Near death experiences: Fenwick excerpt #8

Advocate for the Afterlife: "In this session we present some of the most compelling evidence for the afterlife and ask Dr Fenwick to resume the stand:"

   Raymond Moody       

Dr Fenwick: In 1973, Dr. Raymond Moody, in his seminal book 'Life after Life' (Moody, 1975) made one of the most interesting, controversial and importantobservations of the 20th century when, he observed that ‘consciousness’ somehow seemed to exist while the patient was unconscious during a heart attack. It was this concept that stimulated the field of near-death research, and raised questions about the generally accepted, reductionist view of science that consciousness is created by and limited to a brain.

Most subsequent studies have been retrospective, questioning people and examining their medical records sometime after their experience. Michael Sabom (1982) examined patients who had been in a variety of near-death circumstances, such as severe traumatic injury or comas as well as cardiac arrests. Some claimed to have seen their own resuscitation procedures while unconscious and, correlating their accounts with the medical records, Sabom found that the evidence did indeed point towards the experience having occurred during unconsciousness.

The term ‘Near Death Experience (NDE) has come to refer to a wide range of experiences: those occurring during a true cardiac arrest, when the patient may actually be medically, though temporarily, dead; those in which they have been literally near death, in an accident or illness; those which result from extreme fear – the so-called fear-death experiences; and those which are part of a transcendent continuum in which death is not involved.

To clarify the terminology, Dr. Sam Parnia, a palliative care physician, has suggested that the term ADE – Actual Death Experience should be used for those experiences occurring during cardiac arrest when the person would have died had they not been resuscitated (Parnia et al., 2001). In this chapter the term NDE is used only for conditions which do not fit this classification.

Near Death Experiences

Studies in the USA and Germany indicate that 4.2% of the population have had an NDE and that more than 25 million people worldwide have had one in the last 50 years.(van Lommel, 2011). Since 1997, an entire journal has been devoted to their study, the ‘‘Journal of Near Death Studies’, (JNDS, 1987).

The features of these experiences vary, but the most common are: 

·  ineffability,

·  timelessness,

·  awareness of being dead,

·  out of body experience,

· being drawn through a tunnel towards a light,

· meeting other human spirits, often deceased relatives,

· often in a beautiful garden,

· a life review,

· a feeling of peace and a sense of harmony or unity with the universe,

· awareness of a boundary beyond which they cannot go,

· a feeling of being pulled back to the body because it is not their time to go.

· Sadness at having to leave something so beautiful.

Time in an NDE does not move in a linear fashion. Your life can be reviewed in a fraction of a second. Both past and future can be known. Using NDEs as a model, it seems that, in life after death, time is variable and flexible.

Advocate for the Afterlife: We would now like to call as a witness Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, who experienced an NDE after a car accident:

Moretti:

I remember a vision from above my car ..... many people were there.... as luminous presences which made me feel a sort of peace and sense of acceptance, even though I was aware that I was close to death. I remember lying on the ambulance bed...... I told my friend that I had a strange dream. When he told me... we had a car accident, I immediately heard the noise of the ambulance and felt a terrible pain.

I was reluctant to report what I remembered. I was reading physics at university and trying to frame my experience within scientific theories. When my friend described the sequence of the events, I realized that my story was filtered by a logical interpretation that I introduced later. My perception was looking at events simultaneously, like pictures on a screen.

After that, I started to read accounts from people in coma of the 'out of body' aspects, the presence of light and the absence of a temporal sequence, framing them in the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. I did not answer all the scientific questions, but I felt that death is a passage to another dimension with no separation between masses and times. I am no longer worried about dying, because I am just experiencing my identity as a human body localized in space and time, here and now. I am convinced that when I die I will experience another form of identity, free from fear and pain. My grandmother said that that dimension should be good, since no one came back to complain.

 

 

“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.

Cross-examination: Fenwick excerpt #7

Judge: Now, the counsel for the skeptics may cross-examine the witness.

