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kiidqr · 4 months

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Blooming in the Sickness

Reader/Argenti, Argenti Honkai Star Rail, Angst, Character Death, First Post, Fanfiction, 1.3K Words, Honkai Star Rail, English.

Summary:

As the formidable knight of beauty he was, Argenti finds you lost in a place not deserving of such a pure soul as you. Which actively turns out to demonstrate that he has fallen for something more than solely your outside stunning beauty.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned...

...

Your face had been pale and sickly for some time now. Not wanting to burden your loved one, on deathbed you've decided to deliver one last rose to him.

Blooming in the Sickness

The interstellar winds whispered through the vast expanse of space as Argenti, the noble knight of the Knights of Beauty, traversed the cosmos on his solitary journey. His silver armour gleamed under the distant stars, a beacon of unwavering commitment to the Path of Beauty. Little did he know that his path was about to intersect with a fleeting moment of beauty that would change him forever.

You, an enigmatic traveller with a heart filled with grace and kindness, had been a silent companion to Argenti in his interstellar adventures. Your paths crossed on a desolate moon, and from that moment, a subtle connection began to blossom. Though you spoke little, your actions spoke volumes, and Argenti found solace in your company.

"As the stars above, you appeared in my solitude, a gentle whisper in the cosmic winds," Argenti mused one evening as you both gazed at the distant galaxies. "Why do you accompany me, traveller, on this lonesome journey?"

Your response was a soft smile, eyes reflecting the luminosity of distant constellations. "In the vastness of the cosmos, I saw a kindred spirit. A knight dedicated to beauty, yet burdened by the weight of solitude. I wished to share this journey with you, to bring warmth to the cold expanse."

As the days turned into weeks and weeks into months, a unique bond grew between Argenti and you. Nights were spent beneath the celestial canopy, sharing stories of distant realms and dreams that echoed in the cosmos. The silent moments spoke louder than any words could convey.

Argenti, usually reserved and composed, found himself opening up to you in ways he never imagined. "I never thought I would find a companion in this solitary pursuit," he confessed one evening as you both watched the stars. "Your presence brings a new light to my path."

You smiled, reaching out to gently touch his hand. "The beauty of the cosmos is best appreciated when shared, Argenti. We walk this path together, bound by the threads of fate and the love that silently grows between us."

One day, as you explored the vibrant gardens of a celestial haven, you discovered a rare celestial rose – a flower of unparalleled beauty, said to hold the essence of the cosmos itself. With a gentle touch, you plucked the rose, and in that moment, you decided to send it to Argenti along with a letter expressing your gratitude for the shared moments.

As the rose arrived at Argenti's side, its delicate petals whispered a tale of unspoken emotions. Argenti, curious and touched by the unexpected gift, carefully unfolded the letter. In the quiet solitude of his ship, he read your words, written with love and adorned with a poignant farewell.

"Dear Argenti,

In the tapestry of the cosmos, our paths converged like stars in the night sky. Your unwavering dedication to the Path of Beauty has illuminated my journey, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

As the celestial rose graces your presence, let it be a symbol of the beauty we found in the vastness of the cosmos. Our moments together were fleeting, yet they were the most cherished. Continue to walk your path with the same grace that guided us.”

"Do you remember the night we first spoke of our dreams, Argenti?" the letter continued. "I saw a galaxy in your eyes, and in that moment, I knew my heart had found its home. Though our time together is brief, the love that bloomed between us is eternal."

"As the final petals fall, know that my spirit will linger among the stars, and our love will endure in the cosmic winds.”

“I love you.”

Argenti's heart sank as the weight of your words settled upon him. He clutched the celestial rose close to his chest, feeling the fragility of life encapsulated in its petals. The realisation struck him like a celestial storm – the silent companion he had grown to cherish was slipping away, and he had been oblivious to your struggle.

A mix of emotions overwhelmed Argenti as he recalled the shared moments, the laughter, and the silent exchanges that spoke of a love that transcended the boundaries of time. He whispered your name into the cosmic winds, a prayer for your soul to find peace among the stars.

