, begin to talk about what happened in the next room? What about blind people who can accurately name the color of a surgeon’s tie? Some people who were resuscitated say that in the first minutes they could not understand what happened. While outside the body, they tried to communicate with those around them, talk to them, and were perplexed to discover that they did not perceive or hear them. “I saw how they were trying to bring me back to life. I tried to talk to them, but no one heard me."

The Tibetan “Book of the Dead” also contains a description of such a post-mortem experience. The deceased, it says, sees his body and loved ones mourning him as if from the outside. He also tries to call out to them, to talk to him, but no one hears him. As in the cases told by those reanimated, he does not immediately understand what happened to him.

Many reports mention various types of unusual auditory sensations at or before the time of death. It can be a buzzing sound, a loud clicking sound, a roar, knocking sounds, a whistling sound like the wind, ringing bells, majestic music.

Often, simultaneously with the noise effect, people have the feeling of moving at very high speed through some space. Many different expressions are used to describe this space: cave, well, something through, some kind of enclosed space, tunnel, chimney, vacuum, emptiness, sewer, valley, cylinder. Although people use different terminology in this case, it is clear that they are all trying to express the same idea.

Moody also gives several stories from reanimated people about encounters with other spiritual beings. These beings were obviously present with them in order to help facilitate the transition to a new state for the dying.

The most incredible and at the same time the most common element in all the cases studied by Dr. Moody was the encounter with a very bright light. Despite the unusual nature of this vision, none of the patients doubted that it was a being, a luminous being with a personality. The identification of this being by different people is very different and depends mainly on the religious environment in which the person was formed, his upbringing and personal faith. Further, according to the descriptions collected by Moody, the luminous creature shows a person pictures, as if an overview of his life. This review, always described as a kind of screen of visible images, despite its speed, turns out to be incredibly alive and real, all the witnesses interviewed agree on this. Despite the fact that the paintings quickly replaced each other, each of them was clearly recognizable and perceived. Even the emotions and feelings associated with these paintings could be re-experienced by a person when he saw them.

On several occasions, patients told Raymond Moody how, during their near-death experiences, they approached something that could be called a boundary or some kind of limit. In different testimonies, this phenomenon is described in different ways: in the form of some kind of body of water, gray fog, a door, a fence stretching across a field, or just a line. Behind these impressions there is probably the same experience or idea, and the different forms of the stories represent only individual attempts to convey in words the memory of the same experience.

Since the line, crossing which means that there is no return, is often associated with some kind of water barrier, it is probably from here that the symbol of water in the meaning of the last barrier passed into a variety of mythologies and cultures.

Suffice it to recall the rivers Aida, Lethe, Styx, Acheron in ancient myth, the Senzu River among Japanese Buddhists, etc. This tradition was also characteristic of the ancient Egyptians. In drawings from the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead” (a set of instructions and spells for the soul of the deceased), the soul, ready for the transition, kneels before the river that separates the earthly world from the afterlife Fields of the Blessed, where eternally rich harvests provide a well-fed and carefree life for all the dead.

Not one of Dr. Moody's 150 patients crossed this line. Probably those who did cross it were unable to return and tell about it. Yet people brought back from clinical death have experienced a return from some point in their near-death experience. Almost all those interviewed remembered that the first moments of their death were dominated by an insane desire to return back to the body and the sorrowful experience of their death. However, when the deceased reached certain stages of dying, he did not want to come back, he even resisted returning to his body. This was especially true for those cases in which there was an encounter with a luminous being.

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that a sign of those who had been to the next world was the inability to laugh. Some changes in the psyche of people who have emerged from a state of clinical death are noted by almost all researchers. Raymond Moody believes that the experience had a very subtle pacifying effect on the lives of those resuscitated. Many people think that life has become deeper and more meaningful; their view of the relationship between the value of the physical body and its mind has changed.

French psychiatrist Patrick Duavrin, who also studied the phenomenon of NDE, writes that the psychological balance of reanimated persons is above average, they exhibit much less psychopathological phenomena that happened in the past, they use less medications, alcohol, and do not use any drugs.

As might be expected, the experience of NDE has a profound impact on the survivors' attitude toward physical death, especially those who previously did not think that there was anything after death. In one form or another, Moody emphasizes, all these people expressed the same idea: they were no longer afraid of death.

