Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
" "The medical literature did not encourage that idea. Decades of clinical experience and research have established that brain activity decreases within six to seven seconds of the heart stopping. And after ten to twenty seconds, the electroencephalogram (EEG) goes flat, indicating no activity in the cerebral cortex — the part of the brain responsible for thoughts, perceptions, memory, and language. Analysis of the EEGs of people after life support is withdrawn show that the brain’s electrical activity in such cases actually stops before the heartbeat stops and before blood pressure ends — and after the heart stops there is no well-defined EEG activity. That seemed to answer my question about whether NDEs could be related to electrical activity in the brain.
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
More important to me, however, was a comment by the Dalai Lama himself about the difference between Western science and Buddhism. Both disciplines, he argued, are based on observation and logical deduction, and both give experience precedence over belief in their quest for the truth. But, he added, Western scientists seem to seek understanding about how the world works in order to change and control the natural world. That is, the goal of most scientists is to gain mastery over our environment. Buddhists, on the other hand, seek understanding about how the world works in order to live more harmoniously with it.