Some experts believe endorphins naturally produced by the brain to kill pain can cause NDE, Although it is known that high stress in a person when dying may cause high endorphins level, there is yet no proof it causes NDE.

During 1940 and 1950, Dr. L.J.Medune of the University of Illinois School of Medicine gave high concentrations of carbon dioxide to mentally ill patients. He said he was correcting biotechnical dysfunction’s within the brain. Many of those patients experienced NDE.

Believing in reincarnation probably began in India about the sixth century BC. Hinduism held the belief that the soul passed to another person or animal at the time of death. The new life seen as a punishment or reward, depending how you lived your past life. The belief spread to Greece, through Asia across to the North American Indians and on to the Alaska n Indians who share very similar beliefs to the Hindu karma. Today in the western world, according to recent polls, about 23% of people in America believe in some form of reincarnation and many more in Britain, about 28%

Some exciting experiments were carried out with an electric probe in the 1940s by Wilfield Fender, a neuroscientist. One day, conducting experiments on the brain of a patient, he began exploring the sylvian fissure, a groove between the right frontal and right temporal lobes. Touching the surrounding tissue with the electric probe the patient had the sensation of leaving his body, travelling down a dark tunnel, meeting long dead relatives, and seeing God.

In recent times modern scientists have confirmed that neurone activity within the sylvian fissure generates NDE.

So did Fender find the “seat of the soul”?

Have we at last found where the soul lies within our body, or is it just physiological phenomenon due to certain body chemicals reacting along nerve routes under certain conditions?

An interesting fact emerges from scientific investigation into the temporal lobe. It is also linked with past-life recall – the feeling of having been there, or done something before. It is strong in some people, and many records exist of persons experiencing a previous life; some coming back and speaking a language thought to be long extinct,

One such person who experienced a previous life was the historical novelist Joan Grant. In 1937 she wrote a book called “Winged Pharaoh.” She described in detail the daily lives of Egyptians living 4,000 years previously, and it was recognised as an outstanding historical book. The strange thing about it was every detail in it came from memories she had when she lived in the past thousands of years before. Not one fact had been researched.

Who knows? The “seat of the soul” may yet prove to be the key to reincarnation, past-life recall; or even immortality.