Teachings From Near Death Experiences

Teachings from Near Death Experiences (Interpretations of an Amateur Scientist) By: John Winders

Note to my readers: You can access and download this essay and my other essays through the Amateur Scientist Essays website under Direct Downloads at the following URL: https://sites.google.com/site/amateurscientistessays/ You are free to download and share all of my essays without any restrictions, although it would be very nice to credit my work when quoting directly from them.

(The illustration on the cover is the watercolor “The Angel with the Book” by painter/engineer John Martin. It was inspired by the Book of Revelation, but I think it's also a pretty good depiction of a near death experience.)

According to the prevailing reductionist paradigm, human consciousness is defined as brain wave activity. Electrical discharges from neurons in the brain are manifested as thoughts and feelings.

The near death experience (NDE) is therefore nothing more than a predeath hallucination in a dying brain that are triggered by neurons that are deprived of oxygen. Scientists think they have even identified specific locations in the brain that are associated with this particular predeath hallucination. Such an explanation may sound plausible to a closed-minded or intellectually lazy person; however, it just won't stand up to closer examination, as I will argue below.

People have related the near death experiences throughout history. Scientists generally dismiss these accounts as unproven and unsubstantiated, relegating them to the occult or paranormal. When non-scientists or even qualified scientists try to study NDEs in a consistent and methodical manner, their attempts are simply brushed off as “pseudo-science.” The main difficulty in validating NDE to the scientific community is that those experiences are usually spontaneous, unpredictable, and are therefore not amenable to controlled experiments. I think insisting on controlled experiments in order to prove a point is an unfair standard of proof. When Albert Einstein published the general theory of relativity in 1915, the only way that theory could be tested was through astronomical observations. The precession of Mercury's perihelion and the bending of starlight around the limb of the Sun during a solar eclipse were judged to be sufficient evidence to accept general relativity as fact; there simply were no other credible theories that could explain those observations. Even though this didn't rise to the level of a controlled experiment, the data were repeatable and good enough to validate his theory.

A similar situation exists in the area of jurisprudence. In the American legal system, criminal cases must be based on a legal standard known as “beyond a reasonable doubt” for proving guilt. This level of proof is equivalent to controlled, repeatable experiments used in the scientific method. But a lower standard, known as “preponderance of evidence,” applies in civil cases. Hearsay evidence is usually not allowed in court, so of course we should discount all NDE cases based on anecdotal or evidence that can't be substantiated. However, I believe there are enough well-documented cases to satisfy the burden of proof for NDE based on preponderance of evidence. In fact, any fair examination of the data will show the evidence is overwhelming.

NDEs occur either when a person is approaching death or is clinically dead. Many of the reported incidents are spontaneous, involving violent accidents, drownings, or similar circumstances that lack corroboration from reliable, independent witnesses. However, quite a few NDEs occur during surgery in operating rooms when the subjects are placed under general anesthesia and are being closely monitored. These cases are particularly interesting to me because they practically rise to the level of controlled experiments in accord with the scientific method, particularly because there are trained medical professionals on hand who can independently verify details reported by the NDE subjects. This kind of professional verification transforms mere subjective experiences into objective data that can be analyzed scientifically.

First of all, it is widely accepted that there are many different states of consciousness that are qualitatively dissimilar. Normal waking consciousness is qualitatively different than sleep, both dreaming and non-dreaming. There are meditative states of consciousness and various states of “unconsciousness,” including coma. Mental illnesses and the effects of hallucinogenic drugs define other mental states. Autism represents an entire spectrum of mental states.

The brain under general anesthesia stands out as a particular mental state that is qualitatively different than the rest. Science still doesn't have a complete understanding of how anesthetics really 1

work, but their effects are well known. An anesthetized person does not respond to any external stimuli, including a surgeon's knife cutting through flesh, and after recovery, the person doesn't remember anything that occurred while the person was “under.” There are no sensations, no dreams, no hallucinations – just nothing. Consciousness is completely suspended while the patient is anesthetized; nevertheless, using EEG data, researchers from the University of Virginia have identified specific brain wave patterns that are associated with anesthetized brains as it loses consciousness. Interestingly, it seems that neurons are still firing without consciousness.

