Is there life after death: proof of the existence of the afterlife. Are we alone in the universe? Is there life after death

"Is there life after death?" - a question that we have to think about sooner or later. We are all mortal and we know it.

And the answer to that question is yes, definitely. Our existence as human beings with self-awareness, will, feelings, relationships with others does not end with the death of the body. But how exactly?

When I was a schoolboy, it was believed that death is irreversible: a person died - and his consciousness faded forever, there is only a “grateful memory of descendants” or “great accomplishments” in which a person managed to participate while he was alive. This followed from materialism - a worldview that was then an indispensable part of the official ideology. This ideology is a thing of the past, but materialism itself has not disappeared. As British cosmologist Stephen Hawking beautifully puts this point of view, “...I view the brain as a computer that will stop functioning as soon as its components stop working. There is no heaven or life after death for broken computers; this is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.”

According to this point of view, in reality there is only matter, which moves in accordance with the impersonal and immutable laws of nature, and everything else, including our thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, hopes and fears, is the result of some incredibly complex, but purely material processes in our cerebral cortex. When we die, these processes stop forever.

The materialistic point of view has two interesting features: first, it is blatantly wrong; secondly, it is very popular. Let's start with popularity. Matter is what we can control, where we can increase our power. The natural sciences, which deal with matter, have been extremely successful, and the technologies based on them have profoundly transformed our lives.

The attraction of materialism is that the laws of nature are carried out exactly on schedule. It seems that we just need to figure out this exact schedule for all cases - and everything will be under control.

The temptation to reduce all reality to matter that we can eventually control is understandable. But in reality there are things that cannot be reduced to matter. This is primarily human consciousness and free will. In a materialistic universe, every event is completely determined by previous events and the immutable laws of nature - that is, materialism leaves no room not only for God, but for such a directly experienced phenomenon as free will.

As another scientist (and also an atheist), Francis Crick, said, “You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and aspirations, your sense of personal identity and free will, are really nothing more than the certain behavior of a huge collection of nerve cells and their associated molecules. . You are nothing more than a bunch of neurons… even though we seem to have free will, our decisions are already predetermined for us and we cannot change that.”

To be a materialist, one must regard free will as an illusion, which is both contrary to our experience and logically absurd: to become a materialist, you must perform an act of free will; if materialism is correct, there is no free will.

Materialism has a number of other unsolvable problems - human consciousness, in principle, cannot be reduced to processes in the brain. The main argument against a positive answer to the question "Is there life after death" is based simply on false philosophy. Reality is not limited to matter.

But do we have positive arguments in favor of immortality? Of course. Let's start with such a phenomenon as universal human intuition. In virtually all cultures, it is taken for granted that the dead continue to exist in some other form. The most ancient people clearly differ from animals in that they bury their dead - with clear expressions of faith in the afterlife. In the burial places they find the remains of food, weapons, jewelry, clothes - everything that was supposed to be needed by the deceased on the other side. With the advent of writing, we find texts with rather detailed ideas about the afterlife, which vary greatly in different cultures, but always have one thing in common: life continues after death, and how exactly it continues, usually depends on the behavior of a person on this earth.

The belief that physical death means the disappearance of the individual has always been (and still is) the lot of a minority. Another argument is from conscience. We realize that there is a difference between good and evil, that evil deeds are worthy of condemnation, while good deeds are worthy of praise. We experience anxiety and anxiety when our conscience convicts us of something bad. If there is no afterlife (and retribution), then this experience is illusory. Then the villains who commit all kinds of atrocities and sleep like a baby are absolutely right: if they escape human retribution (which is quite likely), nothing else threatens them. But if conscience is not an illusion, then the reward is real. And if it is not accomplished in this life, then this life is not all that is.

