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.