There are many who believe that since the vast majority of near-death experiences are experienced in the same way — floating over your body, feelings of infinite love and joy, tunnels of light, visions of departed loved ones, angels, Jesus, etc. — then the reason must be that there is an afterlife, God, heaven, etc.
What else could it mean, right?
To each his own. However, I will propose a very simple and logical reasoning as to why near-death experiences are all so similar. I call it the “Standard Shutdown Sequence.”
Our physical bodies are composed of a finite number of interconnected systems, and we have all seen them in biology class. In the most general sense there’s is the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, reproductive, and the neural, which includes the brain.
I’ve left out lots of minuscule details, but they’re not relevant to my proposal.
Aside from the few of us who are aliens from another world (i.e. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos) most of us have all of the same systems. The death of a human body commences with the initiation of the sequence.
During the sequence various systems in the body start slowing down, cooling down, in preparation for final shutdown — not unlike what pilots do in the cockpit while landing the plane and then after the plane has landed. Yes, I think that’s a good analogy.
What the dying person then consciously experiences is, for the most part, mental analogs of that sequence, and thus “sees” whatever they think they’re supposed to see or want to see – similar to dreaming.
No afterlife, nothing supernatural, no “soul,” just natural processes coming to an end — and unto dust you shall return. It’s really that simple.
Now for my question: Is it disappointingly, or even depressingly, simple?
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita