Epidemiology of leukemia and other neoblastoses Epidemiology studies the geography of the disease and the likelihood of its association with environment traditions of life, food and behavior. According to official statistics different countries, for malignant tumors

Calabash from other materials Clay, ceramics, glass Calabash made from ceramic or clay is quite popular now. They appeared in the early twentieth century as a response to the spread of disease. Why are they convenient? They don't have their own

"Is there life after death?" - a question that we have to think about sooner or later. We are all mortal and we know it.

And the answer to that question is yes, definitely. Our existence as human beings with self-awareness, will, feelings, relationships with others does not end with the death of the body. But how exactly?

When I was a schoolboy, it was believed that death is irreversible: a person died - and his consciousness faded forever, there is only a “grateful memory of descendants” or “great accomplishments” in which a person managed to participate while he was alive. This followed from materialism - a worldview that was then an indispensable part of the official ideology. This ideology is a thing of the past, but materialism itself has not disappeared. As British cosmologist Stephen Hawking beautifully puts this point of view, “...I view the brain as a computer that will stop functioning as soon as its components stop working. There is no heaven or life after death for broken computers; this is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.”

According to this view, in reality there is only matter that moves in accordance with the impersonal and unchanging laws of nature, and everything else, including our thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, hopes and fears, is the result of some incredibly complex, but purely material processes in our cerebral cortex. When we die, these processes stop forever.

The materialistic point of view has two interesting features: firstly, it is blatantly wrong; secondly, it is very popular. Let's start with popularity. Matter is what we can control, where we can increase our power. The natural sciences, which deal with matter, have been extremely successful, and the technologies based on them have profoundly transformed our lives. The attraction of materialism is that the laws of nature are carried out exactly on schedule. It seems that we just need to figure out this exact schedule for all cases - and everything will be under control.

The temptation to reduce all reality to matter that we can eventually control is understandable. But in reality there are things that cannot be reduced to matter. This is primarily human consciousness and free will. In a materialistic universe, every event is completely determined by previous events and the immutable laws of nature - that is, materialism leaves no room not only for God, but for such a directly experienced phenomenon as free will.

As another scientist (and also an atheist), Francis Crick, said, “You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and aspirations, your sense of personal identity and free will, are really nothing more than the certain behavior of a huge collection of nerve cells and their associated molecules. . You are nothing more than a bunch of neurons… even though we seem to have free will, our decisions are already predetermined for us and we cannot change that.”

To be a materialist, one must regard free will as an illusion, which is both contrary to our experience and logically absurd: to become a materialist, you must perform an act of free will; if materialism is correct, there is no free will. Materialism has a number of other unsolvable problems - human consciousness, in principle, cannot be reduced to processes in the brain. The main argument against a positive answer to the question "Is there life after death" is based simply on false philosophy. Reality is not limited to matter.

But do we have positive arguments in favor of immortality? Certainly. Let's start with such a phenomenon as universal human intuition. In virtually all cultures, it is taken for granted that the dead continue to exist in some other form. The most ancient people clearly differ from animals in that they bury their dead - with clear expressions of faith in the afterlife. In the burial places they find the remains of food, weapons, jewelry, clothes - everything that was supposed to be needed by the deceased on the other side. With the advent of writing, we find texts with rather detailed ideas about the afterlife, which vary greatly in different cultures, but always have one thing in common: life continues after death, and how exactly it continues, usually depends on the behavior of a person on this earth.

The belief that physical death means the disappearance of the individual has always been (and still is) the lot of a minority. Another argument is from conscience. We realize that there is a difference between good and evil, that evil deeds are worthy of condemnation, while good deeds are worthy of praise. We experience anxiety and anxiety when our conscience convicts us of something bad. If there is no afterlife (and retribution), then this experience is illusory. Then the villains who commit all kinds of atrocities and sleep like a baby are absolutely right: if they escape human retribution (which is quite likely), nothing else threatens them. But if conscience is not an illusion, then the reward is real. And if it is not accomplished in this life, then this life is not all that is.

