A scientific hypothesis: Fenwick excerpt #17

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.

We can simply represent symbolically these material and immaterial realms through the projections (or shadows) of an object on different planes (Figure 4 on the left) signifying the application of different observation/description-filters to the object (Kostmo, 2010).

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.

Creating a theory: Fenwick excerpt #16

Advocate for the Afterlife:

In the preceding sessions we have heard a brief summary of the substantial evidence that some aspect of consciousness appears to survive after bodily death. But to put it on firm ground, we need a theory to interpret this evidence. For this session we would like to call physicist Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti:

Dr Moretti:

Dear panel of esteemed Judges,

Interpretation of the facts depends on the assumptions we make and on the context in which we are embedded. Let me start with an example.

“Yesterday, my neighbors told me that a donkey was flying in the sky".

Is it true that a donkey flew yesterday? Did they really see it? Can a donkey fly?

As a scientist, I would start from the last question and ask myself if I can reproduce the phenomenon in any experiment. If not, or if any experiment does not confirm the hypothesis, I would look for the presence of any objective detection of the event, preferably independent from human cognitive bias. Based on a backward analysis, I would focus on what motivated the neighbors to report a flying donkey. Was it a donkey? Was it really flying or an optical effect?

Most of the evidence for the survival of consciousness is in the form of “reports”, that is “stories” and these stories are told by humans.

NDEs and reincarnation are reported by people of all ages, ethical groups, religions, cultures and in different historical periods. Many report passing through a tunnel of light and meeting deceased relatives. Others report that they were unable to sequence their memories of the experience, and that they probably organized the story according to some logic. Often they report having seen their own bodies on the ground while flying above.

I immediately note that these are personal stories, strongly influenced by the fears and desires of the individuals who reported them. However, statistically speaking, I have to admit that, although these stories are strange, their recurrence is high and the commonalities can hide something that we are not yet able to explain or even is incompatible with our current scientific models. What we do not understand can still exist!

In many cases, these accounts were reported by patients who were well monitored in equipped hospital rooms, as Peter Fenwick mentioned earlier. Patients reported real events while their brain functions were diagnosed as absent and vital functions were assisted by machines.

To make the story short, whether they were alone or in a credible medical context, people reported: the presence of light in different forms (tunnels, presences, lighting), externalization from the body and difficulty in assigning a duration and temporal sequence to the event.

But any conclusions will still be based on stories reported by humans. No “controlled” experiment has demonstrated that there is a link between the identity of a dead individual and a measurable, verifiable presence as a spirit in our world.

Other phenomena can take advantage of experiments in controlled conditions, where we can extract similar features to those reported during NDEs. These phenomena are called “paranormal”, or, using better term, “anomalous” (Rao, & Palmer, 1987), and tend to be ignored or denied by “Western hard science”, of course what is paranormal in one era might well be perfectly normal in another, like the radioactivity and X-rays (Horgan, 2012; Durrani, 2000).

We are talking about premonition and remote viewing. Cases of these can be supported by scientifically valid experiments (Targ et al., 2002; Jessica Utts, 1991).

Premonition means accessing information from the future. Remote viewing means perceiving at a distance, far into space and beyond the usual sensing.

Both involve accessing knowledge of space and time not linked to localization in the present and in the current place (Marwaha & May, 2015). With breathing techniques (Trivellato, 2017) and concentration or intake of substances (Sheldrake et al., 2001), some are able to trigger this type of phenomena, including detachment from the body,

The study of the functioning of the brain has seen remarkable developments in recent decades. During states of absence of consciousness, a decrease in activity of the so-called brain default network is usually observed (Raichle, 2015; DiNicola & Buckner, 2019). The default network is the network of connections that is activated when the brain interacts and acquires data from the external environment. It is the system that shows the presence of interaction and analysis of the brain through the senses. When the brain, voluntarily or not, “stops” receiving signals from the outside or processing them, it is unable to place itself at that moment and in that place. In practice, it loses its space-time localization.

