Memory in the dying

“At the last moment before death, the whole life is reflected in our memory and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners picture after picture, one event after the other.

The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the period of the brain’s activity.

That impression and thought which was the strongest naturally becomes the most vivid and survives so to say all the rest, which now vanish and disappear for ever, to reappear only in Devachan.

No man dies insane or unconscious – as some physiologists assert.

Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present. The man may often appear dead.

Yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body – the brain thinks and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds – his whole life again.