But there are more direct data about life after death. The so-called near-death experience that people experience in a state of clinical death. Most of the survivors of clinical death do not remember anything, but about 10% can tell that they got out of their body and saw it from the side. They can tell what happened in the operating room, describe the actions of doctors, sometimes they talk about meeting with deceased loved ones and the mysterious Light that shows them their whole life. It's an experience that quite a few people have had, and it's impossible to just brush it off. As the American resuscitator (agnostic in his personal convictions) Sam Parnia writes,

“We usually assume that all scientists believe that consciousness is a product of the brain, but, in fact, many are not sure about this. For example, Sir John Eccles, a Nobel laureate, believes that we will never be able to explain consciousness in terms of neuronal activity. All I can say is that I have observed in the course of my work. It seems that when consciousness is switched off at the moment of death, the psyche, the soul - I do not mean the ghost, I mean the individual "I" - continues to exist, at least for those hours until the person is reanimated. From which we can justifiably conclude that the brain works as an instrument through which your "I" or "soul" manifests itself, but it may not be its source ... I think the data is starting to indicate that we should stay open to the possibility that memory… is not just the activity of neurons.”

These descriptions of near-death experiences fit well with the Christian picture of the afterlife that we know from Scripture and Tradition.

Immediately after death, the soul leaves the body, and the person continues to exist - to be aware of what is happening, to rejoice or suffer, to think and remember - in another plane of reality.

Scripture calls the place where the souls of faithful Christians go "heaven." To heaven Already wrote. An inexpressibly joyful place, full of light and consolation. As the holy apostle Paul says, For we know, what, when terrestrial our house, this hut, collapse, we we have from God dwelling on the heaven, house miraculous, eternal. From Togo we and sigh, wanting put on in heavenly our dwelling(2 Cor 5 :1–2). In the face of inevitable (and at the same time violent) death, the apostle joyfully awaits the migration to heaven: I have a wish resolve and to be co Christ, because what this is incomparably better(Phil 1 :23).

There, in heaven, we will meet with that Light in which we will forever be comforted for all earthly sorrows - with our Lord Jesus Christ, with our loving heavenly family - the Mother of the Lord and all the saints; there, in heaven, we will look forward to the final victory of the Lord in the world and the resurrection of the dead - for the day will come when God will restore us in glorified and transfigured bodies.

But this is not only a matter for the future; faith in immortality changes our lives here and now, it colors all the days of our lives, it deeply affects how we accept the sorrows and joys of our earthly path. Faith is an openness to Heaven, where we are loved, expected and accepted when our path is completed.

The other world is a very interesting topic that everyone thinks about at least once in their life. What happens to a person and his soul after death? Can he observe living people? These and many questions cannot but excite. The most interesting thing is that there are many different theories about what happens to a person after death. Let's try to understand them and answer the questions that concern many people.

"Your body will die, but your soul will live forever"

Bishop Theophan the Recluse addressed these words in his letter to his dying sister. He, like other Orthodox priests, believed that only the body dies, but the soul lives forever. What is the reason for this and how does religion explain it?

The Orthodox teaching about life after death is too large and voluminous, so we will consider only some of its aspects. First of all, in order to understand what happens to a person and his soul after death, it is necessary to find out what is the purpose of all life on earth. In the Epistle to the Hebrews of the Holy Apostle Paul, there is a mention that every person must die sometime, and after that there will be a judgment. This is exactly what Jesus Christ did when he voluntarily surrendered himself to his enemies to death. Thus, he washed away the sins of many sinners and showed that the righteous, just like him, would one day be resurrected. Orthodoxy believes that if life were not eternal, then it would have no meaning. Then people would really live, not knowing why they would die sooner or later, there would be no point in doing good deeds. That is why the human soul is immortal. Jesus Christ opened the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven for the Orthodox and believers, and death is only the completion of the preparation for a new life.

What is the soul

The human soul continues to live after death. It is the spiritual beginning of man. The mention of this can be found in Genesis (chapter 2), and it sounds something like this: “God created man from the dust of the earth and blew the breath of life into his face. Now man has become a living soul.” Holy Scripture "tells" us that man is two-part. If the body can die, then the soul lives forever. She is a living entity, endowed with the ability to think, remember, feel. In other words, the human soul continues to live after death. She understands, feels and - most importantly - remembers everything.

spiritual vision

In order to make sure that the soul is really capable of feeling and understanding, it is only necessary to recall the cases when the human body died for a while, but the soul saw and understood everything. Similar stories can be read in a variety of sources, for example, K. Ikskul in his book “Incredible for many, but a true incident” describes what happens after death to a person and his soul. Everything that is written in the book is the personal experience of the author, who fell ill with a serious illness and experienced clinical death. Almost everything that can be read on this topic in various sources is very similar to each other.

