Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "visiting-heaven"
Neurochemical Origin of Afterlife
Today I'll be taking you in the afterlife. Don't worry, nobody needs to die to do that. Basically if you die, there is nothing more to experience for your soul. Because the moment your brain stops functioning, your soul ceases to exist. And it is so, because the soul is the expression of a functional brain.
A lot of people apparently have visited heaven, as in afterlife, and apparently they have come back. That's the claim made by many people. And the quantity of such claims is just too much to simply ignore. So, let's not ignore, and try to unravel the truth underneath such claims.
The very first thing that you need to know is that putting aside the small portion of the claims made simply to draw attention, most of these claims are actually made based on actual experiences. Which means as far as the subject who's making the claim is concerned, his or her encounter of heaven did indeed take place. So, to him or her, it is a real experience, as real as your experience of me talking to you right at this moment. And in fact, in most cases, that afterlife reality actually seems more real to the person than usual reality.
Now first lets look at the origin of this idea of afterlife - the idea of heaven or hell. The idea of an afterlife was created by the imagination of our ancient ancestors who lived in tribes and had way little intellectual capacity. And further this idea fueled in people's actual encounter of an afterlife. Our ancestors simply could not comprehend the sudden immobility of a walking and talking human being. They had to come up with some sort explanation for the so-called death, which they could not comprehend whatsoever. So, their brain concocted the belief, that there is apparently a soul that runs the body - a life-force, and when the body becomes aged and unsuitable for the soul to function, it simply pops out of the body and goes to either a better place, such as heaven or a horrible place such as hell, based on the person's deeds.
These ancient ideas have been passed on through generations, and in the process the minds of these people have been conditioned to believe genuinely that when they die, they'd go to another realm, unlike earth. So, one way or another, their minds expect it to actually happen to them when the time comes. They anticipate it, either consciously or subconsciously. Hence, there are people who claim that during a life threatening situation they actually have gone to haven and come back. And over time these claims have increased exponentially. And that's because of the amazing advancement that we have made in modern medicine. Before when people used to face death, they didn't come back so much to life, because we were yet to develop techniques to bring them back.
Let me give you an example, a simple one but a revolutionary one. It is the revolution brought by the development of what we the people in medical profession call a Defibrillator. It is a simple device, but often times, the availability of this simple device can determine whether a human being will live again or stay dead forever. If somebody's heart stops beating for whatever reason, electrical impulses from the a defibrillator can jolt the heart back to life. The same can be done with an Epi-Pen. In this kind of situations where a person apparently faces death, after coming back to life, that person reports that he or she went to heaven while his or her body had been lying dead.
So what's really happening here? Do these person really go to heaven? Well, in their subjective reality, the experience manifests as more real than the usual reality. And that is why it is almost impossible for them to defy it as anything but the truth. Which means, even though they did not actually budge even a little from their mortal body, the experience of visiting heaven did manifest in their mind as an actual lively experience.
These experiences occur often when a person faces a life and death situation - a situation that has to do with a peerless amount of stress. I have discussed this matter in detail in my book "Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality". When people face death, in that extreme stress the brain releases a special neurochemical which happens to be more powerful in terms of its hallucinogenic properties than LSD. This chemical is called DMT or Dimethyltryptamine.
When your brain releases substantial amounts of DMT in times of utter distress such as a near death event, your mind goes into an altered state - a state of profound hallucinations where your deepest desires or darkest fears manifest as reality. And this reality seems so damn real that it does not matter whether you are an academic, a medical doctor, a scientist, or a lay person. It is so damn real that anybody would easily hail it as a real experience in heaven or in some cases hell, depending on the person's internal knacks and desires.
Consciousness is the product of electrochemical signalling in the neurons of your brain. So when the brain stops functioning fully, your consciousness, or to a broader aspect, your mind ceases to exist with its unique individualistic qualities. It's like the soothing flow of water. It is only water as long as its internal realm of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, remains intact. If you break that structure which we call H20, it ceases to be water. Likewise a soul remains a soul, as longs as its neural structures remain intact. If you mess with those structures, then the entire personality of the soul may get radically altered. So, to think even further, if those neural structures inside your head stop working, then the soul ceases to exist forever. So, as long as you have a functional brain, you exist, and the moment that brain dies you die.
So, hard as it may sound to some, there is no heaven, or hell. And that is more reason that we need to pay attention to this life. Because one life is all you've got. Make the most out of it. Live that one life with your friends, family and neighbors. After all, the true value of life lies in living with our fellow human beings, while caring about each other, nourishing each other, growing with each other. And that's called being human.
