Personal experience tells me that consciousness does exist beyond the brain and the body and survives the death of the body...
As I spent the final day with my daughter, she slept most of the day but hours before her body died, she fell into terminal restlessness. She was mostly lucid throughout the episode, which by my estimate lasted a couple of hours (looking at the clock wasn't really a priority at the time). Toward the end of the episode, as I sat before her, she looked past me over my shoulder, staring into the corner of the room behind me, appearing to be amazed and filled with joy and said, "It's so beautiful." These were the final words she spoke, and minutes later, her consciousness left her body, and her body over the next several hours shut down.
Throughout the nearly two years of her illness, we had discussed the possibility of her death, and she told me that if she did die before me, she would do her best to share what she experienced during the process and would attempt to contact me afterward. While I have not had any contact with her since she passed (others claim to have; perhaps I'm just not ready), I am confident that she did see where her consciousness was headed as her body died and did her best to share this with me as her consciousness left her body.
This experience has had a significant impact on how I view consciousness (even though I used other terms at the time such as 'life energy', 'prana', 'spirit', etc.).
As I spent the final day with my daughter, she slept most of the day but hours before her body died, she fell into terminal restlessness. She was mostly lucid throughout the episode, which by my estimate lasted a couple of hours (looking at the clock wasn't really a priority at the time). Toward the end of the episode, as I sat before her, she looked past me over my shoulder, staring into the corner of the room behind me, appearing to be amazed and filled with joy and said, "It's so beautiful." These were the final words she spoke, and minutes later, her consciousness left her body, and her body over the next several hours shut down.
Throughout the nearly two years of her illness, we had discussed the possibility of her death, and she told me that if she did die before me, she would do her best to share what she experienced during the process and would attempt to contact me afterward. While I have not had any contact with her since she passed (others claim to have; perhaps I'm just not ready), I am confident that she did see where her consciousness was headed as her body died and did her best to share this with me as her consciousness left her body.
This experience has had a significant impact on how I view consciousness (even though I used other terms at the time such as 'life energy', 'prana', 'spirit', etc.).