Dr. Sans Segarra. 'Whoever is in touch with the superconsciousness – and I am – does not fear death'

A doctor specializing in oncological digestive surgery, he has an unshakable faith in science and its methods. But his worldview changed one day when he was in the hospital emergency room and revived a patient who was clinically dead. Astounded by this survivor's story, Manuel Sans Segarra dedicated himself to researching the subject in depth, reading the existing literature, speaking to people who had been on the other side and conducting experiments with patients.

This research gave rise to the book A Supraconsciência Existe – Vida depois da vida (Planeta Publishing House), which discusses the part of us that remains after physical death. The work’s reach was so great that the author received invitations from the Pope and the Dalai Lama to exchange ideas and points of view. In an interview with Nascer do SOL in a Lisbon hotel, Sans Segarra also talks about how his videos have saved desperate people, offering them a meaning to life.

You say in your book that you discovered the reality of human life in its three-dimensionality. Did this discovery really change your life, your habits?

My training as a doctor is based on the Cartesian and Newtonian methods. According to this materialist view, life is, as Descartes said: 'I think, therefore I am'. With physical death, I stop thinking, therefore I cease to exist. As a surgeon specializing in very complex oncological surgery, death was my enemy. If death won, I lost. In other words, I had the view that physical death meant the end of our existence. Until I began to discover near-death experiences in emergency rooms, which are a series of emotional manifestations in clinically dead patients – the heart stops, there is no brain activity, the electrocardiogram is flat, the electroencephalogram is flat. This did not fit in with my scientific training and I decided to investigate. Through in-depth study, reading the bibliography, consulting other disciplines and other specialists, I came to the conclusion that our existential reality is not just body and mind. There is a local consciousness caused by the activity of neurons and there is another consciousness that persists despite physical death.

What is this consciousness, the superconsciousness you talk about in your book?

We define consciousness as the knowledge of our existence, our thoughts and our actions. So how could this consciousness exist when the patient was clinically dead? The study of near-death experiences allows me to affirm that we have this other consciousness, which I call superconsciousness, because it is above the local or neuronal consciousness, which disappears with death. This superconsciousness persists and is our true identity. Physical death means getting rid of the envelope, the garment that superconsciousness assumes for a time in order to live our life in this dimension. And when we have lived it, we are freed from this envelope. But our authentic essence, superconsciousness, as near-death experiences show, persists in another dimension. It is clear that this has influenced my way of thinking.

Have you started doing things differently?

For years, I have been following these patients who have had near-death experiences and I have been able to observe very profound changes in them. By studying near-death experiences, we realise that the entire universe is energy, as quantum physics shows us. A subtle energy that we cannot detect, but we have objective proof of its existential reality. The identity of local consciousness, which can be defined as ego, is a materialistic identity; it is not our authentic identity. Superconsciousness, yes, is our true identity, because it persists after death. There is a primordial consciousness that is the origin of all religions. Some call it God, others YHWH, others Brahma or Tao. Call it what you will, it is the origin of everything. Superconsciousness is the manifestation of this primordial consciousness in each one of us. Spinoza, who was Portuguese, expresses this very well when he defines God as primordial consciousness, full of kindness, understanding and forgiveness. I saw that all the patients who had contacted their superconsciousness had a tremendously kind vital dynamic, and for them life was a gift. On the other hand, I also saw that many of those who live dominated by the ego commit suicide. The difference is dramatic: some accept life as a gift, a wonder; for others, life has no meaning. So I tried to get in touch with my superconsciousness, because if we all have it, I do too. And I discovered a method: meditation.

Do you practice meditation?