But there are more direct data about life after death. The so-called near-death experience that people experience in a state of clinical death. Most of the survivors of clinical death do not remember anything, but about 10% can tell that they got out of their body and saw it from the side. They can tell what happened in the operating room, describe the actions of doctors, sometimes they talk about meeting with deceased loved ones and the mysterious Light that shows them their whole life. It's an experience that quite a few people have had, and it's impossible to just brush it off. As the American resuscitator (agnostic in his personal convictions) Sam Parnia writes,

“We usually assume that all scientists believe that consciousness is a product of the brain, but, in fact, many are not sure about this. For example, Sir John Eccles, Nobel Laureate, believes that we will never be able to explain consciousness through the activity of neurons. All I can say is that I have observed in the course of my work. It seems that when consciousness is switched off at the moment of death, the psyche, the soul - I do not mean the ghost, I mean the individual "I" - continues to exist, at least for those hours until the person is reanimated. From which we can justifiably conclude that the brain works as an instrument through which your "I" or "soul" manifests itself, but it may not be its source ... I think the data is starting to indicate that we should stay open to the possibility that memory… is not just the activity of neurons.”

These descriptions of near-death experiences fit well with the Christian picture of the afterlife that we know from Scripture and Tradition. Immediately after death, the soul leaves the body, and the person continues to exist - to be aware of what is happening, to rejoice or suffer, to think and remember - in another plane of reality.

Scripture calls the place where the souls of faithful Christians go "heaven." To heaven Already wrote. An inexpressibly joyful place, full of light and consolation. As the holy apostle Paul says, For we know, What, When terrestrial our house, this hut, collapse, We we have from God dwelling on heaven, house miraculous, eternal. From Togo We And sigh, wanting put on V heavenly is our dwelling(2 Cor 5 :1–2). In the face of inevitable (and at the same time violent) death, the apostle joyfully awaits the migration to heaven: I have wish resolve And be co Christ, That's why What This incomparably better(Phil 1 :23).

There, in heaven, we will meet with that Light in which we will forever be comforted for all earthly sorrows - with our Lord Jesus Christ, with our loving heavenly family - the Mother of the Lord and all the saints; there in heaven, we will look forward to the final victory of the Lord in the world and resurrection of the dead- because the day will come when God will restore us in glorified and transfigured bodies.

But this is not only a matter for the future; faith in immortality changes our lives here and now, it colors all the days of our lives, it deeply affects how we accept the sorrows and joys of our earthly path. Faith is an openness to Heaven, where we are loved, expected and accepted when our path is completed.

Exoplanets, that is, planets that exist outside the solar system, in last years are in the focus of attention of astronomers around the world. There are already more than three and a half thousand of them open, and the figure is growing steadily. The interest of earthlings in these space objects is understandable: we really hope to find life on them. And on some in a very distant future, a person could, perhaps, move. After all, our Sun, as you know, is not eternal. After just some 4-5 billion years, it will turn from a yellow dwarf into a red giant, swelling and absorbing the Earth's orbit along with our planet.

In the spring, a press conference at NASA was widely announced in the media about the discovery of seven exoplanets comparable in size to the Earth. Then, however, it turned out that it was still impossible to live on them. "To live" in our human understanding, of course. The results of research by Russian astronomers, although not widely disseminated, are no less interesting and significant than their American counterparts. The discovery and study of exoplanets is one of the areas of the comprehensive scientific program implemented by the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Karachay-Cherkess Republic). A large-scale study of the Universe became possible thanks to a large grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF). The full name of the project is "The evolution of stars from their birth to the origin of life." As the head of the project, scientific director of the SAO RAS academician Yury Balega, is sure, in order to find life in space or a planet suitable for life, it is not enough to focus on the study of individual stars or their planets. Need to search in very a wide range directions.

There are three key sections in the complex program of the SAO RAS. The first, as already mentioned, is the study of planets, the size, mass and temperature of which allow the possibility of the emergence and existence of life forms similar to those on Earth. The main task The second, as the researchers formulate, is the discovery of a new class of objects in astrophysics - "very massive stars" (VMS, their mass reaches 1000 solar masses) and (or) intermediate mass black holes (IMBH). The third section is the study of the mechanisms of formation of magnetic fields in space.

