How much does the human soul weigh scientific fact: evidence of the existence of a spiritual body. Is it true that a person's weight decreases at the moment of death? Can this be considered proof of the existence of the soul? How much does a soul weigh?

While some scientists deny the existence of the soul, others manage to weigh it... Does a person have a soul and is it capable of living after his death! This question is causing many pundits to think twice now.

PEOPLE WHO VISITED THE “TUNNEL”

When many of us first read Dr. Raymond Moody's book Life After Life, subtitled "An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of the Continuation of Life After the Death of the Body," we experienced a certain amount of shock. This book definitely said that after the death of the physical body, our “I” continues to live. However, we were not the only ones who were shocked by this book; it was not for nothing that it became a world bestseller in a matter of days.

Dr. Moody managed to collect stories from more than 150 people who experienced clinical death. Regardless of age, nationality, level of education and gender, they all told almost the same thing. Finding themselves in a state of clinical death, they saw their body from the side (usually from above), and watched the attempts of doctors and nurses to bring them back to life. They all passed through a tunnel, at the end of which there was light, met their deceased relatives, friends, and experienced a feeling of unusual peace, tranquility and happiness. Not only Moody, but also other doctors managed to collect similar data. For example, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, after interacting with thousands of seriously ill and dying patients, firmly believed in the existence of life after death.

LET'S GIVE THE WORD TO THE SKEPTICS

It can be said that after the publication of Raymond Moody’s book, the scientific community was divided into two camps: some without any doubt denied all the conclusions and assumptions of the author, while others were not so categorical. Skeptics immediately proposed several hypotheses that, in their opinion, explained all the visions and sensations of people during clinical death.

The first assumption was that all these strange memories of near-death experiences were caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain. The second hypothesis linked everything to damage to certain areas of the brain responsible for emotions due to cardiac arrest. It has also been suggested that some of the mysterious sensations could be caused by certain types of anesthetics, some of which have quite strong effects on the human brain.

According to the Daily Mail, British scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh came to the conclusion that everything can be explained by hallucinations generated by dying brain cells. For example, Dr. Carolyn Wett explains that the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel phenomenon occurs due to the death of brain cells responsible for processing visual information about light from the eyes.

Even the feelings of peace and love characteristic of the state of clinical death were explained by scientists simply as the influence of the hormone norepinephrine, produced at moments when a person suffers from severe stress or trauma. Scientists explained the illusion of the soul leaving the body by changes in the brain and failure of nerve signals.

DEATH OF THE BODY IS NOT THE END YET

Are the skeptics right and there is no other evidence to support the existence of life after death? Some scientists
tried to find them from mediums who have long been known for their ability to communicate with the souls of the dead. Among the mediums, of course, there were many individuals who did not inspire much trust, but there were also real unique ones. For example, the messages received by Leonora Piper sometimes contained details that she could only learn about from the dead. Piper's more than 30-year collaboration with scientists has given no reason to doubt her gift.

Some researchers believe that various signals coming from the other world, which are recorded using electronics, can be used as evidence. For example, in 1992 in Dusseldorf () at the international congress on the topic “Life after death”, reports were made on communication with the other world using electronic devices.

This is how messages from the dead arrived on computers, anomalous images appeared on TV screens when recording from a non-working TV channel, when there was only noise on the screen. It was possible to record otherworldly voices using tape recorders. They even began to talk about the phenomenon of electronic voices.

Some facts established from descriptions of what patients saw during clinical death can also serve as evidence of life after death. First, many of them spoke clearly about what happened during their “blackout” in the operating room; secondly, the souls of some of them managed to visit their relatives, and the descriptions of what their loved ones were doing at that time coincided in detail with reality. The latter cannot be explained in any way by the fantasies of a dying brain. It is worth noting that people who were blind from birth seemed to gain sight during clinical death and then described everything they saw around them.

WEIGHT OF THE SOUL

But American scientists have proven that the soul has weight. To do this, they placed beds with dying people on ultra-precise scales. When a person died, he became 2-6 grams lighter. Similar experiments were carried out in various countries, and each time it turned out that at the moment of death something quite significant is separated from a person.

Since time immemorial, man has been concerned with the question of the existence of the soul (the ephemeral component of human consciousness, his Self). Many are still trying to resolve the issue - these are all fictions and superstitions, and the soul as an astral body does not exist. However, if it exists, how much does it weigh and where is it located? Some people are interested in this from the point of view of selling their souls to the devil, while others, on the contrary, are concerned about how best to preserve the purity of their souls.

The first attempts by scientific researchers to clarify the question of whether a person has a soul can be attributed to Dr. Duncan McDougall from Haverhill (Massachusetts). Dr. McDougall published his own research conducted in the clinic on the pages of the journal American Medicine in 1907.

In 1906, becoming interested in the question of the existence of the inner “essence” of a person, the doctor decided to estimate the weight of the soul. He suggested that once per second of death the soul leaves the physical shell, then perhaps the mass of a person at that moment may decrease. And accordingly, by the difference in weight before and after death, the weight of the soul can be determined.

In preparation for the study, Duncan McDougall built a special bed in the ward of the hospital. The deathbed was a scale with a measurement accuracy of several grams. On this bed Dr. McDougall laid patients in a state of death. For the most part, these were people stricken with tuberculosis, whose last hours of life were spent in immobility. It was the quiet fading of the dying person that was the most important part of the study, so that the scales did not swing and gave the necessary accuracy to the experimenter.

During the experiment, the scales were set to zero and the research assistants monitored changes in the mass of the lying person every minute. Based on the results of multiple experiments, the researcher came to a stunning conclusion: the average weight of the human soul is about 22 grams! It is by this mass that at the moment of a person’s death that the body becomes lighter. This strange weight loss of 22 grams at the moment of death indicates that the soul has left the physical body.

For some time, interest in “soul searching” subsided. However, in the middle of the last century, Doctor of Natural Sciences Eugenius Kugis from the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences returns to this problem and conducts a series of studies. Actually, they are similar to the previous researcher, except that the technique used was more advanced. As a result of the research, the scientist identifies the main thing immediately after death, the human body loses weight from 3 to 7 grams. As the scientist suggested, this is probably the mass of the soul! Since it is impossible to explain this by some natural processes occurring in the deceased body.

Yes, Soviet scientists also tried to examine and weigh the soul. And moreover, they were able not only to determine the weight of the soul, but even to consider what it is like outside the physical carrier! The intriguing area of ​​our body was studied at the VNIIRP named after. Popov, where a special laboratory was created under the leadership of Professor Vitaly Khromov. True, the scientists’ research was not published in scientific journals of the USSR, so there is no need to talk about the reliability of the results... - but nevertheless, it is interesting.

Neurophysiologist Oleg Bekhmetyev conducted research into the nature of the soul, conducting a series of experiments. And according to the neurophysiologist, what we call the soul is the radiation of every cell of our body, without exception. The further work of the scientists at the special laboratory appears to be quite fantastic. By recording the emission of a certain radiation emanating at the moment of death, the researchers managed to sum up the rays and present the mysterious phenomenon on a computer model (90s)! This is something amazing and even frightening - the rays escaping from the body are consolidated into something single, which can be identified as a newborn! It’s as if a new life is being born, but on some other level.

The human soul, where is it located?

German psychologists asked this question to children aged 7 to 17 years. When asked by researchers where a person’s soul might be located, older people answered “everywhere.” The middle ones decided that the soul is in the head. But the younger children chose the heart as the abode of the soul. And it must be said that the children’s assumption that the soul is written in the heart is not so unfounded.

Thus, psychologist Paul Piersell from the American city of Detroit had conversations with hundreds of patients who had undergone a donor heart transplant. And according to the conclusions of a psychologist, set out in the book “The Heart Code”, the heart is not only an organ for pumping blood. Surprisingly, all the feelings and thoughts we experience, all experiences, emotions and habits are “encoded” in the cells of our heart, that is, everything that makes up our own “I”. And as a result of a heart transplant, the new owner of the heart receives the habits and feelings of the previous owner, his thoughts, and most likely his soul too. And what is extremely surprising is that a kind of “rewriting” of a person’s personality occurs. His psychophysical matrix is ​​changing.

— A 40-year-old man received a donor heart from a 19-year-old girl who died in a train accident. After the operation, the man, who was known as a slow bumpkin, unexpectedly turned into an active person with a great interest in life.

