is death the end?

Epicurus says: "when I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not,"; but is this so?

the success of academic propaganda is obvious and omnipresent, materialism (the philosophical belief that matter is all there is) is more in vogue than ever before. but let us remember Michel de Montaigne's caution "nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known". and academia is an institution of specialisation. certain people get trained in certain specifics, the rest will be left aside for other certain people to figure out.
noone has a complete overview of the sciences (e.g neurologists depend on machines (the internal workings of which they know nothing about) made by engineers, who themselves are trained in the understanding and mastery of some general (Newtonian) laws of physics rather than in neurology. physicists don't bother (too much) with either, but deal with the problem of quantum mechanics), every academic scientist is dependent on the other, though, and thus often finds himself in the position to simply believe (or disbelieve) what the other is proclaiming, due to the lack of time to get to know the other's field in detail. too often, though, he finds himself aligned with the orthodox view (at least officially).

but what do you think? does bodily death also mean cessation of consciousness? the complete end of a person?

"so status quo scientists, mind=brain scientists would have expected that if you ingest psilocybin it's going to go fire off your brain like crazy and that's why you're going to have these amazing experiences and these emotions attached to it. and then Dr. David Nutt does this work and he gives people psilocybin and they go into the fMRI and they see that just the opposite is happening. the brain isn't firing, these areas are dampened and suppressed, which completely supports this other model that this consciousness is flowing in and what the brain is doing is kind of regulating it. if you turn that regulator down you get a full dose of this consciousness and that's what it means to be tripping on psilocybin, right?" 
-Alex Tsakiris, www.skeptiko.com/242-oliver-hockenhull-neurons-to-nirvana/

neurology points to the possibility that consciousness is not generated by the brain, but merely filtered by it. but these brain-scaners can't capture anything that's going on on an atomic/sub-atomic level, so neurology can't give us a definite answer.

more interesting is NDE science

"when all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. while this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile. from her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. at this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever..." 
- www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html