Everyone, of course, strives to find a planet resembling the Earth: in size, in mass, - Yury Balega smiles. - The flow of discoveries of exoplanets does not dry out, but 99% of these celestial bodies turn out to be gas giants like our Jupiter and more massive, up to 20 Jupiters in size. Why? These are just easier to spot. After all, most exoplanets can be discovered due to the fact that, rotating around the parent star, they slightly "shake" it. The amplitude of these changes in the movement of the star is extremely small - only tens of centimeters per second, but we catch it. It is clear that large planets shake their star more strongly. The second way is to observe the brightness of stars with very accurate photometers. At the time when the planet passes in front of the disk of the star, the brilliance of the star weakens. Studying the periodic change in this brightness allows us to estimate the size, mass, and period of the planet's movement. But the main thing that everyone is interested in is whether there is an atmosphere on the planet. In order to detect signs of the atmosphere of their planets in the spectrum of stars, very transparent spectrographs are needed. Creating such equipment is an infinitely difficult task! If someone told me that there are such devices 10-15 years ago, I would not believe it, I would answer that it is impossible in principle. But now ground-based surveillance technologies are advancing so rapidly, with such huge investments in them, that the impossible becomes possible. So far, only large planets with an atmosphere have been discovered, but the time is not far off when exoplanets with signs of an Earth-like atmosphere will also be discovered. Astronomers all over the world are working on this, and we are one of the teams.

Photo by Nikolai Stepanenkov

Mother stars for planets could be stars - red and brown dwarfs, - continues the project leader. - They are smaller than the Sun, they burn their hydrogen slowly. But, unfortunately, the unique data that we received just recently showed that during the flares that occur on these stars, a huge amount of particles are released that burn everything around. So it is unlikely that the planets revolving around them are a suitable place for the development of any life.

The number of publications prepared since the start of the program, including in prestigious journals with a high impact factor, is growing every year - in 2015 there were 39 articles, in 2016 - 102, in 2017 - already 60.

One of the main results obtained during the implementation of the RSF grant, its leader considers the discovery of the atmosphere of one of the exoplanets. It is not very far from the Earth (only 20 light years), revolves around a star similar to the Sun (it is a yellow dwarf of spectral type G0). This planet is much larger than our Earth, and, as studies have shown, it has signs of an atmosphere.

In general, the favorite journalistic question "about the main discovery" in the case of astronomy, Yu. Balega notes, is not very correct: after all, the main thing is how to interpret the results, how to explain them. And he cites another study as an example, which is being conducted as part of the second direction of the same project. In the constellation Orion is the region of star formation closest to us - the huge Orion Nebula, which was born as a result of the collision of our Galaxy with a cloud of molecular hydrogen. This happened about 50 million years ago and led to a burst of new star formation. Exploring this region, astronomers see very massive young stars that are only 100,000 years old. “Carrying out research within the framework of a program supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, we discovered hundreds of stars in Orion ten times more massive than the Sun, and they have magnetic fields,” says Yu. Balega. “This is a very strong result! Studying such objects allows us to understand the physics of the birth of new stars ".

In the same Orion, researchers generally find a lot of surprising things, for example, a huge number of "failed" stars - brown dwarfs. It is something between planets and stars. After the birth of a space object, its mass during compression turned out to be insufficient, there was not enough gas to form a star, and instead of a star, a spherical body appeared, the pressure and temperature in the core of which are too low for a thermonuclear reaction.

In addition, planets have been discovered that do not have their mother star. They are born from clots of dust and gas, move in outer space, but do not revolve around some other object.

And in Orion, a huge number of very complex molecules were found - alcohols, sugars, formaldehydes, which, if they got into suitable conditions, could become the basis for the origin of life.

“In a word, we discover a lot of mysterious things,” the academician says enthusiastically. “Therefore, it is wrong to focus only on exoplanets ... In many areas, there is a search for information about how life originated in our Universe.”