The most difficult task that confronts the reader after familiarizing himself with the facts presented is their assessment. Most commentators on R. Moody's book and the articles of his followers unanimously declare that this book opens a new page in a person's knowledge of himself, it proves that a person's life does not end with the death of the body, and, therefore, strengthens the belief in the existence of the afterlife.

But other, materialistic interpretations of the facts we have cited are also possible. Personally, as a person involved in theoretical and practical problems of medicine, I believe that most of the described phenomena can be interpreted within the framework of known biological phenomena. Thus, when clinical death occurs due to the cessation of normal blood supply to the receptors, a sharp oxygen starvation occurs, to which different receptors respond differently. Sensations similar to noise, ringing, or whistling arise in the auditory receptors, and flashes of bright light appear in the visual receptors. Acute ischemia (bleeding) of the vestibular receptors probably leads to the sensation of falling, spinning, and rapid movement through the tunnel. A lack of blood supply to the brain can initiate the work of its cortex, which manifests itself in a stream of memories or the production of images of people who have passed away.

Since in all people the receptors react in the same way to a lack of blood supply, the sensations that arise are quite identical in different people who have suffered this condition. The same can be said about emerging images. For example, there is an old folk belief that deceased relatives dream of a change in the weather. Indeed, changes in atmospheric pressure when the weather changes cause a change in sleep from superficial to deeper, when deep memory mechanisms are included in the formation of dreams, preserving images of once close but deceased people. Probably something similar can happen at the time of clinical death.

Although I do not agree with R. Moody and his associates on everything, I tried to express their point of view as fully as possible. The diversity of points of view has never harmed knowledge and the search for truth.

Literature

Slovo, 1990, No. 7.

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Chapter Eleven Metaphysical Experience

Forensic thanatology is aimed at studying the dynamics and stages of dying. One of the most important parts of this science is thanatogenesis, which determines the true causes and mechanisms of death, and also allows for the creation of a more advanced classification of the circumstances of human dying.

Concept of death

Death is the cessation of life. It occurs due to the cessation of the functioning of all organs and is a result of the lack of oxygen, body cells die, and the blood ceases to be ventilated. If cardiac arrest occurs, the blood flow ceases to perform its functions, which leads to tissue damage.

General concepts about thanatology

Thanatology is a science that reveals patterns of dying. She also studies changes in organ function and tissue damage as a result of this process.

Forensic thanatology acts as part of the main science; it examines the process of death and its consequences for the whole organism in the interests and purposes of the investigation or for conducting an examination.

During the transition of a living organism to death, it experiences various preagonal (with a lack of oxygen), terminal pause (sharp stop of the functions of the respiratory system), agonal and the latter occurs as a result of cardiac arrest and cessation of breathing. The body finds itself between life and death, and at the same time all its metabolic processes fade away.

Since dying is natural at the end of a person’s life in old age, forensic medicine examines cases of premature death caused by the influence of various environmental factors.

After the clinical stage, irreversible changes occur in the cerebral cortex. In a hospital setting, a conclusion about death has occurred is easier to make than outside it, in the absence of special tools and devices. Representatives of authorities often use the term “moment of death,” which forensic medicine regards as the exact time of its occurrence.

Signs of death

In order to establish the exact time of the end of life, it is necessary to know the signs of death, which are studied by thanatology. These are primarily orienting: immobility, absence of pulse and breathing, pallor, complete lack of reactions to various types of influences.

There are also reliable signs: the temperature drops to 20°, early and late cadaveric changes appear (the appearance of spots, rigor, rotting, and others).

Reanimation and transplantation

Resuscitation measures are taken in order to preserve human life when body functions lose their functionality. In this case, irreparable injuries and damage may be caused in the process due to carelessness or incompetence of doctors. Forensic thanatology is aimed at identifying the circumstances of death as a result of the procedure, which makes it possible to assess the injuries caused and help further the investigation. The expert's job is to determine the severity of the injuries and their role in the dying process.

The essence of transplantation is to transfer tissue from one patient to another. The law stipulates that this event can be carried out only in cases where there is no chance of saving the life and normalizing the health of the donor. In case of traumatic brain injuries, if there is no hope of saving life, resuscitation can be carried out in order to preserve the remaining organs that can be used for transplantation. Thus, the bone marrow can return to normal functioning within 4 hours, and the skin, bone tissue and tendons can take up to a day (in most cases 19-20 hours).