Now sometimes NDEs occur during surgery while the patient is under general anesthesia. The patient feels nothing, thinks nothing, and dreams nothing until the surgery “goes sideways.” If the patient goes into cardiac arrest, the heart stops beating, blood pressure plummets, and there is no oxygen flow to the brain. At that point, the patient's brain may “flat line,”where there is no detectable brain wave activity at all. According to the current scientific theory that brain waves accompany consciousness, there would be no possibility of consciousness at that point – the patient is clinically dead. It is precisely at that stage, however, when the patient may experience a NDE. The subject is suddenly very aware and lucid, and can experience sight, sound, smell, and touch.

The colors seen are so vivid that the subject cannot describe them in terms of ordinary colors.

Thoughts race through the mind with extreme rapidity, the person's perception and understanding are magnified tremendously. In some cases, the entire life of the subject is displayed almost instantaneously; all of the lessons from the subject's life are immediately understood and indelibly recorded in memory. If these kinds of thoughts really do occur while the brain has “flat lined” and the patient is clinically dead, this certainly blows a hole in the position that consciousness is nothing more than a collection of neurons firing off electrical impulses.

These types of incidents are actually not all that rare, and when a NDE occurs during surgery, it's about as close to a controlled scientific experiment that can be performed legally. During all major surgery, patients are monitored carefully; almost always with an EKG device and sometimes with an EEG device as well.1 Furthermore, trained professional medical personnel are always present to document everything going on during the operation. If the NDE is an hallucination, then why do patients remember the NDE – but nothing else about the surgery – after they recover from general anesthesia? How could a person correctly observe details of events taking place in the operating room in a NDE through the ordinary senses even while they are under general anesthesia? If the NDE is just an hallucination, how is it that events that were reported by the patient as taking place in the operating room during the NDE are also corroborated by the professional medical staff who were present at the time? Surely the preponderance of evidence gathered from NDEs that occur during surgery is enough to prove there is something very wrong with the current scientific definitions of consciousness and death.

One well-documented case of NDE involved the singer/songwriter Pam Reynolds. She underwent complicated brain surgery that required her to be placed into a state of suspended animation with all of the blood drained from her brain. While Pam was in that suspended state – without anesthesia – she was clinically dead. But during that time, she suddenly became conscious of her surroundings from a vantage point outside her body, and she could both see and hear everything that was happening in the operating room even though her eyes were taped shut and her ears plugged. There were about 20 medical professionals present during her NDE, and some of them later corroborated details of what Pam had experienced. This was one of the strongest cases of NDE ever reported.

But when neuroscientists were asked to comment on the case, most of them flatly rejected the evidence out of hand, stating that this event simply could not have happened. It really saddens me when scientists and engineers refuse to even look at evidence just because it conflicts with their long-held beliefs. After all, science is supposed to be all about gathering and examining all 1

When patients are hooked up to EEG devices, it's called intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring.

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evidence – especially evidence that may contradict or disprove a prevailing scientific theory.2 So what lessons could be gleaned from an objective scientific examination of available NDE data?

Well, I still accept that consciousness is associated with the brain. Injuries, disease, and lesions in the brain clearly cause loss of consciousness or altered states of consciousness, so there's a definite connection between the two. However, the NDE teaches us that consciousness may dissociate from the brain at the time of death. People who have had the full-blown NDE describe leaving and reentering the body, viewing the body rather objectively while they were out of it, as if it were an external inanimate object, like a suit of clothes, instead of an integral part of themselves. (Autistic people also sometimes describe their brains and bodies as external objects that are not fully under the control of the consciousness.) Also, after people leave their bodies during a NDE, they often have a sensation of being more “at home” while they are detached from their bodies.

The data show that the NDE is fairly consistent across a wide cultural spectrum. Most NDE subjects recall meeting a divine being who nurtures and instructs them throughout the experience.

