"Back From the Dead" in Newsweek

The cover story for the latest NEWSWEEK magazine, 7-23-07, is called "Back From the Dead." The subtitle is "Doctors are reinventing how they treat sudden cardiac arrest, which is fatal 95 percent of the time. A report from the border between life and death." Another subtitle is "Oxygen deprivation is merely the start of a cascade. Dying turns out to be almost as complicated as living."

Originally, I had considered copying certain paragraphs and commenting on them, but that appeared too tedious for me. I encourage all of you to read this article, as it does present up-to-date ideas and procedures which should become commonplace in the emergency treatment of people with disorders which can cause sudden death.

What I want to comment on are the more philosophical issues that underly the use of any of these techniques and procedures. We, in our culture, have been taught that being alive is the highest value of all, one that supercedes all others. I spent four months of my 12 month internship in emergency rooms, where we were expected to keep alive all who entered there. Fortunately for us interns, there were no magic machines which could bring back to life those who had been severely injured or who suffered major strokes or heart attacks. But this article now shows where we have come to, and doctors are expected to use these machines to resuscitate those who have gone into comas and have no vital signs.

Also, in this article, they wonder where the mind goes when the brain is not functioning. There are philosophers, called "physicalists," who believe that all thinking is caused by brain cells, so if brain cells are dead, there can be no thinking by any "thing" called consciousness. Near Death Experiences (NDE) are mentioned as occurring in terminally injured patients who then revived to tell about how they thought while their brains were without oxygen.

First, the idea of a "time to die" has been repeatedly mentioned to me by the CIE, my spiritual teachers. They say that each of us has a Life Plan, provided by The Creator, and it includes the conditions for ending this phase of our Master Life Plan. The rest of the Plan will be in future incarnations. So the CIE do not see physical death as something as terrible as our culture does; it is "coming home," at the very least. They are there, in Thoughtspace, to welcome the Essence and Personality of each of us, when our time comes, and they are full of agape love, nothing else. They do not judge us, they do not condemn us, they do not find us failing in any way. What a difference from our society here in Physicalspace!

So when the medical staff decides to use extraordinary means to keep a body alive, is that always wise? Nothing in this world is "always," so the answer has to be "no." There are some times when the doctor's Essence will contact the patient's Essence and get the message that it is OK, even mandatory, for this patient to die at this time, in this place. Every doctor who has worked with dying patients in the ER knows when this has happened. The doctor may feel stressed by not being able to revive this man or woman, but inside he or she knows there is no point in being heroic and expensive about it. The proper time to "cease to exist" (as the CIE call dying) has come for this man or woman. Only a doctor with an ego problem will get distressed about what appears inevitable to others, a doctor who feels like a failure if his patient dies. Such doctors exist, and they are the bane of existence for hospice nurses taking care of their patients.

Another question posed is - where is the mind of the patient during the coma? Here I refer to my work with dissociated patients, whose Essences have separated from their Personalities. The Essence has no emotions at all and claims to be able to exist and communicate by thought when out of the body, visiting its "supervisory CIE" in Thoughtspace, which it does every night during sleep. It can also be aware of the surroundings of the person when the sensory organs, such as eyes and ears, are not working properly. This ensures the safety and survival of that person.

The Personality is another matter, however. Since it operates with emotions, it must be able to use the neurohormones and sex hormones of the human body. So it cannot function if the physical organism is not functioning properly. When the body "ceases to exist", I envision the Personality as going into a state of hibernation until it is implanted into a new body which is born of a new mother in the next incarnation. Then it can function again, with all the emotions possible to be expressed. But it is a "bundle of Intelligent Energy", so it does exist in a latent form between physical lives, in my opinion. It just cannot usually express itself during its time out of the body.

As with everything I say on this subject, there are exceptions to this rule. In the case of Marie, my former MPD patient, her Original Personality dissociated from her Essence at the age of six months, when her mother tried to kill her in her crib. Her Essence, Becky, then sent Marie's Original Personality off to Thoughtspace to be "raised" by the CIE, Faith, Hope & Charity. Marie remembers those 30 years quite well. She reports that she never, during that time, experienced any emotions, as so she was always calm and peaceful, being filled with the agape love of her "mothers." Only when she returned to her physical body, following my therapy, did she have the capacity to feel fear, jealousy, anger, lust, etc. It took having a body to allow her to experience those very human feelings. They do not exist in the absence of the body, it seems.

Nothing I say here should be understood to stand in the way of trying to resuscitate anyone who comes to the attention of trained medical staff. We outsiders do not know which one of them is meant to be saved and which one of them is meant to "cease to exist." Only the patient's Essence knows that fact. But if we humans then interfere in what is planned by The Creator for their future fate, another chain of events is brought into play, with some results we would rather not see. Each Essence has been trained to deal with expected events. But if a person meant to die is kept alive on life support machines, the Essence simply has no idea of what it is supposed to do. During coma periods, it will go to Thoughtspace to consult with its CIE, and then will do its best to be of help to its "charge." But it can become quite dissatisfied with the status quo and develop a negative attitude. In its next lifetime, it can more easily become a "turned Essence" and create a sociopathic individual, a habitual criminal. We certainly do not need more of those in coming generations.