The fundamentals of thanatology determine the conditions and procedure for organ transplantation and organ removal, which should be carried out in government healthcare institutions. Transplantation is carried out only with the consent of the two parties involved in the operation. It is prohibited to use donor biomaterial if during his lifetime he was against it or his relatives showed their disagreement.

Removal of organs is possible only with the permission of the head of the forensic medical examination department, and in the presence of the expert himself. Moreover, the procedure should not in any way lead to disfigurement of the corpse.

Since thanatology is the study of death, organs and tissues removed during the examination process can be used as educational and pedagogical material. This requires permission from the forensic expert who examined the corpse.

Categories of death

The science of death considers only two categories of death:

Violent. Occurs as a result of injuries and mutilations caused by water under the influence of any kind of environmental factors. These can be mechanical influences, chemical, physical and others.
Nonviolent. Occurs under the influence of physiological processes such as old age, fatal diseases or premature birth, as a result of which the fetus has no chance of survival.

Causes of violent and non-violent death

Violent death can occur for three reasons, according to the science of thanatology. It's murder, suicide or accident. Forensic experts determine what type of case each case belongs to. At the same time, they inspect the scene of the incident and collect evidence about the causes of death. These actions help confirm that the end of life occurred by force.

The second category includes sudden and sudden death. In the first case, the end of life occurs as a result of illness. In particular, in which a diagnosis was made, but there were no reasonable causes for death. In the second case, death may occur from a disease that occurs without any symptoms.

Types of death

Thanatology determines depending on the factors leading to its onset. Thus, the violent end of life can include exposure to electric current and temperatures incompatible with survival, mechanical damage and asphyxia. Diseases of various organs with all sorts of complications leading to death can lead to sudden death.

Due to the fact that in current conditions a large number of medications are used and various types of operations are performed, clarification of thanatogenesis is possible through in-depth analysis and examination of the corpse during autopsy by a group of specialists.

Death has always been one of the main themes of religious practices, philosophy, medicine and art. They all turn to the specific features of the dying process and the mysterious, mystical state that characterizes the arrival of death, to give significance to eternal themes: the concept of fate, the existence of God, the search for one’s place in life, and so on. Even such a section of medical knowledge as thanatology is devoted more to philosophical or political discussions about the border of the so-called clinical death and the definition of the line beyond which life ends and death begins, than to medical issues themselves. Psychology is interested in death from the point of view of its influence on the standard of living of an individual, although Freud, who stands apart in this case and is more of a philosopher or social thinker here, speaks of the death drive as a special desire to restore the original inorganic state of the organism. However, does social science need death as a separate branch of the humanities?

In Western sociology (as can be seen, for example, from an interview with anthropologist Sergei Kan), the term death studies is used - “the science of death.” This is a certain body of humanitarian knowledge concerning the topic of death and dying. The title of the article in the Naked Science magazine echoes this position - “Death as Science”, in fact, as does the position expressed by its authors. The creator of Russia's first journal on death studies, “The Archeology of Russian Death,” Sergei Mokhov proposes to establish a separate discipline - necrosociology, which would study death as something that influences the actual life of society. That is, it would study those aspects that are not amenable to our direct observation during our lives, but are the result of observing how this happens to others. Russian researcher Dmitry Rogozin speaks of the sociology of death as a branch that studies human reactions to death: “how and what people think about death.”

Here it must be said that the topic of death, as something different from other problems of interest to the social sciences, first appears in the work of the historical anthropologist Philippe Ariès, “Man Facing Death,” published in 1977. In it, the researcher presents the history of the mentalities of peoples, groups and individuals from the point of view of their ideas about death and dying, as well as ritual practices. Despite the fact that this study suffers from a pretentious approach (only theories that are convenient for the author are considered) and selective citation, Ariès’s work generated “a wave of responses not only in the form of criticism of his constructions, but also in the form of new research on the topic of the perception of death and the afterlife.” . According to the Russian culturologist Aron Gurevich, Aries’s work caused “a powerful explosion of interest in the problem of “death in history,” which was expressed in a stream of monographs and articles, in conferences and colloquia.” Since then, Western representatives of death studies - along with the growing interest of politicians and various scientists in people “close to death” (the elderly, terminally ill, representatives of professions associated with the risk of sudden death) - have been exploiting the idea of “death in life.” This is something that can tell us more about life in society and about society itself than life itself.

