Rouleau writes: In this essay, I have presented
the best available evidence for the survival of human consciousness after
permanent bodily death. As it stands, the data indicate that survival is
possible beyond a reasonable doubt. Predicted over a century ago by William James
in his prescient lecture on human immortality, contemporary neuroscience
research indicates that brains display transmissive functions – they receive,
process, and emit electromagnetic energies that are not dependent upon the
activities of living cells.
Consciousness is not produced by the brain alone.
It is a force that exists independent of any organ as an electromagnetic signal
that can interact with the brain by transmission to generate thought and
experience. Therefore, when brain cells functionally deactivate, decay,
decompose, and disintegrate, an immortal stream of consciousness persists. Just
as consciousness survives death, so too do our memories as electromagnetic
patterns stored in a physical Akashic record. The dying brain does not drag consciousness
into the void – it merely loosens its grip on the transcerebral field that
gives rise to it and connects us all. The butterflies of the soul cannot be
caged, and without the air beneath their wings, they cannot fly.
I hope what was presented here
will inspire philosophers and scientists alike to pursue an increasingly
sophisticated study of consciousness as it relates to death and dying. Equipped
with advanced measurement tools, modern investigators will likely be successful
in elucidating the forces that give rise to consciousness and its relationship
with death. However, there are many self-defeating habits that threaten its
discovery. Chief among them is a failure of imagination, which shackles the
mind to the useful dogmas and doctrines of so-called established disciplines.
The life sciences, in particular, have become ironically resistant to change or
new ideas that subvert convention. On the other hand, there are some who are
too willing to accept any model of consciousness that conveniently satisfies a
particular belief system. Extreme positions such as these do not grapple with
the data, but rather attempt to contort facts to satisfy theories. Therefore,
the practical success of this essay will only be realized if it breaks more
bonds than it builds – an open mind is more productive toward the related
sciences of consciousness and survival. Above all else, we should
dispassionately align ourselves with whatever the empirical evidence suggests
is most likely.
In the spirit of kindling scientific
discussion and creative ideas, I will close this essay with a forward-looking
exercise by outlining possible future directions for survival research.
Specifically, I will offer suggestions to experimentally assess the brain’s
putative transmissive functions on which the post-mortem survival of
consciousness likely depends. What I will discuss are only a few obvious
paradigms that follow from the main points of the essay; however, I suspect the
most creative ideas will come from readers from all over the world and across
all areas of study. Therefore, I will frame each thought with a question that I
hope others will refine or attempt to answer.
Among the many possible
experimental approaches, the continued investigation of complex EMF-brain
interactions and their effects on consciousness represents the lowest-hanging
fruit and can be immediately pursued. Therefore, the first question is: If environmental EMFs are received
and filtered by brain tissues to generate consciousness, will selective
shielding conditions change experience? While previous studies have focused on attenuating
field strength or intensity, efforts should now focus on blocking frequencies
and pulse patterns using high- and low-pass EMF-filtering materials.
For example, selectively
inhibiting theta- and alpha-band EMF oscillations should attenuate real-time
EEG coherence with geomagnetic field fluctuations. Psychometric scales of mood,
attention, and arousal states as well as personality inventories should also be
administered and correlated with brain measurements. Quantitative analyses of
linguistic themes and emotional content of self-reported experiences should be
analyzed across large groups of participants exposed to the same EMF-blocking
conditions. Dying patients may also be measured using combinations of
shielding, magnetometers, EEG devices, and photomultiplier tubes to determine
relationships between functional brain death and local electromagnetic energies
including biophotons. In particular, I anticipate that measuring the “death
flash”, its neural correlates, and environmental dynamics will help advance an
empirically-based science of survival.
Beyond a study of the individual,
the transmissive model predicts that consciousness can effectively be shared
between all brains. In recent decades, there have been several independent
efforts to demonstrate real-time brain signal coherence between paired human
subjects who are physically isolated from each other. One of the most simple
and elegant experiments of brain-brain “excess
correlation” was performed by Leanna J. Standish’s team and published in 2006.
A pair of human subjects, designated as “stimulated” or “non-stimulated”, were
separated by 30 feet and a wall of medical-grade EMF shielding material. The
stimulated individual always sat in front of a video screen that presented them
with visual stimuli in sequential ON-OFF patterns while the non-stimulated
individual, wearing sensory-isolating goggles, was always placed in an fMRI
scanner.
Remarkably, the visual cortex of
the non-stimulated person became reliably activated when the other person was
being stimulated and deactivated when the stimulation stopped. In other words,
even though the non-stimulated person was not experiencing visual stimulation,
their cortex was being activated as if it was. This was one of the first robust
demonstrations of brain-to-brain communication without the use of an
intermediate technology.