In the vastness of space, Argenti continued his journey, carrying the celestial rose as a poignant reminder of a beauty that once bloomed in the cosmos – a beauty that silently faded away, leaving only the echo of your unspoken farewell.

As the starlight dimmed and the galaxies continued their dance, Argenti vowed to honour the memory of the silent companion who had taught him that even in the cold expanse of space, love could be a beacon, guiding one's path with warmth and grace.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, yet Argenti's heart remained heavy with the weight of your absence. He found solace in retracing the paths you once walked together, visiting celestial havens where memories lingered like echoes of a distant melody.

One day, as he explored a crystalline asteroid belt, a beacon of ethereal light caught his attention. As he approached, he “saw” an imaginary projection of you, smiling amid the twinkling stars.

"Argenti," the image said, "Know that my essence lingers in the cosmic winds. Our love was a fleeting bloom, but its fragrance remains in the corners of the universe."

Argenti's eyes glistened with unshed tears as he listened to your words. "I never revealed the truth, for I wished to spare you the burden of my fate. The celestial rose was a token of the love we shared, a love that will endure beyond the boundaries of time."

The imaginary projection extended a hand, and a radiant rose materialised within it. "Take this, my love. Let it be a reminder that even in the vastness of the cosmos, our love transcends the limitations of mortal existence. Carry it with you, and may it bring you warmth on the coldest of nights."

The projected image faded, leaving Argenti standing alone amid the silent beauty of the asteroid belt. In his hands, he held the radiant rose, a symbol of love that reached beyond the boundaries of life and death.

As Argenti continued his journey through the cosmos, the celestial rose became a source of both sorrow and solace. Each petal held the essence of your love, a love that had blossomed like a silent bloom in the heart of the noble knight.

In the quiet moments of interstellar solitude, Argenti found himself whispering to the rose, sharing thoughts and dreams as if you were still by his side. The cosmic winds carried his words across the galaxies, a tribute to the silent companion who had left an indelible mark on the noble knight's heart.

The beauty of the cosmos unfolded before Argenti's eyes, a vast tapestry of stars, nebulas, and galaxies that seemed to dance in harmony with the celestial rose in his hands. Each celestial body became a reflection of the love that once flourished between two wandering souls.

One fateful day, as Argenti stood on the edge of a cosmic precipice, he felt a gentle breeze, a whisper in the cosmic winds that echoed with a familiar warmth. Closing his eyes, he imagined your presence, and in that moment, he knew that your love, like the celestial rose, had become a timeless beacon in the cosmic tapestry.

In the quiet vastness of space, Argenti continued his journey, carrying the celestial rose as a reminder that love once again, even in its silent bloom, could transcend the boundaries of time and space. As the stars above witnessed the noble knight's solitary voyage, they bore witness to a love that endured, a love that whispered through the cosmic winds, and a love that remained eternally engraved in the heart of Argenti.

#hsr argenti #argenti x reader #argenti honkai star rail #honkai star rail #fanfic #angst #character death #terminal illness #first fanfic #first post #1.3k words

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eaglyn · 8 months

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When it rains in Fontaine

tw death, angst, major character death

(Not proofread, also English isn't my first language, beware of potential spelling or grammar mistakes. I might also upload this to AO3)

It was raining again. Granted, it's only been raining for a few minutes, but before that it was bright and sunny outside. The weather patterns of Fontaine are something you never fully got used to, even after almost a year of living here. You sometimes wished to see Inazuma again, but a new law, the Sakoku decree had been issued since you were gone. Going back would be very difficult.

'Has it really been a year already?' This question crosses your mind quite often. Time seems to just fly by these days, each day passes quicker than the one before. You can feel it too, you are running out of time.

It was almost a year ago when you came to this new nation all the way from Inazuma, all of the hope drained out of your body after miraculously surviving exposure to the Tatarigami, but battling its lasting effects. Healers in Inazuma could do nothing to save you, so they sent you to Sumeru, then to Fontaine, and it seemed that this place could at least ease your suffering even if they couldn't heal you.