The brain default network therefore seems to provide a measure of our state of self-consciousness located in time and space.

Here are the aspects that are "reported" by people who have survived experiences that we can call near-death or through different techniques, remembering that they refer to stories and that experimental verification is not currently possible for any of these:

1. detachment from the body, or a view of space mainly from above.

2. difficulty in assigning duration and temporal sequence to events.

3. presence of light.

Then let's add the salient ones that are acquired in scientifically validated experiments:

4. during states of unconsciousness or deep relaxation, the brain default network reduces its activity as cited in (Lee et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2017). That network is responsible for receiving and analyzing external inputs detected through the senses.

5. premonition and remote vision are phenomena that allow access to non-localized information in space and time. Many of these phenomena occur in unconscious or semi-conscious states (Lehmann et al., 2001).

We should recognize that any information we collect and analyze is filtered by the fact that it is reported by humans, but humans are also the ones who have built physical laws, models and concepts. So, we have a bias when trying to explain the unexplainable, and our vision is not independent of our condition as humans, see also (Bouratinos, 2018). Nothing described by individuals from their own mental experiences can be scientifically verified through external measures, apart from measuring the activity in the brain.

Let us therefore reflect on the stories and extract the aspects that do seem to be independent of the human condition.

Let us start from the detachment from the body or a vision of the place from above. Suppose we are in a condition where space no longer exists, or in a dimension where the whole universe is not described in a set of separate objects but in its overall state. What situation in life comes to mind that can make us imagine losing the ability to distinguish objects? Probably a view from above. On the edge of a cliff, over the top of a mountain, on a plane. When we observe from above, we have the sensation of grasping the entirety of the space and losing that of the detail. We are looking at the whole as if we were external to it. Clearly, to a human, "witnessing" the whole of space suggests a vision from above.

We come to another point: difficulties in assigning duration and temporal sequence to events.

If the first point suggested a condition without a localization in space, this suggests a similar condition but without a localization in time. Failing to arrange memories according to a time-line implies that their description occurred later in a logical way and based on personal, human experience. The same thing applies to the assignment of duration, which in the absence of precise time references is deduced from comparison with events already experienced.

We can deduce that we are dealing with stories that identify a situation where space and time are in any case distorted, and probably absent (Saniga, 2005).

Then we have the presence of light.

Are we sure that it is light as we perceive it? Light as that perceived illuminating books in the dark? The book exists, but does the light exist or is this a concept we use to describe the interaction of our senses with the external material world?

When we hear of visions of angels dressed in white, halos, dark tunnels that lead to a passage towards a reality illuminated by a blinding light at the exit: these are all representations of light that we are used to, assisting both with our senses and through our education. Nobody reports the presence of light as a photoelectric effect or with phenomena other than their own experience. Furthermore, most of the time the perception of light is identified in white or in any case without the distinction of colors. White is the result of all colors emitted simultaneously.

So white light represents the concept of light.

Light is indeed structured within the concept of space and time, according to Einstein's theory. The intrinsic characteristic of the distribution of space and time is the universal constant equal to the speed of light, constant and independent of any reference system. It is an intrinsic feature. We can address a characteristic to the light, or rather its speed, as a number that identifies the presence of all space and all time. The speed of light separates the space-time continuum between whatever has mass and what does not. Whatever can be measured and whatever not, for humans living at speeds lower than that of light, light represents the boundary between a world with defined space and time, filled with localized mass, and “something else”. This something else, however, should not have space and time or massive objects, unless they have different laws from those we know.

One thing seems plausible: the stories of near-death experiences and some paranormal phenomena suggest that they can be framed as the access to a dimension without space and time, and light signals the presence of the boundary towards that dimension (Saniga, 2005; Fenwick et al., 2018; Fenwick, 2019).

In summary, therefore, suppose we are unconscious, and our brain has stopped interacting with the external physical world. Let's suppose that our ego, consciousness or whatever you want to call it, has access to a dimension without space and time, thus being able to grasp all the information of the past, future and wherever they are. When we become conscious again, what would we, as humans, say?

