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00:00What if death isn't the end, but actually the beginning of a journey through time itself?
00:06Imagine that when we die, we don't just slip into oblivion or float into the afterlife,
00:11but instead we're propelled into the future.
00:14This fascinating theory has intrigued scientists, philosophers, and mystics alike.
00:19The idea that our consciousness travels forward in time after death.
00:24Could there be more to our dying than simply the cessation of life?
00:28Is it possible that the essence of who we are continues on a path beyond the present,
00:34experiencing future existences?
00:36This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question, do we visit the
00:41future when we die?
00:43Do you need the big questions answered?
00:45Are you constantly curious?
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00:53To properly explore this idea, we must first grasp the fundamentals of time and consciousness.
00:59Time is traditionally viewed as a linear progression from past to present to future.
01:04But it's not as straightforward as it seems.
01:07Specifically, Einstein's theory of relativity reveals the flexibility of time.
01:13It shows us that time can warp under extreme conditions, that it isn't absolute and that
01:18it can change, and that it can shift beyond recognition via a phenomenon called time dilation.
01:25Examples of how and when time can alter are when you travel near the speed of light, or
01:30when you fall within an intense gravitational field, such as around a black hole.
01:35Einstein's theory suggests time isn't a fixed constant, which we are all experiencing
01:41at the same rate, but a variable dimension, influenced by our surroundings.
01:47That realisation doesn't really affect our day-to-day lives, but it is crucial when
01:51we're thinking beyond the here and now.
01:54The other key concept is consciousness.
01:57We often view it as the essence of our being, but science struggles to fully explain consciousness.
02:02Many believe that it's the product of complex brain activity.
02:06That it's made by us, for us.
02:08Not everyone subscribes to this idea, though, and some counter-theories propose that consciousness
02:13might exist independently of the body.
02:15Again, this is crucial, because if true, it suggests that there is the potential for
02:20it to exist beyond physical death.
02:22Naturally, this raises some intriguing questions about life after death, or in other words,
02:28life in the future, that your physical body won't survive to see.
02:31There's plenty of claimed, anecdotal evidence through which to explore the topic, but a
02:36couple of stories stand out among the rest.
02:38First, that of the early 20th century Swiss scholar, Paul Amadeus Dinac.
02:44Born in 1884, he was a professor of French and German.
02:48In 1917, he unfortunately became ill with encephalitis lethargica, also known as sleeping
02:55sickness.
02:56In 1921, he fell into a twelve-month-long coma as a result of his condition, during
03:01which he claims to have lived another man's life… and that that life took him forwards
03:07in time to the year 3906.
03:10So what did he see?
03:12And how did it happen?
03:13Dinac kept diaries both before and after his coma, and when he eventually passed away in
03:18his present time, he entrusted those diaries to a student of his.
03:22Ultimately, the contents were made public, and they made for shocking reading.
03:27Dinac claimed that when he moved forward in time, he lived in the body of an Italian who
03:32was also in hospital, named Andreas Northman.
03:36Northman needed medical care due to his being involved in an accident with a flying car,
03:41but that's not the only claim to the future that Dinac made.
03:44In his diaries, he says that while living as Northman, he researched history until that
03:49point in 3906, mostly by using a machine that is essentially an iPad to modern minds.
03:56He discusses a great deal of future events, which all must have seemed extremely random
04:01in Dinac's native time in the early 1920s.
04:04For example, he predicted that by 2204, Mars would be fully colonised, with millions of
04:10people moving to live there.
04:11He also said, though, that sixty years later, after a monumental disaster on the Red Planet,
04:17humankind would never colonise another world again.
04:20He further claims that by the 2300s, environmental disasters would trigger tension and atomic
04:25war between all the major nations on Earth, which in turn sends the global population
04:31plummeting.
04:32Again, according to the story, all of these foretellings were written by a post-coma man,
04:37alive in the 1920s, decades before nuclear warfare or the space age.
04:42The good news, according to Dinac, is that by the time of Andreas Northman, we will have
04:47turned a corner.
04:48By the era of 3906, humanity is enjoying a golden era, after hundreds of years of comparative
04:54darkness.
04:55So much so, in many tellings of his tale, it's even said that our brains eventually
05:00develop an entirely new sense, called hypervision.
05:04It's unclear what hypervision actually does, but it's said to be key in us changing for
05:09the better.
05:10Dinac's story is chiefly compiled in the 2015 book, Chronicles from the Future, edited
05:15by Achilles Tsourigos.
05:17It's certainly fascinating, but it's also tough to know how much truth there is to it.
