Does the body really lose 21 grams upon death?

[Mario]

If, according to urban legend, the difference in a person's body weight between when they are alive and when they are dead is exactly 21 grams, then where did the 21 grams go?

If this claim is true (a big "if") then the common Daheshist belief of the main Spiritual Fluid leaving the body upon death is quite plausible.

Why?

Well, Einstein showed that matter and energy were equivalent.

Energy has mass.

A Spiritual Fluid is made of pure energy and can therefore be converted into mass and vice versa. So when it is no longer present and disappears or is "recalled" or "pulled" out (think "pulling the plug") it has to (by virtue of Einstein's law) leave a gap.

Now, 21 grams of mass converted into pure energy... that must be enough to light the city of Chicago... right? OK, I'm reaching here, but you get the idea...

[Johnson]

I am not one to talk too much about personal life experiences, but there is one that I am prompted to share here on Daheshville. It has to do with the experience of my mother’s death from cancer back in January of 1981.

I took time off from college to spend with my mother what was appearing to be the final days of her battle with cancer. It was around midnight at the hospital and my father and brother and sister had just gone home for the night to get some sleep. I wanted to spend the night at the hospital with my mother as I just had “a feeling…”

Around 1:00am, my mother’s breathing became more labored and one could tell that her condition was truly failing rapidly. I called my father on the phone and told him to come back to the hospital as I really had the feeling that she was not going to make it until the morning.

My mother was very frail by this stage of the cancer and she was drifting in and out of consciousness. While I was alone with her in the hospital room I cradled her in my arms; much like one holds a baby. I could feel every effort of her ever increasingly strained breathing as well as small convulsions of her body as I held her to me. Her eyes were open and she appeared to be looking at me as she relaxed in to my arms.

After about half an hour, my father and brother and sister returned to the hospital. I was still holding my mother as she started taking her final breaths.

This is the part that has stayed with me so vividly all these years… moments after what would be her final expiration of breath, I felt this powerful rush of “energy” extracting itself from her entire body. It was much like water being extracted from every pore of a sponge. Since she was cradled in my arms, I could feel her entire body against mine and could feel this “release” of life energy from her entire body. As I watched her face as I was feeling this moment, the very split second after that energy was released, the very essence of the look of her face changed. I could feel at that very moment, as I looked at her, this was no longer my mother; her body was just the vessel that held the energy that once was my mother.

Experiencing this transition was absolutely profound. One second, and even though she was moments away from death, my mother’s spirit and energy was still in her body, the next moment, as I felt this energy release, it was clear that as I looked at her, and as I felt her, it was truly just a body in my arms…with no life energy within it. Even today, as I sit here recalling the moment and all the moments surrounding this experience, it was every bit as beautiful as it was heart breaking.

Never before or since have I had someone pass away in my arms. I cannot attest to the fact of the 21 grams of energy being released, however, I can attest to the fact that something definitely quantifiable does leave the body…something very quantifiable from every fiber of being that holds live within.