Death is a process: Rouleau excerpt #3

Rouleau writes: To appreciate the significance and implications of brain death, I will now provide a brief overview of the living brain’s structure and function. The human brain is approximately 1350 cubic centimeters of water, fat, and protein with lesser concentrations of metals and other molecules (Figure 1A). Its outer structure, the cerebrum, resembles a raveled knot of hills and valleys – gyri and sulci – which are connected like a wrinkled but continuous sheet. 

The one-to-four millimeter outer shell of the cerebrum, which is appropriately called the “cortex” or the Latin word for tree bark, is generally considered to be the most important structural correlate of consciousness within the brain. It receives information from sensory organs that define vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and other perceptual modalities. The cortex also governs language, voluntary movement, decision-making, reasoning, moral judgements, emotional regulation, and countless other brain functions. Most neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) are fundamentally cortical including high-frequency (gamma) synchronous activity. 

Further, distinct activations of the cerebral cortices are apparent in near-death experiences (NDEs), out-of-body experiences (OOBEs), and God experiences (GEs), which are frequently cited in survival research. Finally, the clinical criteria for brain death hinge on specific diminishments of cortical activity as inferred by brain imaging. Therefore, the cerebral cortices are undoubtedly areas that we must focus on if we are going to address the survival of consciousness after death.

The cerebral cortices (Figure 1B,C) are composed of 10 to 100 billion cells which includes both neurons – the definitive brain cell – and the supportive glial cells. Originally described as “the butterflies of the soul” by the great neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, neurons maintain an electric charge across their membranes like other cells. However, unlike most cells, they are specialized to be highly polar and rapid communicators. The brain is considered an electrochemical organ and neurons reflect this duality by signaling to each other by both electrical and chemical means. 

The quintessential signal of the neuron is the action potential: an all-or-nothing, 1 millisecond discharge of electromagnetic energy that results in the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters that trigger downstream action potentials in turn. Every time a neuron discharges its membrane potential, it briefly reverses its charge from internally negative to positive, crossing an important electrical threshold of 0 millivolts, which indicates the cell and its environment are electrically indistinguishable. Under normal circumstances, neurons readily re-polarize themselves and continue signaling; however, for a very brief but real moment they are electrically neutral: this is a property of dead and dying cells. 

As far as modern neuroscience is concerned, an uncharged neuron is incapable of generating cognition. In other words, every time a neuron is activated, it crosses the electrical equivalent of the life-death boundary and then comes back again. Of course, this state is transient, but it is important to realize that neurons operate on the edge of life and death. Indeed, over 85,000 neurons die and are never replaced as a normal part of brain aging every single day. Unlike most other organs, brains are in a constant state of incremental degeneration, though what connections remain become increasingly efficient and define the individual’s personality and memory. But what happens when brains become irreversibly non-functional?

As was previously discussed, a still heart is no longer the gold standard definition of death in medicine. In recent years, the consensus has moved toward brain death and detailed criteria have been put forward to guide clinical assessment. One technical definition, for example, specifies the amplitude of electroencephalography (EEG) voltage should be below 2 microvolts for over 30 minutes. However, beyond black-and-white definitions of life and death is a more accurate view of what actually occurs when consciousness appears to stop.

Death is usually understood to be a fixed time that can be reported on a medical chart; however, this is clearly not the case. Living and dying are processes, not events, and processes take time. Furthermore, the boundaries of processes are always blurry or undefined. We now know that when the heart stops pumping oxygen-and nutrient-rich blood to the head, the brain remains functionally active for 3 or 4 hours post-mortem. Because the means by which we detect brain activity such as EEG depend on the synchronous activity of thousands of cells working together, there is likely asynchronous neural activity that persists undetected well- beyond that – the random beating wings of a billion dying butterflies.

Organotypic slice cultures, which are pieces of brain tissue from mice and other laboratory animals that are maintained artificially in a dish, can functionally persist for weeks given the right environmental conditions. Death is by no means a moment. Rather, dying, as evidenced by the brain’s normative state of persistent degeneration, is a lifelong process that becomes suddenly accelerated after heart death. 