Since her seminal discovery,
others have replicated the effects with weaker intensity magnetic fields. As a
graduate student in Michael Persinger’s laboratory, I published a similar
experiment wherein subjects separated by approximately 6,000 km were exposed to
synchronized rotating magnetic fields with changing angular velocities.
Interestingly, when we measured the EEG rhythms of our paired subjects and
later source-localized the brain activity, theta band (4–8
Hz) signals originating within the parahippocampal cortex displayed significant
superimposition across pairs of brains as if they were functionally connected.
Therefore, the second question is
the following: Are
all brains fundamentally connected by shared forces, electromagnetic or
otherwise, which permit the exchange of brain-based information associated with
memory and consciousness? And can they be enhanced or attenuated by certain
technologies?
Pursuing
fundamental mechanisms of survival and transmissive consciousness may require a
completely different approach grounded in biological engineering. In our 2021
review article entitled “Toward Studying Cognition in a Dish”, my colleagues
and I discussed using neural tissue engineering techniques to assess cognitive
capacities including consciousness in lab-grown brains59. One implication of
this approach would be a novel means of testing independence of consciousness
from substrates including brain matter:
Instead of
probing the preassembled brains of animals, investigators are now free to
design and build artificial circuits and pathways that differ from their
naturally selected counterparts and to push systems to their extremes in search
of first principles that underlie brain function. Indeed, artificial neural
tissues are not limited by inborn developmental morphology or structural–functional
templates found in nature. As it is conceivable that some or all higher-order
cognitive functions may be substrate independent, the rationale and means to
test the independence hypothesis are now beginning to converge.
We argued that
incremental innovations would eventually lead to the creation of bioengineered
brains that would be indistinguishable from their natural templates and that
these lab-grown tissues would necessarily display features of consciousness:
To fully
replicate the structure of the brain such that the artificially generated
tissue is at every level of analysis – from the proteins that make up the cells
and the precise composition of the extracellular matrix linking neurons and
glia – indistinguishable from its natural template would be, by definition, to
create a tissue that can experience. To suppose otherwise would be to admit
that consciousness does not emerge from brain matter. . . . Just as comparative
anatomy highlighted the remarkable overlap between species which were thought
to be phylogenetically unrelated, we submit that a comparative study of
cognition across a large set of iterative artificial neural tissues is of equal
importance as we attempt to understand the biological origins of phenomena such
as thought, intelligence, and even consciousness.
With
near-limitless customization potential, lab-grown tissues may represent the
perfect tools to test passive neural properties and the transmissive theory of
consciousness. Thus, the third and final question is: Are transmissive brain
functions independent of productive functions or do they interact?
One way to
parse productive and transmissive brain functions is to build modular brains in
the laboratory and to systematically add and subtract tissue elements to examine
their relative impact on passive EMF signal filtration and amplification as
well as how these properties influence action potentials and network
properties. Neural tissue engineering techniques may also be used to identify
the receptive structures and transduction mechanisms that underly both passive
and active magnetoreception. Lab-grown brains with titrated concentrations of
embedded magnetite could be exposed to alternative EMF conditions while
measuring neural activity. EMFs could then be applied to examine the role of
magnetite on brain activity and its resonance potential.
As
technological innovations accelerate, it is worth considering the possibility
that memory and consciousness could one day be transmitted to artificial or
bioengineered brains – a voluntary rebirth for those who resist drifting away
from their bodies. A procedure to transfer experience from one brain or to
another would circumvent the need for medical breakthroughs associated with
cancer and senescence because the diseased body could always be substituted for
another without sacrificing the ”individual”. In that case, repairing the body
would always be less desirable than replacing it.
Similarly, a
sufficiently precise 3D printer may one day be able to re-create the fine-structure
of a deceased person’s former brain. If the transmissive theory of
consciousness is valid, the 3D printed brain would be precisely “tuned” to
capture the signals which once defined the individual’s consciousness. While it
may only be a distant reality, consciousness may be “brought back” from its
brain-independent state by re-creating the brains of the deceased using
advanced technologies.
The future of
survival research will depend on our willingness to entertain creative and
previously unexplored ideas as well the availability of funding opportunities
to legitimize the subject matter, attract talent, stimulate discovery, and
elevate the topic for public engagement. In addition to what I have presented,
alternative solutions to the problem of survival should be explored in the
interest of generating competing scientific theories and a robust dialectic
that drives innovation.
For example,
consider the possibility that there are many paths to immortality. Indeed, the
simulation argument is quite compelling: If humans, equipped with super
powerful computers, will one day be able to generate simulations with conscious
humans that are indistinguishable from reality, they may also be able to run
many simultaneous simulations – perhaps several orders of magnitude more than
the one surface reality. It is then much more likely than not that our
consciousness is simulated. While it is likely that consciousness survives
death independent of any technological assistance, the opportunity to choose an
afterlife would be the ultimate expression of human freedom.
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/.
