Originally Posted by RedShoe

That's a year old.
I saw a show recently where they explain the "afterlife" visions people have. It's their brain dying. As you die, and as your heart stops and the oxygen and blood flow stop, your brain suffocates and dies. What happens is you experience a dream, what's happening is your brain is beginning to black out.

Have you ever blacked out from lack of oxygen or blood flow to your brain? Ever stand up too fast and the room starts to darken from edges and you get tunnel vision, and all the while you just stare at the ground and your brain starts to 'breathe' again and suddenly you are aware of what almost happened and you feel a tad dizzy.

The same sort of thing happens when you die... or almost die. You experience a dream and your mind starts to 'flash your life.' In the dream you see people from the past, you see bright tunnels, and if you were to stay like that for too long you'd eventually die and the brain activity would cease and that's it.

What happens to near death people is that they experience this dream and are conviced they've been to 'the other side.' The fact is, they haven't been anywhere, they just experienced the death process. If they were to experience it any longer, the brain would fail to recover and they'd live in a permenant vegatative state.

So to answer your question... no, there is no afterlife. It's just something that people believe in to help them deal with death. "Oh it's ok we don't really die, we continue.. in an afterlife." Those people are sad and are just fooling themselves. Get over it, when you die... you die. Nothing more.