The specific persona of that divine being may vary depending on culture. For instance, most people (even atheists) who live in Western societies where Christianity is the prevalent religion usually report meeting Jesus. Hindus meet Krishna, Buddhists meet Buddha, Muslims meet Muhammad, etc. However, regardless of the person's cultural background, the overall quality of the experience is almost always said to be very positive and enlightening – not scary or unpleasant at all. Having a positive near death experience doesn't seem to depend on having particular religious beliefs prior to the NDE, being righteous, or even being a “nice” person. It's almost as if a joyful afterlife is a kind of birthright that every human is entitled to.3 Every NDE subject (that we know of) eventually returns his or her body, although many subjects said they would have preferred to stay “at home” outside the body. They say the predominant reason for returning to the body is to complete some important task. (By inference, these people would have been allowed to remain “at home” permanently if there were no more tasks they needed to complete.) This evidence leads me to believe that the sole purpose of being in the physical world is so the consciousness can learn and develop; apparently, the required learning and development are impossible unless the consciousness is attached to a nervous system that can interact with the physical world. Those who believe in reincarnation stress that learning is the primary purpose for being alive, with the physical universe serving as a kind of school or training ground. NDE subjects also report that this is one of the main lessons they learned from their NDEs. Although almost every NDE subject seems to experience a joyful, uplifting experience, there seems to be at least one exception: People who attempt suicide almost always report a hellish experience during their NDEs, so apparently suicide is an especially abhorrent act in the grand scheme of things. This fits in with the belief that life is for learning and we're all in some kind of finishing school. You don't get passed to the next grade by cutting classes; instead, you spend time in detention, where things are unpleasant.

But what good would it do to put people who commit suicide in a hellish afterlife for eternity in order to “teach them a lesson,” instead of offering them an opportunity to apply that lesson later on?

And what purpose would it serve to “go to school” in a body only once, then have those lessons cut short by death at a young age? If there is any purpose at all to being attached to physical bodies that eventually grow old and die, then it seems almost self-evident that we must experience life in a series of bodies in order to properly complete that process.4 2 3 4

NDE deniers make an absurd claim that Pam Reynolds was in fact still very much alive. She was simply in a very peculiar altered state of consciousness that allowed her to receive and process stimuli through her ordinary senses, even with all the blood drained out of her brain.

This is very bad news for religious fundamentalists who think that paradise is reserved exclusively for people like them.

Of course I could be wrong; life may have no purpose at all. Nevertheless, like the metaphor of a relay race where

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I find it interesting that the “school of life” motif is replicated in our educational system, with grades K through 12, followed by college, graduate school, and post doctoral studies. Students are given lots idle time during summer recess where they break away from their studies and are allowed to loll around, reflect, and do nothing in particular. I'm inclined to think that we unconsciously designed this system of education as a reflection of the type of “schooling” we go through in one physical body followed by the next. (Many people have had recurring dreams where we are enrolled in some sort of school, are trying to get to some class in a building we can't locate, and are very late. Then it dawns on us that we're supposed be taking a final exam that day, but we have never attended a single lecture all year, and have absolutely no chance of passing that course.5 This recurring dream is undoubtedly our higher subconscious mind warning us that we've been spending too much time avoiding pain and seeking pleasure instead of going to class and learning important lessons, and that the time for learning is running out fast.)

I mentioned earlier that barring suicide, the NDE is positive and enlightening regardless of one's prior beliefs or religious affiliations. Almost everyone who goes through the NDE comes out of it as a better person. People who had faith in God prior to their NDE generally come out of it with an even deeper and more mature faith. Those who didn't believe in God prior to their NDE generally come out if it with increased spirituality, with a feeling of oneness with the universe. Almost everyone who has had a NDE report they no longer fear death, their lives have more purpose and meaning, and stress the importance of loving and caring for others. From a purely scientific perspective, the fact that a consciousness actually can dissociate itself from a physical nervous system brings about all sorts of possibilities about reality and the true nature of the physical universe.

If consciousness can exist independently without being attached to a physical body, then what does this indicate about physical reality? Maybe everything we consider as “real” is actually a manifestation of something that is non-physical but is even more real. Through the study of quantum physics, some scientists have embraced the “It from Bit” conjecture, which holds that the fundamental building block of the universe is pure information. Because we live in the digital age, we assume that software requires preexisting hardware to run on. It's a bit disconcerting to think about disembodied software existing without hardware, or to imagine that software could even create its own hardware out of nothing. But as strange as that sounds, the NDE may be teaching us that the “It from Bit” conjecture is really true; that the “hardware” – our brains, our bodies, and the entire physical universe – may be secondary manifestations of information, and that our conscious selves are the only permanent things about ourselves that truly exist.6 In summary …

The current scientific paradigm of material reductionism has problems accommodating a theory of the conscious mind, so it defines away the problem by claiming that consciousness equals neuron activity. That claim does not hold up to preponderance of evidence that proves an alternate state of consciousness, called a near death experience, can and does occur even after trauma to the brain ceases all neuron activity. Furthermore, NDE subjects report that their minds are far more lucid in that state than when they are awake or dreaming. Many NDE subjects get a clear impression that life is meant for learning and that being present in physical bodies is necessary for that to happen.7

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the baton represents our conscious self and the runners are our physical bodies. Runners drop out of the race, but the baton is passed from one runner to the next until the race is finished.

