The Blurred Line Between Life and Death

Sometimes, the line between life and death can seem blurred.

Throughout history, the boundary between life and death was marked by the moment a person's
heart stopped, breathing ceased, and brain function shut down. A person became motionless,
lifeless, and was deemed irreversibly dead.

The advent of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the 1960s was revolutionary, demonstrating
that the heart could potentially be restarted after it had stopped. What was once called death—the
ultimate end point— was now widely called cardiac arrest, and became a starting point.

The purpose of this presentation is to spread awareness of the term ”clinical death”, not only it’s
medical and biological meaning, but also the spiritual one. We tried to show what happens during
clinical death from scientist perspective, and from the spiritual one, too.

So let’s talk a little bit about clinical death from biological perspective.

Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two necessary
criteria to sustain human and many other organisms' lives. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a
regular rhythm, a condition called cardiac arrest.

Until the 1950s, death was considered to be the point when any one of the vital functions —
heartbeat, electrical brain activity or respiration — ceased. But the advent of the mechanical
ventilator, which pushes air into and out of the lungs, created a new category called brain death.

That led to a whole class of people with warm bodies and circulating blood — who could even fight
off infections or gestate a baby — but who had absolutely no brain function.

So it become really hard to distinguish the living from the dead.

The advantages of wider implications of our medical advances is that we can now study what
happens to the human mind and consciousness after people enter the "grey zone," which marks the
time after the heart stops, but before irreversible cell damage occurs, and people are then brought
back to life. Millions have been successfully revived and many have reported experiencing a unique,
universal, and transformative mental state.

Were they "dead"? Yes, according to all the criteria doctors have ever used. But they were able to be
brought back before their "dead" bodies had reached the point of permanent, irreversible cellular
damage.

During this period of time people experience something called Near death experience (NDE) that is
definde as an occurrence in which a person comes very close to dying and has memories of a
spiritual experience.

Most NDEs (75 %) are very positive experiences and mostly follow the same pattern, involving the
mind “leaving” the dead body and having certain blissful experiences, for instance: seeing a bright
light at the end of a dark tunnel is very common as is leaving one’s body and floating above it, or
even journeying off into space. Meeting loved ones, living or dead, as well as other beings such as
angels, or even major figures such as Moses or Jesus, is frequently reported.

Subjects want to remain in this realm, but are told they must return to their bodies.

NDEs are not a new phenomenon, and reports go back to the Middle Ages. For example,
Francis Beaufort, a British Navy admiral and Irishman, reported a vivid NDE in 1791, when he
almost drowned.

From scientific point of view the reasons for survival at the time of clinical death is hypoxia-
when the brain is deprived of oxygen, there are disturbances of sensory perception and
hallucinations. Studies have shown that specific neuromuscular, cerebral disorders explain the
presence of sensations of the travel through the tunnel towards the light, the release of endorphins
explains a feeling of peace and bliss.

Also from medical perspective, there is an interesting and rarely syndrome called Lazarus
syndrome, also known as auto-resuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, that happens
when normal cardiac rhythm return spontaneous to a normal one after failed attempts at
resuscitation. Its occurrence has been noted in medical literature at least 38 times since 1982. It
takes its name from Lazarus who, as described in the New Testament, was raised after 4 days from
the dead by Jesus.

The record time for recovering from clinical death is hold by Velma Thomas, 59 from West
Virginia, USA. In May 2008, Thomas went into cardiac arrest at her home. She was declared
clinically dead for 17 hours after doctors failed to detect brain activity. Her son, Tim Thomas, stated
that "her skin had already started hardening, her hands and toes were curling up, they were already
drawn". She was taken off life support and funeral arrangements were in progress. However, ten
minutes after being taken off life support, she revived and recovered.

Conclusion

Death embraces everyone. It’s a fate none of us can overcome. The question is what really happens
to our mind and our soul, when we die. Even though science explains the phenomenom of returning
back from clincal death of people who has no pulse and no brain activity, it stills remains a big
mistery that no one could solve yet. Sure, Religion explains it as a movement through the tunnel
toward the light, meeting deceased relatives and other friends and a notification that it is not yet the
right time to end the earthly existence. We choose what to believe and how to explain this interesting
and still unknown process, so that’s why is so important to be aware of different aspects of our life
and have knowledges about the most unique and maybe magic phenomenon that can happen to our
body.