In the nearest galaxies - about 20 million light-years from us - stars have been discovered, the mass of which reaches a thousand solar masses. Until now, it was believed that the mass of the largest stars is up to 50 solar masses. That they can be an order of magnitude more massive is one of nature's great mysteries. Theoretically, this has not yet been explained.

So far, the existence of such objects even contradicts the generally accepted theory of star formation, the scientist explains. - When a star begins to be born from a huge mass of gas, gravitational contraction happens very quickly, on the scale of the life of a star, this is one instant. And as soon as the thermonuclear reaction begins, the radiation pressure "blows off" all the gas around the star, and its mass can no longer increase. Theorists have long calculated such models. And how stars of a hundred solar masses, and even more so of a thousand, are formed is not clear. There is an assumption that the first generation of stars, very massive, quickly lived their lives and exploded, enriching the Universe with heavy elements, from which the next generation stars were then born.

Now we are testing our discovery on other telescopes - including Russian, Japanese, American, orbital and ground-based ones. If the existence of high-mass stars is confirmed, it will be just an information bomb! After all, this will mean that supermassive objects can be born today. A world-scale discovery for all astrophysics.

It is essential for astronomers to have access to modern equipment. And it is very expensive. For example, the program for the James Webb Space telescope, which the United States is launching into orbit next year, is estimated at about $10 billion. Russian astronomy lived, in the words of the academician, "on dry rations" for several decades. The last major breakthrough in astronomy, according to him, was made in our country in the mid-1970s, when the historic BTA telescope was installed in the North Caucasus, the development of which began back in the Khrushchev era. For half a century, the instrumental base of astronomy in the country has practically not been updated. Therefore, the contribution to world science was much greater among theorists. The RSF grant helps to correct the situation. Within the framework of the project in the SAO next year, work on the creation of a unique fiber spectrograph will be completed, which, in particular, will allow measuring the radial velocities of stars to detect very low-mass planets. This equipment is very expensive - only one "eye", which registers light, costs 50 million rubles. The domestic optical and optical-mechanical industry, various companies from St. Petersburg and Moscow are involved in the manufacture of the spectrograph. "This is a huge leap forward for us!" - says Yu. Balega. As scientists expect, the use of such modern equipment should lead to a significant increase in the efficiency of exoplanetary research.

- Thanks to a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, as well as the support of FASO, a new mirror for a six-meter telescope was also made. There is a long process for its installation, testing and adjustment. “Now astronomers will be able to calmly do business for ten years, and not walk around with outstretched hands,” adds the academician. “And young people will not run away to the West. an opportunity to also attract young scientists from other cities."

This complex project is carried out mainly by the employees of the SAO - out of about a hundred full-time scientists of the observatory, half are involved in the project, and about the same number of people are involved from others. scientific organizations and universities: these are Moscow State University (in particular, the P.K.

“Today, the Russian Science Foundation practically plays the first fiddle in supporting fundamental science in the country,” says Academician Yu. Balega. - He adopted all the best expert traditions that have been developed in Russia, starting with Soros and continuing with the RFBR. I think this is a big positive development in modern scientific life Russia. Thanks to such funds, it is possible to save Russian science. Physicists are now simply charged with these grants. It is important that the fund continues its activities!

One of the most exciting questions for the mind of people is “is there something there after death, or not?”. Many religions have been created, each revealing the secret of the afterlife in its own way. Libraries of books on the topic of life after death have been written. And, in the end, billions of souls, who were once inhabitants of the mortal earth, have already gone there, into an unknown reality and distant non-existence. And they are aware of all the secrets, but they will not tell us. Between the world of the dead and the living is a huge abyss . But this is provided that the world of the dead exists.

Various religious teachings, each of which interprets the further path of a person after leaving the body in its own way, generally support the version that the soul exists and it is immortal. The exceptions are the religious directions of the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, they adhere to the version of the perishability of the soul. And the afterlife, Hell and Paradise, the quintessence of variations of afterlife existence, according to most religions, for the true worshipers of God will be presented in a much better form than that, that is, on earth. Belief in the excellent after death, in higher justice, in the eternal continuation of life is the basis of many religious worldviews.