Back in college, I knew people whose actual college careers were like this dream.

This attitude comes dangerously close to solipsism, so we need to be careful about carrying that idea too far.

Some NDE subjects describe their afterlife experiences as being somewhat chaotic and almost too vivid. This implies that the main purpose of the physical brain could actually be to limit or filter out information flowing into the conscious mind in order to facilitate learning. Just as you wouldn't try to teach calculus to a kindergarten student, you wouldn't want to overload consciousness with unfiltered reality until it is ready to receive it.

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Appendix A – The Curious Case of Dr. Alexander Eban Alexander is a trained neurosurgeon, who had completely bought into the material reductionist paradigm that the brain equals consciousness … until he had a NDE brought about by a bacterial meningitis infection that put him into a coma for about a week at the age of 55. The bacteria in question were E. Coli, which normally live happily in our large intestines, making vitamin K2 and helping to ward off harmful bacteria. But when E. Coli get loose in the spinal column and in the brain, they wreak havoc and usually either kill their hosts or put them into a permanent vegetative state. The fact that Dr. Alexander survived this ordeal and recovered completely is remarkable enough, but his NDE experience was very atypical as well.

Alexander wrote a book entitled Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife, which triggered a firestorm of criticism and rebuke from scientists, who apparently felt betrayed by a member of their community. One critic called his book “alarmingly unscientific,” although I have to wonder if this person actually read it. Alexander chose a rather unfortunate title for his book in my opinion; it conjures up images of Jesus, angels, meeting dead relatives, etc. – things typically found in cheesy books about the afterlife written by religious propagandists like Todd Burpo, a Christian fundamentalist pastor whose book Heaven is for Real was made into a movie. But reading Alexander's book gave me a reaction completely opposite from what was implied by the title. Alexander was a just another casual Episcopalian, who attended church services mainly on Christmas and Easter. He has no personal stake in any particular religion, or religion in general for that matter. He refrains from referring to the cosmic Spirit as “God” and uses the gender-neutral name “Om” instead. But Alexander isn't just a burned-out hippie promoting crystal-based New Age pseudoscience. When describing his condition, he uses the precise scientific terminology he learned in medical school, although he admits difficulty in describing the NDE experience itself through the use of human language that is based on normal linear consciousness.

As a neurosurgeon, he is very familiar with the conventional “nuts and bolts” theory of the brain.

But having experienced NDE first-hand, he now says that the brain acts as a kind of filter to limit and modulate consciousness. I stated the same thing earlier in this essay; but thinking about this further, it seems that the brain is also some sort of super-efficient correlation engine that takes noise-like stimuli and correlates them into meaningful patterns. Take stereograms for example.

These were very popular in the 1990s, on display in shopping malls everywhere, although I don't see them much anymore. They're 2-dimensional images consisting of what appear to be random dots or periodic waveforms. If you stare at a stereogram by “looking through” it long enough, 3dimensional dolphins, butterflies, geometric shapes, etc., will “pop out” of the flat image. It seems the left eye and the right eye send signals that are spatially offset to the visual cortex, which integrates and correlates those signals into 3-dimensional images, doing what the brain does best.

What we refer to as “intelligence” is basically the ability to correlate and do pattern recognition.

Most IQ tests are actually implicitly testing this ability through questions involving word associations, identifying geometric similarities, logic and mathematics. Although I'm not a neurologist or a psychiatrist, it seems that the condition known as autism might be caused by an impairment of the brain's ability to correlate information. People with autism often report being overwhelmed by a world that seems to bombard them with random noise they can't process. This may be due to an overall impairment of their ability to correlate information; however, some autistics are extremely gifted in specific areas in which that ability is augmented. At the opposite end of the scale, people suffering from schizophrenia always seem to have their correlation engines running on high-octane fuel. They have an enhanced ability to “connect all the dots,” sometimes interpreting newspaper headlines as coded messages directed specifically at them, or concocting elaborate secret conspiracy theories. People label that as paranoia, but there's truth to the saying, “There's a fine line separating genius from madness.” John Nash is a prime example.

