GOD, AFTERLIFE, AND SCIENCE
By Meirion Hughes
Copyright (c) 2000 www.powpublish.com/bible This article may be freely distributed and published provided that the text is not altered in any way and that the copyright notice and hyperlinks are retained and displayed.
"What happens when we die?" is a puzzle for science within which lies a fundamental question: is the human mind bound to the physical brain and body or is it able to exist and function separately? It is a question that science and normal scientific methods cannot answer. It is also the question, arguably, when one thinks of the possible survival of the mind (or soul) after the death of the body, that has preoccupied most, if not all, religions on this planet. So it is perhaps the most important question that any of us, as sentient entities, will ever face during our existence.
So what could science do to help solve this question? Very little it seems. Science is very much determined to view the universe in terms of only its physical properties. It looks at things which can be observed, measured and quantified in objective terms. As humans we view the world in which we live through our eyes, ears and tactile senses. When we close our eyes, the world disappears, but we know it will still be there when we open them again because our memory tells us it will be. Science uses instruments and machines to assist the way in which we can view our world and universe. But our observation remains mostly restricted to our natural sensory organs, even though much data can be accumulated by machines and instruments detecting events and materials not visible to those organs.
Science can detect electrochemical activity within the brain, it can dissect and examine brain tissue, but can it truly detect or observe the mind? The answer is a resounding, no! Can that statement be proven? Absolutely.
It is done by differentiating between what is objective, from the limited human perspective, and what is subjective - that which is impossible to observe or quantify. There are many examples, but one will suffice. Love. Most of us can describe love in very broad terms. Nobody, not even scientists, would suggest that love does not exist. But, using only scientific methods, we cannot prove that it does. Of course the most bloody-minded scientist might describe "love" as just another electrochemical process or algorithm within the organic brain - but he could not prove that, quantify it, or measure it. It would be a theory and it would remain subjective.
This amply illustrates the problem of applying subjective qualities to the universe. We accept the existence of love because enough of us agree that it is part of human experience and therefore part of our world. But it is evident that another, perhaps unearthly, experience is also "part of our world". It is called Near Death Experience - and it is baffling scientists as never before.
The Near Death Experience phenomenon is now part and parcel of our vocabulary. Most of us have heard of at least one account of such an experience. A Near Death Experience (NDE) usually occurs when a person, through illness or injury, is either on the brink of death, or their vital bodily functions have ceased to work - normally a state of death. The accounts of NDE are of course only available to us through individuals who have been "brought back", either by medical assistance, or sometimes spontaneously. Repeat experiences are sometimes reported by epileptics.
NDEs are very often accompanied by an Out of Body Experience (OBE) in which the experiencers felt they had become detached from their body and were able to observe it, usually from above, and sometimes the frantic activity of medical personnel who were trying to revive them. A commonality of account is the impression of travelling along a tunnel towards a bright and welcoming light. Sometimes there are relatives or loved ones awaiting them. Sometimes the experiencers feel they are either sent back, or pulled back into their body. And more rarely there is a conscious decision to go back, due often to a feeling of uncompleted duty.
In the vast majority of cases, the experience is viewed as very positive and there are nine key elements to the classic NDE.
"1. An intense realness. It comes with the conviction of absolute truth, so that the experiencer is overcome by the validity and meaning of the experience.
"2. Feelings of unity. The experiencer feels he has seen through to the fundamental nature of the universe, perceives and understands it and is united with it.
"3. A feeling that the experience is ineffable. There are no words to describe it. All sensory experience would fall into this category if language did not contain terms to describe it. As soon as some new or unusual sensation is experienced, then it becomes ineffable.
"4. Transcendence of space and time.
"5. A sense of sacredness.
"6. Deeply felt positive mood. Feelings of joy and peace.
"7. Paradoxicality. The feeling that something which is 'impossible' is in fact true.
"8. Transiency.
"9. Positive changes in attitude and behaviour."
The above list is quoted from a book by Dr. Peter Fenwick MB BChir (Cantab) DPM FRCPsych entitled The Truth In The Light (Headline Book Publishing, London, ISBN 0-7472-1186-8). Fenwick is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and is a neuropsychiatrist with an international reputation. The book relates his study of the phenomenon known as Near Death Experience (NDE). Fenwick appears to have risked sticking out his neck on such a subject because of a baffling ability by some of those who had undergone NDE/OBE to accurately relate external events that had occurred while they were "temporarily dead" and which they could not possibly have "seen or sensed" within ordinary usage of those terms.
An American Cardiologist, Michael Sabom, was intrigued but sceptical about reports from patients who claimed to know details of what had happened to them during unconsciousness after a heart attack. The most likely explanation, he thought, was that even during unconsciousness the brain had been able to pick up fragments of information through the normal senses and had patched together a picture of what had happened to them. He taped a hundred interviews with people who had experienced NDE/OBEs and compared what they said to the medical notes describing the resuscitation procedures used on them. The results were not what he expected. There was a surprisingly high degree of correlation between the two sets of data.
All attempts to resolve the NDE mystery as "psychological models resulting from oxygen starvation" have failed the test of serious scrutiny. And the cross-cultural uniformity of experience still baffles scientists. Irrespective of religious background, race, social background, age, sex, nationality, NDEs world-wide have a remarkable and consistent similarity.