Elizabeth and Peter Fenwick      

Q: You say that close friends and relatives sometimes experience the presence of loved ones who died recently. Surely this could be hallucination brought on by grief, and if two close people are grieving the same relative, is it not unsurprising that they both dream of him?

A: True. These are death bed coincidences. In some, the person who is dying goes to visit someone to whom they are emotionally attached. What is surprising is that it occurs at the time of death, the two dreamers may be far away from each other, and may not even know that the relative is dying. And it is also surprising that they should both have very similar dreams at the same time on the same night.

Q: You admit there are fraudulent mediums. Couldn't they all be frauds but some cleverer than others? And if not, why do they like to work in darkness?

A: Broad brush refutation is unhelpful. Detailed examination is needed. Some of the most successful mediums have been physically examined even to the extent of having body cavities searched. They have been chained so they could not move and the experimenters have ensured that neither the medium's hands nor their feet have moved. However, the mediums were still able to produce ectoplasm and induce levitation and other physical phenomena. Mediums say it is very difficult to produce physical phenomena with normal lighting.

Q: Couldn't most mediums just be good at cold reading - or even, if it's possible, telepathic exchange with the sitters?

A: Some mediums have been rigorously tested. In the test situation the medium does not know who the sitter will be and never sees them because they are in a different room. As for telepathy, certainly this could be a factor, but from the reductionist science point of view, would not this be simply exchanging one impossible hypothesis for another? Telepathy can also be ruled out as we have been given examples of sitters who were given information they did not know, but later discovered was true.

Q: The supposed voices heard over faulty radios and faces seen in TV 'snow' are always faint and hard to make out. Aren't they just interference plus the brain's tendency to find pattern in randomness, just as we see faces on the Moon or in clouds?

A: What is required is detailed analysis of the data. Sometimes patterns are hard to make out but on other occasions they are very clear and unequivocal and loud voices have appeared from a non-functioning radio even to skeptical Scientific American writers! (Shermer, 2014).

 

References and Bibliography 

 

Batcheldor, K. (1966). Report on a case of table levitation and associated phenomena. Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, 43(729), 339-356. Retrieved 12 August 2021. 

 

Brackett, E. (1885). Materialized Apparitions. ebook, Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/files/34475/34475-h/34475-h.htm). 

 

Braude, S. (2016). Journal Of Scientific Exploration, 30(1), 27-55. Retrieved 4 July 2021, from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/299109580_Follow- Up_Investigation_of_the_Felix_Circle.

 

Cardoso, A. (2017). Electronic Contact with the Dead: What do the Voices Tell us?. White Crow Books.

 

Colvin, B. (2010). The Acoustic Properties of Unexplained Rapping Sounds. Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, 73(2), 65-93. 

 

Fenwick, P., & Fenwick, E. (2008). The Art of Dying. Continuum.
 

Geley, G. (1923). Materialized Hands. Scientific American, 129(5), 316-374. Retrieved 12 August 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24974719. 

 

Kean, L. (2017). Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. Three River Press.

 

Keen, M., Ellison, A., & Fontana, D. (1999). The Scole Report. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 58, 150-452 

 

Peres, J., Moreira-Almeida, A., Caixeta, L., Leao, F., & Newberg, A. (2012). Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation. Plos ONE, 7(11). https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049360 

 

Shermer, M. (2014). Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core (original title "Infrequencies"). Scientific American, 311(4), 97. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1014-97.

 

Tymn, M. (2021). No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. White Crow Books.

 

Varvoglis, M. (1999). The Kluski Hands Moulds. Institut Métapsychique International. Retrieved 4 July 2021, from https://www.metapsychique.org/the-kluski-hands-moulds/.

 

 

“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.

Mediums and materialization: Fenwick excerpt #6

Even long after death, communication between the dead and the living seems possible, through an intermediate interpreter or communication channel. One of the first people to experience and write about these phenomena as unrelated to religious belief was Edward Brackett, in his 1885 book Materialized Apparitions.