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evidence – especially evidence that may contradict or disprove a prevailing scientific theory.2 So what lessons could be gleaned from an objective scientific examination of available NDE data?

Well, I still accept that consciousness is associated with the brain. Injuries, disease, and lesions in the brain clearly cause loss of consciousness or altered states of consciousness, so there's a definite connection between the two. However, the NDE teaches us that consciousness may dissociate from the brain at the time of death. People who have had the full-blown NDE describe leaving and reentering the body, viewing the body rather objectively while they were out of it, as if it were an external inanimate object, like a suit of clothes, instead of an integral part of themselves. (Autistic people also sometimes describe their brains and bodies as external objects that are not fully under the control of the consciousness.) Also, after people leave their bodies during a NDE, they often have a sensation of being more “at home” while they are detached from their bodies.

The data show that the NDE is fairly consistent across a wide cultural spectrum. Most NDE subjects recall meeting a divine being who nurtures and instructs them throughout the experience.

The specific persona of that divine being may vary depending on culture. For instance, most people (even atheists) who live in Western societies where Christianity is the prevalent religion usually report meeting Jesus. Hindus meet Krishna, Buddhists meet Buddha, Muslims meet Muhammad, etc. However, regardless of the person's cultural background, the overall quality of the experience is almost always said to be very positive and enlightening – not scary or unpleasant at all. Having a positive near death experience doesn't seem to depend on having particular religious beliefs prior to the NDE, being righteous, or even being a “nice” person. It's almost as if a joyful afterlife is a kind of birthright that every human is entitled to.3 Every NDE subject (that we know of) eventually returns his or her body, although many subjects said they would have preferred to stay “at home” outside the body. They say the predominant reason for returning to the body is to complete some important task. (By inference, these people would have been allowed to remain “at home” permanently if there were no more tasks they needed to complete.) This evidence leads me to believe that the sole purpose of being in the physical world is so the consciousness can learn and develop; apparently, the required learning and development are impossible unless the consciousness is attached to a nervous system that can interact with the physical world. Those who believe in reincarnation stress that learning is the primary purpose for being alive, with the physical universe serving as a kind of school or training ground. NDE subjects also report that this is one of the main lessons they learned from their NDEs. Although almost every NDE subject seems to experience a joyful, uplifting experience, there seems to be at least one exception: People who attempt suicide almost always report a hellish experience during their NDEs, so apparently suicide is an especially abhorrent act in the grand scheme of things. This fits in with the belief that life is for learning and we're all in some kind of finishing school. You don't get passed to the next grade by cutting classes; instead, you spend time in detention, where things are unpleasant.

But what good would it do to put people who commit suicide in a hellish afterlife for eternity in order to “teach them a lesson,” instead of offering them an opportunity to apply that lesson later on?

And what purpose would it serve to “go to school” in a body only once, then have those lessons cut short by death at a young age? If there is any purpose at all to being attached to physical bodies that eventually grow old and die, then it seems almost self-evident that we must experience life in a series of bodies in order to properly complete that process.4 2 3 4

NDE deniers make an absurd claim that Pam Reynolds was in fact still very much alive. She was simply in a very peculiar altered state of consciousness that allowed her to receive and process stimuli through her ordinary senses, even with all the blood drained out of her brain.

This is very bad news for religious fundamentalists who think that paradise is reserved exclusively for people like them.

Of course I could be wrong; life may have no purpose at all. Nevertheless, like the metaphor of a relay race where

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Appendix B – Moments of Awareness and Psi Phenomena According to conventional wisdom, consciousness consists of electrical wave patterns in the brain.

All thoughts, emotions, including self-awareness, are products of coordinated “firing” of neurons that produce these patterns. In other words, what we call consciousness takes place in the synapses between the neurons on a scale that is appropriate for the classical laws of electromagnetism to prevail. Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers maintain that it will soon be within our grasp to duplicate the level of complexity in the brain (based on the synapses model) using silicon-based electronics to replicate neural networks, making it possible to duplicate (or replace) human intelligence with machines. All it would take would be to connect a network of 100 billion or so logic gates (switches) on silicon chips and voilà, we would have an artificial human brain like HAL from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

