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But by 2015, experiments such as Parnia's had yielded ambiguous results, and the field of near-death studies was not much closer to understanding death than it had been when it was founded four decades earlier.[qh]
但到了2015年，帕尼亚等人的实验得出了模棱两可的结果，而濒死研究领域对死亡的理解并没有比四十年前成立时更接近。[qh]
That's when Borjigin, together with several colleagues, took the first close look at the record of electrical activity in the brain of Patient One after she was taken off life support.[qh]
就在那时，博尔吉金和几位同事首次仔细观察了一号患者在被撤掉生命维持系统后的大脑电波活动记录。[qh]
What they discovered – in results reported for the first time last year – was almost entirely unexpected, and has the potential to rewrite our understanding of death.[qh]
他们发现的——在去年首次报道的研究结果中——几乎完全出乎意料，并有潜力改写我们对死亡的理解。[qh]
“I believe what we found is only the tip of a vast iceberg,” Borjigin told me.[qh]
“我相信，我们发现的只是冰山一角，”博尔吉金告诉我。[qh]
“What's still beneath the surface is a full account of how dying actually takes place.[qh]
“隐藏在表面之下的是对死亡实际发生方式的完整描述。[qh]
Because there's something happening in there, in the brain, that makes no sense.”[qh]
因为大脑里发生的一些事情，是莫名其妙的。”[qh]
For all that science has learned about the workings of life, death remains among the most intractable of mysteries.[qh]
尽管科学对生命的运作已经有了很多了解，但死亡仍然是最棘手的谜团之一。[qh]
“At times I have been tempted to believe that the creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure,” the philosopher William James wrote in 1909.[qh]
哲学家威廉·詹姆斯在1909年写道：“有时我不禁相信，造物主永远有意让自然界的这个领域保持令人困惑的状态，以同等程度激发我们的好奇心、希望和怀疑。”[qh]
The first time that the question Borjigin began asking in 2015 was posed – about what happens to the brain during death – was a quarter of a millennium earlier.[qh]
关于死亡过程中大脑会发生什么这一问题，博尔吉金在2015年首次提出时，时间还要再往前推四分之一个千年。[qh]
Around 1740, a French military physician reviewed the case of a famous apothecary who, after a “malign fever” and several blood-lettings, fell unconscious and thought he had travelled to the Kingdom of the Blessed.[qh]
大约在1740年，一位法国军医回顾了一位著名药剂师的病例，他在经历了一场“恶性发热”和几次放血后，陷入昏迷，并认为自己已经前往了天国。[qh]
The physician speculated that the apothecary's experience had been caused by a surge of blood to the brain.[qh]
医生推测，药剂师的经历是由于大脑充血引起的。[qh]
But between that early report and the mid-20th century, scientific interest in near-death experiences remained sporadic.[qh]
但在那份早期报告和20世纪中叶之间这期间，对濒死体验的科学兴趣仍然是零星的。[qh]
In 1892, the Swiss climber and geologist Albert Heim collected the first systematic accounts of near-death experiences from 30 fellow climbers who had suffered near-fatal falls.[qh]
1892年，瑞士登山家和地质学家阿尔伯特·海姆收集了第一份关于濒死体验的系统性记录，这份记录是从30位登山同伴那里收集的，他们遭遇过险些致命的跌倒。[qh]
In many cases, the climbers underwent a sudden review of their entire past, heard beautiful music, and “fell in a superbly blue heaven containing roseate cloudlets”, Heim wrote.[qh]
海姆写道，在许多情况下，登山者会突然回顾自己的整个过去，听到美妙的音乐，“坠入一个深蓝色的天堂，里面有玫瑰色的云朵”。[qh]
“Then consciousness was painlessly extinguished, usually at the moment of impact.”[qh]
接着，意识便会毫无痛苦地消失，通常是在撞击的那一刻。[qh]
There were a few more attempts to do research in the early 20th century, but little progress was made in understanding near-death experiences scientifically.[qh]
在20世纪初，还有一些进行研究的尝试，但在科学理解濒死体验方面进展甚微。[qh]
Then, in 1975, an American medical student named Raymond Moody published a book called Life After Life.[qh]
然后，在1975年，一位名叫雷蒙德·穆迪的美国医学生出版了一本书，名为《死后的生命》。[qh]
