Revenant

German scientists prove the existence of life after bodily death on earth

‘Revenant’ is a French word referring to a person who returns after a long absence. For those who return after a near-death-experience (NDE) it may not be a long clinical death in linear earth time, but could be much longer in the other, higher dimension. Call it cosmic time if you like. For example, Zainab Omar, whose NDE I wrote about in an earlier article ‘Zainab Goes to Heaven’, flat-lined and was clinically dead for just 90 seconds of earth time, but by her reckoning she was gone for 21 days and nights during which she had one heaven of an experience. One can say that the English word ‘death’ can be misconstrued to also mean the end instead of death of the body on earth so is not as accurate as the Urdu word ‘Intiqal’ which means ‘transfer’ – transfer to the other dimension. Even on earth when we transfer or are transferred to another place or job, the decision can always be reversed and we are back to the old place or job for a time. Hence NDEs.

Both Christians and Muslims believe that Jesus will return to earth one day to save Mankind, which makes him a revenant. Muslims however believe that Jesus never died but was raised to heaven and will return to earth after a long absence to save humankind. Christians on the other hand believe that Jesus died on the cross but was resurrected and then ascended to Heaven from where he will return as saviour. Either way, Jesus will be a revenant. The difference is wafer thin because in the end the same thing will happen: Jesus will return to earth after death and resurrection and ascension or after direct ascension after a long absence.

Thus begins my seventh article in the series on life after death: is there existence in some form after earthly death of the body? My mind was kicked back to this subject by the earthly ‘death’ last Wednesday of my father’s last remaining sibling, his sister Surriya Chaudhry, the last remaining child of my paternal grandfather Raja Taffazul Hosein Janjua. May her soul be in a peaceful place. Now I am the oldest in the family and on the frontline. It really doesn’t bother me: if there is life after death, fantastic; if existence extinguishes, no problem for I won’t know. What’s there to fear? We shall all find out one day.

I have already written six articles on life after death at different times. The first appeared on the Sunday my brother-in-law once removed Iqbal Haider passed away. It was a coincidence though our mutual friend Aitzaz Ahsan suspected that I may have had a premonition. I did not, I told him. However, most of the evidence of existence after death that I relied upon was anecdotal, from people who had near death experiences. It lacked the sort of narrow ‘proof’ that scientists look for. Now, it seems, we have ‘scientific’ proof discovered by German scientists last year and also by American scientists through quantum physics of life after ‘death’ on earth. First the German. The proof of quantum physics by American scientists will come next week.

I have already told you about the afterlife experience of the American neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander who died for 10 days after the neo cortex of his brain shut down. The neo cortex houses consciousness and no one is expected to return after it shuts down, but Dr Alexander did and returned to tell his tale in a bestselling book called ‘Proof of Heaven’ that is now available in Islamabad. It was his ‘consciousness’, variously called ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ or ‘rooh’ that lived on. He was able to experience new sensory dimensions that are indescribable in human language. He saw beautiful new colours and birds and heard music he had never heard before. There was love and caring everywhere; infinitesimal evil unlike on earth. He felt lightness. He saw an Orb that the beings there called ‘Om’ and thought it might be God (though I doubt that that was it) but it caught my attention because the Hindu religion calls the Creator ‘Om’. Alexander didn’t seem to know this though.

Now to the German scientific proof. I will quote from what Barbara Johnson wrote about German findings instead of giving it my own words so as to be faithful to her writing.

“A team of psychologists and medical doctors associated with the Technische Universität of Berlin, have announced… that they had proven by clinical experimentation, the existence of some form of life after death. This astonishing announcement is based on the conclusions of a study using a new type of medically supervised near-death experiences that allow patients to be clinically dead for almost 20 minutes before being brought back to life.

“This controversial process that was repeated on 944 volunteers over that last four years, necessitates a complex mixture of drugs including epinephrine and dimethyltryptamine, destined to allow the body to survive the state of clinical death and the reanimation process without damage. The body of the subject was then put into a temporary comatic state induced by a mixture of other drugs which had to be filtered by ozone from his blood during the reanimation process 18 minutes later.

“The extremely long duration of the experience was only recently made possible by the development of a new cardiopulmonary recitation (CPR) machine called the AutoPulse. This type of equipment has already been used over the last few years, to reanimate people who had been dead for somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour.

“Near-death experiences have been hypothesised in various medical journals in the past, as having the characteristics of hallucinations, but Dr Ackermann and his team, on the contrary, consider them as evidence for the existence of the afterlife and of a form of dualism between mind and body.

“The team of scientists led by Dr Berthold Ackermann, has monitored the operations and have compiled the testimonies of the subjects. Although there are some slight variations from one individual to another, all of the subjects have some memories of their period of clinical death, and a vast majority of them described some very similar sensations.

“Most common memories include a feeling of detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of an overwhelming light.

“The scientists say that they are well aware that many of their conclusions could shock a lot of people, like the fact that the religious beliefs of the various subjects seems to have held no incidence at all, on the sensations and experiences that they described at the end of the experiment. Indeed, the volunteers counted in their ranks some members are a variety of Christian churches, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and atheists.

‘I know our results could disturb the beliefs of many people,’ says Dr Ackermann. ‘But in a way, we have just answered one of the greatest questions in the history of mankind, so I hope these people will be able to forgive us. Yes, there is life after death and it looks like this applies to everyone’.”

I know sceptics will still scoff at this, even those who are not scientists. But what quantum theory has proved is even more stunning. I hope to share that with you next week. If you still don’t believe then you will never believe on earth but find the truth only after you die. Then shall you know.

I kept this brief so that you can digest it and think.