People who have experienced clinical death characterize it with a white enveloping fog. Below you can see the body of the man himself, next to him are his relatives and doctors. Interestingly, the soul, separated from the body, can move in space and understand everything. Some argue that after the body ceases to give any signs of life, the soul passes through a long tunnel, at the end of which a bright white light burns. Then, as a rule, for some time the soul returns to the body again, and the heart begins to beat. What if the person dies? What then happens to him? What does the human soul do after death?

Encounter with peers

After the soul separates from the body, it can see spirits, both good and bad. It is interesting that, as a rule, she is attracted to her own kind, and if during her life any of the forces had an influence on her, then after death she will be attached to her. This period of time when the soul chooses its "company" is called the Private Court. It is then that it becomes completely clear whether the life of this person was in vain. If he fulfilled all the commandments, was kind and generous, then, undoubtedly, the same souls will be next to him - kind and pure. The opposite situation is characterized by the society of fallen spirits. They are waiting for eternal torment and suffering in hell.

First few days

It is interesting what happens after death with the soul of a person in the first few days, because this period is for her a time of freedom and enjoyment. It is during the first three days that the soul can freely move around the earth. As a rule, she is at this time near her native people. She even tries to talk to them, but it turns out with difficulty, because a person is not able to see and hear spirits. In rare cases, when the connection between people and the dead is very strong, they feel the presence of a soul mate nearby, but cannot explain it. For this reason, the burial of a Christian takes place exactly 3 days after death. In addition, it is this period that the soul needs in order to realize where it is now. It is not easy for her, she may not have had time to say goodbye to anyone or say anything to anyone. Most often, a person is not ready for death, and he needs these three days to understand the essence of what is happening and say goodbye.

However, there are exceptions to every rule. For example, K. Ikskul began his journey to another world on the first day, because the Lord told him so. Most of the saints and martyrs were ready for death, and in order to go to another world, it took them only a few hours, because this was their main goal. Each case is completely different, and information comes only from those people who have experienced "post-mortem experience" on themselves. If we are not talking about clinical death, then everything can be completely different here. The proof that in the first three days the soul of a person is on earth is also the fact that it is during this period of time that the relatives and friends of the deceased feel their presence nearby.

Next stage

The next stage of the transition to the afterlife is very difficult and dangerous. On the third or fourth day, trials await the soul - ordeals. There are about twenty of them, and all of them must be overcome so that the soul can continue its journey. Ordeals are whole crowds of evil spirits. They block the way and accuse her of sins. The Bible also talks about these trials. The mother of Jesus, the Most Pure and Reverend Mary, having learned about the imminent death from the Archangel Gabriel, asked her son to deliver her from demons and ordeals. In response to her requests, Jesus said that after death, he would lead her by the hand to Heaven. And so it happened. This action can be seen on the icon "Assumption of the Virgin". On the third day, it is customary to pray fervently for the soul of the deceased, so you can help her pass all the tests.

What happens a month after death

After the soul has gone through the ordeal, it worships God and goes on a journey again. This time, hellish abysses and heavenly abodes await her. She watches how sinners suffer and how the righteous rejoice, but she does not yet have her own place. On the fortieth day, the soul is assigned a place where, like everyone else, it will await the Supreme Court. There is also evidence that only until the ninth day does the soul see the heavenly abodes and observe the righteous souls who live in happiness and joy. The rest of the time (about a month) she has to look at the torments of sinners in hell. At this time, the soul cries, mourns and meekly awaits its fate. On the fortieth day, the soul is assigned a place where it will wait for the resurrection of all the dead.

Who goes where and where

Of course, only the Lord God is omnipresent and knows exactly where the soul goes after the death of a person. Sinners go to hell and spend time there in anticipation of even greater torment that will come after the Supreme Court. Sometimes such souls can come in dreams to friends and relatives, asking for help. You can help in such a situation by praying for a sinful soul and asking the Almighty for forgiveness of her sins. There are cases when sincere prayer for a deceased person really helped him move to a better world. So, for example, in the 3rd century, the martyr Perpetua saw that the fate of her brother was like a filled reservoir, which was too high for him to reach. Days and nights she prayed for his soul, and in time she saw how he touches the pond and is transported to a bright, clean place. From the foregoing, it becomes clear that the brother was pardoned and sent from hell to heaven. The righteous, thanks to the fact that they lived their lives not in vain, go to heaven and look forward to the Day of Judgment.