The Scole Experiment

     Robin Foy       

The Scole experiment which took place at the end of the 20th Century, set out to see if mediumistic information was due to fraud or genuinely came from spirits. It was carried out by senior members of the Society for Psychical Research in England, who studied a group of four people and two mediums, known as Robin Foy’s group, at the Scole farmhouse. Every possible precaution was taken. Their controls were numerous, and lights were attached to the mediums to prove that they did not move during the séance. The ‘spirits’ could ‘write’ on unexposed film , produced light in the room of the séance and information that only the sitters could know. The Scole report concluded that there was sufficient experimental evidence to suggest the continuation of life after death. (Keen et al., 1999)

Doris Stokes was one of the best known and well-regarded clairaudient mediums of the 20th century. She would always openly admit if she lost contact with the spirit voices, or received no messages from them, and was so successful that it is not surprising that she received hostile criticism from the most vocal sceptics of the time. A friend of ours, Pauline, who lived in America, went to see her on impulse one day when she was visiting London. The accuracy of most of the statements made by Doris Stokes in this session, about the life of someone from a different continent who she had never met before, was such that it is beyond the bounds of probability that it was achieved by guesswork or fakery.

1. “Barbara and Sheila say hello.” This, the first statement Doris made, is telepathy and not after death communication. These were the friends Pauline was living with in New York.

2. “There’s a man here, Charles, who wants to talk to you.” Pauline’s recently dead father was called Charles. The voice and rhythm of his speech were his, though his cockney accent did not come through.

3. “Fred and Alice are here too.” These were Pauline’ grandparents.

4. “And Paddy came just after me” Pauline’s uncle who had died soon after her father did.

5. “And your brother Peter’s here.”

This was a puzzle. Pauline had never, as far as she knew, had a brother called Peter. But because the rest of the information was so accurate, she went over to see her mother in Ireland. When she questioned her mother she was told, rather reluctantly, about the abortion, back in Ireland at a time when such things were neither legal nor socially acceptable. The baby would have been a brother for Pauline. And they had chosen a name for him: Peter. (Personal Communication).

The evidence that mediums can contact dead spirits is now incontrovertible, and examination of mediums' brains during a séance shows that the brain state is significantly different from both the control state and imagination (Peres et al., 2012).

Materialization and the Kluski gloves

In the early part of the 20th century materializations were very much in vogue and ectoplasm was often created in séances. The most convincing of these experiments was carried out with Franek Kluski, a Polish medium. A bowl of paraffin wax was melted over a bath of warm water. Kluski materialized an ectoplasm hand and asked the spirit to dip this hand into the wax and slowly withdraw it. When the wax had cooled this was repeated a number of times until, at the end of the séance, the medium dematerialized the hand and a perfect cast of it was left in the wax. Seven moulds of child-sized hands with the markings of adult hands, one of a foot and one of a lower face were produced in this way (Geley, 1923).

The Institut Métapsychique International conducted a detailed examination of this experiment to see if the results could have been fraudulently produced, either by sleight of hand during the séances, or moulds prepared in advance and surreptitiously smuggled into the laboratory (Varvoglis, 1999). Both seemed implausible because the experiment was so well controlled and they concluded that “...the Kluski wax gloves are genuinely paranormal, constituting evidence for an extraordinarily developed form of psychokinesis.”

Table levitation and psychokinesis

“To abandon these spiritual phenomena to credulity, is to commit a treason against human reason. Nevertheless, we see them always rejected and always reappearing. They date not their advent from yesterday.” – Victor Hugo. (cited in Brackett, 1885)

Psychokinesis – movement of physical objects without apparent human intervention – is one more phenomenon which seems to defy our scientific norms. Batcheldor (1966) describes sessions of table levitation by groups of sitters in which one six pound table levitated six feet, beyond the reach of the group, and another weighing forty pounds produced “brisk movements and levitations.”

