What Happens After Death? Can the Near Death Experience (NDE) Answer This Question?

Ever since the beginning of mankind the most quizzical and rhetorical question has been "what happens after death". Do we continue on, after out bodies die into a different form? Does our consciousness die when our bodies do? What happens? Where do we go? What determines all of this?

Many people are unwilling or unable to take a stance of this burning question because there is a lack of scientific evidence to answer these questions. There are, however thousands of cases where people have clinically died, have been resuscitated and have woke up to tell amazing stories of what happened and where they went during their time of being deceased. Can these stories be evidence of what actually happens when we die? Could it be that so many thousands of people who have died could possibly make up so many similar details of their near death experiences (NDE)? Could all of these people be hallucinating the same types of circumstances with the same general hallucination?

I personally do not believe that most people who are pronounced clinically dead would have any reason to fabricate a story about such things, furthermore, there actually is some evidence, and yes- some of it is scientific- that something happens to our energy and consciousness when our bodies die.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross, a world renowned author of a series of books on the topic of death and dying has delved very deeply into the subject at hand. In her book titled " On Death and Dying", Elizabeth, a doctor herself, recounts numerous stories of children who were afflicted with terminal illnesses, and obviously way too young to create stories from having heard them from others. Many of these kids who had "died" only to be resuscitated had come back to tell stories of how they had left their bodies at the time of their "death" and proceeded to travel out of the room that their bodies were in. They would describe in intrinsic details what they saw, who they saw, what they heard and much more. This all while they were clinically dead!

Other people as well, as depicted in Doctor Raymond A. Moody have come back after incidents of dying and have told stories of their experience while they were deceased. Many would tell of stories of meeting a supreme being, of meeting with loved ones who had died previously, of a life review and of being consumed with a light filled with pure love.

Are these stories enough to convince skeptics of a life in some form beyond this one on earth?

If not, then how could it be explained that people who were on a deathbed were put on a weight scale. At the exact moment of death a quarter of a pound was consistently lost from the body.

How could it be explained when people experience phenomena where ghosts or spirits of loved ones visit them in a dream and give them information about what is to happen at a future time. They document this information and then at a later date, it actually occurs?

What happens after death? That question for us all will someday be answered- at the time of our own death we will see for ourselves. But will we ever definitively know the answers to these questions before that time comes?