— New York resident Sylvia Claire, at the age of 50, as a result of replacing her “engine,” acquired habits that were previously unusual for her. When the dance lesson teacher came to her senses after the operation, unexpectedly even for herself, she wanted beer and fried chicken legs, which the woman had never consumed before. Over time, she began to develop other previously unnoticed habits. As it turned out, the teacher received the donor heart from a young 18-year-old man (who died in a car accident) who was a lover of beer and fried chicken legs, and also loved to smoke.

The soul is a substance independent of the body.

As the study of cases of clinical death (cardiac arrest) has shown, the soul can exist separately from the physical body. This is confirmed by the words of people who experienced clinical death. They talk about a state of absolute peace, about the roads they saw to other dimensions, about how they communicated with deceased relatives - and all this happened while the brain was not working. Moreover, some of the patients believed that they stayed in the “other dimension” for about a week, although in the real world seconds passed.

It is impossible to explain this phenomenon, except perhaps through visions of a brain fading away without oxygen, scientists believe. Or recognize the fact that the soul is not attached to the physical body and can live separately, while maintaining the personality and individuality of a person. What gives rise to the deeper question of the soul living forever?

The life of the soul after the death of the body.

The debate about whether life continues after death or whether it is fiction was in some way cleared up by the American scientist Robert Lantz (professor at the Medical University of North Carolina). If you don’t delve into the theory of biocentrism and quantum physics, then in simple words the scientist’s conclusion sounds simple - there is no death as such! We are accustomed to believe that the basis of life is the activity of carbons and molecules, and as long as this formula works, we live. But this is not a completely appropriate definition, explains Professor Lanz. In addition to the physical body, a person has a certain energetic essence - let’s call it a soul.

Everyone decides for themselves whether to believe or not to believe in assumptions about the immortality of the soul and life in the astral world. But there is a reason to think about the safety and purity of your soul. It may be that life on Earth is the threshold of something greater, the same origin of life in another world. But having marred your soul with sins or sold it to the devil, you can be born in a new world... albeit stillborn.

The weight of the human body (if measured accurately) is generally quite flexible. It can change both up and down, depending on whether a person has eaten, exercised, or gone to the toilet. I don’t have any numbers on hand (and hardly anyone has received them), but it is quite possible to assume that the fluctuations may well be within 0.5 kg around the “equilibrium point”.

Now about those same “21st grams” that are so firmly entrenched in people’s heads.

The fact is that this study was carried out quite a long time ago, already in 1907, by a certain American physician named Duncan McDougall. The technology of those times hardly made it possible to measure the mass of the human body with such accuracy (the greater the mass of an object, the more difficult it is to measure it with high accuracy - such is the specificity of scales) - so a change in body mass by 21 grams means absolutely nothing, since the experimenter could well to obtain that body weight after death increased, say, by 50 grams. Simply because the measurement error is high. In addition, McDougall did not shy away from outright falsification of statistics, stating that he obtained such a result for a sample of 6 people, although in fact he received such a result for only one: two other results were not recorded due to problems, one lost 10 grams, two others initially lost weight but then regained it. And finally, the methodology of the experiment itself does not stand up to criticism. For example, it is not clear what kind of death the mass was measured in relation to: clinical, biological, brain death?

Modern medicine attributes weight loss at the time of death to two factors:

1. Due to respiratory arrest, the blood temperature begins to rise rapidly in the first moments after death. This leads to some sweating due to which body weight is lost.
2. Again, due to the cessation of breathing in the body, most bioreactions stop and the cells desperately “finish” everything that they have accumulated in the hope of extending their life a little.

Thus, we can conclude that, firstly, there is no reliable evidence that body weight decreases after death (although this can be assumed). It is unlikely that anyone will study this issue, since, on the one hand, it contradicts ethics, and on the other hand, it is rare that a patient lies motionless when dying - and this is a necessary condition for measuring mass. Secondly, even if body weight decreases after death, there is a scientific explanation for this. So, even if there is evidence of the existence of the soul, then a decrease in body weight after death is definitely not it.

What do we know about soul? Until recently, during the times of atheism, it was believed that such a concept simply did not exist. Years passed, and some researchers came to the conclusion that the soul is a kind of immaterial substance that contains the ability of a living being to think and feel.

But since the end of the 20th century, experiments have been carried out in different countries of the world, thanks to which we can conclude: the soul not only exists, it has a number of physical features reminiscent of the properties of thermal radiation or an electromagnetic field. And this means, according to the law of conservation of energy, after the death of the physical body it does not disappear without a trace, but only passes into a different state.