An interesting experiment to see whether table levitation might be a human-generated phenomenon is described by Leslie Kean, in her book Surviving Death (Kean, 2017). Leslie was part of a team invited by Stephen Braude to examine table levitation facilitated by Kai Muegge, a German medium. Five of them sat with Kai around a plastic garden table. (Braude, 2016)

During the sessions Leslie and Steve sat on either side of Kai, holding his hands and touching his legs so that he could not physically move the table.

“We experienced a lot of table tilting and erratic circular movement. But it was the longer more relaxed levitations that really stood out. One of them lasted about fifteen seconds. The table rose at least two and a half feet straight up...swayed and dipped as if rocking on wave in what seemed like a swimming motion. It was as if it had suddenly become light and fluid, floating effortlessly, almost ‘alive’. (Kean, 2017)

They were also aware of other odd physical phenomena - raps as if someone was knocking on the wall, and the ringing of a bell which was hanging from the ceiling – which occurred spontaneously while they were all still sitting round the table. Leslie Kean (2017) and Stephen Braude (2016) also draw attention to a paper comparing the waveforms of paranormal rapping sounds with those of human-produced sounds. (Colvin, 2010). The sound amplitude of a human knocking on a wall is strongest the moment the sound begins and then quickly decays, whereas in a paranormal rap the sound starts quietly, builds to a maximum and then decays. See diagram in p.278 of (Kean, 2017).

The investigation of spirits has now gone a stage further, by using modern technology. Anabela Cardoso, was founder and editor of the ITC Journal Instrumental Transcommunication, which includes EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and DRV (direct radio voices). She has been able to show that spirit voices came from either the white background noise of a radio, or of a radio that was not working. A television camera pointed at itself or looking into a mirror has produced a lot of random moving dots. Sometimes these dots weave themselves into an image and have been claimed to be a form of spirit communication (Cardoso, 2017).

The evidence for an afterlife is strong (Tymn, 2021). For a few days after their death there seems to be an interim period when people may be able to communicate with those who were close to them in life. And even when separation from this life is complete, communication between the living and the dead seems possible through Mediums.

 

“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.

After death communication: Fenwick excerpt #5

Advocate for the Afterlife:

"We will now hear evidence that the dead are able to communicate with this world. Communication with the dead gives many of the bereaved comfort. They accept that the person they love has not simply ceased to exist, and that they are all right. We call Dr Peter Fenwick to resume the stand to discuss the ways in which this communication can occur and the varying forms it can take."

What happens when you die?

Is there a transcendent component to the human being; a spirit locked in which can be released at death? It is an ancient idea, but there are many present-day accounts of apparent direct communication between people who have died and those they have left behind. The accounts almost all occur within two or three days of the death, as though there is a transition period before the ‘spirit’ of the dead leaves the consciousness of the living entirely.

“My father died on the 30th April 1989. I could not go to the funeral because I was nine months pregnant. My son was born on the 17th May 1989. Three days later around 3 a.m. my father actually came into my room – I saw him fully. I even remember sitting up in bed because I did not think he was real. He walked over to the cot and looked at my son and smiled.... nodded his head in approval and left. It was a wonderful experience.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)*

One obvious explanation for some of these visits is that they are simply hallucinations. So, the following accounts are particularly interesting because they seem to have been experienced by two family members simultaneously.

“My father suddenly died in August 1998.... One night in a dream my father appeared, looked alive and well and told me that he was fine and happy and staying with his uncle. Since that night I stopped having bad dreams about him and was able to let him go. But the most surprising experience came when my sister told me about her bad dreams about our father’s death, that stopped when one night our father appeared in her dream and said he was fine and happy and staying with his uncle. She was telling me exactly the same thing that happened to me. (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)

This is another account of such a strange ‘coincidence’, told us by a man whose two year old son had died in 1998, accidentally drowned in a neighbor’s pond.

