WHAT IS BEYOND DEATH?

Wanting to establish what is beyond death, I recently read a feature in the Irish Daily Mail about Hannah, a 41-year-old teacher who believes that she 'shared' the death of her widower father two years ago when he died from lung cancer.

She described being told by his nurses to prepare for the end and then - as he drifted in and out of consciousness - somehow having her own out-of-body experience.  Hannah says: "I felt like I was watching everything from above - my dad's body, the nurses.  And I could see myself, too.  And in the distance I saw light and my mum smiling."

She next remembers the 'trance' being over.  "I felt myself pulled back, as it were, and I was just in my chair with the nurses telling me dad had gone."  Two years on, Hannah cannot rid herself of her conviction that she went with her father on the first steps of his journey to the afterlife, experiencing an altered state of consciousness that coincided with her father's dying breaths.

The feature went on to say that Dr Peter Fenwick, an eminent neuropsychiatrist who has spent many years studying near-death experiences and shared death experiences, has become increasingly convinced they are a result of a 'loosening of consciousness' that occurs around the death process.

"In effect, this means the mind of the dying person is then no longer bound by any constraints of time and space, which seem to limit us while we're in physical form," he explains.  "This can then encompass someone with whom the dying person is closely connected."

Dr Pim van Lommel is a Dutch cardiologist who also believes we need to change the way we view consciousness.  Prompted by the realisation that a substantial number of patients who had suffered cardiac arrest described the same sensations and phenomena at a time when they had been pronounced brain dead, he has spent years studying near-death phenomena - consequently moving from scepticism to acceptance.

He says: "What I've witnessed and the data I've gathered have convinced me that the hypothesis that consciousness is a by-product of brain-function has to be discussed again," he says. "It's hard for people to accept because it goes against the basic principles you learn in medical school, which hold that consciousness is only there when the body is functioning.  Now I'm convinced this is not true and that it can exist separately.  Moreover,  I believe in an altered state of consciousness where there is no time and space in the way we understand it."

So - what is beyond death?  Have you reached any conclusions yet?