Could we say that we have seen something that we personally have never had anything to do with? Could we say that we have seen or perceived something outside the capabilities of a Human?

No, we would describe something that we can understand and relate to. In other words, we would filter it through a syntax linked to our physical and historical condition. We would report any information as a function of past and human experiences.

So, the reported stories pass through two consecutive filters: 1) consists of the combination of 1a) the sensory/cognitive capacity of human beings as evolved animals in a competitive environment and 1b) the individual cultural/educational background that allows the interpretation of facts. 2) consists of the methodology and cultural contexts that frame any identification and interpretation of facts (Bouratinos, 2018).

This reflection is by no means innovative, but it has to become our lens to investigate the facts.

By adopting a scientific methodology based on verification of facts and measurements acquired by instruments, we cannot assume the reports from humans as evidence for the existence of an “afterlife”. This is definitely true when we deal with NDEs and reincarnation. For other phenomena as premonition and remote viewing, I admit they can be accepted as evidence of “something else”, but there is no direct link with “afterlife”. I do think most of us are therefore influenced by a confirmation bias and we should scout for a possible model that can explain these phenomena bearing in mind self-reflection and openness.

 

“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.

Reincarmation theories: Fenwick excerpt #15

Dr Fenwick: How might information be preserved between lives in reincarnation?

Psychologist Jeffery Martin has suggested that every human consists of two domains:

Domain 1 consists of our physical attributes, body, genetic profile, and the filters in the brain which are constructed by the experiences of the individual and so are different for everyone but the same in that they limit in some way the expression of the transcendent nature of the individual.

Domain 2 is a transcendent realm, containing consciousness – perhaps more easily thought of and described as awareness. Awareness can be seen as the prime generator in the universe, giving rise in its widest state to love, light, and the experience of bliss (Martin, 2019).

Awareness is understood to be the driving and creative force of the universe, which structures every moment, and has an evolutionary thrust leading to the development of the physical realm (Martin, 2019). The experience of awareness is limited by the restriction of the experiential filters constructed by the brain.

Domain 2 exists in no space, no time and thus is unknowable to the physical realm but can be made manifest and thus available to the physical brain, see chapters 7-8 in (Martin, 2019).

There are now so many of these cases that one has to accept that a memory of what happens in one life can be reproduced in a subsequent life. If such memory does exist then it is supported by people who die and live again following an ADE.

As both brain and body decay after death and a reincarnated body has no close genetic relationship to the previous one, it would not be possible, with our current science, for this to affect the genetics of a child, e.g., birthmarks on a child who is born with the stigmata of a person who has died. A non-physical component to the body must be postulated if information from a dead person is later to affect the genetic profile of the reincarnated person.

This presupposes the carryover of information in some way from one life to the next. One possibility is that at death the memory component of a life goes into an area of the universe which has no space and no time. When the very wide experience is called back from no space, no time, it will be reinterpreted by the filters in the growing child and thus will be similar though not identical to those of the original person.

It is unlikely that the space into which memory goes can be determined by classical physics, or we would already have had hypotheses to explain it. It is thus reasonable to assume that these are quantum mechanical spaces which have no space and no time (Wheeler, 1990).

A Hilbert space must be a candidate, and I would ask physicist Dr Vasileios Basios to take the witness stand and briefly explain what that is:  

 

Dr Vasileos Basios

Hilbert spaces express the basic tenets of all quantum theories and quantum field theories and transcend the wave-particle duality. They are extensions of the classical concept of vector spaces which themselves generalize, by abstraction, spatio-temporal relations such as distance, direction, and angle. Yet, Hilbert spaces are spaces of functions, relations, operations, and operators beyond space & time. Not only do they describe all quantum phenomena but also express the quantum logic that underlies them, as well as the axioms of modern quantum information & quantum communication theories. Moreover, it recently became clear that they constitute the foundation of treating, from first principles, quantum theory as a purely informational theory (D’Ariano, 2017).

It would be reasonable to argue that ‘awareness’ is a transport operator or ‘projector’, and since it is linked to consciousness it would be able to transfer information back and forth from the space.

Dr Fenwick Resumes:

To understand awareness and the mechanism of perception we must first discuss non-duality. In the ordinary everyday world, people are fixed in subject/object consciousness (dual consciousness or awareness). Information from the outside world is analyzed by the brain and then projected back into the outside world. So we experience the outside world with an internal perceiver. However, in non-duality the structures relating to the perceiver vanish and thus the outside world becomes just one thing with the inside world. There is no perceiver looking out, just experience of the present moment.

Current science is our religion, and it has no explanation for, and therefore no belief in, any of the phenomena described in this article. And like the followers of any religion, most of us find it easier to believe than to observe. But if we do observe, and try to do so objectively and honestly, a new belief system will eventually begin to evolve.

What science can do, despite its limitations, is to look at the personal experiences that have formed the basis of many people’s belief in reincarnation. It can assess the quality of the evidence that they have indeed lived a past life and it can see how far the phenomenon of past-life memories can itself be explained within a scientific framework. If there are phenomena which can’t be explained within a scientific framework then we must decide whether to ignore the many and varied accounts of them we have been given, or to acknowledge that our science is incomplete. 

 

 

“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.

Past life memories: Fenwick excerpt #14

Professor Erlandur Haraldsson, of the University of Iceland, studied the personalities of 30 Sri Lankan children who claimed past-life memories. Although he was only able to verify a few of these cases, his main aim was to try to identify common characteristics in children who had these memories. Did they show a tendency to dissociate – and how did they get along with their parents? If they did not, then the child might have a good reason for feeling he actually belonged to somebody else.

What he did find was that the children who had past-life memories were usually very bright and mature for their age. They had greater verbal skills, better memory and were more serious, less likely to fool around in school. If one assumes that past-life memories are quite common in early childhood, but are quickly forgotten, then perhaps it is only the early talkers who could speak about them before they vanished completely. But he found no evidence that such children were socially isolated, suggestible, had a tendency to dissociate or had relationship problems within the family - in fact that they were no more likely to create this fantasy world than any other children.

These are the most common features of a previous life:

·   They died a violent death, often related to a phobia in their present life. Of 52 reincarnated children who had died by drowning, 42 had a fear of water (Stevenson, 1990)

·   There are birthmarks which correspond to an injury at the time of death in the previous life e.g., bullet wounds, or reproduction of injuries e.g., missing fingers. It has also been suggested that previous lives might be a factor that contributes to the development of human personality.

·   Nightmares related to the previous life are common.

·   The time most frequently seen (mode) between death and rebirth is estimated to be about four and a half years. But the mean is much longer, in the teens.

·    After a few years the child starts discussing their previous life and attempts are then made to verify what they say. In some of these cases correspondence is remarkably high.

·   Most children lose their past-life memories by the age of 6.

·   Ian Stevenson noted that many children appear to be in a partial trance when they talk about their previous lives (Stevenson, 2001).

·   Some people, even as adults, have inexplicable feelings of déjà vu when they find themselves in certain places or situations.

Roger Woolger was one of the first doctors to practice regression therapy. He did this not because he was trying to prove reincarnation, (though he gave the impression he believed in it), but because it worked as a therapy. Belief was incidental to his work as a therapist, which involved using stories that might or might not be true (Woolger, 2010).

Woolger found that one of the quickest ways to get people into past lives was to start from the idea that everyone has within them inner characters, secondary or sub-personalities, which appear in their dream life, and then to try to find one or two places in the world which either attracted or repelled them, and imagine they were living there in another lifetime.

Although he believed that between 10 and 30% of what came up was fantasy, he also believed that he could distinguish between a fantasy reconstruction and a genuine past life memory. Regression therapy seldom provided any evidence of reincarnation. A past life regression that is attempting to prove reincarnation would take quite a different form (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2001). The hypnotist would try to elicit as many details as possible – name, date, places, anything that could be checked, to see how well the past life story hung together, as in the following case:

Neil is a professional hypnotherapist who uses both past life and present life regressions to resolve problems. One day when he was working with a client she regressed to a past life in the 1920s and recounted very specific details of her life, including the name of her favorite aunt – Aunt Aggie. The client’s previous life ended in 1934. She was born in this life in 1946 so it seemed likely that some of her previous relatives were still around.

