Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death

“Our consciousness and selfhood is not annihilated when we cross over into death,” according to this eyebrow-raising treatise. Highlighting recent studies that blur the boundary between life and death, Parnia (Erasing Death), the director of resuscitation research at NYU’s School of Medicine, notes that one neuroscientist was able to restore function to pig brains up to 14 hours after death and that another researcher discovered bursts of electrical activity in human brains between 30 seconds and two minutes after the heart stops. Parnia claims to have uncovered evidence proving the reality of near-death experiences, describing how an AI program he commissioned found testimonies from those who had nearly died to be linguistically distinct from remembrances of dreams and hallucinations. Unfortunately, Parnia’s failure to discuss how the program was designed or how it evaluated evidence will do little to appease skeptics. Though some of the studies intrigue, Parnia’s most outrageous claims strain credulity. For instance, he suggests that the out-of-body experiences and “expansion of consciousness” reported by survivors of near-death experiences might result from the human brain’s efforts to process higher dimensions. This is unlikely to change minds. Agent: Andrew Stuart, Stuart Agency. (Aug.)