Further Reading
Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality
A lot of people apparently have visited heaven, as in afterlife, and apparently they have come back. That's the claim made by many people. And the quantity of such claims is just too much to simply ignore. So, let's not ignore, and try to unravel the truth underneath such claims.
The very first thing that you need to know is that putting aside the small portion of the claims made simply to draw attention, most of these claims are actually made based on actual experiences. Which means as far as the subject who's making the claim is concerned, his or her encounter of heaven did indeed take place. So, to him or her, it is a real experience, as real as your experience of me talking to you right at this moment. And in fact, in most cases, that afterlife reality actually seems more real to the person than usual reality.
Now first lets look at the origin of this idea of afterlife - the idea of heaven or hell. The idea of an afterlife was created by the imagination of our ancient ancestors who lived in tribes and had way little intellectual capacity. And further this idea fueled in people's actual encounter of an afterlife. Our ancestors simply could not comprehend the sudden immobility of a walking and talking human being. They had to come up with some sort explanation for the so-called death, which they could not comprehend whatsoever. So, their brain concocted the belief, that there is apparently a soul that runs the body - a life-force, and when the body becomes aged and unsuitable for the soul to function, it simply pops out of the body and goes to either a better place, such as heaven or a horrible place such as hell, based on the person's deeds.
These ancient ideas have been passed on through generations, and in the process the minds of these people have been conditioned to believe genuinely that when they die, they'd go to another realm, unlike earth. So, one way or another, their minds expect it to actually happen to them when the time comes. They anticipate it, either consciously or subconsciously. Hence, there are people who claim that during a life threatening situation they actually have gone to haven and come back. And over time these claims have increased exponentially. And that's because of the amazing advancement that we have made in modern medicine. Before when people used to face death, they didn't come back so much to life, because we were yet to develop techniques to bring them back.
Let me give you an example, a simple one but a revolutionary one. It is the revolution brought by the development of what we the people in medical profession call a Defibrillator. It is a simple device, but often times, the availability of this simple device can determine whether a human being will live again or stay dead forever. If somebody's heart stops beating for whatever reason, electrical impulses from the a defibrillator can jolt the heart back to life. The same can be done with an Epi-Pen. In this kind of situations where a person apparently faces death, after coming back to life, that person reports that he or she went to heaven while his or her body had been lying dead.
So what's really happening here? Do these person really go to heaven? Well, in their subjective reality, the experience manifests as more real than the usual reality. And that is why it is almost impossible for them to defy it as anything but the truth. Which means, even though they did not actually budge even a little from their mortal body, the experience of visiting heaven did manifest in their mind as an actual lively experience.
These experiences occur often when a person faces a life and death situation - a situation that has to do with a peerless amount of stress. I have discussed this matter in detail in my book "Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality". When people face death, in that extreme stress the brain releases a special neurochemical which happens to be more powerful in terms of its hallucinogenic properties than LSD. This chemical is called DMT or Dimethyltryptamine.
When your brain releases substantial amounts of DMT in times of utter distress such as a near death event, your mind goes into an altered state - a state of profound hallucinations where your deepest desires or darkest fears manifest as reality. And this reality seems so damn real that it does not matter whether you are an academic, a medical doctor, a scientist, or a lay person. It is so damn real that anybody would easily hail it as a real experience in heaven or in some cases hell, depending on the person's internal knacks and desires.
Consciousness is the product of electrochemical signalling in the neurons of your brain. So when the brain stops functioning fully, your consciousness, or to a broader aspect, your mind ceases to exist with its unique individualistic qualities. It's like the soothing flow of water. It is only water as long as its internal realm of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, remains intact. If you break that structure which we call H20, it ceases to be water. Likewise a soul remains a soul, as longs as its neural structures remain intact. If you mess with those structures, then the entire personality of the soul may get radically altered. So, to think even further, if those neural structures inside your head stop working, then the soul ceases to exist forever. So, as long as you have a functional brain, you exist, and the moment that brain dies you die.
So, hard as it may sound to some, there is no heaven, or hell. And that is more reason that we need to pay attention to this life. Because one life is all you've got. Make the most out of it. Live that one life with your friends, family and neighbors. After all, the true value of life lies in living with our fellow human beings, while caring about each other, nourishing each other, growing with each other. And that's called being human.
Further Reading
Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality
