NDEs require a new view of consciousness

Cardiologist Pim van Lommel writes: “it is indeed a scientific challenge to discuss new hypotheses that could explain the reported interconnectedness with the consciousness or self of other persons and of deceased relatives; to explain the possibility to experience instantaneously and simultaneously (nonlocality) a review and a preview of someone’s life in a dimension without our conventional body-linked concept of time and space, where all past, present, and future events exist and are available; and to discuss the possibility to have clear and enhanced consciousness with memories, with self-identity, with cognition, with emotion, with the possibility of perception out and above the lifeless body, and even with the experience of the conscious return of the self into the body.” [AS, 25]

To conceptualize this experience of an “enhanced consciousness” van Lommel proposes that: “our endless consciousness with all the aspects or essence of self finds its origin in, and is stored in a nonlocal space as wave fields of information, and the brain only serves as a relay station for parts of these wave fields of consciousness to be received into or as our waking consciousness or ego in the shape of measurable and changing electromagnetic fields.” [AS, 25]

He suggests: “The function of the brain should be compared with a transceiver, a transmitter/receiver, or interface, and the function of neuronal networks should be regarded as receivers and conveyors, not as retainers of consciousness and memories.” In this concept, “consciousness is not rooted in the measurable domain of physics, our manifest world. This also means that the wave aspect of our indestructible consciousness in the nonlocal space is inherently not measurable by physical means. However, the physical aspect of consciousness, our waking consciousness or ego, which presumably originates from the wave aspect of our consciousness through collapse of the wave function, can be measured by means of neuroimaging techniques like EEGs, fMRIs, and PET scans.” [AS, 25-26]

“There is a kind of biological basis of our waking consciousness or ego, because, during life, our physical body functions as an interface or place of resonance. But there is no biological basis for our whole, endless, or enhanced consciousness because it is rooted in a nonlocal space. Our nonlocal consciousness with the experience of self resides not in our brain and is not limited to our brain. So our brain seems to have a facilitating, and not a producing, function to experience consciousness.” [AS, 26]

“In trying to understand this concept of interaction between the invisible nonlocal space and our visible material body, it seems appropriate to compare it with modern worldwide communication. There is a continuous exchange of objective information by means of electromagnetic fields for radio, TV, mobile telephone, or laptop computer. We are not consciously aware of the vast number of electromagnetic fields that constantly, day and night, exist around us and even permeate us, as well as permeate structures like walls and buildings.” Yet we know: “The voice we hear over our telephone is not inside the telephone. The concert we hear over our radio is transmitted to our radio. The images and music we hear and see on TV are transmitted to our TV set. The Internet, with more than a billion websites, can be received at about the same moment in the United States, in Europe, and in Australia, and is obviously not located in, nor produced by, our laptop.” [AS, 26]

AS – Pim van Lommel, “Near-Death Experiences: The Experience of the Self as Real and Not as an Illusion,” Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923, 1234 (2011) 19–28, http://pimvanlommel.nl/files/NDE-NYAS-Experience-Self-article.pdf.