“In the early hours of Tuesday morning I woke up.... I could see a shadow of a baby’s face looking through the window, I knew it was Matthew. Later I heard a rustling noise (like the noise of a baby walking and his nappy rustling). The noise started near the door and moved across the foot of the bed and up towards my wife. I was reluctant to open my eyes (I was scared, to be honest) but when I did there was nobody there.

I didn’t mention this to my wife at first as I didn’t want to upset her; I told her a couple of days later. She said she had heard exactly the same thing as me, which freaked us both out a bit. Both of us heard the same thing but did not want to mention it in case it upset the other.

Now, Matthew had been doing this for quite a while before he died. He would wake up in the early hours, come into our room pat the foot of our bed and up Janette’s side, and we would hear his nappy rustling. ...One of us would take him back to his own bed later and tuck him in.

I was always a bit skeptical of these stories.... It’s only my own experiences that have made me question what happens when people pass on. It can be a bit daunting mentioning it to other people for fear that they will think you’re crackers.” (Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008)

*Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Art of Dying (2008).

“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.

Theories of consciousness: Fenwick excerpt #4

Evidence for Nonlocality of Mind

               Dean Radin            

The first possibility is that mind may have a non-local effect - an influence beyond the brain, mediated by some physical principle not yet defined by science. This would mean that brain processes can affect, at a distance, other minds (telepathy) and physical matter (psychokinesis, or PK).

Recent work in the area of parapsychology has produced results which, if they are confirmed, might provide some persuasive evidence for non-locality of mind The most convincing are the Ganzfeld experiments (Radin, 2011), which have examined mind-reading ability in a state of sensory deprivation and Bob Jahn's set of experiments in Princeton’s University PEAR Lab, which have shown the ability of minds to influence a random number generator, or to affect the way balls fall in a large pinball machine. (Jahn & Dunne, 2005a; Jahn & Dunne, 2005b; Jahn & Dunne, 2009) None provided full proof, but they were taken seriously enough for other researchers to try to replicate them (Carter, 2012; Broderick & Goertzel, 2014).

Wackermann et al (2003) investigated the correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatially separated human subjects and found that such correlations may occur, although no biophysical mechanism is known.

Fenwick (2019) investigated the claims of Alain Forget, a philosopher who has spent years in meditation. He discovered that he could radiate energy in the form of light to his students and that they saw light surrounding Alain while he was giving it.

Fenwick et al (2018), conducted a hyperscanning EEG experiment to see whether, when Alain gave light, his student’s brain was affected, even if he did not know light was being transmitted. They discovered that, although a group of people could see Alain’s light, no camera could record it. When giving light, Alain’s brain showed a totally different pattern of activity, with frequencies stretching up to 100hz, the limit of the measuring equipment. At the same time, the student’s brain, even though he did not know Alain was giving light, showed responses as well. Of interest is that on Facetime, Alain’s light, when viewed by 100 people from all over the world, could be seen by 75% of them and was very strong in about 30%.

In summary, they found clear evidence that there were unusual electrical and metabolic changes in Alain Forget’s brain which correlated with the giving of the light energy. And that this energy was able to affect other brains. This suggests that the linking of brain activity may provide a physiological basis for altering another person’s brain function and might form the basis for an explanation of parapsychological phenomena such as telepathy.

Wider theories of consciousness

If consciousness is only the mechanical functioning of neuronal nets it can never be non-local. A recent step away from that reductionist position was suggested in a paper published by the Royal Society (Schwartz et al. 2005). The authors, argued that the reductionist mechanical science which assumed that causality within the brain was fully determined by the movement of small Newtonian particles, atoms etc., is now over three-quarters of a century out of date. It has been superseded by the application of quantum mechanical theories of brain function. These follow the mathematics of von Neumann who argued that both the physical world and the conscious world must be considered when looking at a quantum mechanical system (von Neumann J., 1955).

Schwartz et al argue that the brain is a quantum mechanical system, not only because the neurotransmitter junctions are susceptible to quantum effects, but because the von Neumann view of the world stretches from the level of the individual molecules of neurotransmitter to include the whole brain and the mental processes that occur within it. They showed very clearly that mental processes and the mental (social) context in which the brain is embedded are causal agents in their own right as postulated by von Neumann’s theory.

