Defining Death..... the medical way.

In an article from LiveScience today, AWARE is a new study that is meant to discover what happens to the brain when it 

is on the verge of dying. This an effort to explain the idea of near-death experiences.

My mother claimed to have had one in her many hospital stays in my youth. There was the white light, the soul floating above her mortal body on the hospital bed etc.

According to the study 10 to 20 percent of people who live through cardiac arrest tell of lucid thoughts and memories during that time.

I don't believe in the soul or afterlife... death is the end literally. A body becomes an empty shell which should decompose back to the earth gracefully. But the last thoughts of a lifetime of thoughts that then disappear forever has an almost mystical quality to the them.