The teachings of Pythagoras

As mentioned earlier, there are a huge number of theories and myths regarding the afterlife. For many centuries, scientists and clergy have been studying the question: how to find out where a person went after death, looking for answers, arguing, looking for facts and evidence. One of these theories was the teaching of Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls, the so-called reincarnation. The same opinion was held by such scholars as Plato and Socrates. A huge amount of information about reincarnation can be found in such a mystical current as Kabbalah. Its essence lies in the fact that the soul has a certain goal, or a lesson that it must go through and learn. If in the course of life the person in whom this soul lives does not cope with this task, it is reborn.

What happens to the body after death? It dies and it is impossible to resurrect it, but the soul is looking for a new life. In this theory, it is also interesting that, as a rule, all people who are in a family relationship are not connected at all by chance. More specifically, the same souls are constantly looking for each other and find. For example, in a past life, your mother could have been your daughter or even your spouse. Since the soul has no gender, it can be either feminine or masculine, depending on which body it enters.

There is an opinion that our friends and soul mates are also kindred spirits who are connected with us karmically. There is one more nuance: for example, a son and a father constantly have conflicts, no one wants to give in, until the last days two relatives literally fight among themselves. Most likely, in the next life, fate will bring these souls together again, as brother and sister or as husband and wife. This will continue until both of them find a compromise.

Square of Pythagoras

Supporters of the Pythagorean theory are most often interested not in what happens to the body after death, but in what kind of incarnation their soul lives and who they were in a past life. In order to find out these facts, the square of Pythagoras was drawn up. Let's try to understand it with an example. Let's say you were born on December 03, 1991. It is necessary to write down the received numbers in a line and carry out some manipulations with them.

It is necessary to add all the numbers and get the main one: 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 1 = 26 - this will be the first number.
Next, you need to add the previous result: 2 + 6 = 8. This will be the second number.
In order to get the third, from the first it is necessary to subtract the doubled first digit of the date of birth (in our case, 03, we do not take zero, we subtract the three times 2): 26 - 3 x 2 = 20.
The last number is obtained by adding the digits of the third working number: 2 + 0 = 2.

Now write down the date of birth and the results obtained:

In order to find out which incarnation the soul lives in, it is necessary to count all numbers except zeros. In our case, the human soul, born on December 3, 1991, lives on the 12th incarnation. By composing the square of Pythagoras from these numbers, you can find out what characteristics it has.

Some facts

Many, of course, are interested in the question: is there life after death? All world religions are trying to give an answer to it, but there is still no unequivocal answer. Instead, in some sources you can find some interesting facts regarding this topic. Of course, it cannot be said that the statements that will be given below are dogma. These are just some of the interesting thoughts on the subject.

What is death

It is difficult to answer the question of whether there is life after death without finding out the main signs of this process. In medicine, this concept is understood as a stoppage of breathing and heartbeat. But we should not forget that these are signs of the death of the human body. On the other hand, there is evidence that the mummified body of a monk-priest continues to show all signs of life: soft tissues are pressed through, joints are bent, and a fragrance emanates from it. In some mummified bodies, nails and hair even grow, which, perhaps, confirms the fact that certain biological processes do occur in the deceased body.

And what happens a year after the death of an ordinary person? Of course, the body decomposes.

Finally

Given all of the above, we can say that the body is just one of the shells of a person. In addition to it, there is also a soul - an eternal substance. Almost all world religions agree that after the death of the body, the human soul still lives, someone believes that it is reborn in another person, and someone that it lives in Heaven, but, one way or another, it continues to exist . All thoughts, feelings, emotions are the spiritual sphere of a person that lives, despite physical death. Thus, it can be considered that life after death exists, but it is no longer interconnected with the physical body.

Mankind has peered into the heavens for centuries in the hope of finding fellow souls. In the 20th century, scientists moved from passive contemplation to an active search for life on the planets of the solar system and sending radio messages to the most curious parts of the starry sky, and some automatic interplanetary stations, having completed their research mission inside the solar system, carried the messages of earthlings to the Universe.