How much does the astral body weigh?

When talking about the soul (it is also called the astral body), I would like to get an answer to one main and two secondary questions. The main thing is does it exist at all? And if so, where is it located and where does it move after the physical death of the organism?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the American physician Duncan McDougall conducted a series of experiments, determining the weight of patients before and after death. The dying man's bed was a large scale. McDougall noticed that at the moment of death, their needle immediately deviated in the direction of decreasing readings.

In total, with the consent of the patients' relatives, six measurements were made. The average weight loss in dying people was three quarters of an ounce (21.26 grams).

Using this device, doctor Duncan McDougall determined the weight of patients before and after death

In 1988, McDougall's experiment was repeated by scientists from Germany, and a little later - from the USA. More than 200 patients were studied. All experienced weight loss immediately after death, although more accurate equipment determined it at a level of 2.5 to 6.5 grams.

Swiss scientists have suggested that the soul can leave the body not only after death, but also in a dream. The subjects slept on ultra-sensitive bed scales for several days.

The results were the same: at some point, corresponding to the deep sleep phase, the weight of each volunteer decreased by 4-6 grams, and after waking up it became the same.

Similar experiments were carried out in Russia - on laboratory animals. A group of researchers led by Mstislav Miroshnikov conducted experiments with mice. The animal was placed in a sealed glass vessel placed on an electronic scale. A few minutes later the rodents died from suffocation. And their weight immediately decreased!

All these experiments clearly showed: firstly, the soul exists, secondly, it exists not only in humans, but also in other living organisms, and thirdly, it has some physical characteristics. After all, if it can be weighed, then why can’t it be seen or at least photographed?

Why does the clock stop?

In other words, is it possible to use not only scales, but also other instruments to prove the existence of the soul?

The French doctor Hippolyte Baraduc photographed the bodies of dying people - and in the photographs at the moment of death a small translucent cloud was visible above the body.

Doctors in St. Petersburg used infrared vision devices for the same purpose, which recorded how a foggy object separated from the body and blurred into the surrounding space.

American psychologist Charles Tart placed working, but not connected to anything, recorders and oscilloscopes in the wards of dying people. A few moments after death, the instruments recorded bursts of changes in the electromagnetic field. Could this be a consequence of the fact that the soul, leaving the physical body, somehow affects the surrounding space?

Dr. Melvin Morse from Delaware studied patients with drug-induced hallucinations and found out an interesting fact: a quarter of them experienced the fact that their watches suddenly stopped at a moment when the person was in a state that could be called borderline between life and death.

This correlates with the well-known sign that watches often stop the minute their owner passes away. That is, when the soul temporarily or permanently separates from the body, it emits some kind of energy similar to electromagnetic energy?

Through a tunnel thousands of kilometers away

This conclusion is confirmed by many studies of patients who experienced clinical death. Back in the 1970s, American psychologist Raymond Moody analyzed the feelings of patients who had been beyond the death line after breathing and circulation had ceased - and who managed to return to life. And at the beginning of the 21st century, similar studies were carried out at the London Institute of Psychiatry.

The research results look sensational: it turned out that human consciousness is not directly dependent on the functions of the brain and exists even when the physical processes in it have stopped!

The connected devices almost always showed the same thing. First, a powerful surge of electrical activity in the brain was recorded. Scientists explain it by saying that all neurons are connected into a single chain - and after death it is discharged. Then the brain activity stops, no instruments can register it.

But at the same time, all those who returned from a state of clinical death talk about the visions and sensations that they experienced. The most common of these is passing or flying through a dark tunnel towards the light.

Also, many patients told about other visions - in particular, about what was happening at that time thousands of kilometers from the place of clinical death. And these stories turned out to be true!

It is not yet possible to explain such phenomena. But one conclusion is obvious: our consciousness can exist outside the body and brain! Let it be short-term and not in full, but it can!

Shifting Consciousness

The ability of the soul to leave the physical body for a while is usually attributed to yogis or shamans, who, falling into a trance, seem to be transported to another time and place.

In Russia, scientists from the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences conducted a series of experiments when a person was put into a hypnotic trance and given the task of visiting another point in space. At the same time, in an apartment in another city, where the soul was supposed to “flight”, special equipment was installed to fix it.

