Entering the void: Fenwick excerpt #20

Honorable Judges, before you close this case, we would like to call again Dr Peter Fenwick to share evidence from one final witness:

Dr. Fenwick: Alain Forget is a philosopher who lives in Monaco where he teaches a small group of students. He began meditating from the age of 20. He was 21 when he met his first Teacher. During this phase, he would meditate in many of France's cathedrals. His medication method was to observe his mind and to let go of thoughts as they arose.

Alain Forget

His second Teacher is a remarkable man who spent a number of years in his early teens with a Tibetan monk in Tibet. He did not return to France until his late adolescence. Forget talks to him regularly.

Forget has experienced what he calls entering the void. He has also written a book titled How to Get Out of this World Alive (Forget, 2008), in which he describes his philosophy. He has developed, he says, a number of methods, which can clear his students’ past mental traumas and allow them to reach what he believes is a higher level of consciousness, an area of no space, no time.

Those who have entered this void, he says, have a continuous core of joy at their center. They have lost their overwhelming sense of ‘I’ and their consciousness is no longer identified with their ego. They seem to be at a different level.

Forget is able to "transmit light" to his students. When he does this, he says he enters a different mental state of no space, no time in which others see him as radiating light, love, and energy. His students perceive light of various colors surrounding him and feel energy running within them (Fenwick, 2019). He describes this state as ‘dying to his ego’. When Forget ‘dies’, which he does on a daily basis, he explores the 'no space no time' dimension of the post-death world, sometimes with his teacher.

Forget has allowed himself to be examined by scientists when he was in this state. They looked at changes in his brain function, via EEG and fMRI, as he gave light. They also researched how his student’s brains were responding as he transmitted it (Fenwick et al., 2018).

The results of these examinations show that Forget’s brain activity changes dramatically when he gives light. Faster brain rhythms, high gamma activity, were seen at a high amplitude, spreading widely across his brain. This is a
distinctive and very unusual picture. Analysis of his brain and of a student’s brain together suggested that during the transfer of light, their brains’ activity became entangled. It was apparent that Forget was driving certain areas of the student’s brain, and that the student was responding with an alteration to Forget’s brain areas. (Fenwick et al 2018).

Since 'entering the void', Forget says that he is no longer afraid of death. When he stands back and enters the void, he becomes multi-dimensional. At times, he explores 'no space no time' with his teacher.

These levels correlate with another state of being which he enters and which he says has a special quality to it. He also states that at his physical death he will permanently enter this 'no space no time' area which he defines as the area into which all humans who have entered the void will go. But, he insists, this area has nothing to do with time and space.

So here is a man, Your Honor, who says he has experienced “death” on many occasions, and who is able to describe no-time-no-space (the afterlife) in detail on his return through the limitations of his current filter [his physical body and mind].

Judge: I see that the Counsel for the skeptics wishes to raise a question.

Counsel for the skeptics: Your Honor, this is all hokum-pokum, woo-woo, all disturbed brain function

Dr. Fenwick: It has all been recorded on EEGs and fMRIs (Fenwick et al., 2018). Forget, like certain other individuals (Martin, 2019), has developed special aptitudes: the light he gives and the experience of a refined mental state which correlates with very unusual brain functioning, the alteration of his filter. This has been shown and verified scientifically. He has the capacity to transfer this light to many people near him and at a distance. That is not hokum.

Judge: What say you to this?

Counsel for the skeptics: These phenomena are not recognized by science.

Dr. Fenwick: Many scientists accept that our present reductionist science is not wrong but incomplete, and that it cannot answer all the anomalies ("Galileo Commission Report", 2019), especially unknown energy level anomalies, which are found and experienced.

Judge: I find the case proved, on the grounds of being beyond reasonable doubt. Actually, it adds momentum to my previous call, for a new science of consciousness, which remains open and valid.

 

Fenwick, P. (2019). Shining Light on Transcendence: The unconventional journey of a Neuroscientist. White Crow Books.

Fenwick, P., Di Bernardi Luft, C., Ioannides, A., & Bhattacharya, J. (2018). Neural Correlates of Induced Light Experience during Meditation: A Pilot Hyperscanning Study. Neuroquantology, 16(12), 76-86. https://doi.org/10.14704/nq.2018.16.12.1318.

Forget, A. (2008). How to get out of this world alive (1st ed.) Lulu.

Galileo Commission Report. “Galileo Commission: Expanding the Scope of Science”. (2019). Retrieved 1 July 2021, from https://galileocommission.org/report/. 

Martin, J. (2019). The Finders. Integration Press.

 

“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.