Every day. There are many techniques, each person must choose the one that is most appropriate for them. Of course, this must be guided by a specialist; you cannot do it alone. For years, I have been practicing Patanjali’s Rajayoga, which uses breathing and, above all, a mantra. This way, you can achieve a blank mind, something that is impossible to do with the ego. If you try to spend a minute with your mind blank, you will see that you cannot. Automatically, the ego begins to notice sounds and noises that distract it. But when we achieve this, we have a perception of life such as that described by patients who have had near-death experiences. You have a feeling of openness, of spaciousness, of being part of the universe, of being connected to everything. You can see the essence in a rock, a bird, a tree or a sunset. With superconsciousness, we see the essence, the divinity of everything. My life has changed and I have come to understand my existential reality.

Is this superconsciousness individual, that is, does each person have their own, or is it diluted into a collective entity?

Each one has their own. It is the authentic identity that makes each one of us unique and exclusive.

What did the patient who had an accident and was on the verge of death tell you? What did he tell you?

I have several patients who describe a typical near-death experience. What do they describe? The first thing they say is that they leave their body and are in an elevated position.

Always upwards, therefore.

Some say they can exit laterally, but most people stand up and watch everything that happens from above. This comes as a great surprise to them, because they do not understand, they are not familiar with this phenomenon of exiting the body. They see the body lying on a stretcher, with a group of health professionals around it. A patient who was clinically dead and did not know these professionals identified them all. 'This is Dr. so-and-so, that is the anaesthetist...', all with their first and last names. Another characteristic is that they move around with great ease.

Even through walls, right?

And they have the ability to see what is happening in other places. An older patient told me everything that was happening in each room of the emergency department. I was later able to verify what he told me. And then they contact beings of light, or angels, as they call them, who guide them. They often contact deceased loved ones to whom they were very emotionally attached. One of my patients contacted her mother telepathically. And then there is a light. And a feeling of peace, harmony, well-being in that other dimension. And that is why they do not want to return. One patient even said to me: 'You have harmed me. You have no idea of ​​the peace, the harmony, of how well it is to be in the other dimension. And then you come and revive me. You bring me back to this vale of tears'. This is a classic case. In the books of [Bruce] Greyson, Raymond Moody, [Michael] Sabom and Pim Van Lommel, there are hundreds, thousands of cases like this. And Plato, in the Republic, describes the case of a wounded Armenian soldier. Everyone thought he was dead, but he eventually recovered and reported a near-death experience identical to the ones I heard about. It is independent of age – it is very common in children –, gender, race, socioeconomic or cultural status, or political ideology. They all tell the same story.

Some of these descriptions are very similar to those of people taking hallucinogenic substances, such as ayahuasca or LSD. Could these be similar experiences?

I do not recommend taking hallucinogenic substances, because they cause emotional disturbances and, in the long term, can cause brain damage and serious psychosis. But it is true that hallucinogenic substances completely inhibit the ego. That is why certain [spiritually] 'evolved' people can contact the superconscious. This happened a lot in primitive tribes, with shamans. The medium is another person who has an easy time contacting his superconscious and with the spirits of other people. But these are subjects that I no longer touch on. I am a scientist, I only talk about the patients I have treated, who had a near-death experience and came back. And I research this.

Caetano Veloso – a very popular Brazilian singer – describes in his autobiography [Verdade Tropical] a bad experience with marijuana that left him so disturbed that, he says, he was forever «hating the idea that we can continue to be ourselves after death».

You're right. Statistics show that between 5 and 7 – less than 10% – of near-death experiences are terrifying. The patient goes through terrible moments. They hear voices, are attacked, assaulted. What exactly is the cause? I've spoken to people who have gone through this and I've read the literature. These are people who have had very tormented, very complex, very negative lives. In these cases, near-death experiences can take on these diabolical forms. And then the patients need psychiatric support because they're going through something terrible.

Your book has a strong scientific component, involving neuroscience and quantum physics. Couldn't we just accept the mystery and acknowledge that there are things that science can't explain?

The researcher precisely intends to find a logical, scientifically based explanation.

But that's quite Cartesian...