05:21One piece of evidence in its favour lies in how the professor dealt with the story after
05:25waking up from his coma, again giving his diary entries to a student who translated
05:30them.
05:31The fact that Dinac himself never tried to profit from his claims, or widely publish
05:36them, arguably reveals a certain level of sincerity.
05:39There doesn't appear to be motivation for him to just make the whole thing up, which implies
05:43that he was genuinely recounting the experience he had while in his coma.
05:48If such a phenomenon were possible, though, we might naturally expect others to have experienced
05:53the same thing.
05:54However, while there are a few adjacent stories that explore similar themes, there aren't
05:59any direct parallels to Dinac's exact experience.
06:03As far as we know, what he claims happened to him is unique.
06:06Ultimately, then, and intriguing as it is, it doesn't provide conclusive evidence that
06:10we're ever truly capable of visiting the future.
06:13Neither while our body is under stress, such as while comatose, nor after it has suffered
06:18the ultimate ordeal in death.
06:20So, if we imagine that Dinac wasn't lying, but that what he claims likely didn't actually
06:25happen either, then what's going on?
06:28Some researchers simply attribute it to his being in an altered state of consciousness,
06:33to dreams or hallucinations induced by the coma.
06:36And it is common for a person to experience extremely detailed dreams while comatose,
06:41or in a near-death state.
06:43Not everyone sees the future, but many do claim to have seen some otherwise inexplicable
06:48things.
06:49Of course, there is crossover between this and reported near-death experiences.
06:54Generally, a near-death experience, or NDE, involves the sufferer having vivid experiences
07:00during moments of clinical death or extreme trauma.
07:04This includes sensations of floating outside the body, moving through a tunnel, encountering
07:09bright lights, or even meeting a deceased loved one.
07:13Interestingly, some studies have found that people recall a sense of timelessness.
07:17There are then further anecdotal reports of people who have had NDEs and come back describing
07:22visions or insights related to future events.
07:25These can be broken down into two types, personal flash-forwards, which are when a survivor
07:30sees how their life will continue after their NDE, or prophetic visions, where planetary-wide
07:37events are foreseen.
07:38The Pam Reynolds case is particularly famous.
07:42Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Reynolds was an American singer.
07:45At age 35, a large aneurysm was discovered in her brain, very close to her brain stem.
07:51This meant that she had to be put into emergency surgery for a procedure with a worryingly
07:56low success rate.
07:57It was so tricky in part because it involved lowering her body temperature to 50°F, which
08:04turned her brain completely unresponsive.
08:07Thankfully, after seven hours on the surgeon's table, the operation was a success.
08:12But despite this, there was a lengthy period during it when Reynolds was clinically dead.
08:17And here's where it gets interesting.
08:19Afterwards, Reynolds said that she had felt as though she had been pulled out of her body
08:23and as if she was floating above the operation room.
08:26She claimed she was able to see the doctors operate and observed things that happened
08:30to and around her.
08:32She could recall some of the medical instruments used during her operation, as well as some
08:36of the conversations that the medical staff were having.
08:39Alongside this, she says she was also pulled towards a light, a light which contained her
08:45grandmother, an uncle, and other deceased relatives.
08:49The more time she spent with them, the warmer she felt.
08:52But it was eventually decided that she should return to life on Earth, a sensation which
08:56Reynolds described as akin to jumping into ice water.
08:59Now, it might be said that for all its strangeness, Reynolds' claim doesn't explicitly involve
09:05travelling to the future.
09:06However, the seeming detachment of her being from her body has come to stand for many as
09:11one of the most convincing reports of an afterlife ever made.
09:15As with Paul Deenock, it could be said that Pam Reynolds was as close to actually dying
09:19as you're ever likely to be, and she came back adamant that there was somewhere else
09:24waiting beyond the veil.
09:26Similarly, Deenock apparently felt compelled to pass on his story to his student, so convinced
09:32had he become, in some kind of life everlasting.
09:35Ultimately, and as always, no one has ever died and come back to know for sure.
09:42Deenock and Reynolds got close, but they never definitively stopped living, and therefore
09:47any question or theory surrounding what happens after you die is inescapably impossible to
09:53answer.
09:54However, if you consider how time really can change as per the laws of physics, and you
10:00think how, according to some ideas, consciousness really might be separate from our physical
10:05selves, and you think on both of their stories again, then there's also, clearly, a fair
10:11amount of murkiness and unknowableness.
10:14Such is the riddle of life and death.
10:17What do you think?
10:18Is there anything we missed?
10:19Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
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