One year, they said. In one year, it would be determined whether you will be completely healed, or your body will give up the fight and succumb to this accursed illness. It's still hard to breathe sometimes, although you've realized that it's not because of your illness, rather because of that Chief Justice, who had managed to completely steal your heart in the span of the last over eleven months.

It's still hard to breathe sometimes, but only when he's around.

That reminded you, where exactly is he? You are sitting on a bench in the Court of Fontaine as rain is pouring down upon you, washing away your makeup and your conscience alike, as you realize you'd probably been staring into the distance, just reminiscing for at least half an hour. The clock was ticking, you looked at the watch on your wrist. For you, every second meant getting closer to that critical moment, the fact of which was eating away at your thoughts every day, but now you couldn't help but think about something else.

The clock was ticking for Neuvillette too. After all, he promised to meet you today, and he was running late. It wasn't like him at all, especially not since he knew all too well that he'd be playing with a dying girl's time.

You looked up at the rainy sky, and it all seemed so bittersweet. The rain was somehow different today. On one hand it seemed fresh, youthful, but it also seemed to carry a deep sorrow within.

Nobody else was out on the streets at this time. It was just you in the rain, waiting for the man you love to arrive.

Soon he did. You wanted to question him for making you wait out in the rain for so long, but as soon as you heard his smooth voice greet you, you immediately forgot any grudge you might've harbored against him.

"Greetings, Y/n. I apologize for making you wait so long."

"It's alright. I was enjoying the peace and quiet out here." You smiled at him, not even caring that you probably look like a drenched cat.

"You should've gone inside while you waited. I don't want you to get sick." He said, looking deep into your eyes, and suddenly it was hard to breathe once again.

"But I am already sick. A little cold would make no difference if I'm destined to die." The rain started pouring down heavier after you said that, while the man in front of you took his jacket off and put it over your shoulders. He had a sour expression on his face.

"Don't say that. Your doctor said there is a fifty-fifty chance." His hand lingered on your shoulder as he said that.

"Heh, doesn't feel like it to me..." you looked down at your hand, which was covered in purple spots, some bigger, some smaller, with some of then having wounds in the middle. "These have been spreading increasingly fast in the last few months. My hands are always shaking, I'm loosing my strength, and it's becoming more and more common that I just randomly collapse. I've tried being optimistic, but I see no chance of living."

The rain was pouring down mercilessly at this point. It was as if the skies were crying as you spoke.

"Every day I wake up with less energy than what I had the day before. I know I'm dying, Neuvillette, there is no fifty-fifty." You looked into his eyes to see tears pouring out of them. But he wasn't looking at you, instead he was looking down at the ground, trying to blink them away.

"Sorry. I said I wouldn't elaborately rant about my condition." You muttered.

"You don't need to apologize, Y/n. I just asked you that because I couldn't bear thinking about the fact that I will lose you. There are so many things I wanted to tell you, so many things I wanted to do with you..." He said, and somehow the short distance between the two of you felt like a thousand miles.

"What do you mean?" You stepped closer to him.

"My heart burns for you, Y/n. I am in love with you." He said, and even though you've been waiting to hear this statement for the longest time, you were frozen in place.

"It's alright if you don't reciprocate my feelings, I just had to get that off my chest." He looked away from you, but you reached after his hands, taking them in your own.

"I'm in love with you too, Neuvillette. I have been for a long time." You brushed a strand of hair out of his face before the both of you leaned in. The whole world seemed to pause for a moment when your lips finally touched, and you melted against each other. For a few moments it felt like there were no problems in the world, it was just you and him alone, stranded in your own paradise with no Tatarigami, no sickness and no rain.

When you two eventually pulled apart, Neuvillette just felt the urge to embrace you. He held you close as he buried his face in your neck, whispering into your ear.

"Then for the little time you have left, will you please be mine?" He placed a small kiss on your neck, sending shivers down your spine.

"For you, always." You squeezed him to the best of your abilities in regards to your lack of strength.

***

One week later, everything felt like a dream. In fact, you weren't even sure if anything was real anymore. It all felt like you were out of your body, and the scene you chose to look at was your newly-wed husband standing among a small crowd of familiar faces, and they were all gathered around a casket decorated with flowers.