It is incredibly important for people to search for their own kind in the vast expanses of space. This is one of the primary tasks of humanity. To date, only the first and probably ineffective steps are being taken on the long road to alien civilizations. However, there is still the question of the reality of the search object itself. For example, the well-known scientist and thinker of the 20th century, I.S. Shklovsky, in his book “The Universe, Life, Mind”, very reasonably substantiated the hypothesis that the human mind may be unique not only in our Galaxy, but throughout the Universe. Moreover, Shklovsky said that the very contacts with a different mind, perhaps, will bring people little benefit.

We will demonstrate the probability of reaching distant galaxies using the following example: if at the time of the birth of civilization from our planet a spaceship started there at the speed of light, then today it would be at the very beginning of the journey. And even if in the next 100 years space technologies reach near-light speeds, a flight to the nearest Andromeda Nebula will require fuel hundreds of thousands of times more than the useful mass of the spacecraft.

But even at such fantastic speeds and perfect medicine that can put a person into a state of suspended animation and safely bring him out of it, it will take millennia for the shortest acquaintance with just one branch of our Galaxy, and the increasing pace of scientific and technological progress simply casts doubt on the practical benefits of this kind expeditions.

To date, astronomers have already discovered billions of billions of galaxies, in which there are billions of stars, and yet the scientific world admits the existence of other universes with a different set of parameters and laws in which life can exist that is completely different from ours. Interestingly, some of the scenarios for the development of the Universe as a Multiuniverse, which consists of many worlds, suggest that their number tends to infinity. But in this case, contrary to the opinion of Shklovsky, the probability that an alien mind exists will tend to 100%!

The issue of extraterrestrial worlds and establishing contacts with them is the basis of many international scientific projects. It turns out that this is one of the most difficult problems that once faced the scientific world. Suppose living cells appeared on some cosmic body (we already know that there is no such phenomenon in generally accepted theories yet). For further existence and evolution, the transformation of this kind of "grains of life" into intelligent beings, it will take millions of years, provided that some mandatory parameters are preserved.

An amazing and, apparently, the rarest phenomenon of life, not to mention the mind, can originate and develop only on planets of a very specific type. And we should not forget that these planets need to revolve around their star in certain orbits - in the so-called life zone, which is favorable in terms of temperature and radiation conditions for a living environment. Unfortunately, in our time, the search for planets around neighboring stars is the most difficult astronomical task.

Despite the rapid development of orbital astronomical observatories, observational data on the planets of other stars are still not enough to confirm certain cosmogonic hypotheses. Some scientists believe that the process of the formation of a new star from the gas and dust interstellar medium almost inevitably leads to the formation of planetary systems. Others believe the formation of terrestrial planets is a rather rare phenomenon. The available astronomical data support them in this, because the vast majority of discovered planets are the so-called "hot Jupiters", gas giants, which sometimes exceed Jupiter in size and mass by dozens of times and rotate very close to their stars at high orbital speed.

At the moment, planetary systems have already been discovered around hundreds of stars, but in this case it is often necessary to use only indirect data on changes in the motion of stars, without direct visual observation of the planets. And yet, if we take into account the very cautious forecast that terrestrial planets with a solid surface and atmosphere appear on average around one in a hundred million stars, then only in our Galaxy their number will exceed a thousand. Here it is possible to add the possibility of the emergence of exotic life forms on dying stars, when the internal nuclear reactor stops and the surface begins to cool. Such amazing situations have already been considered in the works of the classics of the sci-fi genre Stanislav Lem and Ivan Antonovich Efremov.

Here we come to the very essence of the problem of extraterrestrial life.
In our solar system, only three planets occupy the "zone of life" - Venus, Earth, Mars. Moreover, the orbit of Venus passes near the inner border, and the orbit of Mars - near the outer border of the life zone. Planet Earth is lucky, it does not have the high temperature of Venus and the terrible cold of Mars. Recent interplanetary flights of robotic rovers show that Mars was once warm, and there was also liquid water. And it is possible that the traces of the Martian civilization, so many times and colorfully created by science fiction writers, will someday be able to be discovered by space archaeologists.

Unfortunately, so far neither express analyzes of the Martian soil, nor drilling of rocks have revealed traces of living organisms. Scientists in the hope that the upcoming international expedition of a manned spacecraft to Mars can clarify the situation. It may take place in the first quarter of our century.