The brain contains two domains, both causal, von Neumann’s Process 1 and Process 2 – those conscious processes, such as thoughts, feelings, beliefs etc, would come to bear on the pure quantum system and are causative in their own right.

Thus, at one stroke consciousness takes its place in its own right in any theory of how the brain works. The matrix of meaning in which the subject is embedded - culture, family relationships and so on - now extends brain function well beyond the physical brain.

Schwartz et al show the causative effect, of conscious processes very simply and elegantly. They point out that a placebo may consist only of chalk and is inactive when taken by mouth. However, if subjects with Parkinson’s disease are told that it is a powerful anti-Parkinson agent and will improve their walking, then they do indeed find that their Parkinson symptoms alleviate when they take the chalk pill. They move more easily and MRI scans show an increase in dopamine, the neurotransmitter in which they are deficient. What this paper showed is that it is not possible when just looking at brain processes, to explain their form and nature only by other brain processes, e.g. from the reductionist point of view.

Multidimensional theories

So consciousness and the cultural setting have to be taken into account when addressing the ‘hard question’ relating to consciousness. When we die it is clear from accounts of the dying that the transcendent role of consciousness is primary, particularly in the movement of the dying into an alternate reality, composed of love and light which is not situated in this physical world. [See Chapter 5 of this essay] It is truly transcendent but it is only detected by consciousness itself. If we are to ask about the location of the dead relatives, the dying would answer that their location is in the domain of transcendence. So the question now becomes, where is this domain?

There are a number of theories in physics that postulate reality cannot be contained in space and time alone. It has been suggested by the astrophysicist Bernard Carr (Carr, 2007) that the world is in fact a five-dimensional matrix and that it is within the fifth dimension that these conscious experiences are stored. Randall & Sundrum, (1999) extending Kaluza-Klein theory, also use a five dimensional model to explain the phenomena we find in dying and David Lawton, who has studied near death experiences, (Kean, 2017) has also argued for a five dimensional structure for NDEs, and suggests that “death is simply the withdrawal of the 4-D part leaving the 5D intact” (Kean, 2017). So it will only be available to the four-dimensional brain on occasions when the structures within the brain weaken and allow it. This is certainly true for the experiences reported during cardiac arrest and as described by Pim van Lommel in Chapter 5 of this essay.

There are other features of the dying process which fit neatly into a five-dimensional explanation of reality, for example the alteration of time as shown by premonitions and in the appearance of dead relatives. Light surrounding the body and shapes seen leaving the body, which do not seem to be physical, would suggest that momentarily, at the time of death, these energies can be sensed by others present in the room of the dying. Alteration of space and linking together of minds are shown by deathbed coincidences, in which the dying establish a link to someone they are emotionally close to. It goes some way towards explaining physical phenomena such as mechanical malfunction, or the stopping of clocks.

Biocentrism and Beyond

Biocentrism was first proposed by Dr. Robert Lanza in 2007. Dr. Lanza is an expert in regenerative medicine. His theory of biocentrism consciousness as fundamental to the universe (Lanza & Berman, 2016). It is consciousness that creates the material universe and not the other way round. Therefore, the death of consciousness simply cannot occur.

 

“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.

Advocate for the afterlife: Fenwick excerpt #3

"Before we can make sense of the idea of Consciousness continuing after death, we need to look at evidence for aspects of consciousness, mind or knowledge extending beyond the physical brain.

So, we call neuropsychiatrist Dr Peter Fenwick as an expert witness.

Dr Fenwick, what evidence is there that 'mind' extends beyond the brain?"

Peter Fenwick:

Let's look at Consciousness as a ‘Field Structure’ and start with precognition. A precognitive experience is one in which you get knowledge about an event which has not yet happened. It may be something quite trivial, sometimes it carries important information though this is not always recognized at the time.