Most NDE accounts relate moving through a long tunnel towards a "white light". It is there that they undergo many of the nine positive, mystical experiences listed earlier. People who had previously held no spiritual beliefs were transformed into a high spiritual awareness. Those with strong religious beliefs sometimes found their beliefs radically modified by the experience. There are accounts of either a being or beings waiting for them in the light and that the light is the source of bliss, joy, and incredible love and welcome. Some felt they were "returning home" during this experience and most were disappointed that they were wrenched back into their physical bodies.
For these people, their experience was real. In most cases, it was more real to them than the physical world they were accustomed to living in.
Many describe being shown the true fabric and meaning of the universe and that what they had undergone transcended normal perceptions of space and time. Unfortunately, this profound understanding appears to become shrouded and tantalisingly beyond their grasp upon return to a "normal" state of consciousness. There is also a sense that "worldly wisdom" has become totally irrelevant. They often feel as "small children" when considering the experience.
Cartesian Philosophy, as promoted by Descartes, categorises a separation between mind (soul) and the physical brain. The Aristotlean philosophy, and Occam's Law, upon which our whole present scientific system is based, despises that concept as being wholly unobservable by any "scientific" method (those scientific methods known to man: they exclude those methods not known yet, obviously - as so called scientists excluded certain observations, like the world was round, when the world was thought to be flat.)
We live in the age of Stephen Hawking, however. It is an age of theories about the origins of the Cosmos; of the Big Bang; String Theory; and an Event Horizon at the beginning of the existence of our Universe beyond which we cannot theorise. Our primitive ancestors lived in just such a Universe. It was a universe where they could not see beyond the physical curvature of the Earth.
The Near Death Experience suggests the possibility that certain individuals have survived death, have returned to tell about it, and more importantly have "seen" beyond our normal physical horizon of existence.
This possibility has profound implications for our scientific idea of life and sentience. In effect, that mind and existence are not limited to this physical universe of time and space.
Without going into a long discussion about the origins of our universe, it is imperative to say something here about the nature of energy. All scientists agree that energy is constant in the universe. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy simply "is". It can be modified - as in the generation of electricity - but that is all. There is also an argument that beyond the event horizon at the beginning of the cosmos, just before the big bang, where all matter in the cosmos was concentrated in one tiny point, that energy was infinite. This concept raises baffling conflicts about what relationships might exist between energy and time. (The big bang theory of all matter being in one spot brings in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to conclude that within that dense mass of matter, time would stand still - how could that energy modify into a big bang without the ability of time to allow such an event to occur? This is partly why scientists describe the General Theory, or "science" as breaking down beyond that event horizon).
And what has that to do with the human mind and the possibility that death is not the end for us? The answer is "everything". Human understanding of the human brain is limited to knowledge of its organic components and electrochemical impulses. No scientist can determine where the subjective notion of "mind" resides. Does mind reside within the organic component or is it within the electrical activity? There is a strong argument that our sentience - our "I think, therefore I exist" - resides within the electrical activity. Without that electrical activity, such a thought could not exist in the first place.
Experiments with electromagnetic fields have caused "altered" states of mind which produce a limited array of the mystical experiences and concepts listed here earlier. Mind, therefore, is electrical energy. Energy cannot be destroyed, it just "is". And it is here that we encounter the paradox of the big bang theory. If all matter and energy in the universe is focussed in one spot prior to the big bang, if all the laws of general relativity break down so that time stands still, then all energy, including the electrical activity of our minds, is co-existent with that energy at the beginning of our universe. (This fits nicely with the modern "string theories" for gravitation which postulate dimensions over and above our normal view of space-time).
What this means in terms of existence, is a duality - the energy of our minds exists in two places at once, both here and now and back at the very beginning of the universe.
Is it possible then that our organic brain is nothing more than the provider of an electromagnetic containment field for the mind? Under such a theory, the failure or modification of that field would cause modification of the mind - it could not result in the destruction of the energy! Is it possible that death of the organic brain is merely a liberation of the mind (soul) which then continues to exist?
It has been said that our universe is just a thought in the mind of God. If the centre of the universe (prior to the Big Bang) is a place of infinite energy, is it not possible that such energy would also be possessed with infinite intelligence?
Stephen Hawking describes his work of investigating the Cosmos as an "investigation into the mind of God".
But what scientific evidence do we have that the mind (soul) can function and survive independently of the physical brain?
None that our present day science and technology can detect.
There is, however, a small grain of scientific support for one aspect of this puzzle. The most striking aspect described by many experiencers of the Near Death Experience (NDE) and Out of Body Experience (OBE), was that for them, the experience transcended space and time. We have argued that the mind (or at least an important part of it) exists within the electrical activity of the brain. Electricity is energy. Pure energy travels at the speed of light. According to scientists then, and because of the General Theory of Relativity, any intelligence that was pure energy would experience the whole lifetime of our universe in an instant. Space and Time would indeed be transcended.
But at the end of the day, at our present stage of scientific knowledge, real proof can only be manifested within an individual who has experienced these phenomena. It is a proof personal to that individual and has no value to science. For the rest of us, in the absence of proof, there is always faith and perhaps the words of one NDE survivor.
"Before I died and came back, I was just human. When I was out of my body, I was a different being altogether. I now know what I am - a human and a being - and I know now that God is real." - RMH, Wales, 1966, (at the age of 11).
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