The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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162. After decapitation, does a person retain any form of consciousness?
“They frequently do for a few minutes, until the organic life of the body is completely dead. The fear of death often causes people to lose consciousness before their demise.”

This question simply refers to the awareness that victims may have of themselves as a person, and not as a spirit. If they have not lost this awareness before death, they may retain it for a few moments afterwards, but only for a very short period of time, which must cease with the end of the brain’s organic life. The termination of human consciousness by no means implies the clean separation of the perispirit from the body. On the contrary, when death has resulted from violence and not the gradual extinction of life, the bonds tying the body to the perispirit are tighter, and the release is completed more slowly.

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