A few hours later, it was only Neuvillette kneeling at a fresh gravestone, and looking at it, the name written on it was unmistakably yours.

It had never rained so hard before.

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #romance #neuvillette #neuvillete x reader #confessions #neuvillette x y/n #neuvillette x you #fontaine #fanfic #oneshot #terminal illness #reader insert #female reader #angst #hurt/comfort #major character death #sad ending #tw death

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whumpetywhump · 3 months

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Till The End Of The Moon - Ep. 25

#till the end of the moon #cdrama #poisoned #terminal illness #collapse #support #concern #passing out #tw death #deng wei #whump #cwhump #asian whump

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eileenguy · 9 months

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very important fundraiser for a very cool person whose life is really sucky right now. here is the instagram post.

TLDR (and also because it's very late at night and i am too tired to write image descriptions); Sanch (@/sleepysoyabean on ig) is an indigenous/Adivasi queer person from Assam, India who just got a breast cancer diagnosis and needs helps with their bills and expenses for the treatment, which includes a procedure called thoracentesis to remove fluid from their lungs, implementation of hormone blockers and the actual surgery plus chemo and radiation.

This fundraiser is being organised by their friend Rhea Mukherjee (@/rheealization on ig) and partner Ankur Gedam (@/da.lit.vegan on ig). The end goal to be met is about 5 lakh Indian Rupees, which is 6,071 usd. To make donations, please either scan the QR code provided, transfer directly to Ankur Rajesh Gedam on the UPI adress 8380032573@paytm, or DM either Rhea or Ankur on their Instagram handles.

Sanch has massively helped my understanding and learning of marxism, casteism, veganism and neglected sections of indian politics in general, and I'm sure she's helped with many other people's political awakenings and learnings as well. They have also been very helpful to lgbt+ Indians from abusive and queerphobic families and have organised fundraisers to provide housing, basic commodities, trans and queer-related healthcare to so many people. She really deserves as much help as she can get, and this is a very urgent and precarious situation. Even just 1 us dollar amounts to 82.36 Indian rupees in the current economy.

#muku.priv #trans #bisexual #queer #lgbtqia #lgbt #lgbtq #indian lgbt #northeast india #barbenheimer #cancer #terminal illness #nonbinary #non-binary

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alex-a-roman · 5 months

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Cancer

Will you wait until Christmas? I know your bones are brittle But please stay with me Until next year.

~ A. A. Roman

#writers #writerscreed #twcpoetry #poetry #poetry corner #poetry community #poems #cancer #terminal illness #aaroman #alex a roman

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sickficideas · 8 months

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gin with the sick akutagawa insight...this makes me sad 😭 he is so in denial

and bonus: (so true)

#nothing makes me sad more than the fact that she doesnt even know hes dying i pretend its not real #sickly akutagawa real and thats why i love him #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd #gin #akutagawa #higuchi #illness #sick #ill #flu #canon sickfic content #tachihara #forgot hes there too sorry king #chronic illness #terminal illness

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bloodpen-to-paper · 11 months

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After watching Jaiden's reaction to Bobby dying, I kind of see the whole thing as an accidental metaphor for terminal illness.

Bobby died and an appeal was sent, but until the verdict was made Roier and Jaiden were made to wait in this limbo state of not knowing whether or not Bobby was actually dead. Jaiden already started grieving, saying everything reminded her of Bobby and she didn't even know if he was dead or not.

Its very similar to being a parent of a terminally ill child isn't it? Your kid is on the verge of death, and you have no idea if things will get better. Especially if doctors and medical staff tell you that your kid doesn't have much time left. You're left to grieve and mourn them in the event that they are to die soon, while also having that spare bit of hope because they're not actually gone yet. Its all very confusing and painful, because you're not able to properly let go.

Then there's the after. The true death. Bobby was given those final ten minutes with his parents after the Federation confirmed that he was dead for real. Everyone who was on the server at that time came to say goodbye. They gave final words, reminisced, but most importantly, they celebrated. They celebrated Bobby. Because they knew he was dead for a while, even if it wasn't confirmed. They had prepared for the worst, and when the news finally hit they were ready to make one last event to finally send him off.