Indeed, brain death is likely only a meaningful concept when the brain has become physically dissociated following cellular breakdown and is actively decomposing. It should also be noted that the longer a person’s brain is deprived of oxygen, the less likely they are to ever regain consciousness. For example, following cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the likelihood of recovering consciousness after 24 hours, 72 hours, and 5 days is 34%, 25%, and 20% respectively. Brain death is clearly a process, and we can expect its interaction with consciousness, including survival, to track those changes over time.

Nicolas Rouleau, PhD, a neuroscientist and bioengineer, is an assistant professor at Algoma University in Canada. He received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies "An Immortal Stream of Consciousness" in response to its search for "scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death." Footnotes and bibliography are omitted from these excerpts from his essay, but the full essay is available online at https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/contest-runners-up/.

Life and consciousness: Rouleau excerpt #2

Erwin Schrödinger

Rouleau writes: To describe how the consciousness of a living human can survive death, several important terms will first need to be defined, beginning with a review of “life”. In his 1944 book entitled “What is life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell”, Erwin Schrödinger provided the theoretical groundwork for the scientific study of life, anticipating among other things the “aperiodic crystal” structure of DNA and the role of mutation in evolution. Most notably, Schrödinger emphasized that life, as with all products of physical laws, is dependent upon “order-from-disorder”. That is, from the percolating chaos and disorder of the quantum world emerges – not as an accident or coincidence but as a property of the conditions themselves – highly ordered molecular structures that give rise to living organisms.

Schrödinger’s speculations provided a new and exciting path from fundamental particles to life and are recognized as foundational to the field of molecular biology. He even discussed the relationships between life, free will, and consciousness. His insightful unification of non-living matter and energy with life and conscious experience was an important acknowledgement of the continuous and inseparable chain of interactions that connect the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Since Schrödinger, there has been an explosion of information about the fundamental nature of life but the primary role of the cell as its structural and functional unit is among the least controversial facts in the field of biology.

Cells are approximately 10 millionths of a meter wide, mostly water by volume and surrounded by a thin, gated membrane that maintains order by keeping certain molecules in and others out. The cell membrane acts as a selective bridge between the inside of the cell, where chemical reactions are highly controlled, and the outside of the cell, where they are largely spontaneous or random. Because membranes can separate charged particles – also called ions – cells store an electric charge, like a battery, that can be actively discharged to help them divide, proliferate, or communicate with their neighbors. The boundary of the membrane is what distinguishes the living cell from its non-living environment.

Consider that viruses must cross the important threshold of the cell membrane to suddenly become activated and “life-like”, with disastrous consequences to our bodies. When membranes are dissolved, cells and their environments become assimilated, and life becomes non-existent. Life is therefore a state of ordered conditions maintained by a thin and delicate cell membrane that divides the world into living and non-living parts: “order-from-disorder”. As its direct negation, death, to reverse Schrödinger’s formulation, is “disorder-from-order”. More generally, death is the disorder that a living system experiences when its boundaries dissolve and it is no longer distinguishable from its environment.

Not all cells are equally relevant to the death of the individual. That is, when considering the essence of a person, we are not preoccupied with cell death in the gallbladder or kidneys. Where life, death, and consciousness interact is, as we understand it, the brain. And while the human body is a highly interconnected system, and the heart might be necessary for its function, the brain is the only known organ in the human body that is sufficient for consciousness.

Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that a brain supported by a series of artificial organs could not sustain consciousness. There are, after all, many such examples in modern medicine including circulatory pumps, ventilators, and dialysis machines that sustain conscious life. But what do I mean by the word “conscious”? A system is conscious if there is something that it is like to be it. That is, consciousness is pure subjective experience and the entry point for everything we know and can know about the external world and our internal states. It is the stream of mental chatter that defines our point of view relative to events in the world. Consciousness is, fundamentally, the thing we refer to when we say the words “I” and “me”.