Author of the recently published book (M.: “New Literary Review”, 2015) “Death in Berlin. From the Weimar Republic to Divided Germany" (perhaps the first translated monograph in this field), Monica Black asks the following questions: what did people do when they came into contact with death? What did people think (if they thought) about the afterlife? and what is death for them anyway? The researcher tries, through these three aspects, to get to the bottom of the fundamental levels of interaction between people, where activity is regulated by motives that have no connection with words and external ideas formulated by society. Everything done in this way most often cannot be said out loud by the participants in the interaction, but can be easily reproduced by them. The picture of life in Berlin and Germany as a whole described in this way during the amazingly changing years for the country shows the “specialness” of the Germans in their idea of themselves as a cultural nation, bearers of the notorious European Zivilisation. By separating themselves through attempts to preserve “correct” ritual practices from the rest of the world, the Germans are preparing themselves for the future reconstruction of the country after two world wars and the reconstruction of the European order. Thus, an important practice was the burial of a separate body in a separate coffin: noteworthy are the cases described in the book when residents of Berlin, already captured by Soviet troops, sacrificed food and basic amenities in order to get a decent coffin for each dead. This approach contrasted with the burial practices, such as mass graves, that existed in the Soviet units that were located in the city. The author, following the Berliners, is gently surprised by this approach, joining himself to the conventionally “cultural” nations.

What can such a direction give to domestic science? Of course, death, if we talk about it openly, is a common place in Russian historical and anthropological discourse, regardless of the specific topic that is taken as the object of study. Civil war, repression, the Great Patriotic War, the institution of concentration camps and the Gulag are possible topics for research by modern necrosociologists. Along with this, modern Russian practices of dying and preparation for death are of undoubted and even more significant interest. Social norms, the behavior of relatives, caring for loved ones in this process are things that may be of interest to domestic science. To put it simply, in the modern Russian discursive field there is a special, poorly analyzed and poorly articulated world of death, existing in parallel with the world of life, with its own rules and characteristics.

Naturally, all these questions can be considered purely from the position of social anthropology: there is a tribe (society, society), it has certain rites of passage, including rituals associated with death; we will study them and be able to understand something about the social norms and institutions of this tribe. This, in turn, will give us a blueprint, a template for understanding our society. However, a sociological approach to the study of mortality provides a wider range of specific research practices.

There are certain difficulties here - first of all, difficult access to the field. Mortality is a taboo topic in Russian society: end-of-life practices, care for the dying, the consciousness of death itself in the mirror of everyday life did not come into the field of view of official science until recent years. Hospices, boarding schools for the elderly, private apartments with paralyzed relatives - these are so-called complex social fields, with access to which at least administrative problems may arise, not to mention the ethical framework of the researcher. Communication with cemetery workers, whom people's rumors (often with good reason) associate with crime, can end in failure for the researcher. Necrosociology is the hard work of analyzing hard-to-access or even classified information; The work of a necrosociologist is different, for example, from the work of a war journalist who takes a series of photographs about the death of military personnel in a hot spot, or from the work of a priest who gives a sermon about the resurrection from the dead at an Easter service. A sociologist, like a priest and a correspondent, has the right to his own view of an object, but this is not a dogma or a professional instruction. The degree of impartiality and the desire for non-partisanship imposes strict restrictions on his work.

This point is well illustrated by the themes of the two published issues of the mentioned “Archaeology of Russian Death”. Most of the articles are devoted to the analysis of printed and other sources, the study of the symbolic space of cemeteries - in fact, the problems of future necrosociology, and only one material is “removed” from a direct conversation about death and is devoted to the funeral and memorial lamentations of a separate area. It must be said that, despite this, a conversation between a researcher and a respondent, for example, about the latter’s salary, may turn out to be an incomparably more difficult task than finding out the circumstances of the death of his relative. Everything related to death is at the same time an object of sale and purchase, from funeral services to online games. Unlike a commercial product, the study of death from a sociological point of view brings it to light, presenting, say, the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster for specific people not just as a phenomenon with physiological consequences, but as a new type of moral panic, the fear of death from a hitherto unknown source, associated with new mechanisms of death.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the personal experience of the author, which will be reflected in the works being prepared, as well as the experience of the team of researchers, which the already mentioned sociologist Dmitry Rogozin speaks about, shows that in modern Russia people are increasingly and more often themselves, the first, ready to talk about death, translate it into an articulated field, discuss it and “share” it. The reason for this is also a possible subject of study.

