There is only Love

I was in hospital about to get an intravenous (IV) drip with anesthesia. When the line unkinked, the drugs came racing into my body. I felt my heart immediately go into extreme tachycardia. 'My heart!' I yelled, 'My Heart!' The nurses came running toward me.

Suddenly, I was flying about 8 feet over my body. I was watching the scene below as the nurse scrambled through the cabinet looking for something. She was pulling things out and onto the floor. The nurse assistant ran into the surgery room. She grabbed the doctor, who ran over to me and started doing compressions while the nurses got the big needle out. they were arguing about whether it would be better to put it into my chest or into the IV line. I thought I was in a dream state until I looked at the EKG, and it was all flat lines with the alarms going off.

I said to myself, 'Oh Fu#$! I am Dying!' I could see the doctors down below trying frantically to bring me back. I said, 'I don't want to die! Oh My God! NO!' I tried to dive back into my body, but instead I was falling backward through a dark tunnel at what seemed like thousands of miles per hour. It was horrifying until I started slowing down. I realized that it wasn't a dark tunnel. It was a tunnel with so many lights. There were so many colors I had never seen before. I wasn't afraid any more.

At the end of this tunnel was the most beautiful place in existence. I seemed to have arrived back in the room but in another dimension. I was looking at everyone and everything in that hospital through what I can only describe as 'through the eyes of God.' I felt the Love of God for all these people in the hospital; the patients, the staff, and the receptionist. I never saw my own life, but I saw everyone else's life pass before my eyes. I saw the receptionist and everything about her. I saw her heart. I felt her love for her babies. I felt her pain and her thoughts. I saw the technician and everything in his life right then. I saw each person for who they really truly were. I saw what motivated them and I saw their beautiful soul-full hearts. I saw their souls as if through the eyes and heart of God. I saw them and I loved them, each and every person. I seemed to pull back from the room and up, out of the building. I saw people on the street and knew their pain. I saw them with pure love.

Then I began getting an information download. There was no talking, just information going into me with absolute love. It was very clear, very loud, and very certain, that We are ALL VERY IMPORTANT TO GOD. The message was that our lives are deeply important to God and to the existence of the universe. Our love we have and the love we cultivate on earth, especially for people we have a hard time liking, that love somehow expands the universe and does some very important things. I felt that there was something at stake, that we have a very important job to do. Human Beings are beloved and our choice in how to act is given to us to prove God. I don't know how to describe it, I am trying hard to explain it here but it's hard to explain. It may take my lifetime to explain what I learned.

In this place we go to, we will have lightness, laughter and joy, and our soul family is there waiting for us. Our jobs on earth are to find out how to break through all these illusory walls everywhere that we erect to hide who we are. We need to really love each other and love ourselves. I felt as though there was a sense of humor too. I was like a deep appreciation for our lives and even for our failures. We are suppose to learn from our failures and not beat ourselves up over them. We find a way to forgive and love ourselves because in reality, in the real place of creation, there is only Love. It seemed the message was that if we couldn't find a path to love, then we are destroying something very very precious.

I recognized a big crowd of people around me, but they didn't have human form. I recognized their souls. They had pink shapes but also resonated to the energy which was them. My great-uncle Steve, I felt him there. I also felt the presence of my grandmother who is actually alive. It was then that I realized that when we pray, we actually send our soul-self to the side of the person. It is an act of love which makes creation. The love was incredible and the beauty was so absolutely, outrageously incredible. When I was looking down at all these people and the doctor who was trying to save me, I was thinking, 'I love these people. Oh, these people are so loved!' I wanted to go back so badly and tell them how loved they were. I was standing alongside this soul family of mine and in the presence of what I would describe as total love from the one who made it all. Yet, I wanted to go back.

NDERF.org

Let go and let God

I have not had a near-death experience (NDE), but my father did when during surgery he suffered cardiac arrest. A scientist by training, he had never heard of this experience and doubted his own memory of it. Yet seeing himself outside his body, observing the surgeon trying to revive him, moving through darkness toward a clear vision of my deceased mother, and feeling unconditional love from the brilliant light behind her, before returning to his body.

He lost his fear of death, he told me, and I saw that he became a warmer person. My life was also transformed by his experience, as researching NDEs has altered my view of life, death, consciousness, and God.

For surgeon Bernie Siegel, “the knowledge that God is a loving, intelligent, and conscious energy” has come from dreams, drawings, and near-death experiences. He believes: “first, there was consciousness and consciousness was with God” and “consciousness was God, because God speaks in dreams and images―the universal language.” In his experience with patients, Siegel has learned that consciousness can be healing. 

To a cancer patient Siegel proposed: “visualizing God’s light melting a tumor that appears as a block of ice.” To another: “Let go and let God.” Siegel tells his patients: “By accepting ourselves as God’s creation, seeing beauty and meaning in what we are, just as we are, we accept others as God’s creation too.”

Bernie S. Siegel, The Art of Healing: Uncovering Your Inner Wisdom and Potential for Self-Healing
(New World Library, 2013), 198, 42, 36, 163, and 92.