There are many accounts of premonitions of dying occurring to people who subsequently met their death. After the Aberfan catastrophe, in which a colliery slag tip collapsed over a small Welsh village, burying the school and killing over 100 children and their teachers, several people claimed to have had premonitory dreams of the disaster. One particularly sad story is that of ten-year old Eryl Mai, a pupil at the school, who told her mother, two weeks before the disaster:

“Mummy, I’m not afraid to die,” and added “I shall be with Peter and June,” (two of her school friends). The day before the disaster she said to her mother “Let me tell you about my dream last night. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it!” (Dossey, 2010)

Dreams of disaster are relatively common and can usually be dismissed as due to general anxiety, or simply coincidence. But a few, like the one described above, are so specific that it is hard to dismiss them. Here is another:

“My third daughter was just seven years old, when I woke up in the morning totally upset and in mourning over her death. I was so surprised and confused to see her lying next to me that I actually gently nudged her to see if she was alive. She had apparently gotten up during the night and climbed in next to me. When she moved I cried uncontrollably with relief. She was not dead and I hugged her. I did not tell her I thought she was dead. I could not remember any dream but the feelings were so strong and real, exactly as they were two days later when she was the victim of a hit and run.” (Santana Santos & Fenwick, 2012)

Premonitions suggest that our access to a line of time is not always limited to the present moment, but that we may occasionally get access to the future. And if this is so, then we have to ask whether consciousness is more a field structure than being created by the brain as reductionist science suggests.

Transmission Theories

We've been assuming that everything is created within the brain. An alternative view is that everything is transmitted through the brain.

William James was one of the strongest exponents of transmission theory. He described in his 1897 Ingersoll Lecture (James, 1898) the idea that beyond the 'veil of reality' in this world, and particularly beyond the brain, there is a transcendent reality in which the soul may live. He argued that this beam of consciousness is transmitted through the brain which modifies it. Sense data is transformed by the brain for transmission to an external mind. Mind in its turn can will an action which is transmitted to brain and so is able to initiate brain processes and thus actions. Although memories are held partly within the brain, a large part of memory is stored external to the brain, and in this, personal identity is located.

The attraction of transmission theories is that they allow for the concept of survival of personal identity after death, and thus give a meaning to life beyond the purely biological and cultural. They try to explain something that many people feel intuitively - that human beings, besides being individuals, are part of a greater whole. But once again we come up against the difficulty that at present there is no known mechanism which would link brain to mind in this way, or which would allow memory to be stored outside the brain.

Sir John Eccles, one of last century's most distinguished neurophysiologists and a Nobel laureate, also suggested that there is an interface between brain and mind. Here the 'dendron' (a hypothetical region of the nerve cell processes of the brain) links with the 'psychon' (the hypothetical atom of mind) (Eccles, 1990; Eccles, 1994). However, so far nobody has managed to identify dendrons or psychons, so the theory remains just that, a theory.

Field Theories

The theory of morphic resonance is biologist Rupert Sheldrake's attempt to explain how memory might exist independently of an individual brain, and could be accessed by other brains. He postulates the existence of 'morphogenetic fields' (Sheldrake, 1981). A morphogenetic field is part of the structure of the universe, existing everywhere at once. It is possible for matter to be influenced by this field at the same time in widely separate areas. He suggests that information relating to a pattern of behavior can be transmitted from the brain to this field. The transmitted information modifies the field and the field in its turn modifies other similar brains so that they become more likely to reproduce this particular piece of behavior. He uses this morphic resonance theory to explain, for example, how it is that when rats in one part of the world learned to run through mazes, other rats in other places seemed to acquire this ability simultaneously, and why scientists working in different places and not in contact with each other often tend to make the same discoveries at more or less the same time. Dr Sheldrake believes that experiments which he and other workers have carried out have produced some evidence for his field theory, (Sheldrake 2009) but so far the scientific world is not convinced.

 

 

“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.