As a scientist, this is how I proceed. It is not enough for someone to tell me something for me to believe it; I have to find an explanation, a theory, that proves that it is actually true. And then, by reproducing it in the laboratory, I get the same result – this is the theory of the scientific method. I have objective clinical evidence that near-death experiences are authentic. So I ask myself: what is the inner mechanism of how all this works? I want to know what theory explains this to me. With the scientific method, I realised that it is impossible, so we have to resort to other disciplines, and one of them is theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, which studies the true structure of the universe. Democritus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, said it: 'All matter is made up of very small particles'. From the 19th and 20th centuries, when quantum mechanics was developed, it was realised that this man was right. Everything is made up of atoms and, ultimately, everything is energy, electromagnetic waves of varying frequency. From this, I see a parallel, a similarity, an analogy between the principles of the behavior of these subatomic particles and the effects of the experiments that have been entrusted to me. Can I say for sure? No. At the moment, I can only say that I see a parallel. With scientific progress, perhaps in a few years we will be able to say: 'What we suspected is true'. Or else we will have to accept another theory.

Do your fellow doctors look at you with suspicion? Have you encountered a lack of understanding or even animosity from your peers?

As a surgeon, my training is materialistic. When I saw these psychic phenomena, which have no material basis whatsoever, I couldn't find an explanation. So I started talking to psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, and neuroscience experts, and they told me: 'Don't get involved in this, you'll only harm yourself, your professional career, and your service. These are hallucinations. They are neuronal disorders resulting from cardiac arrest. The brain is very sensitive to ischemia, to lack of blood supply, and when it doesn't receive blood, changes occur in the neurons and these things happen. Everyone knows this. Don't complicate your life.' I wasn't convinced at all, because a hallucination has nothing to do with a near-death experience. And with the objective evidence we obtained, I completely disproved these arguments. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on patients who had near-death experiences and who told us about their experience in great detail. And we saw that when the patient was shown an object that he could never have seen in his life, but that he had talked about in the near-death experience, the occipital lobe was activated. The same person who told me that these were hallucinations admitted: 'The patient is not lying. He really saw this object.'

He was therefore convinced.

He was convinced. That's why I say we have proof. Now the intimate mechanism... the closest thing, as I said, is quantum mechanics. But I only find a parallel, I can't say I'm 100% sure.

Does this process of encountering superconsciousness happen to everyone or is it reserved for those who are somehow prepared?

Superconsciousness has an enemy, which is the ego. And the ego has four fundamental weapons. First, ignorance. These issues that we are talking about, 90% of people do not even know that they exist. Second, attachment to material things. Buddha said it: 'Suffering is caused by attachment to material things'. Third: selfishness. 'Everything for myself, to hell with others'. Fourth: fear. All fear, however banal, is motivated by the ego, because the ego knows that physical death is the end of its existence. The ego has a material, external origin. It depends on our neurons. The moment I die, the neurons are destroyed and the ego disappears. All these four factors prevent superconsciousness from manifesting.

And do animals also have access to superconsciousness?

Every living being has consciousness, which is the knowledge of its existence, its thoughts and its actions. Consciousness allows me, at any moment, to know who I am, where I am, what I am doing. It allows me to know that we are in Lisbon giving an interview. This is local or neuronal consciousness, the activity of our neurons. If you inhibit the neurons, consciousness disappears. This happens, for example, when you are sleeping, or if I give you an anesthetic to operate on you. You lose consciousness. We know that the first living being appeared on the planet 4 billion years ago. It was a cell, a cyanobacteria, which later evolved into a multicellular being, which in turn gave rise to the different branches of species. We come from fish – amphibians – reptiles – birds – mammals – primates – hominids. We have three brains. The basal brain, which we call reptilian, does the same thing as the brain of a reptile. It controls vegetative life: the heart, breathing, temperature. It is a very low level of consciousness. A crocodile has it. Then there is the midbrain: that is what mammals have. Do you have a pet, a dog?

I already had it.

The dog gets emotional when he sees it. You can teach him things and he will remember them. It is a higher level of consciousness. And the human being has the highest consciousness, with two cerebral hemispheres. It is here that the highest functions are located: intellectual capacity and free will. In other words, there are different degrees of consciousness, but every living being has consciousness.