Something I learned about when I was looking into terminal illness was this area in the grieving process that I'm calling The Relief. Because again, as a parent in this situation, you've already prepared for the worst, you've already grieved, and the longer your sick child is alive and in pain the longer the grieving process goes on. When they die, there is much sadness, but many parents also feel this sort of relief because its finally over. The pain, the sadness, the being in the mindset of a parent whose child died without fully being able to let go because they're not actually dead yet. It all sort of washes away. There's a sense of peace that comes with the end to it all. And I think that's what we saw for Bobby.

Bobby was a celebration, because he lived a life to the fullest he could, and died as a sign of closure. He brought life everywhere he went, and died giving peace. And when its said and done, we live, and we remember him.

#i sure did think a thing didnt i?#anyway thought i'd share #cause it felt different from previous egg deaths and i wanted to know why #and this made me feel better about bobby #tw terminal illness #terminal illness #qsmp #qsmp analysis #qsmp bobby #jaiden animations #roier #see you around

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urlocalwhumper · 2 months

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been thinking about delayed grief responses.

like - after a long fight with illness, whumpee dies in the hospital, with caretaker by their side.

and honestly? at least in the moment, caretaker feels more relief than anything. this was inevitable, and they'd been watching whumpee suffer for so long, but now they'll never suffer again. they can rest now.

it isn't until days or even weeks later that the loss really sets in. caretaker finds whumpee's belongings gathering dust because whumpee isn't there to use them, whumpee's clothes sitting untouched in the closet because whumpee isn't there to wear them. only then do they really realize that whumpee hasn't just stepped out for a while, they're gone.

#whump #whump prompts #character death #dead whumpee #terminal illness #grief #emotional whump #mine

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bringthekaos · 1 month

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On a more serious note i remember taking a screenshot of each time Viktor is like. *Looking* at the Hexcore and. Man. Stop looking at it as if its your wife or like your drug. Its scary. Please return to being normal. I can’t believe Jayce never noticed how concerning it was

I truly believe, had he not been forced into politics against his will, and was spending his usual amount of time in the lab, Jayce would have noticed. I feel like the “are you sure this is safe” line was even hinting at his worry about the risks Viktor was taking with the Hexcore.

I also think that whatever this influence is that the Hexcore is exuding onto Viktor (whether it’s the Void or not)… it’s sentient. It knows it needs to keep itself secret if it wants to continue to put its feelers in Viktor’s psyche, and as such, I feel like it started to manipulate Viktor’s behavior. Viktor already had a tendency to pull away from people when he was struggling (“he disappeared. He does that sometimes”), so it wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch for this habit to get worse without people around him noticing (especially in the wake of his terminal diagnosis—everyone has a different reaction to a terminal diagnosis, and sometimes solitude is one of them. Jayce may have wanted to respect that. And that’s a slippery slope, with no right answer—do you force yourself into someone’s personal life when they don’t want you there? Do you leave them alone, even when it’s clear they’re hurting and could use the support? I can understand how they end up in a sort of stalemate, because everyone is afraid of encroaching on boundaries.)

But the sad truth is that Viktor’s desperation to save himself is what drove him to these extreme measures, and even without the Hexcore’s influence, that desperation would still be there. The Hexcore was his hope, and I understand how hope—even when flawed—can be addicting. At that point, there would have been no going back to “being normal,” because either way he’d suffer. He truly is backed into a corner, and the inevitable snarling, gnashing, lashing-out rage at the injustice is yet to come, I think.

#arcane #arcane viktor #Viktor arcane #terminal illness #terminal illness mention #TW: terminal illness #sad thinking about Viktor hours on this Sunday morning #let it be known: idc what atrocities he commits #number one Viktor apologist right here #asks #ace answers

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thebardostate · 4 months

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Is the Brain a Driver or a Steering Wheel?

This three part series summarizes what science knows, or thinks it knows, about consciousness. In Part 1 What Does Quantum Physics Imply About Consciousness? we looked at why several giants in quantum physics - Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Von Neumann and others - believed consciousness is fundamental to reality. In Part 2 Where Does Consciousness Come From? we learned the "dirty little secret" of neuroscience: it still hasn't got a clue how electrical activity in the brain results in consciousness.