The 18th - 19th centuries were the time when science supplanted religion and people wanted to comprehend the previously unknown. And one of the main mysteries was to understand the origin of life. Scientists have learned to revive the dead, trying to answer the question: can electricity return from the other world?

In 1780, Italian anatomy professor Luigi Galvani discovered that the muscles of a dead frog could be made to twitch using electricity. Other scientists also began experimenting by applying electricity to animals. Galvani's nephew, physicist Giovanni Aldini, having received a whole bull, cut off its head and, using an electric current, made its tongue move. The scientist sent such high voltages that it resulted in “a very strong action on the rectum, causing a bowel movement,” Aldini wrote.

People outside science were also fascinated by electricity. Shows where the heads of cows and pigs were shocked became very popular. Once scientists had trained on animals, they turned to human bodies. The laws of those years allowed the corpses of executed criminals to be used for experiments.

On November 4, 1818, Scottish chemist Andrew Ure stood next to the lifeless body of Matthew Clydesdale. It was a criminal who had been hanged just an hour ago. Ure was performing a research demonstration in an anatomy theater filled with curious students and doctors from the University of Glasgow. But this was no ordinary autopsy. Yure used two metal rods connected to a galvanic battery and touched various parts of the corpse with them. Enthusiastic spectators watched the convulsions of the body, which writhed in the dance of death.

While most naturalists used galvanism more for fun, Ure wanted to find out if it was really possible to bring someone back from the dead.

Other scientists noted that Ure was convinced that electricity could restore life to a dead body. Unlike the others, he was not limited to primitive stimulation of the cadaver muscles with electric current pulses. Bright sparks and loud explosions of stunning effects attracted both scientists and artists to these experiments. And Andrew Ure's ambitions were almost like those of the literary hero Victor Frankenstein.

When Ure sent charges of current through the Clydesdale's diaphragm, his chest heaved as if he were breathing. Stimulating the facial muscles had a terrible result: it changed expression, showing rage, fear, despair, melancholy. The killer's face frightened those present, some even left the room, and one gentleman lost consciousness.

The experiment lasted about an hour. Experimenters tried in vain to bring the dead back to life. Ure concluded that if death had not been caused by bodily injury, then resurrection could have occurred. He also wrote that if the experiment was successful, there would be no reason for joy, since the murderer was resurrected.

And two years before Yura’s experiment, the English writer Mary Shelley came up with a story about Frankenstein. She published her novel in 1818. Coincidentally, Victor Frankenstein also brought the monster to life "on a dreary November night." However, unlike the university experience, the scene of the creature's resurrection is described briefly and vaguely, with no mention of the word "electricity".

Horrific electrical displays eventually fell out of fashion as the public came to view them as evil and "satanic in nature." At least the first primitive experiments with electric current paved the way for resuscitation technologies such as defibrillation.

The amazing and frightening story of the monster created by Victor Frankenstein is captured in the book.

“Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear thinking! It has a non-linear dimension, like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse. In other words, death is only a psychological delusion instilled in a person by false “knowledge” about the world, Real Psychology reports.

Modern science comes to the conclusion that human life and death are not at all something that a person is sure of. This does not fit into the framework of a banal human idea of things and does not refer to “objective phenomena”, but to a person’s subjective ideas - his psychological cliches.

Modern man was brought up in the traditions of “vulgar materialism”. The one-sidedness of the scientific and philosophical thought of the “traditional European school” and the success of the introduction of technology “mothballed” man’s beliefs that “the world has an objective existence, independent of the observer.” However, the most modern studies of “dissenters from science” and their experiments prove that in fact, “everything is exactly the opposite.” The classic view that “Our life is just the active existence of carbon-containing molecules, which ends the moment the biological body becomes unusable” is no longer tenable.