This lady had never been to England and yet she had given specific details of names and addresses in Burnley, Lancashire. After the session with the client present Neil telephoned directory enquiries and gave them the surname and address that she had relived. “I was given two telephone numbers for that name in that street in Burnley. One was identical to the house number that she said she had lived at. With the client’s permission Neil telephoned that number and asked for Aunt Aggie, to be told by the person who answered the phone that Aunt Aggie had died about five years ago. Neil said that his client was freaked out by this and understandably did not want to continue any further. He added that his client had no relatives in Burnley, in fact she had never heard of the place. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2001)

Coincidence is really the only rational explanation, and yet the account would involve four coincidences – name, house number, street name and town. Is this really that much easier to believe than the idea that the client had somehow tuned into memories of a past life, whether her own or someone else’s?

Another case which illustrates very well the value that past life therapy can have is that of a young woman, Catherine who, for more than a year had been suffering from recurring nightmares and chronic anxiety attacks. When no traditional therapy seemed to help her, her psychiatrist, Dr. Brian Weiss, turned to hypnosis. This was something he had always been skeptical about, so he was astonished when Catherine began recalling past-life traumas which seemed to hold the key to her problems, and he lost his skepticism completely when she began to channel messages from 'the space between lives', which contained remarkable revelations about his own life (Weiss, 1994). 

 

 

“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.

Reincarnation: Fenwick excerpt #13

Advocate for the Afterlife:

In this session we call on neuropsychiatrist Dr Peter Fenwick to resume the witness stand and provide evidence for reincarnation - those who have died being re-born in a new body.

History

Every culture has its own theory of survival. Plato believed the soul was immortal. Pythagoras is said to have taught reincarnation and Virgil introduced the idea of reincarnation in his account of the underworld in the Aeneid.

Hindus and Buddhists believe that Karma sets the moral tone for your next life. In Tibetan Buddhism, after the death of a spiritual leader, there is a search for his reincarnated soul.

Let's turn to documented evidence from more recent times. One of the clearest indicators of the survival of individual human consciousness after bodily death would be reincarnation. So what's the evidence?

Ian Stevenson

One of the first serious studies in this area was done by Ian Stevenson who collected over 2000 cases, mainly from India (Stevenson, 2001) but also from Europe (Stevenson, 2001). Jim Tucker collected many in the USA, and showed they occur as commonly in a Western culture as in India (Tucker, 2015).

From the age of only five or six, Alan Pring knew that he wanted to become a pilot. His chance came when he joined the RAF in WW2.

“When I began flying in 1943 my instructor was convinced that I had piloted aircraft before. Just knew how to fly and every ‘new’ experience to which I was introduced in the air was already a memory. Similarly, the first time I encountered the smell of aircraft fabric dope I knew that I had experienced it previously, and it gave me the most peculiar sense of pleasure, as if it was associated with very happy memories. My love of flying has never faded but it is directed always in my memory towards biplanes. I feel that I flew with Sopwith Aircraft.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2001)

After the war Alan joined RAF Voluntary Reserve and one day six of them decided they would have a mock dogfight. Alan felt he had managed to climb to 9000 feet without being seen, spotted four of the planes at least 1000 feet below him and concentrated on searching for the fifth.