And although scientists and atheists claim that a person hopes, because it is inherent in his nature at the genetic level, they say, “ he just needs to believe in something, and preferably global, with a saving mission ”, - this does not become an “antidote” of craving for religions. Even if we take into account the genetic attraction to God, where did it come from in pure consciousness?

Soul and where is it located

Soul- it is an immortal substance, not tangible and not measured with the help of material standards. Something connecting spirit and body, individual, identifying a person as a person. There are many people who look similar in appearance, twin brothers and sisters are just copies of each other, there are also enough “twins” who do not have a consanguinity. But these people will always differ in their inner spiritual content, and this does not concern the level, quality and scale of thoughts, desires, but, above all, abilities, facets, features, and potential of the individual. The soul is something that accompanies us on earth, reviving the mortal shell.

Most people are sure that the soul is in the heart, or somewhere in the solar plexus, there are opinions that it is in the head, brain. Scientists, in the course of a series of experiments, have established that when animals are killed with a current at a meat processing plant, a certain ethereal substance comes out at the moment of termination of life precisely from the upper part of the head (skull). The soul was measured: in the course of experiments carried out at the beginning of the 20th century by the American physician Duncan MacDougall, soul weight - 21 grams . Approximately such a mass was lost by 6 patients at the time of death, which the doctor was able to fix with the help of supersensitive beds-scales on which the dying lay. However, later experiments conducted by other doctors found that a person loses a similar body weight when falling asleep.

Is death just a long (eternal) sleep?

The bible says the soul is in the blood. In the days of the Old Testament, and even to this day, Christians were forbidden to drink and eat processed animal blood.

“For the soul of every body is its blood, it is its soul; Therefore I said to the children of Israel: You shall not eat the blood of any body, for the soul of every body is its blood: whoever eats it shall be cut off.” (Old Testament, Leviticus 17:14)

“... and to all the beasts of the earth, and to all the birds of the air, and to every creeping thing on the earth, in which there is a living soul, I have given all green herbs for food. And so it became” (Genesis 1:30)

That is, living creatures have a soul, but they are deprived of the ability to think, make decisions, they lack a highly organized mental activity. If any soul is immortal, then the animals will be in spiritual incarnation in the afterlife. However, in the same Old Testament it is said that previously all animals simply ceased to exist after physical death, with no other continuation. The main goal of their life was affirmed: to be eaten; born to "capture and exterminate". The immortality of the human soul was also questioned.

“I said in my heart about the sons of men, that God might test them, and that they might see that they themselves are animals; because the fate of the sons of men and the fate of animals is the same fate: as they die, so these also die, and everyone has one breath, and a person has no advantage over cattle, because everything is vanity! Everything goes to one place: everything came from dust and everything will return to dust. Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of men goes up, and the spirit of the animals goes down into the earth? (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21)

But the hope for Christians that the animals in one of their incarnations are incorruptible is preserved, because in the New Testament, in particular in the Revelation of John the Theologian, there are lines that there will be many animals in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The New Testament teaches that accepting the sacrifice of Christ will give life to all people who desire salvation. Those who don't accept it, according to the Bible, don't have Eternal Life. Whether this means that they will go to Hell or that they will hang somewhere in a state of “spiritual disability” is unknown. In Buddhist teachings, reincarnation means that the soul that previously belonged to a person, who accompanied him, can settle in an animal in the next life. Yes, and the man himself in Buddhism takes a dual position, that is, it seems that he is not “pressed” as in Christianity, but he is not the Crown of Creation, master over all living things.

And it is located somewhere between the lower entities, “demons” and other evil spirits and higher, enlightened Buddhas. His path and subsequent reincarnation depend on the degree of enlightenment in today's life. Astrologers talk about the existence of seven human bodies, and not just the soul, spirit and body. Etheric, astral, mental, causal, buddhial, atmanic and naturally physical. According to esotericists, six bodies are part of the soul, but according to some esotericists, they accompany the soul on earthly paths.

