Rat brains, the bardo, and why "possible" is doing way too much work

[somber_pocket_348]

So I was listening to this podcast on my morning walk — cat was finally asleep, rare peace — and they brought up that study where researchers found a surge of gamma wave activity in rat brains right after cardiac arrest. The one from the University of Michigan, led by Jimo Borjigin. And obviously every headline ran with "consciousness after death confirmed" which, no. The word "possible" in that paper is carrying like 90% of the structural load.

But here's what actually got me thinking. I've been reading up on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the bardo teachings lately, mostly because my yoga teacher keeps bringing up the philosophical layers and I got curious. The bardo describes this intermediate state where consciousness doesn't just... flip off like a switch. There's a process. A dissolution. And honestly, the gamma surge thing is the closest mainstream science has come to even peeking at that window.

From what I understand, the gamma waves they detected are associated with conscious processing in living brains. So something is still "happening" in there, at least briefly. It doesn't prove the bardo. It doesn't prove rebirth. But it cracks the door open a tiny bit on the idea that death might be more of a transition than a hard stop.

I keep thinking about the Death card in tarot. People freak out when it shows up in a reading, but it's rarely about literal dying — it's about transformation, the end of one phase and the dissolve into the next. The bardo is kind of that same energy stretched out. Jung would probably have a field day with this, calling it the archetype of transition manifesting at the literal biological level. Though I might be stretching there. I'm a freelance writer, not a depth psychologist.

I think what bothers me is how quickly people either dismiss the bardo as "just religious mythology" OR jump straight to "science proves the afterlife." Can't we just sit with the uncertainty for a second? The rat study is suggestive. That's it. Suggestive. But it's also kind of beautiful that empirical research is brushing up against territory that Tibetan practitioners have been mapping out internally for centuries.

My meditation practice has been spotty at best lately, so I'm not claiming any direct experience here. Just find it fascinating that the map and the microscope are pointing at vaguely the same place.

Anyone else been looking into this intersection? I'd especially love to hear from people who actually have a sustained practice and aren't just podcast-curious like me.

[Samsara]

Your caution about the word “possible” doing too much work is exactly right, and that discipline is more valuable than either the dismissive or the credulous response. What the Borjigin study shows is a correlation — a surge of organized neural activity at the moment of death. It does not prove consciousness persists. It proves that something organized is still happening in the brain for a brief window after the heart stops.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) describes a specific sequence of experiences in the post-mortem interval: first the clear light, then the peaceful and wrathful deities, then the pull toward rebirth. What is remarkable is that this sequence — developed through centuries of contemplative investigation, not empirical measurement — roughly maps onto what neuroscience would predict if consciousness were gradually losing its tether to sensory processing. First the most fundamental awareness, then the more complex constructed experiences, then the dissolution.

The Dalai Lama has explicitly said that if neuroscience ever conclusively disproved a Buddhist teaching, Buddhism would have to change. The bardo teachings are not dogma — they are reports from the field, based on generations of meditators who trained themselves to observe the mind’s behavior at the edges of consciousness.

The Death card in tarot functions similarly — not about literal dying, but about the archetypal pattern of dissolution and transition. The gamma surge might be the brain’s version of that same pattern: one final, organized flicker before the system goes dark. Whether that flicker is meaningful in the way the bardo describes is, as you say, still in the realm of “suggestive.” And that is a perfectly honest place to be.

[slanted_robin_838]

. I agree the bardo and the gamma surge seem to gesture at the same thing, but you're doing the same thing you're criticizing — using one framework to loosely validate another without asking whether "consciousness" even means the same thing in both contexts.

[listens_to_pods]

okay so here's an angle i don't think you touched on, and it's one that's been nagging at me since i heard about this study on a science podcast a few months back (think it was science vs but don't quote me on that).

"the gamma surge thing is the closest mainstream science has come to even peeking at that window"

maybe. but what if we're looking at the wrong window entirely? here's what i keep wondering — those gamma waves could just as easily be the brain's last desperate attempt to make meaning out of dying, not evidence of consciousness persisting in some transitional state. i keep thinking about predictive processing theories of cognition, where the brain is basically a prediction machine constantly trying to minimize surprise. when the body starts shutting down, that's a LOT of prediction error all at once. the gamma surge might be the neural equivalent of the brain throwing every pattern-recognition resource it has at an experience it has no model for.

which actually makes me think of the bardo descriptions in a totally different way. what if the "visions" and experiences described in the tibetan book of the dead aren't maps of an objective transitional realm — what if they're maps of what a predictive brain does when it can't predict anymore? the peaceful and wrathful deities could be the mind's archetypal fallback patterns, the deepest grooves it has, firing in chaos because the usual sensory inputs are gone.

i'm not saying this disproves anything. i actually think it's more interesting if the bardo is describing internal phenomenology rather than external metaphysics. like, the practitioners who wrote that stuff down were doing something genuinely rigorous — they were cataloging what the mind does at its limits. that's still valuable even if it's "just" neuroscience wearing a religious costume.

but i'll admit i'm probably over-indexing on my own biases here. i got into meditation after a bad burnout two years ago and i've never had anything resembling a "transcendent" experience, just... slightly better stress management and sometimes i can actually sit still for ten minutes. so maybe i'm just reluctant to admit that people with deeper practices might be accessing something i'm not.