“Suddenly with an ominous sinking in my stomach I looked behind me. There, not five yards from my tail was the whirring propeller of the fifth plane. At that moment I experienced a horrendous feeling of doom....It was no longer a Tiger-Moth behind me but a Fokker triplane. I saw the two flashes of its machine guns and immediately felt terrible blows in my back and momentarily everything went black..... I was quite emotionally upset...not at losing the contest, but the conviction that it had all happened before and that I had been killed through carelessness and over-confidence in a dogfight in the First World War.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2001)

Many years after this experience Alan had a near-death experience which had a profound effect on him. It convinced him that it was impossible to die. Given this belief, he says, it would seem plausible, if not logical, that reincarnation is a possibility. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2001)

Classically these past life memories start to emerge when the child is very young – around the age of two years - and are lost by the time they are six. These children usually also have repeated nightmares which relate to their previous life, often including an unnatural or violent death – murder, suicide, accident or combat. After a few years the child starts discussing their previous life and attempts are then made to verify what they say. In some of these cases correspondence is remarkably high. Often, the time between death and rebirth is only a few years, though in one of the strongest and most interesting cases, that of James Leininger, described below, it was over 50 years. But it included many statements that have been verified as accurately describing the life which is said to be reincarnated (Tucker, 2016).

In 2000, when James was 22 months old, his father took him to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas. James was fascinated by the planes, particularly by the World War II exhibit, and by a video about the Navy's flight exhibition team. Soon after the trip he began repeatedly to say “airplane crash on fire,” and slamming his toy planes nose first into the family's coffee table. James's father travelled a lot, and when James and his mother saw him off at the airport, James would often say, “Daddy, airplane crash on fire.” He also began to have nightmares in which he would scream and eventually also say “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can't get out.”

His parents and Jim Tucker investigated this case and they came upon 12 close correspondences with the life and death of a WII pilot, James Huston, who had been a pilot in the American Airforce, whose plane took off from a boat named Natoma, and was shot down by the Japanese. The plane’s engine was hit, it was set on fire and crashed. Although James Leininger said that he was flying a Corsair, which frequently got flat tires, when he crashed, in fact Huston had been flying a different plane when he died, an FM- 2, but he had flown a Corsair earlier, which frequently got flat tyres in test flights. James also remembered the name of one of Huston’s friends, Jack Larsen, who had been on the aircraft carrier with him, and this too was verified (Tucker, 2015).

James’s recurrent nightmares and what appeared to be post- traumatic compulsive play of plane crashes appear very similar to those that children who have experienced trauma in their current life display, and they are often seen in children who report memories of previous lives.

It is difficult to dismiss this as fantasy, or say that the child James's statements matched Huston's life purely by chance. The specifics present in this case would seem to undermine that possibility, for example, knowing the unusual name Natoma for a ship that was indeed in the place he reported.

James had made all of the documented statements by the time he was four years old, so he could not have read about them. In any case no published materials about James Huston are known to exist. No television programs focusing on Natoma or James Huston appear to have been made either (Tucker, 2015).

Another interesting case is that of Ryan Hammons, born in Oklahoma in 2004. His speech development was delayed so he did not speak in full sentences until he was four, when he started talking about a past lifetime. He remembered being in his mother’s womb, and asked her why she had cried when she discovered he was a boy (which was true, though he could not have known about it). He said that he wanted to go home to Hollywood and visit his “other family,” and gave so many details of this life and family, that his mother began to investigate it herself, and eventually contacted Jim Tucker, who also investigated it. Ryan’s previous life was found to be as Marty Martyn, a Ukrainian Jew and unsuccessful actor (though he did manage to tap dance on Broadway). Ryan gave 55 verified details of his life. Martyn was known to be very fond of Chinese food. The first time Ryan was taken to a Chinese restaurant he picked up his chopsticks and used them quite naturally without having to be shown how. He also liked to tap- dance. He is said to be one of a few such children who seemed to have psychic abilities, able to predict things which were about to happen (Kean, 2018) (Tucker, 2015) (Haraldsson & Matlock, 2017)

 

“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.

Rational counter-arguments: Fenwick excerpt #12

Cross-examination of Dr. Fenwick by counsel representing skeptics

Q: One of the central beliefs of most religions is in some sort of afterlife. Scripture and belief are not counted as evidence for this trial, but could they count as evidence against survival? Most people naturally fear death and find it hard to imagine their narrative consciousness just ending. Religions have nurtured this fear with ideas of heaven and hell, thus encouraging hopes for an afterlife. So, as rational minds, should we not distrust ideas of an afterlife as products of indoctrinated fear?