There are many teachings, treatises and doctrines that interpret the essence of being, life and death in their own way. And, of course, not all are true, the truth, as they say, is one. It is easy to get confused in the wilds of other people's worldview, it is important to adhere to the position once chosen. Because if everything was simple and we knew the answer that there, at the other end of life, there would not be so many guesses, and as a result of global, radically different versions.

Christianity highlights the spirit, soul and body of man:

"In His hand is the soul of all living things, and the spirit of all human flesh." (Job 12:10)

Moreover, there is no doubt that the spirit and the soul are different phenomena, but what is their difference? Does the spirit (it is also mentioned in animals) go after death to another world or soul? And if the spirit leaves, what happens to the soul?

Termination of life and clinical death

Doctors distinguish biological, clinical and final death. Biological death implies a cessation of cardiac activity, respiration, blood circulation, depression, followed by the cessation of reflexes of the central nervous system. Final - all of the listed signs of biological death, including brain death. Clinical death precedes biological death, is a reversible transitional state from life to death.

After stopping breathing and palpitations, during resuscitation, it is possible to bring a person back to life without serious damage to health only in the first few minutes: up to a maximum of 5 minutes, more often within 2-3 minutes after the pulse stops.

Cases of a safe return and after 10 minutes of stay in clinical death are described. Resuscitation is carried out within 30 minutes after cardiac arrest, breathing or loss of consciousness in the absence of circumstances that make the resumption of life impossible. Sometimes 3 minutes is enough for the development of irreversible changes in the brain. In cases of death of a person in conditions of low temperature, when metabolism is slowed down, the interval of a successful “return” to life increases, and can reach 2 hours after cardiac arrest. Despite the strong opinion based on medical practice that after 8 minutes without a heartbeat and breathing, the patient is unlikely to be brought back to life without serious consequences for his health in the future, hearts begin to beat, people come to life. And they meet further life without serious violations of the functions and systems of the body. Sometimes the 31st minute of resuscitation is decisive. However, most people who have experienced prolonged clinical death rarely return to their former fullness of existence, some go into a vegetative state.

There have been cases where doctors mistakenly recorded biological death, and the patient later came to his senses, scaring the mortuary workers more than any horror movie they had ever watched. Lethargic dreams, decreased cardiovascular and respiratory systems with the oppression of consciousness and reflexes, but the preservation of life - a reality, and it is possible to confuse an imaginary death with a true one.

And yet here is the paradox: if the soul is in the blood, as the Bible says, then where is it in a person who is in a vegetative state or in a “beyond coma”? Who is artificially kept alive with the help of apparatuses, but doctors have long stated irreversible changes in the brain or brain death? At the same time, it is absurd to deny the fact that when blood circulation stops, life stops.

See God and not die

So what did they see, people who survived clinical death? Lots of evidence. Someone says that Hell and Paradise appeared before him in colors, someone saw angels, demons, deceased relatives, communicated with them. Someone traveled, flying like a bird, all over the earth, not feeling any hunger, or pain, or his former self. In front of another, his whole life flashes in a moment in pictures, another sees himself, doctors from the outside.

But in most descriptions there is the famous mysteriously deadly image of the light at the end of the tunnel. The vision of light at the end of the tunnel is explained by several theories. According to psychologist Pyell Watson, this is a prototype of passing through the birth canal, a person at the time of death remembers his birth. According to the Russian resuscitator Nikolai Gubin - manifestations of toxic psychosis.

In the course of an experiment conducted by American scientists with laboratory mice, it was found that animals, when experiencing clinical death, see the same tunnel with light at the end. And the reason is much more banal than the approach of the afterlife illuminating the darkness. The brain in the first minutes after the cessation of the heartbeat and breathing produces powerful impulses, which are accepted by the dying as the image described above. Moreover, the activity of the brain in these very moments is incredibly high, which contributes to the appearance of vivid visions, hallucinations.

The appearance of pictures from the past is due to the fact that new structures of the brain begin to fade first, then the old ones, with the resumption of the vital activity of the brain, the process occurs in the reverse order: first, the old ones begin to function, then the new sections of the cerebral cortex. What causes the “emergence” in the emerging consciousness of the most significant pictures of the past, then the present. I don't want to believe that everything is so simple, right? I really want everything to be confused on mysticism, mixed up on the most bizarre assumptions, shown in bright colors, with feelings, spectacles, tricks.