So, life may not appear in all star systems, and one of the prerequisites is the stability of the star's radiation over billions of years and the presence of planets in its life zone.

Is it possible to reliably estimate the time of the first birth of life in the Universe?
And to understand whether this happened earlier or later than on Earth?

In order to answer such questions, we need to once again return to the history of the universe, to the mysterious moment of the Big Bang, when all the matter of the Universe was grouped “in one atom”. Recall that this happened about 15 billion years ago, when the density of matter and its temperature tended to infinity. The primary "atom" could not stand it and scattered, forming a superdense and very hot expanding cloud. As with the expansion of any gas, its temperature and density began to drop. Then all observable cosmic bodies were formed from it: galaxies, stars, planets, their satellites.

The fragments of the Big Bang are flying apart now. We live in an ever-expanding universe without noticing it. The galaxies fly apart from each other like colored dots on an inflated balloon. We can even estimate to what extent our world expanded after the super-powerful impulse of the Big Bang - if we assume that the fastest "fragments" moved at the speed of light, then we get the radius of the Universe on the order of 15 billion light years.

A light beam from a luminous object at the very edge of our cloud must travel the distance from its source to the solar system for billions of years. And the most curious thing is that he copes with this task without losing light energy along the way. Space orbital telescopes already allow it to be captured, measured, and studied.

In modern science, it is generally accepted that the phase of the chemical and nuclear evolution of the Universe, which prepared the possibility of the emergence of life, took at least 5 billion years. Let us assume that the time of biological evolution, at least on average, on other stars is of the same order as on our planet, that is, about five billion years. And it turns out that the earliest extraterrestrial civilizations could have appeared about five billion years ago! These ratings are simply amazing! After all, terrestrial civilization, even if we take the countdown from the first glimpses of reason, has existed for only a few million years. If we count from the appearance of writing and developed cities, then its age is about 10,000 years.

Therefore, if we assume that the first of the emerging civilizations overcame all crises and safely reached our days, then they are ahead of us by billions of years! During this time, they could do a lot: colonize star systems and command them, defeat diseases and almost achieve immortality.

But questions immediately arise.
Does humanity need contact with alien intelligence? And if so, how to install it? Will it be possible to understand each other, to exchange information? From all that has been said, one can understand the essence of the problem of extraterrestrial civilizations. It is a tangled tangle of interrelated questions, most of which have yet to be satisfactorily answered.

Considering questions about living alien creatures, Isaac Asimov wrote that there is only one form of living creatures on Earth, and at its core, from the simplest virus to a huge whale or mahogany, are proteins and nucleic acids. All these living beings use the same vitamins, the same chemical reactions take place in their bodies, the energy is released and used in the same way. All living things move in the same way, no matter how different biological species differ in details. Life on Earth originated in the sea, and living beings consist of exactly those chemical elements that are (or were) abundant in sea water. The chemical composition of living beings contains no mysterious ingredients, no rare, "magical" primary elements, which would require a very unlikely coincidence to acquire.

On any planet with a mass and temperature similar to ours, one should also expect oceans of water with a solution of the same type of salts. Accordingly, the life that originated there will have a chemical composition similar to terrestrial living matter. Can it follow from this that in its further development this life will repeat the earthly one?

This is where you can't be sure. It is possible to assemble many different combinations from the same chemical elements. It is possible that in the youth of our planet, at the very dawn of the origin of life, thousands of fundamentally different living Forms floated in the primitive ocean. Suppose that one of them beat all the others in the competition, and then there is no denying the possibility that this could happen by pure chance. And now the uniqueness of the currently existing life can lead us to the false conclusion that it is precisely this structure of living matter that is inevitable.

It turns out that on any planet similar to Earth, the chemical basis of life, most likely, will be the same as on our planet. We have no reason to think otherwise. Moreover, the whole course of evolution as a whole must be the same. Under the pressure of natural selection, all accessible regions of the planet will be filled with living beings, acquiring the necessary abilities to adapt to local conditions. On our planet, after the origin of life in the sea, there has gradually been the colonization of fresh water by creatures that can store salt, the colonization of land by creatures that can store water, and the colonization of air by creatures that have developed the ability to fly.