For all practical purposes, it is the soul under a different name. However, just as the phlogiston theory of combustion led to the discovery of oxygen, the ancient idea of the soul has given way to a focused science of consciousness and its relationship to the essence of human life.

While consciousness and the related mechanisms that allow experience or internal representations to arise from matter are not fully understood, its existence is certain. Indeed, it was Descartes who famously pointed out that thought is the original ground truth and the foundational argument for personal existence. Today, philosophers and scientists alike generally agree that human consciousness exists and is a function of the brain.

Therefore, if the question at the core of this essay is “Can consciousness survive the death of the body below the neck including the heart?”, the answer is an uncontroversial and emphatic “yes”. However, without addressing brain death, the significance of the question at the core of this essay is completely lost. Therefore, any proposed solution for the survival of consciousness after bodily death must account for its persistence following brain death in particular.

 

Nicolas Rouleau, PhD, a neuroscientist and bioengineer, is an assistant professor at Algoma University in Canada. He received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies "An Immortal Stream of Consciousness" in response to its search for "scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death." Footnotes and bibliography are omitted from these excerpts from his essay, but the full essay is available online at https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/contest-runners-up/.

Soul as a person's essence: Rouleau excerpt #1

Nicholas Rouleau's "An Immortal Stream of Consciousness" received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for its response to the call for essays presenting "scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death." Rouleau's begins his essay with this introduction:

The concept of a soul or vital force is consistent across scientific, medical, theological, and philosophical thought. The soul is often described as contained within specific organs but separate from the body, and it is unsurprising that its location has been a subject of great debate throughout history. Despite much contention, those historically in search of the soul have generally agreed that it is the essence of a person – their true and immortal self. Indeed, when confronted with the challenge of identifying themselves, most people point to their chest or, approximately, their heart. 

This cardiocentric model of who we are is described in humanity’s earliest writings from the third millennium BCE, indicating that Ancient Egyptians believed souls were immortal and located within the hearts of impermanent bodies. The related idea of the pneuma – ancient Greek for breath, spirit, or soul – represents one among many similar beliefs about the essence of human life. Consistent with the heart’s exalted status throughout history, and until very recently, irreversible cardiac arrest was considered the medical standard for death. Which is to say, when your heart stopped beating, you stopped being. 

However, the importance of other bodily organs did not go unnoticed by our ancestors. Notable philosophers such as Plato and Descartes championed the brain as the locus of the soul and modern definitions of death rest squarely on the structural and functional integrity of the brain, not the heart.

A fascination with the brain is also present in Ancient Egyptian writings as evidenced by the lucid descriptions of agnosias, automatic behaviors, and emotional disturbances associated with head injuries as reported in the Edwin Smith Papyrus. Around 200 BCE, the famous Greek physician Galen noted that stimulating the heart induced no cognitive or perceptual response but that the same procedure applied to the brain had marked effects. Some prehistoric human skulls, discovered to be over 5000 years old, feature holes with tapered edges that suggest they were formed and allowed to heal while the person was alive, which is evidence of a surgical technique called trepanation that is still used today to relieve increased intracranial pressure that can cause altered mental states and death. 

Unsurprisingly, our ancestors noticed that our heads and their contents are major anatomical correlates of how we feel, what we do, and who we are. As they would have observed frequently in soldiers returning from war, getting hit in the head could change someone’s personality and behavior, as well as erase their memories. As modern clinicians know, a person suffering a head injury then would have, in their own words, reported feeling “like a different person”. 

Beyond brain injury, the most extreme changes would be associated with death, including a loss of speech and all movement by which we infer thought and experience or “consciousness”. Then, like now, people might have seemed to live behind their eyes until they could no longer open them and the care with which burial and cremation practices were carried out tens of thousands of years ago suggests that when faced with the death of loved ones, our ancestors likely wondered where they had gone and if they would ever meet again.

