Presence in Death

I have been studying and practicing tibetan buddhism for a little over a year now, particularly dream yoga, but branched into some of the other practices. I'm always a skeptic but it is fascinating some of the stuff they can do. There is scientific evidence they can raise and lower their body temperatures through meditation, withstanding great heat/cold and deprivation conditions. I've played around with deprivation and what it has done for my mental health and body has surprised me. I'm but a novice, but I absolutely believe they are tapping into something scientific about the body/mind that is still unknown.

There are reasons to be extremely skeptical about some of their claims, but, some of it is very interesting and credible.

Interesting thing I learned: Once you die the biome in your intestines massively contributes to processes that breakdown your body. That’s why decapitated heads are often in much better shape then the remaining body, especially if the surrounding environment is generally conserving the body, such as is the case in dry mountains or bogs.

There are stories about bodies of Christian monks that did not decompose for a log time after the dearth. Modern take on it attributes it to the climate in caves where the body was put after the dearth. But another important part was diet. Often the well-preserved bodies were of those who had eaten only rough bread and water for months and years before the dearth.

So I suspect both of the factors are at the play here as well.

The two phenomena in the article are incorruptibility and responsiveness after apparent death. Granting the evidence is weak, is it possible?

Death for medical purposes is really the boundary when function is not at all expected to return. It's not when metabolic processes stop. It can vary with treatment (handling?).

For incorruptibility, (as others have mentioned) diet could be a factor, especially for immunogenic foods. Lack of stress is another. Stress hormones have wide-ranging impacts and are key to sleep, wherein detoxification, esp. reduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by melatonin. A monk at peace for months or years before death could have a vastly altered hormonal and metabolic landscape.

Therapeutic hypothermia is cooling the body after near-death trauma from heart attacks and drowning. In the last ~15 years, it has been instrumental in increasing survival, even for people e.g., under water for many minutes. The problem is reperfusion injury: after a bout of anoxic cellular respiration, there's a large build-up of ROS; re-introducing full metabolism quickly results in these molecules reacting with others, impeding metabolic processes and destroying some cellular structure. So cooling and only slowly reheating the body allows the ROS to be scavenged instead, and people survive as a result.

If there's validity to incorruptibility in this context, my bet would be on some combination of coolness and processes that reduce ROS, coupled with a very low population of ROS from a stress-free history before death.

But a mechanism of incorruptibility doesn't address the other phenomenon of responsiveness, holding collapse off until some signal.

In my (limited) experience with people after stroke, long after any cognitive abilities are gone, the person maintains reactivity to the environment - touch, heat, light, sound, and (yes) voices. This reflects more autonomic processes. The cerebellum maintains body awareness and position with input from the midbrain, and spinal nerves for muscle groups can operate on their own to hold position and react. (Indeed, one of the signs of the absence of CNS suppression is painful, relentless muscle spasms.) So I can imagine nerves and muscles holding anoxic positions, and even some reduced nerve signaling from the cerebellum using ion reserves. The holding would have to be perfect, and the signal to release would be a one-time thing. This would not work repeatedly or for any signal to do something.

My overall takeaway is that we don't realize the extent to which we are a product of our bodies.

If TRUE and consciousness is eternal (using whatever framework you like), the idea of death becomes double sided. On one hand, physical death is sad as it's the end of this physical 'epic story' before our consciousness moves onto a new body/story. On the flip side, approaching body death is a sort of a temporary great relief as we are immortal and cannot actually die. I.e. After ten thousand years of being alive, a vampire looks forward to sleeping in their coffin at night.

Since we're of a certain level of interest and openness, I'll throw a pop fiction title into the mix: Dan Brown's /Secret of Secrets/ for a tip toe through the non-local mind and soul topic. It's a 4 index card book for me - meaning I have 4 index cards of notes, references, and words worthy of reflection or research. Pretty good for a fiction best seller.

The research mentioned in the article (which indicates no EEG activity): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7876463/

Here's the documentary referred to: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21945758/

It's rentable at the usual places. I might check it out.

Some of these esoteric states are really weird, and it seems crazy to me that we are only now investigating them. This isn’t just “energy” woo that can’t be measured, there are clear physical phenomena.

Another good one is Niroda Samapatti (cessation) where advanced meditators can momentarily cease awareness https://awakeningdharma.org/havard-study-on-nirodha-samapatt...