And on another planet, everything should happen according to the same scenario. On no terrestrial planet can a flying creature grow beyond a certain size, since it must be supported by air; the sea creature must either be streamlined or move slowly, etc.

So it is quite reasonable to expect from alien living beings the appearance of features familiar to us - simply for reasons of rationality. Bilateral symmetry "right-left" should also take place, as well as the presence of a separate head with the placement of the brain and sensory organs there. Among the latter, there must necessarily be light receptors, like our eyes. More active living forms must also eat plant forms, and it is very likely that aliens, like us, breathe oxygen - or absorb it in some other way.

In short, aliens cannot be completely different from us. There is no doubt, however, that in specific details they will be strikingly different from us: who could predict, say, the appearance of a platypus before Australia was discovered, or the appearance of deep-sea fish before people could reach the depths where they live?

Incredible Facts

Disappointing news: scientists insist that there is no life after death.

The famous physicist believes that humanity needs to stop believing in the afterlife and focus on the existing laws of the universe.

Sean Carroll, cosmologist and professor of physics at California Institute of Technology put an end to the issue of life after death.

He stated that "the laws of physics that dictate our daily lives have been fully understood" and everything happens within the limits of the possible.

The scientist explained that for the existence of life after death consciousness must be completely separated from our physical body, which is not the case.

Rather, consciousness at its most basic level is a series of atoms and electrons that are responsible for our mind.

The laws of the universe do not allow these particles to exist after our physical death, says Dr. Carroll.

Claims that some form of consciousness remains after the body has died and decayed into atoms face one insurmountable obstacle. The laws of physics do not allow the information stored in our brain to remain after we die.

Dr. Carroll cites quantum field theory as an example. Simply put, according to this theory, there is a field for each type of particle. For example, all photons in the Universe are at the same level, all electrons have their own field, and so on for each type of particle.

The scientist explains that if life continued after death, in tests for quantum fields, they would find "spiritual particles" or "spiritual forces".

However, the researchers did not find anything of the kind.

Of course, there are not many ways to find out what happens to a person after death. On the other hand, many people wonder how a person feels when the end is approaching.

According to scientists, a lot depends on how a person dies. So, for example, a person dying of an illness may be too weak and sick, and unconscious, to describe his feelings.

For this reason, much of what is known has been gathered from observation and not from man's inner experiences. There are also testimonies of those who experienced clinical death, but returned and spoke about what they experienced.

According to the testimony of specialists caring for hopelessly ill people, a dying person loses feelings in a certain sequence.

First of all, the feeling of hunger and thirst disappears, then the ability to speak is lost, and then to see. Hearing and touch usually last longer, but then they disappear.

Near-death survivors were asked to describe how they felt, and their answers matched surprisingly well with research in this area.

In 2014, scientists studied the dreams of people near death, and most of them (about 88 percent) spoke of very vivid dreams that often seemed real to them. In most dreams, people saw loved ones of dead people and at the same time experienced peace rather than fear.

You may also see the light that you are approaching, or the feeling that you are separating from the body.

Scientists have found that right before death, a burst of activity is observed in the human brain, which may explain near-death experiences and the feeling that life flashes before our eyes.

When the researchers studied how a person feels during the period when he was officially dead, they found that the brain is still functioning for some time, and this is enough to hear conversations or see events taking place around, which was confirmed by those who were nearby.

If you have been physically injured, you may experience pain. One of the most painful experiences in this sense is suffocation. Cancers often cause pain because the growth of cancer cells affects many organs.

Some diseases may not be as painful as, for example, respiratory diseases, but cause great inconvenience and difficulty in breathing.

In 1957 the herpetologist Karl Patterson Schmidt was bitten by a venomous snake. He did not know that in a day the bite would kill him, and he wrote down all the symptoms he experienced.

He wrote that at first he felt "great chills and trembling", "bleeding in the mucous membrane of the mouth" and "light bleeding in the intestines", but in general his condition was normal. He even phoned his work and said that he would come the next day, but this did not happen, and he died shortly after.

In 2012, soccer player Fabrice Muamba suffered a heart attack in the middle of a match. For some time he was in a state of clinical death, but was later resuscitated. When asked to describe the moment, he said he felt dizzy and that's all he remembers.

After the football player Muamba felt dizzy, he said that he did not feel anything. He had neither positive nor negative emotions. And if your senses are disabled, what can you feel?