That timeless question concerning the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death remains as relevant today among religious and non-religious people alike. In centuries past, we turned to both scientific and religious institutions with questions about the afterlife or lack thereof, receiving incomplete and deeply dissatisfying answers that failed to quell the human fear of annihilation.

In this essay, I will demonstrate that a contemporary scientific understanding of life, death, consciousness, and its survival is possible and that the best available evidence for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death is empirical. 

Beyond religion and philosophy, the scientific method, bolstered by our modern technological instruments, has already addressed questions of survival in significant ways that are not immediately obvious. Whereas one might expect near death experiences (NDEs) and related subjective reports to carry the burden of proof for survival research, a review of the literature published between 1945 and 2013 demonstrated that NDEs often fall short of providing investigators with explanatory hypotheses or testable mechanisms. 

Therefore, unintuitively, NDEs are important but may not represent the best available scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after death. Instead, scientists have formulated testable hypotheses on the bases of pervasive cultural ideas of psychic energy to found what is now a nascent but empirical study of consciousness as a force that interacts with the brain but is independent of it. If brains are conduits or vessels rather than generators of consciousness, death may represent a significant change to the individual but certainly not an end.

In this essay, I will outline why the survival of consciousness after brain death is not only possible, but probable beyond a reasonable doubt. I will also demonstrate that our understanding of brain function has changed radically over the past century and now includes biophysical mechanisms which can explain not only survival, but also related observations which have classically been categorized as “psi” phenomena. 

For example, while it is true that the putative telepathic and remote-viewing abilities of unique individuals such as Sean Harribance and Ingo Swann are not easily explained by older models of brain function that treat endogenous activations as the sole sources of cognition, new models that place consciousness at least partly outside the brain can explain them. In fact, the latest evidence indicates that our brains readily interact with electromagnetic fields (EMF) from natural and artificial sources. Not only do brain cells signal wirelessly to each other by means of their own weak electric fields, but the Earth’s magnetic field has been repeatedly shown to influence, cohere, and resonate with human brain activity in real-time, with profound consequences on neurocognitive and behavioural output. 

Using principles of electromagnetic induction, we now employ technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to change brain activity, assess and treat neurological disorders, and even subvert free will. Our brains’ EMFs, which can be detected using biomedical devices such as magnetoencephalography (MEG), are all immersed in a shared geomagnetic medium that oscillates with periodicities that match the frequency patterns of our own brain waves. 

As will become clear, it is possible that the information content of our experiences and memories can be uploaded or downloaded to and from spaces external to our brains, existing independently after we die. On the bases of these and other discoveries, I will instruct and elucidate a comprehensive model of brain function that characterizes consciousness as a transmitted signal or force with at least a partial existence outside the head.

Before I elaborate on these lines of evidence, I want to briefly emphasize two important points. First, the question of whether or not consciousness survives permanent bodily death is fundamentally a scientific one. We must remember, after all, that the natural world is filled with phenomena that confound our intuitions and, before scientific inquiry, appear magical, other-worldly, or divine. When we are finally able to measure, quantify, and subject said phenomena to independent replication, we inevitably realize that what seemed unrealistic was simply a misunderstood feature of the natural world. 

If consciousness is a physical and reproducible phenomenon that can be measured albeit indirectly, we should be able to design experiments to detect its presence within or without the body after death. Indeed, the final section of this essay will make concrete experimental suggestions for doing exactly that, including the measurement of death-related light emissions and creating lab-engineered brain tissues to tease apart mind from matter. 

Second, the question we are concerned with is of tremendous importance to the human species. Great religions, cultures, and scientific institutions throughout history have dedicated enormous amounts of attention and resources to the study and contemplation of life after death. People are willing to fight and die to maintain their cultural belief systems, which often provide coherent and anxiolytic frameworks for life and death. Contemplating mortality is a feature, not a bug of the human condition. Some of the most beautiful poetry and devotional art that our species has ever produced has been shaped along the boundaries of life and death. 