In this concluding part of the series we will look at how a person can have a vivid conscious experience even when their brain is highly dysfunctional. These medically documented oddities challenge the materialist view that the brain produces consciousness.

Before proceeding, let's be clear what what is meant by "consciousness". For brevity, we'll keep things simple. One way of looking at consciousness is from the perspective of an outside observer (e.g., "conscious organisms use their senses to notice differences in their environment and act on their goals.") This outside-looking-in view is called behavioral consciousness (aka psychological consciousness). The other way of looking at it is the familiar first-person perspective of what it feels like to exist; this inside-looking-out view is called phenomenal consciousness (Barušs, 2023). This series is only discussing phenomenal consciousness.

Ready? Let’s go!

Source: Caltech Brain Imaging Center

A Hole in the Head

Epilepsy is a terrible disease in which electrical storms in the brain trigger seizures. For some people these seizures are so prolonged and frequent that drastic action is needed to save their lives. One such procedure is called a hemispherectomy, the removal or disconnection of half the brain. Above is an MRI image of a child who has undergone the procedure.

You might think that such radical surgery would profoundly alter the memory, personality, and cognitive abilities of the patient.

You would be wrong. One child who underwent the procedure at age 5 went on to attend college and graduate school, demonstrating above average intelligence and language abilities despite removal of the left hemisphere (the zone of the brain typically identified with language.) A study of 58 children from 1968 to 1996 found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality or humor, and minimal changes in cognitive function after hemispherectomy.

You might think that, at best, only a child could successfully undergo this procedure. Surely such surgery would kill an adult?

You would be wrong again. Consider the case of Ahad Israfil, an adult who suffered an accidental gunshot to the head and successfully underwent the procedure to remove his right cerebral hemisphere. Amazingly, after the five hour operation he tried to speak and went on to regain a large measure of functionality (although he did require use of a wheelchair afterwards.)

Another radical epilepsy procedure, a corpus collosotomy, leaves the hemispheres intact but severs the connections between them. For decades it was believed that these split-brain patients developed divided consciousness, but more recent research disputes this notion. Researchers found that, despite physically blocking all neuronal communication between the two hemispheres, the brain somehow still maintains a single unified consciousness. How it manages this feat remains a complete mystery. Recent research on how psychedelic drugs affect the brain hints that the brain might have methods other than biochemical agents for internal communication, although as yet we haven't an inkling as to what those might be.

So what's the smallest scrape of brain you need to live? Consider the case of a 44-year-old white collar worker, married with two children and with an IQ of 75. Two weeks after noticing some mild weakness in one leg the man went to see his doctor. The doc ordered a routine MRI scan of the man's cranium, and this is what it showed.

Source: The Lancet

What you are seeing here is a giant empty cavity where most of the patient's brain should be. Fully three quarters of his brain volume is missing, most likely due to a bout of hydrocephalus he experienced when he was six months old.

Last Words

Many unusual phenomena have been observed as life draws to an end. We're going to look at two deathbed anomalies that have neurological implications.

The first is terminal lucidity, sometimes called paradoxical lucidity. First studied in 2009, terminal lucidity refers to the spontaneous return of lucid communication in patients who were no longer thought to be medically capable of normal verbal communication due to irreversible neurological deterioration (e.g., Alzheimers, meningitis, Parkinson's, strokes.) Here are three examples:

A 78-year-old woman, left severely disabled and unable to speak by a stroke, spoke coherently for the first time in two years by asking her daughter and caregiver to take her home. She died later that evening.

A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name. She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time.

A young man suffering from AIDS-related dementia and blinded by the disease who regained both his lucidity and apparently his eyesight as well to say farewell to his boyfriend and caregiver the day before his death.

