News editor for the New Scientist, Anil Ananthaswamy, ends a remarkably clear explanation of a mysterious reality by acknowledging: “The case remains to be solved.”1 He was writing about the famous two-slit experiment in which a single photon of light may appear when measured to be a particle or a wave, depending on how the observer measures it.
I am writing about a very different case, the resurrection celebrated by Christians on Easter, which I affirm also “remains to be solved.” Ananthaswamy explains how “a sunbeam split in two” has shed “light on the underlying nature of reality.” I suggest the resurrection has shed light on the underlying nature of life.
The resurrection of Jesus after his death on a Roman cross has given Christians hope that conscious life can survive physical death. The dominant paradigm in science, which holds that all conscious life depends on a physical brain, assumes that physical death is the end of every form of conscious life. Yet, quantum physics has discovered that matter comes from energy, like the photon arising from the wave function of light. Material reality itself arises from energy that, like conscious thoughts and feelings, is not in itself material.
Near-death experiences, too, when a person’s brain is non-functional, are immaterial events that have significant consequences. My father remembered such an experience when during surgery his heart stopped, and his conscious awareness “awakened” despite anesthesia and observed the life-saving efforts of the medical team. Furthermore, my father’s conscious awareness left the hospital and “traveled” toward a brilliant but not blinding light, which he experienced as unconditional love. He also saw my mother in front of the light and wanted to remain there with her. But she communicated telepathically that it was not his time to die.
My father, a
scientist, knew that materialist scientific explanations could not explain his
near-death experience. Nonetheless, he told me, the experience was absolutely
“real” and ended his fear of death. In addition, I knew that he had become a
more compassionate person after his near-death experience. Moreover, research
has confirmed that this character change is common among those who have shared
their near-death experience with researchers.
2 
James K Traer
Four hundred scientists have affirmed a “Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science” that asserts: “Conscious mental activity can be experienced in clinical death during a cardiac arrest.”3 And other scientists have affirmed in “Beyond a Materialist Vision” that “the belief that consciousness is nothing but a consequence . . . of brain activity . . . is neither proven, nor warranted.”4
I am not suggesting near-death experiences explain the resurrection. I am suggesting the materialist assumptions of scientists have not resolved our experience of consciousness—even when we are physically healthy, much less in cases such as near-death experiences.
The resurrection was a conscious experience for those who were its initial witnesses, and Easter has been and continues to be a real source of hope for many. The case for conscious life after physical death has not been resolved but remains both a scientific and spiritual possibility.
1 Anil Ananthaswamy, “Through two doors: How a sunbeam split in two became physics’ most elegant experiment, shedding light on the underlying nature of reality,” Aeon, Oct. 2, 2018, https://aeon.co/essays/the-elegant-physics-experiment-to-decode-the-nature-of-reality
2 Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2021).
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