Standing on the shoulders of countless thinkers throughout history, I am humbled to find myself addressing this timeless question. Most of what I will discuss will be curated rather than created; however, I will supplement my case with some of my original published research in the field of neuroscience to support the central thesis: consciousness survives death.

 

Nicolas Rouleau, PhD, a neuroscientist and bioengineer, is an assistant professor at Algoma University in Canada. Footnotes and bibliography are omitted from these excerpts but the entire essay with these details is available online at https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/contest-runners-up/.

 

 

 

There is no death: Mays excerpt #27

The Mays write: The most important paradigm shift will be for all of humanity to accept that the human being is a spiritual being clothed in a physical body. There is no need to fear death because our essential being does not die with the death of the physical body. There is no death.

When people lose the fear of death, their whole perspective changes. Nearly all NDErs report a strong decrease or complete loss of the fear of death as the result of their NDEs. Shared death experiencers and ADC witnesses also experience this aftereffect.

And NDErs experience a whole set of other lasting changes in their lives. They experience an inner peace and greater appreciation for life; for them, life has meaning and purpose. NDErs are less judgmental and more loving than before their NDE; they are less materialistic and more altruistic, with an increased concern for others; they are less competitive and more cooperative, and they are less self-centered, more compassionate and more understanding of others than before their NDE.

Kenneth Ring

You don’t need to have an NDE in order to make these changes yourself, inwardly. NDE researcher Ken Ring has found that merely hearing and learning about NDEs can bring about profound personal changes similar to what NDErs report (54: 200–215). For example, Donald, a retired professor, wrote to Ring that studying NDEs brought about a major life change:

“I have found myself identifying so closely with these [NDErs] that I have been experiencing vicariously much of what they experienced in fact. ... A noticeably reduced fear of death, and with it, the attendant disappearance of all fear of living. ... Prior to my research, I characterized myself as a rip snortin’ atheist. ... Now, ... I am firmly convinced that human consciousness survives bodily death.”

Another student of NDE literature, James, told Ring:

“NDEs have greatly reduced any fear of death I had. In fact, they’ve eliminated it. I have a very positive view of death, and the beginning of a much clearer picture of life after death. ... NDEs have greatly enhanced my awareness of the primacy of love as a Living Force, and as the meaning and goal of all of our actions and of all things.”

The [near-death] experience represents the very essence, the very expression of the fabric of being. It is the ultimate of all spiritual experiences, with the only known exceptions being death itself and its complement, birth. The numerous stories from experiencers have provided humanity with a wide variety of richness in spiritual experience. Over the ages, these tales have provided the world with the very core of spirituality, religion, and esoteric teachings. For the person who has had such an experience, it is not ‘near-death.’ It is a real death, both physically and psychologically. It is a transformation in that it changes one’s life forever. It is time to get these stories out to the public. Humanity is in need.

Near-death experiencer Jerry Casebolt

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Implications for neuroscience: Mays excerpt #26

The Mays write: To adopt the new paradigm of the nonmaterial self-conscious mind, current neuroscience must be reformulated and extended, for example, in the following ways:

Neural activations are currently considered calculations on neural representations of mental content encoded in neural structures.

In contrast, in our theory, all mental processing occurs in the nonmaterial mind. There are no neural representations of mental content. The mental content in the mind is impressed on a brain region; the neural activations in that region bring the content to awareness. The reciprocal interplay of the mind with the brain produces in-body consciousness.

Both episodic and semantic memories are currently considered to be encoded as neural representations in the brain, in the hippocampus or globally in the cortex, respectively.

In contrast, in our theory, all memories are formed and “stored” in the mind and are accessible by impressing specific remembered content, through intuition, on the appropriate brain region, for example, a specific life event or the meaning of a word. The reciprocal interplay of the mind with the brain brings the memory to consciousness.

The “mind” is currently considered to be a set of cognitive and emotional capacities produced by brain activity. The mind is impaired when the brain is impaired. With severe brain damage, the mind is reduced to primitive “unresponsive wakefulness” or “vegetative” states. The mind—the person—is annihilated with the death of the brain.

