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What Happens When We Die?: A Groundbreaking Study into the Nature of Life and Death | 
 enlarge | Author: Sam Parnia
Publisher: Hay House
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 156169
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1401907113
Dewey Decimal Number: 133.9013
EAN: 9781401907112
ASIN: 1401907113
Publication Date: February 1, 2007
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Product Description
Dr. Sam Parnia faces death every day. Through his work as a critical-care doctor in a hospital emergency room, he became very interested in some of his patients’ accounts of the experiences that they had while clinically dead. He started to collect these stories and read all the latest research on the subject, and then he decided to conduct his own experiments. That work has culminated in this extraordinary book, which picks up where Raymond Moody’s Life After Life left off. Written in a scientific, balanced, and engaging style, this is powerful and compelling reading.
This fascinating and controversial book will change the way you look at death and dying. . . .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Hope I wont have to read it again in my afterlife June 24, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The beginning is fine since he was telling the NDE experiences of patients who had cardiac arrest. After he ran of out experiences to talk about, he basically focused on his attempt of his first research, which he didn't explain any further, then jumped into his struggles to raise funds for more advanced studies, repeating again and again the same thing about how people's NDE experience transformed them.
 Guess what? Dr. Parnia doesn't know.... April 4, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This has to be one of the most diappointing books I have read on this subject. Basically, it is a bunch of theories by other researchers that are tossed around in a disorganized fashion (peppered by some anecdotal accounts from people who have experienced NDE's, which was somewhat interesting.) There wasn't even a study completed due to lack of funding, so nothing was ever examined. Very misleading and really a waste of time.
 Not the Promised End December 30, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have seldom been so disappointed with a book, which was good enough to read all the way through. Much of the text has as much to do with near death experiences as the ribbon and wrapping paper have to do with the present inside. Much of the discussion is about (1) the author's training to become, a physician from M.D. through residency and Ph.D. with various job descriptions of the entailed steps, (2) experimental design for probing near death experience (rather than research findings!, more on this in a moment), and (3) the mostly futile quest for funding for this research. This book has been published prematurely. The first half, for instance, describes the author's attempt to design an experiment to test the validity of out-of-body experiences associated with cardiac arrest. He and a crew of friends hang from the hospital ceiling message boards whose messages can only be ascertained by a perceiver looking on from above, i.e., floating above the resuscitation attempt on that person's body. But the author reports in the book not one instance of these "messages" being viewed or, for that matter, not viewed! It is as if the first half of the book is a detailed description of an experiment being set up whose findings were completely inconclusive. What bothers me most is the hybridizing in approach to subject: joining the narrative techniques of fiction (i.e., the creating of suspense about the outcome of the experiment) with the prose techniques appropriate for a scientific article in a technical journal (i.e., dispassionate reporting of inconclusive results).
But, in fact, the book is overall an account of a weird set of circumstances of which the author himself appears unaware. He set out to design an experiment to probe near-death and particularly out-of-body experiences. The experiment came to naught, but a nurse unwittingly disclosed what was going on with the experiment to another nurse, and word of the experiment went the rumor mill of the hospital and eventually leaked to the press who persuaded the public relations person at the hospital to induce the author to interview. The resultant media coverage then triggered people who had had the experiences to write to the author. Their accounts are in fact the most interesting material in the book. He quotes them, and their prose is much more textured and nuanced than the dispassionate narrative voice of the text. So it was the experiment gone bad--i.e., its design was supposed to be kept from the hospital staff so that they could not affect or influence the accounts of would-be "out-of-bodiers"--that turned up the best evidence for or, at least, best probing of the near-death experience. The author seems unaware of the irony that the flaw in the experimental design led to the best material he has to report in this book. It is almost of if the author's consciousness has yet to grow into consonance with his material.
Very misleading and disappointing ... December 18, 2006
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
The subtitle is "A Groundbreaking Study into the Nature of Life and Death". The only study in the book is hardly groundbreaking because it yielded no useful results due to insufficient data. The author even admitted that. Then the author talks about another study involving out-of-body experiences, but can't do it because he has no funding, and that's where the research ends. The book is padded with anecdotal accounts of NDEs that the author received in the mail. That's hardly very scientific. There are terse rehashes of other scientists' work, but again it reads like a way to pad the book because the author has nothing new to add. In two different places, the concept of correlation was mentioned, and it was butchered both times. Don't waste your money if you're interested in science.
 Death Is A Pleasant Experience October 30, 2006
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
Have you ever wondered what it is like to die? Have you ever wondered about "near death experiences" or "out of body experiences"? Then this is book is for you.
Sam Parnia, MD, PhD in "What Happens When We Die" covers the history of near-death experiences (NDEs), the results of studies to date on NDEs, conventional and non-conventional theories on what causes NDEs, and implications for future research of NDEs, including his own on-going scientific study.
Near-death experiences are characterized by:
1.An experience of peace, well-being, and an absence of pain.
2.A sense of detachment from the physical body, progressing to and out-of-body experience.
3.Entering darkness, a tunnel experience with panoramic memory, and a predominately positive effect.
4.An experience of light that is bright, warm, and attractive
5.Entering the light; meeting persons or figures
At present, NDEs, and whether they are real of not, depends on the social group that is asked. If we question those people who have had an NDE, they mostly believe that it is real experience, whereas if a group of skeptics is asked, they will say they are not. We do know that a near-death experience has a profoundly religious impact on those who experience it, and many of them perform altruistic acts afterward.
Parnia concludes that at the very least, the dying process is a pleasant experience for the majority. He also concludes that the mind and consciousness may exist separately from the brain and also, during, and at least for some time, after death. This connection or lack thereof has significant implications for ethics, theology, and philosophy.
My father had a NDE several years before he died. I have had a deep interest in this subject ever since. "What Happens When We Die" integrates medicine, science, and first person stories to provide the best overview of the subject to date.
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