 

Going Home

The third verse of the hymn “Amazing Grace” ends with the affirmation that “grace will lead me home.” Home surely refers to heaven, but when I noticed this I thought it was unusual for Christians to think of heaven as home. I discovered, however, that African American spirituals often affirm heaven as home.

The spiritual based on the story of Elijah riding to heaven in a chariot of fire includes the phrase, “Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.” In the song “O Freedom,” each verse ends with: “And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave. And go home to my Lord, and be free.” And the chorus in “Steal Away” includes this phrase: “steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.”

Early in the 20th century William Arms Fisher, a student of Antoin Dvorak, wrote a hymn to reflect African American spirituality using the Largo melody from Dvorak’s Symphony #9, known as the New World Symphony. The chorus affirms: “Going home, going home, I am going home.”

Modern hymns rarely refer to heaven as home, but survivors of near-death experiences often note the presence of a brilliant Light, a feeling of overwhelming Love, and that they are “home.” Here are three examples from physician and researcher Jeffrey Long’s 2016 book, God and the Afterlife.

Anna: It was the most real thing that’s ever happened to me. The life I’d been living was an insignificant experiment that I’d volunteered for. The me, the I, wasn’t Anna, the woman who’d just given birth. I was a light being—“light” in every sense. I was made of the same light as the light that shone from the clear pool in front of me. The light sensed and felt everything, thought and understood everything; it knew I was finally back home! The light was God.

Andy: The Light knows me, knows my name! Surrounding this Light form are millions of other Lights welcoming me back home. I know them all and they know me; we are all pieces of the same Light. I tell them, “It’s good to be back home.” I know we’re all home together again.

Sandy: The Light was a sparkling glowing cloud. I heard a voice in my head and knew it was God. We never talked about God at my house, and I never went to church, but I knew it was God. And I knew that this place, with this beautiful light that was God was my real home.

Going Home is about the spiritual reality of life after death, which we can experience before death, as the New Testament promises. And now thousands of those who have survived near-death are witnessing to their loss of fear of death and the Love that awaits each dying person.

With hope in God’s grace . . . Bob Traer

Living with love and hope

You have been raised with Christ, so set your hearts on things above. For you have died and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 2:1-4)

 

Resurrection is not about what happens to a body after it dies. As Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15, resurrection is a spiritual reality. A final hope, but now a Way of living. As Paul says in his letter to followers of the Way in Colossae, a small city near Ephesus in what is today Turkey, faith is dying to life as an everyday, material existence and being born anew in a life marked by hope and love. This is what Paul means by living "in Christ."

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

Living without fear of death

May the God of perseverance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves following the example of Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and one voice you may glorify God. (Romans 15:1-6)

Paul struggles to achieve support for his teachings in Rome and elsewhere. Paul argues that diversity can exist within the body of Christ, but his teaching is also a cause of division. He blames the conflicts on those who oppose him, but Paul's opponents must have blamed Paul. And who are Paul's opponents? The former disciples of Jesus, the apostles in Jerusalem who, we learn in Galatians 2 and in the second half of Acts, are led by James, the brother of Jesus.

The apostles in Jerusalem seem to believe that some if not all of the commandments of Jewish law must be kept by all following the Way of Jesus. As they knew Jesus during his lifetime, it is hard to believe that the historical Jesus set aside the Jewish law as Paul claims the risen Christ does. Paul never knew the historical Jesus, but he acknowledges that both he and the former disciples know the risen Lord. Why then do they differ?

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from a Roman city; the disciples of Jesus who were the first apostles were Aramaic-speaking Jews from Galilee. Perhaps their experience of the risen Christ was different, because their lives were so different. Yet, despite conflicting beliefs about Jesus, the first apostles and also Paul were transformed by their experience of the risen Christ.

In our time, thousands of survivors of near-death experiences have been transformed by the love and light that embraced them when they were unconscious and their brains were incapable of constructing perceptions, feelings, or memories. Nonetheless, these witnesses had striking perceptions, feelings, and memories. And now tell us that we all are going home. If you trust in their testimony, you too can live without fear of death.

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

 

Conclusion: Rouleau excerpt #18

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/.

Remote Viewing: Rouleau excerpt #17

Rouleau writes: The most famous and well-documented example of an individual who could engage in “remote viewing” or a capacity to experience people, places, and events at a distance is the late Ingo Swann. Originally investigated by prominent psychical researchers Hal Puthoff and Russel Targ in the 1970s, Ingo Swann’s remote viewing procedure was supported by U.S. national defense and intelligence agencies with clear military and strategic applications. When Swann engages in remote viewing, he experiences flashes of visual stimuli and words, as well as recognizable images, the sensation of floating, and out-of-body experiences – all known correlates of temporal lobe activation. In one experiment, Swann was asked to remotely view pictures placed in envelopes positioned in a distant room while his EEG rhythms were measured. Just as Puthoff and Targ had originally observed, Ingo Swann’s readings were highly accurate. When he began to concentrate and engage in his remote viewing procedure, bursts of 7 Hz spikes were observed over his right temporal and occipital lobes that strongly correlated with his accuracy scores. MRI scans later revealed structural abnormalities within the same regions of his right hemisphere.