But according to the Hameroff-Penrose model of quantum consciousness, mentioned in Appendix A of this essay, consciousness takes place at a much more subtle level than the synapses. In their model, the actual thought process does not involve the synapses at all, but rather computations using quantum bits (qubits) taking place within the cytoplasm of the neurons in structures known as microtubules. The existence of microtubules is a known fact, although there is some debate about what their exact functions are and how they carry out these functions. Microtubules are on a scale small enough where quantum mechanics would dominate whatever physics is taking place.10 If Hameroff-Penrose are correct, the AI folks will have to scale up the complexity of their machines by many orders of magnitude to even come close to the computing power of the human brain. I'm not going into their work in any detail – it's quite extensive and very deep – although I would strongly encourage the reader to investigate it further at the following web site: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html The long and short of it is this: Quantum computations involving superimposed qubits occur inside the microtubules, which somehow shield the qubits from the warm, wet and noisy environment.

The qubits themselves might involve electron spin states, although Hameroff and Penrose aren't sure. Vibrational frequencies within the microtubules are over a very wide range of frequencies all the way up to the gigahertz level. When a “solution” is optimized, the quantum wave functions collapse and the microtubule takes on a definite state, which translates into a macroscopic electrical signal that causes the neuron to fire. Coordinated firings among neurons produce the brain-wave patterns that are familiar to neuroscience having distinctive frequencies: delta (0.1 – 3 Hz), theta (4 – 7 Hz), alpha (5 – 15 Hz), and all the way up to gamma (32 – 100 Hz).

Penrose isn't quite willing to abandon reductionism, which says that consciousness is equal to brain waves, and Hameroff-Penrose define coordinated neuron firings as “moments of consciousness.” I would amend that slightly; since consciousness really takes place at the quantum microtubule level, neuron firings are really “moments of awareness,” when quantum consciousness finally emerges and manifests itself at the macro level of classical physics. The neuron could be a sort of link between the hidden quantum world and the objective reality of the macroscopic universe.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, which is discussed in some of my other essays, all physical reality consists of a linear superposition of quantum wave functions with no boundary between observer and observed, or between the microscopic and macroscopic. I personally do not subscribe to that extreme view, but I'll concede there is a level of truth to it. Let me explain what I mean by this.

10 Similar cellular structures, found in plant cells, appear to mediate the process of photosynthesis, converting energy from photons into food through a super-efficient process that seems to rely on a quantum-mechanical superposition effect that is not well understood.

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I find it interesting that the “school of life” motif is replicated in our educational system, with grades K through 12, followed by college, graduate school, and post doctoral studies. Students are given lots idle time during summer recess where they break away from their studies and are allowed to loll around, reflect, and do nothing in particular. I'm inclined to think that we unconsciously designed this system of education as a reflection of the type of “schooling” we go through in one physical body followed by the next. (Many people have had recurring dreams where we are enrolled in some sort of school, are trying to get to some class in a building we can't locate, and are very late. Then it dawns on us that we're supposed be taking a final exam that day, but we have never attended a single lecture all year, and have absolutely no chance of passing that course.5 This recurring dream is undoubtedly our higher subconscious mind warning us that we've been spending too much time avoiding pain and seeking pleasure instead of going to class and learning important lessons, and that the time for learning is running out fast.)

I mentioned earlier that barring suicide, the NDE is positive and enlightening regardless of one's prior beliefs or religious affiliations. Almost everyone who goes through the NDE comes out of it as a better person. People who had faith in God prior to their NDE generally come out of it with an even deeper and more mature faith. Those who didn't believe in God prior to their NDE generally come out if it with increased spirituality, with a feeling of oneness with the universe. Almost everyone who has had a NDE report they no longer fear death, their lives have more purpose and meaning, and stress the importance of loving and caring for others. From a purely scientific perspective, the fact that a consciousness actually can dissociate itself from a physical nervous system brings about all sorts of possibilities about reality and the true nature of the physical universe.

If consciousness can exist independently without being attached to a physical body, then what does this indicate about physical reality? Maybe everything we consider as “real” is actually a manifestation of something that is non-physical but is even more real. Through the study of quantum physics, some scientists have embraced the “It from Bit” conjecture, which holds that the fundamental building block of the universe is pure information. Because we live in the digital age, we assume that software requires preexisting hardware to run on. It's a bit disconcerting to think about disembodied software existing without hardware, or to imagine that software could even create its own hardware out of nothing. But as strange as that sounds, the NDE may be teaching us that the “It from Bit” conjecture is really true; that the “hardware” – our brains, our bodies, and the entire physical universe – may be secondary manifestations of information, and that our conscious selves are the only permanent things about ourselves that truly exist.6 In summary …

