In the 300,000 years of human existence, there is one mystery that remains definitively unsolved throughout all that time.

What happens to us after we die?

We certainly have our assortment of answers. Millions hold faith that we will be reunited with loved ones who have passed before us. Some believe that death is an absolute finality and there is nothing left of us but decay and decomposition.

Enter Dr. Zach Bush from Virginia to offer his professional opinion. He is a physician who specializes in internal medicine, endocrinology and hospice care. Several of his patients in the intensive care unit and hospice have died under his watch and in fact, in one night, he has paddled three patients back to life after they were clinically dead for as long as 30 minutes.

Each patient who Bush brought back to life back has asked the same question with their very first words since they had flatlined: “Why did you bring me back?”

All of them described their deaths as experiences of “profound clarity, interconnectedness and a complete release of ego.” With eyes wide open, his patients described their moments on the other side as an incredible expansion of their consciousness.

They tell stories of taking journeys to unearthly places during both past and future times. Bush has interviewed patients who were resuscitated in ICU, all saying that they had entered a bright light where they felt “completely and unconditionally accepted without judgment.” After they were removed from their bodies, they realized their true nature was to be free of fear, guilt and shame.

These death experiences transformed their attitudes about how we should be living life to the fullest. One huge regret was “performing” for others rather than living authentically as their true selves. Their death increased a conscious awareness of the value and meaning of life.

Bush has learned much from his patients who have crossed over. If we could understand what awaits us after death, an equal acceptance into a beautiful realm of another existence, we would live much better lives. We’d be less inclined to take advantage of others. Money, status, power would be of little interest to us and would be replaced by kindness, compassion and empathy.

A unanimous belief is that the universe can teach us about the transformation of death becoming another form of life. A dead tree nourishes the earth. Nutrients that have sustained the existence of the universe for billions of years come from the decaying matter of dead animals, deceased people and plant life that help the earth thrive in all its glory. In that sense, we never die into nothingness.

Of course, one physician’s discovery of what happens when we die may not change what we choose to believe. After my mother had her third heart attack and had flatlined for a minute or so, I asked her if she remembered an ambulance taking her to the hospital.

“I don’t remember that at all,” she said. “I remember I was in church praying with my mother and then I opened my eyes and standing at the foot of my bed was a man with long hair and he was wearing a robe.”

I thought of every possible reason why her vision might have been an hallucination. She was taking no medications except for some pills for her heart. I know that during a heart attack, a person does not usually lose consciousness. Yet, she remembered nothing of the ambulance ride or the rush to get her immediate hospital care, only praying with her mother and the robed man at the end of her bed in the nursing home.

I’m on the same page with Dr. Bush. He said that many of us have been stigmatized to believe that death is final and cemeteries and urns filled with ashes prove that there is no more function in this life once we no longer have life.

Science and religion have been in conflict about the afterlife until recently a Harvard physicist said he has proved through a mathematical formula that the universe operates with a preset design of process and patterns that had to have been made by a creator and could not have been created as an incredible living and organized organism all by itself.

Bush knows that people dying for weeks or months in hospitals or hospices are isolated from the real world. All they see are long tubes, latex gloves and faces half-covered with masks, which brings them severe depression, and that relief that can only come from death.

When he hears a resuscitated patient that had been clinically deceased for several minutes ask, “Why did you bring me back?” he understands that although they did not want to return to their bedridden existence, they now live with a joy of what awaits them once they take their final breaths.

One resuscitated patient said, “I went into this space where there was bright light everywhere and I felt completely accepted for the first time.” This remark caused Bush to think that if we all died for just a moment and came back to life, we wouldn’t be killing each other and destroying the very universe that welcomed us into the light of our birth and welcomes us back into the light of our death.

If we might agree with Bush’s findings, we could accept each other in this life, and in his own words say to each other: “You’re enough. I accept you completely. I want to be with you. I want to live with you. I want to be alive.”

Perhaps Dr. Bush is also saying that what comes after life is unconditional love. Living the gift of life is a great rehearsal for what will become the gift of death.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com