In contrast, in our theory, the nonmaterial self-conscious mind is ordinarily dependent on brain activity and is impaired when the brain is impaired. With severe brain damage, the mind is still whole but is locked in a severely dysfunctional brain. Therapies can be developed to improve brain function so the mind can begin to work with the brain again and the patient can become more responsive. With the death of the brain, the mind—the essence of the person—is released from the body and continues to exist as the whole person.

Implications for physics

To adopt the new paradigm of the nonmaterial self-conscious mind, current physics must be reformulated and extended to account for the following new phenomenological facts:

An extra spatial dimension: As described above, NDErs frequently report unusual visual abilities— “360° spherical vision” and “vision from everywhere.” Several NDE researchers have proposed that this exceptional ability suggests there is an additional spatial dimension. Because NDEr veridical perceptions occur “simultaneously in all directions,” the 5th dimension must encompass the other dimensions (three of space and one of time). The nature of this 5th dimension has relevance to physicists who are considering an extra spatial dimension to explain the weakness of gravity relative to the other fundamental forces.

A new physical force between the out-of-body nonmaterial mind entity and solid physical objects: This force accounts for the subtle interaction NDErs experience when moving through solid matter, generally described as a resistance or increase in density. This force is likely a universal force between out-of-body entities existing in the 5th dimension and matter, for example, accounting for the rare cases of physical interaction between a deceased loved one and an in-body person. This new force may also be involved in apparent cases of psychokinesis (PK), the paranormal ability to influence a physical system without using ordinary physical interaction.

A new type of entity (spiritual beings): The evidence from NDEs strongly suggest that the NDEr’s nonmaterial mind or consciousness separates from and operates independent of the body; that the mind is the essence of the person; and that the mind entity is objectively real. The evidence of meeting deceased persons in NDEs, in shared death experiences (SDEs), and in after-death communications (ADCs) demonstrates that the deceased persons these experiencers encounter are objectively real. The phenomenological facts indicate that the minds of living and deceased persons are nonmaterial spiritual beings who continue to exist after the death of the physical body. Therefore, a complete scientific description of physical reality needs to include the existence of these entities because every living human being is the embodiment of a spiritual being in a physical body.

The insights derived from NDEs, SDEs, and related phenomena lead to a theory of mind that has greater explanatory power with respect to consciousness, memory, and agency. As we have hopefully demonstrated above, the insights from this theory provide a new conceptual framework that can lead to paradigm shifts in neuroscience, physics, and other fields, thereby extending the current naturalism to include nonmaterial entities, forces, and interactions.

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Explanatory power of evidence: Mays excerpt #25

The Mays write: The credibility of any theory or explanation of the survival of consciousness after physical death must include a presentation of how the theory fits in with other areas of science, philosophy, and human knowledge. How powerful is the theory in explaining other problems or conundrums in science and philosophy? What are the implications of the theory for other areas of science and for the whole of humanity?

A central tenet of the mind entity theory is that the essence of the human being is an autonomous nonmaterial conscious entity, a spiritual being, united with a physical body. This tenet is a radical departure from explanations of consciousness proposed by materialist scientists and philosophers—who are stuck on the “hard problem” of explaining subjective phenomenal experience. This tenet is also at odds with explanations of consciousness proposed by NDE theorists—as some form of “nonlocal,” “infinite,” or “cosmic” consciousness where the self loses its individual identity.

Nearly all scientists and philosophers have dismissed interactionist dualism out of hand because, they conclude, it is literally impossible to explain how nonmaterial entities can causally interact with the physical world.

We believe our mind entity theory answers these challenges with a plausible explanation and specific neurological mechanisms. We are confident that this theory can successfully be tested and confirmed and can provide more comprehensive and coherent neurological explanations of conscious experience than current neuroscience can do.

The mind entity theory, based on the existence of a nonmaterial conscious entity united with the brain, explains a number of problems in philosophy and neuroscience.