The results of the experiments confirmed that the soul can indeed travel: information about an apartment where a person had never been before was distinguished by detailed reliability, and the instruments installed in it noted bursts of some electromagnetic activity.

Professor Leonid Spivak and a group of employees from the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences found that about 8% of women in labor experience such a “flight” of the soul. This happens because childbirth, especially difficult ones, is accompanied by great physical stress and pain, which can switch consciousness, sending it somewhere else. Women in labor, talking about such trips, also provide reliable facts or details that they did not know about before.

Where does the soul live?

All of the above facts indicate that the soul really exists. But where is it? Which of the vital human organs is it most closely related to?

Here scientists have not yet come to a consensus. Some of them, for example, the famous psychiatrist Paul Pearsell from Detroit, believe that the soul is located in the heart, in the cells of which all the information about our thoughts and feelings is encoded - and as proof cite numerous cases of dramatic changes in the character of people who received this transplant. organ.

Other experts say that the soul is in the head - based on the fact that it is around it that a certain energy aura can be observed with the help of special equipment.

But most researchers are inclined to think that the seat of the soul is the organism as a whole, that is, its entire cellular structure. And at the same time, the soul of each person is a piece of a huge common biofield that exists in the Universe.

“The Hindus invented a good religion...”

Where does the soul go after the death of the physical body? Almost all experts believe that death is not the disappearance of a person, but only its transition to a different qualitative state. True, many see the further existence of the soul in their own way.

Someone says that it remains to live as a small part of the general information biofield of the Universe. And in this case, the bright white light at the end of the tunnel, which was observed by those who experienced clinical death, is precisely the designation of the moment of such a transition. In other words: after death, the soul enters some other world, the laws of which we do not yet know and which, most likely, is not material.

Other researchers believe that the astral bodies of the dead pass to newborns. According to Indian beliefs, the soul can transmigrate from five to 50 times. This is confirmed by a number of interesting facts when people suddenly acquire the ability to speak a foreign language or remember details of events from the distant past.

For example, a housewife from London, Rosemary Brown, suddenly began to have visions of the long-dead great composers Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven visiting her. Under their dictation, she recorded about 400 completed musical works.

The sheet music was later examined by reputable contemporary musicians, who concluded that many of them were identical to the author's handwritten copies, and some were original - but reflected in great detail the musical style of each composer!

Research on the soul does not yet provide clear answers to the questions of where exactly it is located and what happens to it after the death of the physical body. But on the main point, many experts are already unanimous: it exists, which means it can and should be studied.

Plato VIKTOROV

Today there are several scientific assumptions about the weight of the human soul.

●B 1915 American doctor McDougal in the Adventist magazine Good News No. 8, described a scientific experiment. He defined the weight of the soul as the difference in a person’s weight before and after death. He carried out his experiments on a special bed capable of detecting the slightest fluctuations in the weight of a living and dead person. A total of six patients in the pre-death stage were examined; measurements showed that “the soul weighs five and a half spools,” which is 22.4 grams.

● A team of scientists from the Institute of Semiconductors of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Doctor of Natural Sciences Eugenius Kugis, conducted a number of studies. The scientist's measurements showed that at the moment of death a person loses from 3 to 7 grams weight. Kugis suggested that this is ... “the weight of the soul leaving the body.”

● In an experiment that Swiss scientists conducted, volunteers (23 people in total) lay down on ultra-sensitive scale beds and fell asleep. The moment a person crossed the line between reality and sleep, he lost weight from 4 to 6 grams According to scientists, it could be the soul leaving the body during sleep.

● According to data obtained from the intensive care unit of Cook County Hospital, Illinois, the human body weight after death decreases by 9-12 grams. The same picture is observed during the period of clinical death. But if the actions of the resuscitators are successful and the person returns to life, his body weight again increases by the same 9-12 grams. Based on this, it is more likely to assume that this is exactly what the ephemeral religious component of a human being - the soul - weighs. (From the afterword to the English edition of the book by the American psychologist Raymond Moody"Life after death").

● At the end 1990 One of the US laboratories discovered that the soul is a bioplasmic double of a person, which leaves the human body at the moment of his death. Researcher Lyell Watson discovered a fact - the bodies of dying people become lighter 2.5-6.5 grams. The experiments, as in other cases, were carried out on special scale beds.