Primitively looking at things, we believe in death because:
we have been taught to associate ourselves only with the biological body, we can see the death of this very biological body and perceive it literally. And yet, modern scientific thought, and in particular biocentrism (an ideology, as well as an ethical and scientific concept that places living nature at the center universe), suggests that the so-called. death cannot be the final event as we think. And one of the arguments here is that if you add life and consciousness into the equation, many of science's biggest mysteries can be explained. For example, it becomes clear that space, time and the properties of matter directly depend on the observer! Moreover, the fact of the “ideal correspondence (reasonable fit)” of the laws and constants of the Universe to the existence of life becomes obvious.

It is necessary to understand that the entire universe, as it is, is such only in our consciousness. As a trivial example, we can say that we see a blue sky only because certain cells in our brain are tuned to “blue sky perception.” And nothing prevents you from changing them so that the sky looks green or orange. The concepts of “light-dark” or “warm-cold” are no less conventional. If you think it's hot and humid, but to a tropical frog the weather seems cold and dry. All this logic applies to almost everything. The main thing to understand here is: Everything that you see cannot be present without your consciousness. And these are primitive examples that say much more!

By and large, it is naive to even believe that a person sees with his eyes, that his senses are something like portals to the objective world. Everything that a person feels and senses at one time or another (including the sensations of his own body) is a whirlwind of information rushing through his mind. According to both quantum physics and biocentrism, space and time are not the rigid, inert objects we think they are. Space and time are simply tools for placing everything.

Consider the famous experiment of Thomas Young, which became experimental proof of the wave theory of light. When observing the passage of particles through two slits in a barrier, each particle behaves like a corpuscle and passes through either one slit or the other. But in the absence of an observer, the particle already acts as a wave and can pass through both slits simultaneously. That is, the particle changes its behavior depending on whether you look at it or not! How so? It's simple: the so-called “objective reality” is not static, but a dynamic process that includes your consciousness!

The same conclusion can be reached through the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If the so-called The “objective world” really exists, then we should be able to at least measure the properties of any particles moving chaotically in it. However, we cannot do even this. If only because all the experience of physics shows that the exact position and momentum of a particle cannot be known at the same time. In other words, what matters to the particle is the fact that at one point or another you suddenly decided to take measurements!

Another example is that pairs of “quantum entangled” (having a common origin) particles can instantly communicate with each other from opposite ends of the galaxy, as if space and time did not exist for them. Why and how? And that is why it is so that they are not at all in the so-called. “objective reality” - that is, as if outside from the observer. Conclusion - space and time are just tools of our mind.

Therefore, today both physics and biocentrism say that “Death does not exist in a timeless, extra-spatial world. Immortality does not mean endless existence in time, but is outside of time in general!”

Another interesting fact refutes the correctness of the “linear way of thinking about time” instilled in us from childhood. In an experiment conducted in 2002, scientists showed that some photons seem to “know in advance” what other photons at the other end of the Galaxy will do in the future. Scientists have tested the connection between pairs of photons. Here's how it was described in the report: "The experimenters interrupted the movement of one photon, and it had to decide whether it would become a wave or a particle.

The researchers increased the distance it took for another photon to reach its detector. At the same time, they could place a polarizer in its path to prevent it from turning into a particle. Somehow the first particle knew what the explorer was going to do before it happened, at a distance, instantly, as if there was no space or time between them. She decided not to become a particle even before her twin met the polarizer." All this once again confirms that our mind and its knowledge is the only condition that determines how particles will behave. That is, the World is subject to the "Observer Dependency Effect !"

Opponents of biocentrism argue that such a phenomenon is limited to the microcosm. But, according to the modern scientific paradigm, the assertion that there is one set of physical laws for small objects, and another for the rest of the universe (including us) has no basis! So in 2005, a paper was published in the journal Nature describing how KHC03 crystals exhibited an "entanglement" effect while being half an inch tall - that is, quantum behavior manifested in the ordinary human-scale world.

Today, one of the fundamental aspects of quantum physics is that observations cannot be predicted at all. Instead, it refers to a "range of possible observations" having different probabilities. And this is one of the main explanations for the objectivity of the “many worlds” theory, which states that each of the possible observations corresponds to a separate universe in the Multiverse conglomerate.

In other words, everything that could theoretically happen is realized in some universe. And all possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Therefore, the death of a person does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios, but refers only to his mental perception (belief).

In connection with all this, Ralph Waldo Emerson states: “The influence of the senses in most people has overpowered the mind to such an extent that the walls of space and time have begun to seem solid, real and insurmountable, and to talk about them frivolously is a sign of madness in the world.”