This may be of interest to some, detailing the work of Dr Sam Parnia, a resuscitation specialist and researcher of near death experiences. His insights on death are pretty interesting, his research indicates clearly that death is a physiological process as oppose to a specific moment (depending on the cause of death of course) and that by chilling people post 'death' (say cardiac arrest) this will slow down cellular decay, particularly in the brain, and give people an extended window of when they can be brought back to life. He is also behind the AWARE study which aims to study the brain, mind, consciousness relationship in people who experience cardiac arrest and clinical death as it is currently defined (i.e. no pulse, no brain activity).
He remains faithful to objective science and seeks to explore death and what happens to us when we die via the scientific method. He began his research skeptical of any validity to NDE's but has formed different opinions through his continued research, and some of his musings on death and consciousness make for pretty interesting reading, particularly coming from a scientist working in his particular field. Where other NDE researchers tend to be reductionist when viewing NDE's (i.e. the brain is hallucinating, going weird from lack of oxygen etc.) he doesn't think these explanations validly explain the universal nature of the NDE and thinks there may be something much more interesting going on, and that there is certainly nothing to fear about death.
"All we can say now is that the data suggests that consciousness is not annihilated."
http://www.wired.com/wir...ousness-after-death/all/