The consciousness of many people refuses to believe in ordinary death without mystery, without continuation. . And how can you really agree that someday you will not be at all? And there will be no eternity, or at least some kind of continuation ... When you look inside yourself, sometimes the most terrible thing is to feel the hopelessness of the situation, the finiteness of being, the unknown, not knowing what is next and stepping into the abyss blindfolded.

“How many of them have fallen into this abyss, I'll open it away! The day will come when I will disappear From the surface of the earth. Everything that sang and fought will freeze, It shone and burst. And the green of my eyes, and a gentle voice, And gold hair. And there will be life with its daily bread, With forgetfulness of the day. And everything will be - as if under the sky And there was no me!” M. Tsvetaeva “Monologue”

The lyrics can be endless, since death is the biggest mystery, everyone who, no matter how they get away from thinking on this topic, will have to experience everything on their own experience. If the picture were unambiguous, obvious and transparent, we would have been convinced long ago by thousands of discoveries of scientists, stunning results obtained as a result of experiments, versions of various teachings about the absolute mortality of the body and soul. But no one has been able to establish and prove with absolute accuracy what awaits us at the other end of life. Christians are waiting for Paradise, Buddhists are waiting for reincarnation, esotericists of flight into the astral plane, tourists to continue their travels, etc.

But it is reasonable to admit the existence of God, since many, who during their lifetime denied the highest justice in the Other World, often repent of their ardor before death. They remember the One who was so often deprived of a place in his spiritual temple.

Have survivors of clinical death seen God? If you have ever heard or will hear that someone in a state of clinical death saw God, doubt it very much.

First, God will not meet at the “gate”, he is not a Swiss... Everyone will appear at the judgment of God already during the Apocalypse, that is, for the majority - after the stage of rigor mortis. By that time, hardly anyone will be able to return and tell about the Other Light. “Seeing God” is generally not an adventure for the faint of heart. In the Old Testament (in Deuteronomy) there are words that no one has yet seen God and remained alive. God spoke to Moses and the people on Horeb from the midst of the fire, without showing an image, and even people were afraid to come close to God in a hidden form.

The Bible also states that God is a spirit, and the spirit is immaterial, respectively, we cannot see him as each other. Although the miracles performed by Christ during His stay on earth in the flesh, spoke of the opposite: you can return to the world of the living already during or after the funeral. Let us remember the resurrected Lazarus, who was revived on the 4th day, when it already began to stink. And his testimony to another world. But Christianity is more than 2000 years old, during this time were there many people (not counting believers) who read the lines about Lazarus in the New Testament and believed in God on the basis of this? Likewise, thousands of testimonies, miracles for those who are convinced in advance of the opposite, can be meaningless, vain.

Sometimes you have to see it for yourself to believe it. But even personal experience tends to be forgotten. There is a moment of replacing the real with the desired, excessive impressionability - when people really want to see something, during their lifetime they often and a lot draw it in their minds, and during and after clinical death, based on sensations, they finish impressions. According to statistics, most people who saw something grandiose after a cardiac arrest, Hell, Paradise, God, demons, etc. were mentally unstable. Resuscitation doctors, who have repeatedly observed the state of clinical deaths, saving people, say that in the vast majority of cases patients did not see anything.

It so happened that the author of these lines once visited the Other World. I was 18 years old. A relatively easy operation turned out to be due to an overdose of anesthesia by doctors almost real death. Light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel is like an endless hospital corridor. Just a couple of days before I ended up in the hospital, I was thinking about death. I thought that a person should have a movement, a development goal, in the end, family, children, career, study, and all this should be loved by him. But somehow there was so much “depression” around at that moment that it seemed to me that everything was in vain, life was meaningless, and maybe it would be nice to leave before this “torment” had yet begun in full. I don't mean suicidal thoughts, but rather fear of the unknown and the future. Difficult family circumstances, work and study.