Terminal lucidity has been reported for centuries. A historical review found 83 case reports spanning the past 250 years. It was much more commonly reported in the 19th Century (as a sign that death was near, not as a phenomenon in its own right) before the materialist bias in the medical profession caused a chilling effect during the 20th Century. Only during the past 15 years has any systematic effort been made to study this medical anomaly. As a data point on its possible prevalence a survey of 45 Canadian palliative caregivers found that 33% of them had witnessed at least one case of terminal lucidity within the past year. Other surveys found have that the rate of prevalence is higher if measured over a longer time window than one year, suggesting that, while uncommon, terminal lucidity isn't particularly rare.

Terminal lucidity is difficult to study, in part because of ethical challenges in obtaining consent from neurocompromised individuals, and in part because its recent identification as a research topic presents delineation problems. However, the promise of identifying new neurological pathways in the brains of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients has gotten a lot of attention. In 2018 the US National Institute on Aging (NIA) announced two funding opportunites to advance this nascent science.

Due to the newness of this topic there will continue be challenges with the data for some time to come. However, its impact on eyewitnesses is indisputably profound.

Near Death Experiences

The second deathbed anomaly we will take a look at are Near-Death Experiences (NDEs.) These are extraordinary and deeply personal psychological experiences that typically (but not always) occur during life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, falls, automobile accidents, or other traumatic events; they are also occasionally reported during general anesthesia. Much of the research in this area has focused on cardiac arrest cases because these patients are unconscious and have little to no EEG brain wave activity, making it difficult to account for how the brain could sustain the electrical activity needed to perceive and remember the NDE. This makes NDEs an important edge case for consciousness science.

NDEs are surprisingly common. A 2011 study published by the New York Academy of Sciences estimated that over 9 million people in the United States have experienced an NDE. Multiple studies have found that around 17% of cardiac arrest survivors report an NDE.

There is a remarkable consistency across NDE cases, with experiencers typically reporting one or more of the following:

The sensation of floating above their bodies watching resuscitation efforts, sometimes able to recall details of medical procedures and ER/hallway conversations they should not have been aware of;

Heightened sensations, occasionally including the ability of blind and deaf people to see and hear;

Extremely rapid mental processing;

The perception of passing through something like a tunnel;

A hyper-vivid life review, described by many experiencers as "more real than real";

Transcendent visions of an afterlife;

Encounters with deceased loved ones, sometimes including people the experiencer didn’t know were dead; and

Encounters with spiritual entities, sometimes in contradiction to their personal belief systems.

Of particular interest is a type of NDE called a veridical NDE. These are NDEs in which the experiencer describes events that occurred during the period when they had minimal or no brain activity and should not have been perceived or remembered if the brain were the source of phenomenal consciousness. These represent about 48% of all NDE accounts (Greyson 2010). Here are a few first-hand NDE reports.

A 62-year-old aircraft mechanic during a cardiac arrest (from Sabom 1982, pp. 35, 37)

A 23-year-old crash-rescue firefighter in the USAF caught by a powerful explosion from a crashed B-52 (from Greyson 2021, pg. 27-29)

An 18-year-old boy describes what it was like to nearly drown (from the IANDS website)

There are thousands more first person NDE accounts published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies and at the NDE Research Foundation. The reason so many NDE accounts exist is because the experience is so profound that survivors often feel compelled to write as a coping method. Multiple studies have found that NDEs are more often than not life-changing events.

A full discussion of NDEs is beyond the scope of this post. For a good general introduction, I highly recommend After: What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond by Bruce Greyson, MD (2021).

The Materialist Response

Materialists have offered up a number of psychological and physiological models for NDEs, but none of them fits all the data. These include:

People's overactive imaginations. Sabom (1982) was a skeptical cardiologist who set out to prove this hypothesis by asking cardiac arrest survivors who did not experience NDEs to imagine how the resuscitation process worked, then comparing those accounts with the veridical NDE accounts. He found that the veridical NDE accounts were highly accurate (0% errors), whereas 87% of the imagined resuscitation procedures contained at least one major error. Sabom became convinced that NDEs are real. His findings were replicated by Holden and Joesten (1990) and Sartori (2008) who reviewed veridical NDE accounts in hospital settings (n = 93) and found them to be 92% completely accurate, 6% partially accurate, and 1% completely inaccurate.