1. The hard problem of consciousness. How does neural activity in brain neurons turn into subjective phenomenal experience, for example, the vivid experience of the color red? In our view, the mind is the seat of consciousness, the seat of subjective experience. The mind is the subject in which phenomenal experience occurs. When one is in-body, all conscious experience occurs via brain electrical activity, that is, through the interaction of neural activity with the mind. Because human beings are conscious entities, sufficient neural activity in the brain naturally comes to awareness as subjective experience. There is no “hard problem” of consciousness because conscious awareness is the inherent property of minds.

2. The problem of encoding semantic memory. Semantic memories—of facts, word meanings, faces, etc.—are evidently “encoded” throughout the cortex. How do neural circuits across the cortex provide a mechanism for encoding and recalling semantic memories? In our view, when we learn a new word, the semantic memory is formed in the mind. When we read the word again, its meaning is recalled from the mind and activates a specific pattern of neural activity to bring the word’s concept to awareness. There is no semantic encoding in the neurons.

3. The problems of agency and free will. How does one have the sense of self-awareness and know that one is the agent of one’s own actions, feelings, and thoughts? Are our choices completely determined or are we free to choose among different courses of action? In our view, the sense of agency is one’s sense of being an autonomous mind entity. When I decide to move, my thought activates neural activity in my brain. I become aware of my decision and my body moves. As a self-aware mind entity, I know that I am the agent of my actions, feelings, and thoughts. I can choose freely and my intentions are fulfilled. Free will exists; I can’t always control the circumstances of my life but I can control how I respond to those circumstances.

4. The problem of inhalational anesthetics. How do biochemically inert anesthetics, like ether, work to suppress conscious awareness? In our proposed mechanism for mind-to-brain interaction, the mind alters neural “ion channels” to trigger electrical activity which enables one’s mental content to come to awareness. The presence of substances like ether in the brain temporarily blocks these ion channels so that the mind can no longer trigger electrical activity. One’s normal brain activity is suppressed and mental content can’t come to awareness. 

 

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Summary of evidence: Mays excerpt #24

The Mays write: The focus of the evidence we have presented has been near-death experiences (NDEs), the experiences of human beings who have been close to death and experienced the first stages of the dying process. We then included the related experiences of those who have witnessed the dying process in shared death experiences (SDEs) and of those who have witnessed communications from deceased loved ones in after-death communications (ADCs). Thus, we have covered the full spectrum of human experience relating to the separation of the mind from the body, the process of dying, physical death, and survival after physical death.

Roughly 400 million people worldwide have experienced an NDE. Millions more people have experienced an SDE or an ADC. When the same experience is considered collectively across millions of people, it can be regarded as a common, objective reality.

The evidence that we presented in these phenomena is both (a) veridical, that is, based on credible accurate, verified observations or information, and (b) objective, that is, based on corroboration by credible independent witnesses. Therefore, the facts we have derived in our key lines of evidence are credible, real, and objective.

In addition, we included sections to address skeptical arguments or alternative explanations for these phenomena (a) to present a plausible model and mechanism that explains how these phenomena can occur, and (b) to show how various philosophical counterarguments and alternative explanations fail.

All this evidence must be considered as a whole. Together, it forms a complete coherent picture. The ten key lines of evidence

1. A person’s mind or consciousness can separate from and operate independent of the physical body. We presented strong evidence that in many NDEs, the NDEr reports accurate, verified perceptions of the physical realm beyond the reach of the physical senses or while the brain was incapacitated, demonstrating that the NDEr’s mind or consciousness has somehow separated from and operates independent of the body.

2. The separate mind embodies all of the person’s cognitive functions; it is the essence of the person. We presented strong evidence that the NDEr’s mind acts as a cohesive unit, embodying all cognitive faculties, and carrying the essence of the person. The NDEr realizes that their physical body is not their real self.

3. The separate mind itself is an objectively real thing, a real being. We presented strong evidence that the mind entity itself is objectively real—the mind entity can be seen by other people, by animals, and by other NDErs. The separate mind entity objectively exists.