Dr. Fenwick: These experiences do not map onto religious belief. They can happen with similar frequency to atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindu etc.

Q. Couldn't A/NDEs simply be like dreams - fantasies generated in the brain?

Dr. F. The similarity of these experiences makes this unlikely.

Q. A/NDEs have been very widely reported in popular books since the 1980s. Couldn't many now be being generated through hopes and expectations of those dying?

Dr. F. Following an early TV program about NDEs in 1989, before the phenomenon had had much publicity. I received over 400 letters about NDEs. They were from an English population who all maintained that at the time of their NDE they had not heard about them.

Q. Can't the tunnel, the light and even the feeling of Love be a result of brain processes starting to fail due to lack of oxygen?

Dr. F. There is no clear evidence that tunnels, light or love are generated by anoxia. For example, in obstructive sleep apnoea oxygen levels fall to below 60% and none of these phenomena occur .

Q. People say they have difficulty putting their ADE into words and a linear sequence. Could this not just be the recovering brain trying to make sense of the confusional blur of unconsciousness and not something actually experienced by those who do not recover?

Dr. F. The experiences of the ADE occur in a very clear sequence and are not a blur as they appear to occur in clear consciousness.

Q. This evidence for NDEs is based on anecdote. Clearly it's not ethical to conduct trials, but is there any quantitative evidence?

Dr. F. This is incorrect. A number of studies have collected multiple cases and analysed these according to a strict proforma for various components of the NDE. So although the data are subjective accounts, the analysis of this data shows objective quantification of the result.

Court Usher: The Court will adjourn.

 

 

“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.

End of life experiences: Fenwick excerpt #11

In summary, The accounts we have of the mental processes of the dying can only give us a partial view, taking us up to the moment of death. The accounts given by those who return from an A/NDE [After Death Experience or Near Death Experience] have a higher definition and paradoxically seems to give a much clearer insight into the mental state of the dying as they start the journey. But despite these differences, the amazing similarity of accounts of the transcendent realm strongly supports the idea that there is one transcendent reality which, although accessed differently, is where the dying go.

It is surely illogical to think of end of life visions and actual death experiences as isolated, entirely unrelated events. It makes more sense to regard them as part of a continuum, or as different views of the same event – the dying process. It is easy to spot the similarities between them. Both give a glimpse of a transcendent realm suffused with love and light, and both seem to eliminate any fear of death. The presence of dead relatives who seem to be there for a purpose is common to both experiences - to take you on your journey, in the case of an end of life experience, or in an ADE, to send you back, with the message that it was not your time to go. The relatives are all healed of any injury like lost limbs and they never age.

There are obvious differences too. First, the feeling of being out of one’s body has not been reported in any of the end of life visions we have been told about, though it probably occurs in about a third of ADEs. Neither has anyone described a tunnel experience as part of an end of life vision. Instead, although the dying person sometimes describes being able to move into and out of another transcendent realm, only a movement towards rather than a real journey seems to be involved, just a feeling of going to and from with great ease. Perhaps it is the mental set of the dying which makes the tunnel experience less likely to occur. The dying often spend some time on the edge of consciousness, and at some level at least may know that death is approaching; they are embedded in a psychological matrix of ongoing, a journey to elsewhere, in which the process of leaving may be prolonged. In the A/NDE the movement into the experience – sometimes through a tunnel – and the return, usually described as a ‘snapping back into the body’ are very precise and abrupt events. There is a clear beginning and a clear end. But the end of life experience is a one way journey only, guided and supported by those you have loved.

How does this help with our understanding of life after death? The evidence we have would suggest that the domain after death has no location in physical space; subjective time is quite different, almost as if there is no time. But the domain is full of light and love. This would fulfill the concept of an entry into no time and no space but the memory of this area is always love and light.

 

“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.