The current scientific paradigm of material reductionism has problems accommodating a theory of the conscious mind, so it defines away the problem by claiming that consciousness equals neuron activity. That claim does not hold up to preponderance of evidence that proves an alternate state of consciousness, called a near death experience, can and does occur even after trauma to the brain ceases all neuron activity. Furthermore, NDE subjects report that their minds are far more lucid in that state than when they are awake or dreaming. Many NDE subjects get a clear impression that life is meant for learning and that being present in physical bodies is necessary for that to happen.7

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the baton represents our conscious self and the runners are our physical bodies. Runners drop out of the race, but the baton is passed from one runner to the next until the race is finished.

Back in college, I knew people whose actual college careers were like this dream.

This attitude comes dangerously close to solipsism, so we need to be careful about carrying that idea too far.

Some NDE subjects describe their afterlife experiences as being somewhat chaotic and almost too vivid. This implies that the main purpose of the physical brain could actually be to limit or filter out information flowing into the conscious mind in order to facilitate learning. Just as you wouldn't try to teach calculus to a kindergarten student, you wouldn't want to overload consciousness with unfiltered reality until it is ready to receive it.

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Appendix C – Cogito Ergo Sum and the Turing Test René Descartes formulated the famous statement, “I think, therefore I am” in 1637. He recognized that limitations in our sensory apparatus often cause us to misread reality. As an example based on modern physics, a granite table seems heavy and solid to the touch although granite is mostly empty space. The apparent heaviness comes almost exclusively from the mass contained in tiny nuclei at the centers of empty atoms that comprise granite. The apparent solidity results from two laws: 1) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which forces electrons to maintain their distances from atomic nuclei, and 2) Pauli's exclusion principle, which forbids electrons in the granite from occupying the same quantum states as electrons in our hands. Without those laws, our hands could penetrate granite as easily as they penetrate fog. So is the table really an object that is heavy and hard, or is it just a set of physical laws, framed mathematically, that make it appear that way?

Descartes realized that thoughts entering consciousness while awake were no more “real” than thoughts that enter consciousness while asleep and dreaming. Then he made the following observation: “But immediately upon this I observed that, while I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am” and Descartes concluded that this truth was the first principle of philosophy he was searching for.

Modern neuroscience has its own version of cogito ergo sum, namely that thinking is nothing more than a complex electrochemical process in the brain, so the “I” who Descartes said must exist is just the sum total of these electrochemical processes; therefore, subjective consciousness and the sense of personhood are mere illusions. Okay, I can go along with the idea that thoughts coincide with electrochemical responses in the brain; after all, we can measure brain wave activity and see regions of the brain “light up” when certain thoughts and emotions occur. In fact, thinking might really just amount to those electrochemical responses. But who or what is observing them? Can thoughts observe themselves? I don't think so, because of the obvious subject-object problem.

The Turing test is a thought experiment11 where a human being communicates with a machine, posing questions to the machine and eliciting responses from it. If the human cannot tell whether the responses are coming from another human or a machine, the machine is said to have passed the Turing test. The possibility that computer hardware could actually “pass” the test is what fuels current AI research.12 But here's my question: Is any “person” actually doing this test, or are both participants machines? You see, material reductionism attempts to objectify consciousness by reducing it to a set of electrochemical processes and brain wave patterns. That may work for evaluating the person sitting next to you; i.e., you objectify him or her and conclude that he or she passed the Turing test and is therefore either human or a cyborg with AI and a very sophisticated operating system.13 But how can you objectify yourself? Even if I am solipsist who thinks all of reality reduces to me as a brain in a jar, exactly who perceives what goes on in that brain?

Identifying your brain chatter as your own self is the root of what Hindus refer to as māyā, meaning illusion or magic. Imagine sitting all alone in a dark movie theater and being completely absorbed in the film being shown on the screen. The movie screen represents the brain. Obviously, you don't identify the images on the screen as being you – that would be māyā. Since consciousness cannot directly observe or objectify itself, it needs a brain for self-awareness. Sure, many of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we experience might arise as automatic electrochemical responses as neurologists say, but there still needs to be someone alone in the movie theater to perceive them, and my guess is that this someone can also put images up on the screen.