NDEs are just hallucinations or seizures. The problem here is that hallucinations and seizures are phenomena with well-defined clinical features that do not match those of NDEs. Hallucinations are not accurate descriptions of verifiable events, but veridical NDEs are.

NDEs are the result of electrical activity in the dying brain. The EEGs of experiencers in cardiac arrest show that no well-defined electrical activity was occurring that could have supported the formation or retention of memories during the NDE. These people were unconscious and should not have remembered anything.

NDEs are the product of dream-like or REM activity. Problem: many NDEs occur under general anesthesia, which suppresses dreams and REM activity. So this explanation cannot be correct.

NDEs result from decreased oxygen levels in the brain. Two problems here: 1) The medical effects of oxygen deprivation are well known, and they do not match the clinical presentation of NDEs. 2) The oxygen levels of people in NDEs (e.g., during general anesthesia) has been shown to be the same or greater than people who didn’t experience NDEs.

NDEs are the side effects of medications or chemicals produced in the brain (e.g. ketamine or DMT). The problem here is that people who are given medications in hospital settings tend to report fewer NDEs, not more; and drugs like ketamine have known effects that are not observed in NDEs. The leading advocate for the ketamine model conceded after years of research that ketamine does not produce NDEs (Corraza and Schifano, 2010).

Summing Up

In coming to the end of this series, let's sum up what we discussed.

Consciousness might be wired into the physical universe at fundamental level, as an integral part of quantum mechanics. Certainly several leading figures in physics thought so - Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Von Neumann, and more recently Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose and Henry Stapp.

Materialist propaganda notwithstanding, neuroscience is no closer to identifying Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCCs) than it was when it started. The source of consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries in science.

Meanwhile, medical evidence continues to pile up that there is something deeply amiss with the materialist belief that consciousness is produced by the brain. In a sense, the challenge that NDEs and Terminal Lucidity pose to consciousness science is analogous to the challenge that Dark Matter poses to physics, in that they suggest that the mind-brain identity model of classic materialist psychology may need to be rethought to adequately explain these phenomena.

Ever since the Greeks, science has sought to explain nature entirely in physical terms, without invoking theism. It has been spectacularly successful - particularly in the physical sciences - but at the cost of excluding consciousness along with the gods (Nagel, 2012). What I have tried to do in this series is to show that a very credible argument can be made that materialism has the arrow of causality backwards: the brain is not the driver of consciousness, it's the steering wheel.

I don't think we are yet ready to say what consciousness is. Much more research is needed. I'm not making the case for panpsychism, for instance - but I do think consciousness researchers need to throw off the assumption drag of materialism before they're going to make any real progress.

It will be up to you, the scientists of tomorrow, to make those discoveries. That's why I'm posting this to Tumblr rather than an academic journal; young people need to hear what's being discovered, and the opportunities that these discoveries represent for up and coming scientists.

Never has Planck's Principle been more apt: science advances one funeral at a time.

Good luck.

For Further Reading

Barušs, Imants & Mossbridge, Julia (2017). Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.

Barušs, Imants (2023). Death as an Altered State of Consciousness: A Scientific Approach. American Psychological Association, Washington DC.

Batthyány, Alexander (2023). Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death. St. Martin's Essentials, New York.

Becker, Carl B. (1993). Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death. State University of New York Press, Albany NY.

Greyson, Bruce (2021). After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond. St. Martin's Essentials, New York.

Kelly, Edward F.; Kelly, Emily Williams; Crabtree, Adam; Gauld, Alan; Grosso, Michael; & Greyson, Bruce (2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Rowman & Littlefield, New York.

Moody, Raymond (1975). Life After Life. Bantam/Mockingbird, Covington GA.

Moreira-Almeida, Alexander; de Abreu Costa, Marianna; & Coelho, Humberto S. (2022). Science of Life After Death. Springer Briefs in Psychology, Cham Switzerland.

Penfield, Wilder (1975). Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. Princeton Legacy Library, Princeton NJ.

Sabom, Michael (1982). Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. Harper and Row Publishers, New York.

van Lommel, Pim (2010). Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. HarperCollins, New York.

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