And here is the flight into oblivion. Already after this tunnel - and after the tunnel I just saw a girl whose face the doctor looks at, covers with a veil, puts a tag on her toe - I hear a question. And this question, perhaps, is the only thing that I could not find an explanation for, from where, who asked it. “I wanted to leave. Will you go?” And I seem to be listening, but I don’t hear anyone, neither the voice, nor what is happening around, I am shocked that death exists. The whole period, while I was observing everything, and then, after the return of consciousness, I repeated the same question, my own, “So, death is a reality? Can I die? I died? And now I will see God?

At first, I saw myself from the side of the doctors, but not in exact forms, but blurry and chaotic, mixed with other images. I did not understand at all that they were saving me. The more they manipulated, the more it seemed to me that they were saving someone else. She heard the names of medicines, the doctors' conversations, screams, and, as if yawning lazily, she also decided to cheer up the rescued person, began to say in unison to the alarmists, “Breathe, open your eyes. Come to your senses, etc.” I sincerely worried about him. I was spinning around the whole crowd, then as if I saw everything that would happen next: a tunnel, a morgue with a tag, some orderlies were weighing my sins on Soviet scales ...

I become some kind of small grain of rice (these are the associations I have when I remember). There are no thoughts, only sensations, and my name was not at all what my mother and father were called, the name was generally a temporary earthly number. And it seemed that I had been alive only a thousandth part of the eternity into which I was going. But I didn’t feel like a person, some small substance, I don’t know, a spirit or a soul, I understand everything, but I just can’t react. I don’t understand how it was before, but I realize a new reality, but I just can’t get used to it, it was very uncomfortable. My life seemed like a spark, burning for a second, extinguished quickly and imperceptibly.

There was a feeling that there was an exam ahead (not a trial, but some kind of selection), for which I did not prepare, but I would not present anything serious to me, I had not done either evil or good in a worthy measure. But as if frozen at the moment of death, and it is impossible to change something, somehow influence fate. There was no pain, no regrets, but a feeling of discomfort and confusion from how I was so small, the size of a grain, I was going to live. Without thoughts, they were not, everything is at the level of feelings. After being in a room (as I understand it, a morgue), where I spent a long time near the body with a tag on my finger and could not leave this place, I start looking for a way out, because I want to fly further, it’s boring here and I’m not here anymore. I fly out the window and fly towards the light, with speed, suddenly a flash, akin to an explosion. Everything is very bright. Looks like it's coming back at this point.

A gap of silence and emptiness, and again a room with doctors, manipulations with me, but as if with someone else. The last I remember is incredible severe pain and pain in the eyes from the fact that they shine with a lantern. And the pain in my whole body is hellish, I again wet the earth into myself, and somehow it’s wrong, it seems that I stuffed my legs into my hands. There was a feeling that I was a cow, that I was square, that I was made of plasticine, I really didn’t want to go back, but they pushed me in. I have almost come to terms with the fact that I left, but now I have to go back again. Got in. It hurt for a long time, hysteria began from what he saw, but she could not speak or even explain the reason for the roar to anyone. During the rest of my life, I once again endured anesthesia in a few hours, everything was quite safe, except for the chills after. There were no visions. A decade has passed since my “flight”, and, of course, a lot has happened in my life since then. And I rarely told anyone about that long-standing event, but when I did share, most of the listeners were very worried about the answer to the question “did I see God or not?”. And although I repeated a hundred times that I did not see God, I used to be asked again and with a twist: “And Hell or Paradise?” Did not see… It doesn't mean they don't exist, it means I didn't see them.

Let's return to the article, or rather finish it. By the way, the story by V. Zazubrin “Sliver” that I read after clinical death left a serious imprint on my attitude to life in general. Maybe the story is depressing, too realistic and bloody, but that's exactly what it seemed to me: life is a sliver ...

But through all the revolutions, executions, wars, deaths, diseases, one could see what is eternal: soul. And it’s not scary to get into the next world, it’s scary to get there and not be able to change anything, while realizing that the test has not passed. But life is worth living, definitely, at least in order to pass exams ...

What are you living for?