Are you a believer?

I am tremendously spiritual. I met with the Pope for more than half an hour.

With Pope Francis or with the new one?

Francisco. On January 10th. My book reached him through other people, he said he wanted to talk to me and he arranged a meeting. I went to Rome and we talked for more than half an hour. And it was wonderful because we reached very interesting conclusions. Do you know what he said to me? 'You and I say the same thing. You demonstrate scientifically that there is a primordial consciousness that is God. And then you show that this consciousness manifests itself in each one of us'. Then he asked me a very curious question. 'I know that you fill halls with 2,000 people. But the churches are empty. How can you explain that?' And I said: 'The answer is not easy...'. 'You came here to tell the truth'. And I said: 'The Church has not evolved. It continues with dogmas, and people do not believe in dogmas. You say that I have to have faith in God because the Church says so. And I want you to prove it to me. I don't talk about religion, sex or politics, I only talk about science. And I show scientifically that God exists and manifests himself in each one of us. The Church says the same thing, but in a way that people don't believe.' He didn't contradict me. I'll show you the photos so you can see that I'm not lying.

It is not necessary.

That was when he received me. And do you know what he said to me at the end? 'You must have enemies'. 'Yes. Fewer and fewer, because the evidence is clear'. Then he said to me: 'Keep going. I will pray for you'. And then something that left me shocked: 'And now I ask you: pray for me, because I also have enemies'. And on the 5th of April I was with the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, the last city in northern India, near the border with Tibet. He asked me to go to a Buddhist monastery to explain scientifically to the monks the existence of God. 'We get there with meditation, with metaphysics. You get there with science'. They gave me an armchair and I spoke to all the lamas. At the end, the abbot of the monastery gave me a Buddha of health, which I keep at home with great care. He told me the same thing as the Pope: 'Keep going'.

Many people who have had near-death experiences say that they saw their entire life in an instant, in every detail. It seems as if they entered a different dimension of time .

Absolutely. It is very common in near-death experiences for people to tell us that they see their life – past, present and sometimes future. They see it as if it were a screen, and they see everything in the present. Einstein and Stephen Hawking have already said this. There is only one time: the present moment. In the ego, however, it is linear: past, present and future.

To conclude. Today is a wonderful day, very sunny, 30 degrees in the shade. You could be at the beach taking a dip or having a picnic, but instead you are here talking to me about death. Can't focusing so much on death distract us from living?

One of the characteristics of the ego is the panic of death, because it knows that with death it ends, period. From the moment we are in contact with the superconsciousness – and I am – I assure you that we completely lose the fear of death. I would not like to suffer and I give my terminally ill patients a cocktail to take away the pain. But as far as the transition from one state to the other is concerned, for me everything is so clear that I am not in the least bit worried. You asked me a very beautiful question. I could be on the beach, swimming, or in my house in Montjuïc, which is a mountain near Barcelona, ​​where there is a forest that I love. But here I am. And tomorrow I am going to run to Barcelona and then I am going to spend the weekend in Madrid, for World Book Day, and I have to sign I don't know how many books. Why am I doing this? I am already very old and I have a family that I love more than anything. I have been married for 56 years, the ones I love most are my wife, my children and my grandson, and I leave them alone. Why? I have WhatsApp messages from people who tell me that they were going to commit suicide and that my books and videos have helped them find meaning in life. We did a study at the Faculty of Medicine and we concluded that, between the ages of 15 and 35, the main cause of death in Catalonia is suicide. This is horrifying. 15-year-old kids! Do you remember when you were 20? I was a well of dreams, projects and goals. These kids kill themselves, get drunk, smoke hashish and throw themselves under trains. Why? Because materialism doesn’t give meaning to life. They seek transcendence and don’t find it in religion. And with my videos, many people find it. This gives me an inner peace that justifies any sacrifice I might make. I only feel bad about one thing: my family. But my family understands.