To discern how Swann was receiving information, EMFs were applied to his brain while he was not engaged in remote viewing. Echoing Harribance’s experience, Swann reported spontaneous inductions of his remote viewing experiences when exposed to the applied EMFs; however, some EMF patterns could also disrupt his abilities. Again, the simplest explanation supports the existence of transmissive brain function and an electromagnetic basis of memory and consciousness. The involvement of the right temporal lobe and the conspicuous 7 Hz signature also suggests a potential link to Schumann resonances and the geomagnetic field.

Finally, the lesser-known Ms. Black (anonymized) represents a rare case of an individual who expresses psychokinesis – an ability to move objects by means of thought alone – with associated poltergeist phenomena including electronic, movement, and sound-based events coupled to her own emotional state. The sounds were typically experienced as taps that were linked to real-time fluctuations in geomagnetic activity. Notably, they were typically heard on the left side of her body, and she reported experiencing occasional discharges of light from her left hand – both of which indicate lateralized, right hemispheric brain activations. This is relatively unsurprising given she sustained an impact to the right side of her head during a car accident earlier in adulthood, causing a moderate right hemispheric brain injury.

EEG measurements confirmed an anomalous, high-intensity and high-frequency signal over her right temporal lobe that could be attenuated by sitting in a Faraday cage that significantly reduces local geomagnetic field intensity – suggesting an electromagnetic basis to the phenomenon. The signal was source-localized to the right insula – a region of the cortex that is structurally adjacent and medial to as well as continuous with the temporal lobe.

Ms. Black reportedly developed her psychokinetic ability by learning to rotate a pinwheel by force of concentration alone. In one experiment, she was asked to move the pinwheel while her EEG rhythms were monitored. A strong relationship was identified between the amount of 7 Hz activity she expressed over her right temporal lobe and the rotation of the pinwheel. When she was exposed to a simulated geomagnetic EMF in the laboratory, the 7 Hz signal that was diminished by the EMF-shielding cage spontaneously returned with a paired feeling of distress and unease. Like Harribance and Swann, Ms. Black displayed a prominent right hemispheric functional brain anomaly that could be modulated by electromagnetic fields. However, unlike the highly subjective reports of the former cases, Ms. Black displayed an objective mind-matter interaction, which supports the transmissive model of brain function.

Assuming scientists will one day conclusively validate the existence of psychokinetic activity, a revision of some historical events may be necessary. For example, recalling the near-death experience that inspired Hans Berger to pursue the measurement of “psychic energy”, it is worth considering the possibility that he did not telepathically transmit fear to his sister, but rather that her distress psychokinetically caused the fall that nearly killed him.

Here, I have focused on a small set of cases to demonstrate parallel findings across psi research; however, statistically abnormal performance on tasks related to telepathy and remote viewing have been reliably reported to varying degrees among randomly sampled, otherwise normal people. Indeed, the use of random event generators (REGs) to demonstrate mind-matter interactions in humans has indicated that some individuals can bias random physical systems by concentration alone. Meta-analyses of hundreds of studies examining the effects of consciousness on REGs and the results of falling dice clearly indicates the existence of a genuine interaction between thought and physical systems outside the head.

Consciousness therefore likely extends beyond the brain, supporting a transmissive model over current productive models. Interestingly, EMFs can be used to induce, amplify, and suppress psi task performance among randomly selected individuals. There is also a developed literature on psi phenomena that reinforces the significance of geomagnetic activity and its effects on performance. Geomagnetic storms affect extrasensory perception scores indicative of telepathy among average human participants and are linked to poltergeist phenomena.

Despite independent verification of some specific cases and phenomena, the mainstream rejection of psi abilities as “spooky” or the always-childish “woo-woo” is reasonable given the productive model of consciousness. That is, if brains generate consciousness by endogenous mechanisms that can only interface with the external environment by way of the peripheral nervous system and its control of our musculoskeletal system, psi is a total non-starter because it lacks a realistic mechanism. However, it should be noted that, historically speaking, phenomena which are unexplained because of an incomplete or inaccurate model of the system always seem spooky until an accurate model is adopted. Once a causal mechanism is identified, the phenomenon becomes mundane and post-hoc analyses are often paired with a dense incredulity associated with sentiments such as “How could we have ever thought otherwise?”

Similarly, the survival of consciousness after death is expected to become increasingly mundane as a concept if empirical efforts toward its validation yield compelling results with a defined mechanism. Based upon the three presented cases, psi phenomena are typically associated with anomalous right hemispheric activity with localized activations in the temporal lobe and parahippocampal area in particular. Synchronous brain activity is often reflective of Schumann resonance frequencies with dominant theta rhythms that track psi performance. Finally, actual and simulated geomagnetic fields as well as artificial EMF exposures can modulate psi ability. Together, these findings strongly support the validity of transmissive, electromagnetic models of consciousness. Therefore, the survival of consciousness after bodily death – which is at least partly dependent upon transmissive function – is likely beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

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/.