Is there life after death - this question is asked by every person, regardless of their beliefs. Almost all known religions of the world claim that after the death of the physical body, human life continues. Absolutely all beliefs convince - the human soul is an immortal body.

All of us during our lives are interested in an entertaining question, what is there ... after death? Many people who have experienced clinical death talk about amazing visions: they observe themselves from the side, hear how doctors state their death. They feel like they are rushing at great speed through a long dark tunnel towards a bright source of light.

Doctors, including resuscitators, very much doubt the reality of the described visions, which are allegedly experienced by those who visited the afterlife while in a state of clinical death. The reason for such near-death visions is called a light spot, which, being the last one to enter the brain from the retina of the eye, deposits a picture on the center of the brain responsible for analyzing what it saw.

However, devices that record the activity of the brain at the time of death of a person show its zero activity. In other words, the brain and, accordingly, the imagination cannot process information at this moment, but vivid images of a person still exist and originate somewhere.

There is not a single person for whom the experience of clinical death passed without a trace. Many of them begin to have supernatural powers. Someone sees the future, someone begins to heal, some see parallel worlds.

Some tell fantastic things, claiming that at the moment of death they saw their soul separating from the body in the form of a small cloud, in the middle of which there was, as it were, a spark. Everything has a spheroidal shape from the atom to the planets, including the human soul, says a woman who experienced clinical death, and after which she began to notice many luminous balls around her and on the street.

Researchers suggest that the human soul is a clot of spherical energy 3-15 cm in size, and supersensitive devices are able to detect such luminous balls. On this basis, a hypothesis was born about parallel worlds, and supposedly in the thinnest boundaries of contact of these worlds with our world, such phenomena with balls can be observed.

There are an abundance of hypotheses, but the most interesting thing is that all those who experienced clinical death claimed in their desire to fly further to the light that some kind of unearthly love is where the light is. However, not everyone sees the light at the moment of death, some claim that they have observed the suffering of people and very unpleasant odors. It was very scary there.

In this case, the theory of scientists about the last light spot from the retina is not supported by anything. All those who experienced clinical death underwent a spiritual transformation and came to God. Today they look at the world differently, they are not afraid of death, although they cannot describe everything in words, but much is already clear to them and no arguments of scientists can convince them.

Today, many scientists doubt the truth of their assumptions, and do not deny the spiritual origin of what eyewitnesses tell, and yet continue research in this area. We do not have instruments to measure divine values, but who knows, maybe technologies will appear, we will be able to find out with the help of instruments what is there, at the end of the mysterious tunnel!

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Death is the eternal companion of man from birth. She invariably pursues a person and every moment gets closer and closer. Fortunately, no one knows when Death will make its swift jump, since a person is not supposed to know the reason and time of his departure to the realm of the dead.

Whoever a person is in life, the end of the life path is the same for everyone. Everyone knows about this event, but the deep secret that lies beyond life attracts thousands of years to look behind the secret door of Death.

A little about the mysteries of what is happening was told in the 1970s by the American professor Raymond Moody in the book that became the bestseller Life After Death. The author collected in the publication of the history of 150 people who survived clinical death.

Patients who have acquired an extremely dangerous experience looked into the Kingdom of the Dead, but got a chance to return to life and tell about their visions.

People who have experienced the horror of clinical death after returning, now feel more vitally active, assure survivors of their own death. Much more fully than usual, they accept everything that happens and feel the environment more intensely than it was before.

According to those interviewed, most of them heard how medical workers ascertained their death, but continued to fight for their lives. In these frightening moments, they allegedly painlessly left their own body and soared to the ceiling of the ward or operating room.

We find it hard to believe this, since it is well known that in a state of clinical death, the human brain does not receive the necessary oxygen, without which it can function for a few minutes. Clinical death is a complete cessation of blood circulation, and after that the restoration of the normal working capacity of the brain is rather a matter of divine powers and great luck.

Most medical professionals agree that the experience of near-death visions is created in the imagination at the moment of loss of vital functions. At the same time, there are serious controversies regarding what exactly should be understood by vital functions and their termination.

According to the researchers of near-death visions, not all pictures in the moment of "imaginary death" are the fruit of fantasy, a number of them represent a true picture of the afterlife.

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