4. The mind entity hypothesis is a plausible picture of the human being. We presented the mind entity hypothesis. We proposed that the human being consists of a nonmaterial “mind” integrated with the physical body. The mind ordinarily interacts and works with the brain to support consciousness, but can separate from and function independent of the brain. The mind entity hypothesis is plausible given the evidence in the previous items 1–3.

5. There is a plausible mechanism for two-way causal interactions between the nonmaterial mind and the brain. We proposed a mechanism for causal interactions between the mind and the brain based on (a) NDEr reports of an interactive force of resistance when the NDEr moves through solid matter, and (b) NDEr reports of interactions with another person’s physical body that appear to enable both the sensing and triggering of neural activity.

6. The mind entity theory addresses the main philosophical objections to dualism. In the mind entity theory, the mind merges with the physical brain and exerts direct causal interaction with it at specific points of contact, thus addressing the “causal pairing problem” and the “causal closure of the physical.”

7. Various psychological and physiological explanations for NDEs fail. Unlike the mind entity theory, various alternative explanations fail because they do not give a comprehensive explanation of all aspects of all NDEs. Some explanations apply ad hoc hypotheses to address specific aspects of specific cases but fail when applied as a general coherent explanation of NDEs. In addition, many NDEs occur in non-life-threatening circumstances, in healthy individuals, indicating that there must be some unifying factor, that is, some immediate cause that applies in all NDEs, rather than a specific psychological or physiological precipitating factor. We proposed the common immediate cause of NDEs is in fact the separation of the mind entity from the physical body.

8. Encounters with deceased persons during an NDE indicate that the mind of the deceased person continues after physical death. In these cases, the deceased person communicated accurate veridical information that the NDEr could not have obtained by any other means, which provides strong evidence that the encounters were real encounters with real human beings who once lived on Earth. Veridical communications with someone who has already died is evidence implicitly for personal survival of physical death.

9. Shared death experiences (SDEs) are strong objective evidence that the deceased person’s conscious Self continues to exist after physical death. In some SDE cases, the experiencer (SDEr) witnesses the process the dying person goes through in making the transition out-of-body, which has elements similar to NDEs. The SDEr can later verify the details seen in the dying person’s life review. Two or more SDErs in attendance at the person’s death may observe and corroborate the same SDE events, so the events are objective facts. The SDEr observes that the process of dying is identical to the process in an NDE, except that the dying person’s mind does not return to the physical body but continues to exist after physical death in a different realm.

10. After-death communications (ADCs) also provide strong objective evidence that the deceased person continues to exist after physical death. In ADCs, a deceased loved one communicates with the “witness” who may sense the presence of and hear the loved one, or directly see and converse with them. The loved one frequently appears completely solid, in their full form, and the encounter seems more real than everyday reality, including in some cases physical interactions. The loved one may provide veridical information which is later confirmed to be accurate. Shared ADCs, that is, encounters in which two or more people together witness the loved one, provide objective corroboration of the event. Thus, ADCs provide strong objective evidence that the deceased person continues to exist after physical death.

The evidence from near-death experiences (NDEs) demonstrates that the essential, nonmaterial aspect of a human being (the person’s mind entity) separates from the physical body in an NDE and operates independent of the brain and physical body

The evidence from shared death experiences (SDEs) demonstrates that in the process of physical death, as witnessed by SDErs, the dying person’s mind entity separates from the physical body and transitions to a different realm.

The evidence of meeting deceased persons in NDEs, SDEs, and in after-death communications (ADCs) demonstrates that the deceased persons are objectively real because they are observed at times simultaneously by multiple witnesses and at times provide veridical information previously unknown to the witness. Credible veridical communication with someone who has already died is evidence implicitly for personal survival of physical death.

Conclusion: Based on the evidence from these phenomena, taken as a whole, a person’s essential Self or mind at death separates from the physical body, transitions to a different realm, and survives the death of the physical body.  

 

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts.