Life After Death

The universe is full of mysteries. But the most complex entity that's always been the greatest mystery is inside us. The human brain. There is no proof of what actually happens to our consciousness after our death. How can we even analyze that? Near death experiences? No. Even science can't actually say what the consciousness is. It could also be an illusion, granted how complex our brain is.

TheConsciousnessTheConsciousness

The state of being aware.Consciousness is intangible. How can we even study it? Yet, we are always aware who we are. Many actions we perform are done consciously. A mere connection of neurons creates a waking state.

Could the consciousness be just an illusion? Our brain could possibly make us believe some illusions because it is capable of doing so. The most sought after illusion is the what we call:

TheInnerSpeech1TheInnerSpeech1

The voice that you hear in your head when you imagine conversations could be a manifestation of your external speech. There were experiments that tried to prove that voiceless speech(triggered in the larynx) was the source of inner speech.

The same areas that were active during speech from the larynx were active when people spoke sentences in their head. The difference was, no sound was produced in the latter case. Even if small sound was produced, the brain will choose to ignore it. This applies for "Voices in the head" too. If the sound wasn't self-produced, the brain will ignore it. The Sensory motor area registers any motor signals as it controls movement. If the brain creates inner speech, there wasn't any motor signals from the larynx and hence it doesn't register that the sound was self made. It doesn't know it made the sound in the first place. This gives an illusion that there are "Voices in your head".

The brain can also distinguish stimuli that comes from outside/inside. Thus, you cannot tickle yourself, whereas someone else can.

So, in essence, the inner voice you hear is just an illusion created by your brain.

NearDeathExperiencesNearDeathExperiences

Now, let's talk about death.
Death is another mystery. What actually happens when we die? Not sure. But we a know little about the human Autonomous nervous system, which plays a major role in keeping us calm, excited, emotional, etc.

There are two major systems22:
Sympathetic Nervous System: This is responsible for the control of "Fight-or-Flight" reactions to the relevant situations. For example, when a dog starts chasing you, your sympathetic nervous system helps you by pumping the needed adrenaline, increasing heart rate, etc.
Parasympathetic Nervous System: This is responsible for the control of "Rest-and-Digest" reactions to the relevant situations. For example, when you sit down on a beach looking at the beautiful sunset.

There is a theory that during death, both the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic nervous systems work together, giving vivid hallucinations. The brain will show us what we want to see. We could even recall past memories that we thought were forgotten, giving an illusion that we "saw our whole life flash in front of us".

We do this sometimes during dreams. Dreams are a result of the brain showing us what we want to see, with the existing data we have stored in us. You might have noticed you dream of the same thing that you ponder over a lot during the day, or of experiences that you long to experience, like being with your crush.

Hypnotism33 tries to achieve this by breaking the barrier between the conscious and the sub-conscious minds. Monks, Yogis, etc can achieve this state of mind (called trance) and hence experience "out of the world" experiences.

ConclusionConclusion

Everything is an illusion. Even during death, your brain will try to create illusions, which seem real. What exactly happens after death, however, is unknown. What happens to our consciousness is unknown. After all, it is still a mystery, and assumptions are the best we've got.