Death Meditation and Near-Death Experiences: Scientific and Mystical Perspectives

Meditation on death focused on these 3 fundamental points:
• transience of earthly splendors: therefore all constructions undertaken now are ruins and time destroys everything
• putrefaction of the beauty of human form: aging, the ephemeral joys of youth are joys, but ephemeral.
• equality of every social condition: the glory conquered, social position passes with time and one is forgotten.

As a result of these meditations the mystic had to come to understand that the only thing worth changing, the only work that needed to be undertaken was one's own work of awakening and transmutation. One must find a part of oneself that is immortal and change this part.

Having said this, let's see what death is and the process of death

WHAT IS DEATH ACCORDING TO SCIENCE

What is the process of death and what is the destiny of life after death?

• What is death? According to medical science, death is a process of cessation of physiological activities. These activities are cardiac, respiratory, cerebral. In particular, from a legal point of view, an individual is considered dead when there is a permanent absence of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex. This is based on the belief that human consciousness resides in the cerebral cortex and that therefore after a few hours of absence of electrical stimuli in the cerebral cortex we are in the presence of brain death.

• From this point on, contemporary science does not investigate. Not only does it not investigate but it even considers it impossible to investigate. In fact, one of the problems that currently hinders the investigation of knowledge of life after death is the cultural dogma that "one cannot know what there is after death". It is important to note that it is not that there would be no opportunities to deepen the subject even from a scientific point of view.

• The case of Ian Stevenson, head of the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia, is well known. In his 40-year career, he collected more than 3000 extremely well-documented cases of reincarnation testimonies. Stevenson's work is considered well done even by the most skeptical such as Carl Sagan. Equally well known are the studies by Pim van Lommel published in the Lancet which, after analyzing more than 340 cases of near-death experiences examined, concludes that near-death experiences NDE cannot be caused by an abnormality in cerebral reactivation.

• In one case that is reported extensively, a subject asks the nurse who resuscitated him to get back the dentures that she had taken from him and put aside while he was in a comatose state, describing to her the details of what happened during the entire time of his coma.

Studies on NDEs are very interesting and a wide collection of these experiences has shown that about 10% of survivors of cardiac arrest have had near-death experiences with some or all of the following characteristic features:
• the ability to look at one's body "from the outside"
• crossing through a sort of dark tunnel at the end of which a light is distinctly glimpsed
• experiencing a sensation of great peace and tranquility outside space as we know it and especially outside our concept of time
• the review of all moments of earthly life lived
• meeting with dead people

Another phenomenon not as well known in the media but equally interesting are ELEs or End of Life Experiences, in particular DBVs DeathBed Visions or deathbed visions. These visions generally involve the vision of one or more people on their deathbed. But they can also be much more complex.

• On this subject in the XIV and XV centuries a book called Ars Moriendi was dedicated, which in addition to describing these visions deals with the psychological state of the dying person and their crisis during the agonizing state.

• This is very interesting for us because as we said all the unresolved issues during life: attachment, doubt, ignorance, unpreparedness for death, at the moment of death suddenly manifest to the dying person translating into a struggle that can also modify the destiny and future of the dying person after passing.

Professor Haraldsson in the '60s and '70s collected thousands of accounts of deathbed visions from a population of tens of thousands of people. His research showed that about 50% of cases were subject to deathbed visions. More recent studies conducted on nurses in hospices and hospitals have led to the discovery that in 5 years 84% of nurses have directly witnessed a number of deathbed visions between 1 and 50, 8% between 50 and 100 and 8% of nurses have not witnessed any phenomenon in the last 5 years.

EXPERIENCES OF TOMMASO PALAMIDESSI

Finally there are also - although in very rare numbers - cases of shared near-death experiences as is the case reported by Dr. Melvin Morse, professor at the University of Washington, relating to Karl Skala, a well-known Austrian poet, who had the opportunity in his youth during a war action in the trenches to find himself out of body with his companion who had just died above the battlefield.

A similar case happened to Tommaso Palamidessi at 31 years old on the occasion of his father's death. Here is an extract from his diary:
Christian Book of the Dead page 127
"Carlo Palamidessi, my father, lay dead arranged in the funeral chamber, the..."