What IS Life?
Generally speaking there are subjects which are avoided as if they were of Plague proportions and that, fear of fear, it may be contageous. Politics and Religion. Politics clearly is not taboo on the site; When it comes to Religion, in this Politically Correct World, I have never understood the degrees to which people's hearts are segregated and sliced when they are essentially following the same goal. In any event, that particular aspect must be avoided here.
The question as to 'Near Death Experiences' has been raised. The question itself is wrapped in other questions. What IS Life? Is there something after Death, which may have some connection with the spirits of this Other World. If there is a spirit world of some kind, then perhaps a Supreme Being, or perhaps a Spring within the Mind. We refer to Love, and it is Felt in the Heart. The Ancient Egyptians saw the Human as being a number of layers or conscious beings within one space, where a person had three hearts or other organs in one place, each with its own function in time and space. Referring to Love, this is that when one person's 'soul' reaches out to another (not the I love a packet of crisps, or I love the latest single; nor the confused psychodependencies of society). There is a point when the series of neurophysiology that drives our amino acids leaves the definition of plant into a knowing walking person. I had it explained to me for example, by a leading Theologian that Animals must have souls because they are aware of another and of humans, not in the automotive sense that 'we are food on legs', but in the sense that an emotional contact could be made. He defined that moment when a creature (animal or human) could acknowledge and appreciate the other animal/human exists and that a bond could be made. The question then arises as to whether or not this Bond is one generated from a mutual need, or one of an external but genuine extension of the self for mutual unconditional growth of the soul ... which is the true definition of Love.
To my mind the definition of Love is an extension of that same belief that (to me) accepts that there is a Supreme Being.
Beyond that question is another that begs the origins of the Universe and just where it fits. There are those that rattle on about Big Bang, with no knowledge of how or why it happened. Oh yes they can tell you chapter and verse as to the nature and force involved in the microsecond after the vast 'explosion' - they cannot explain the chaos that followed as it does not align with their own science, nor can the explain what happened prior to the microsecond in any way shape or form. Where did the material come from ... dunno .. How did is accrete in the first place ... dunno ... where is all this material ... dunno ... and then they wander off designing on paper string theory and all the other theories that make their flawed ideas work, until they discover that it needs another theory to make that work. If Time has no End, or any Beginning, it follows that since time and space are relative that space itself is limitless. Our minds cannot conceive of infinity. However it is unavoidable that an object exists in a defined location. It HAS to be somewhere, and it does no good at all to talk about Folded Space, of hyperbolic paraboloid stretched Space, IT STILL HAS TO BE SOMEWHERE. It is worse than a Conundrum. It is an impossibility.
To my way of thinking there are only two ways in which the impossibilities could come into being; total complete blind chance which produced sompletely at random the precise set of rules to bring about this Universe and its contents, or a Supreme Being with a set of plans. Yes we can play with Infinite Time and the monkey with the typewriter theory and Darwinian Development, but I regret that each of those requires something else to have got it all started; you see you have to start somewhere with all the theories, and it does not ever go far back enough in their thinking.
There is one unavoidable fact ... matter cannot be destroyed, matter cannot be created from nothing. Whatever is here now was always here and always will be; whatever we are built from was once a part of a star.
What ever all the tests and theorising are written and explored, we have an irrefutable fact ... they do not know, they were not there, there is no evidence. Until someone can give me an electroanalysis of brain patterns and be able to tap into the ultimate source of what I see to be Life, and to be able to look into the Being and know what 'neurocarbons' actually do, surgeons will only be able to measure against their own skeptical yardstick.