Counsel for the Afterlife:
In this session we ask you to consider possible mechanisms that could explain the phenomena that we have heard from our witnesses. We call again Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti to submit his analysis:
Dr Moretti:
Dear colleagues, I focused my previous intervention on the apparent commonalities to extract a possible interpretation in terms of science we rely on.
I will therefore describe a model that is supported by contemporary science that we are now comfortable to accept in many other contexts.
The three main aspects I ask you to have always in mind are those reported by those who were close to death, but returned to life: the presence of light, the absence of time and the detachment from the body.
I first need to describe some scientific concepts:
First of all: “light”.
Light can be represented classically as a wave of the electromagnetic field. A wave can be also interpreted as a probability distribution in standard quantum physics. In the case of light, as a quantum entity, there is a probability that it can exist throughout the entirety of space. It is everywhere as long as it does not interact with matter. It can also be represented as a massless particle (photon). A photon has a constant speed, independent of reference systems, and that is the maximum allowed (the speed of light). Any particle with mass can only travel with a speed less than that of light.
To measure velocity, we need two measurements in space, and the time it takes to cover the distance between them. But in a reference system that travels faster than light, time in Einstein's formula, becomes a negative number: something must be wrong or time must become something different, at least in its classical mathematical description (Einstein & Lawson, 2001). Time is in fact not an absolute quantity, that is, it depends on the reference system. It scrolls differently depending on the speed: the higher the speed, the slower the passage of time. In principle, if an identity that is linked to a body disconnects from its mass and starts traveling at the speed of light for a certain time, if it were to reconnect with the mass, would perceive its luminous travel as instantaneous. This is what a person would experience if their mind were to disconnect from their body and then rematerialize back.
In addition to light (i.e., photons), every microscopic particle with mass can also be described as a wave, that is, in principle, could be present everywhere. This characteristic of vagueness in spatial localization is lost when it interacts with the environment. There are two interesting quantum effects that demonstrate this vagueness in localization: tunneling (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021) and entanglement (Bub, 2020).
Tunneling is what allows a particle with mass to overcome an energy-potential barrier that classically would prohibit it. In reality it is not prohibited! But the probability that the particle can cross the barrier is low. It is the principle on which tunnel effect microscopes and other electronic devices are based (Aharonov & Rohrlich, 2005). When dealing with macroscopic bodies, the probability that all the atoms can jump together at the same time becomes truly zero. The more of them that are bound together, the more they are condemned to stay in a certain place.
Entanglement is a theoretical phenomenon that, in experiments to date, is mostly confined to microscopic particles, although larger and larger objects are being detected in entangled states (Abbott & et al, 2009; McConnell et al., 2015). Suppose that two particles are generated simultaneously and that there is a property that binds them to obey a certain law, e.g., a pair of photons or electrons sharing energy, momentum and/or spin. If we are able to separate them in space and manage not to make them interact with the external environment, they would have a description of their existence through a common wave-function, a probability wave, precisely because they were generated together. If one of the two, no matter how far away from the other, interacts with the environment, the property that binds them would remain valid and the other particle would obey, regardless of their mutual distance. This means that something would instantly happen to the other particle, with the correlation traveling instantaneously (Gilder, 2008).
If we now reflect on the concept of time, what if time also could be described as a wave or equivalently as a quantum operator? (Prigogine, 1982). Or what if time was not localized in an instant but depended on interaction? (Barbour, 2001) We would no longer have a particle moving in time, but we would have a number of possible combinations between past and future and different places. The spatial and the temporal positions would mostly depend on the fact that many particles, all “connected” together, interact with other masses (Barbour, 2001).
This means that our body cannot cross to the other side of a barrier of the space-time field represented by the speed of light. But we can imagine it, through thought.
All these reflections suggest that the condition of mass-entity blocks us from accessing the reality beyond space and time.
What does this block consist of and how is it overcome?
We are not speaking now about the speed of light, but anything that prevents a body from accessing another dimension with no localization in space and time.
Let's go back for a moment to the fact that messages between material bodies cannot travel faster than light in space-time, unless the bodies have an intrinsic link and can pass as correlations through entanglement. And let's think of a boat that sails in the middle of the sea. Ripples move ahead of the boat if its speed is lower than that of the propagation of sound in the water. When the speed exceeds it, we would see the trail behind us but no ripples ahead. This means that we are going faster than information can be transmitted. So, nothing ahead of us could understand that we are coming while we would only affect what's behind us. In practice, we see the past that we have changed but we do not see the future that we are about to change. This happens if we're only seeing the surface of the sea. If we raised our eyes from the surface of the water, however, we would see what lies ahead of us.
It all depends on how we arrange ourselves on the boat; that is, if we see the surface of the water, if we look forward or behind, or if we stand up in the bow. What is it that allows us to change our viewpoint?
Let's now assume the existence of entities with mass not localized in space and not localized in time, as an extreme speculation. When they interact with the environment, they materialize in a position in space and time. But what defines existence?
Let's now insert a definition, as often happens in the scientific field, because we need some initial rules to be able to proceed with the argument.
We define identity as the property of a series of connections between particles having mass that allows a living being to operate in the material world in order intentionally to modify it.
Therefore, identity is not a material object, defined by culture or humans, and positioned in a measurable place. We speak instead of living beings, capable of acting on the material world and capable of free will.
So how is identity achieved? Let us continue our speculation.
We have many material particles that are linked together through entanglement. When a living organism is generated, the genetic code as an initial algorithm begins its construction of the "identity" through interaction with the environment. The particles, with mass and therefore localized, have a link between them that defines their identity. This bond is described by a waveform integrated between all the particles, as is the case for entanglement. This bond has an energy and correlations that characterize its configuration and that we will call “identity energy”. Identity therefore could be described by a ‘waveform’ or via some wave function. Its binding energy and correlations do not have a material existence. In principle, this identity cannot be measured directly through tools or models developed for the material world. We can only detect and measure the interaction of it with the external world.
The first consequence of this model is that there is matter with "meaning". A living organism therefore has a sort of “network" of energy and correlations that establishes its identity as a concept of creation and invention, linked to the ability to influence the space-time distribution of mass through a massless quantity.
We therefore assume that there is a sort of energy that describes the order in matter, such as the energy that is needed to tie many tree trunks together to make a raft and therefore change its function. It is an energy that transforms the distribution of logs in space from pieces of wood into a different meaning linked to a goal. It is not the energy that we used to cut the logs, transport them and tie them, but a form of energy that describes the design and the order in which they were arranged in order to change their purpose. If we had connected the logs for the raft in a different way, we would have created a hut for example. In classical philosophy’s terms that would be the efficient and final cause, responsible for meaning and agency, ostracized by science since Galileo’s times (Basios, 2005; Goff, 2019).
Now suppose that living beings have this order among their material components. It is an order that we have currently assigned to the genetic code as an algorithm capable of creating from a few constituent blocks a whole variety of living beings in turn capable of interacting with the environment and its resources, reproducing and evolving the algorithm so that it can survive changes that would otherwise be fatal.
In the proposed model, the name represents the identity as the concept associated with the energy of the structure that binds the material components so that they take on a meaning. Identity addresses the meaning. It can be associated with an energy, which is currently not measurable and describes its design and entelechy.
Now I move to the NDEs, meditation, premonition, remote vision, hypnosis, etc.
Our atoms are structured together to enable our body, and the whole system that composes it, including the brain, contribute to having self-awareness, thinking and interacting with the outside world. The external material world exists for us in a certain place and time. The internal world, on the other hand, can range. We have assumed this ordering structure of matter is associated with a form of energy that establishes the role, function, or meaning of the design.
When the interaction with the external environment is high, that is, our senses and cognitive system are active in picking up external signals and processing them, we are fully present and localized. When the coordination energy of interactions with the environment decreases, measured for example by reducing the activity of the brain default network, our cognitive capacity expands (Lin et al., 2017).
To put it another way: if we lose our ‘name’, or matter-based identity, we are able to access a realm that is no longer dominated by space-time variables. Our "part" accesses the "whole". In practice, the less we know, in the sense of acquiring details, the more we know, in a similar way with which, in quantum mechanics, we reduce (or ‘collapse’) the extent of possible states when we observe (von Neumann, 1955).
As we lose our identity embedded in matter, we access dimensions without and beyond space and time, where there is no sequence of events, there is no definition of speed and there is no measurement of space and/or time. We have access to more, or even all, imaginable information. When we return to ourselves, we regain the ability to interact through the senses and restore our identity and therefore the human filters of knowledge.
The death of a living being translates as the lack of the possibility of re-establishing the binding energy and correlation, that makes the material structure localized in time and space. Death results in the impossibility of interacting with the material world “directly”, but of being able to interact with the immaterial one instead.
There is therefore always a link between the material and the immaterial dimensions at every moment (Bohm & Hiley, 1995; Nadeau & Kafatos, 2001). What we consider identities associated with our bodies are the projections in one time and one place of a wider simultaneous and ubiquitous unity.
Dear colleagues, the model I just proposed can interpret most of the phenomena within state-of-the-art science. Unfortunately, there is no mathematical formulation of how to describe the link between them, if not conceptually as I did, although very recently there is some preparatory activity on this front (D’Ariano & Faggin, 2020; Faggin, 2021; Kauffman & Radin, 2021).
The Court will adjourn.
Figures 1, 2, and 3 in the original text have been omitted.
“To Be And Not To Be. This is The Answer: Consciousness Survives,” essay for the 2021 Bigelow essay contest submitted by Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern. The complete essay with footnotes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.
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