11 Here we go again with more thoughts.

12 This will never succeed in producing anything close to human intelligence in my opinion.

13 I doubt if the OS is Windows, however.

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Appendix D – The Effects of Belief and Non-Belief on Psi Experiments Experiments were performed to determine if people could actually sense when they are being stared at. To remove as much subjectivity as possible from the experiment, the subjects were observed remotely through closed-circuit television (CCTV), and the electrical conductivity of their skin was used to record the sense of unease experienced by being stared at. This eliminated any direct physical contact between the starer and the subject (the staree). Skin conductivity has been shown to be a very sensitive indicator of stress, which doesn't depend on a subject's conscious awareness.

Marilyn Schlitz was the President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (INS) and is a true believer in occurrences of psi phenomena. Richard Wiseman is a professor at the University of Hertfordshire (U of H) in the UK and is a skeptic concerning all things paranormal. Schlitz and Wiseman performed essentially the same remote viewing experiments utilizing CCTV and skin conductivity, but the two teams got very different results. The INS experiments used Schlitz as the starer and produced statistically significant positive results, whereas the U of H experiments used Wiseman as the starer and produced nothing out of the ordinary. Believers in psi phenomena say Wiseman's own negative bias automatically inhibited any response to his stares, so his experimental results proved nothing. Scientists say that's hogwash – experimental results aren't affected by a person's attitude toward the experiment. Needless to say, the INS isn't held the same level of esteem as Harvard Medical School, and it would be pretty hard for institutions such as INS to get any peerreviewed (i.e. skeptic-reviewed) papers published in established scientific journals. So I wouldn't be surprised at all by the absence of articles supporting the existence of paranormal phenomena published in Science.

So here's my suggestion: Let Wiseman collaborate with Schlitz, and use her as the starer. He could then publish any positive or negative results in Science with Schlitz as a coauthor, the full stature and reputation of U of H standing behind the paper. I think that's eminently fair to both believers and skeptics alike. In fact, from now on all psi research should be carried out with both the believers and skeptics participating on the same research teams together.

I also have some innovative ideas for doing further remote-staring research. First, it would be very interesting to see if subjects can sense (via changes in skin conductivity) whether someone will stare at them in the future from a taped TV recording. This involves three kinds of experiments.

The first experiment would randomly turn the TV camera on and off in the present. The future starer would then be shown recorded clips of the subject. Would there be any correlation of skin conductivity with the TV camera turned on, indicating the subject senses being watched in the future? The second experiment would randomly turn the TV monitor on and off in the future while the starer is staring at it. Would there be any correlation of skin conductivity with the monitor being turned on in the future, indicating the subject senses which portions of the tape will be stared at?

Finally, have the starer consciously turn the monitor on and off and later check for correlations between those “on” times and previously-recorded skin conductivity.

My guess is that the first two future staring experiments might show some statistically significant correlations, indicating that psi phenomena can transcend both space and time (subject to certain restrictions). These experiments would be brain-to-brain versions of delayed-choice experiments using particle-to-particle quantum entanglement, in which weird correlations that seemingly transcend space and time. However, I strongly doubt the third experiment would reveal any statistical correlations at all, and for a very good reason: If subjects could be aware of deliberate decisions to stare at videos of them in the future, this would set up the possibility of sending messages from the future to the present (or from the present to the past).14 This would be a serious violation of causality that I'm convinced would disrupt any messages we try to send back in time.

14 The possibilities for manipulating lotteries and the securities markets would be staggering.

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But let's go back to Dr. Alexander. His NDE was atypical on a couple of counts. First, the duration of his experience was unusually long. His neocortex (the part of the brain that involves memory, logic, personality, identity, and other “higher” brain functions) was completely shut down for about a week. Second, he had total amnesia about who or what he was throughout the NDE. Most NDE subjects remember their identities throughout their experiences and report a sense of separation from those whom they “left behind.” Alexander went into his NDE as a “clean slate,” like a newborn baby coming into this world, with no recollection of a previous existence, including his own identity. Because he had an NDE over such an extended period of time, he was able to repeatedly navigate back and forth between what he calls the “Earthworm's-Eye View,” a primitive mental state where his consciousness barely functioned at all, and a place he calls “the Core” where he encountered the cosmic Spirit “Om” while being in a state of super awareness. But I'm not going to describe his NDE in detail because you can read all about that in his book.

Thankfully, Dr. Alexander emerged from the coma, which he describes as similar to being born all over again, and slowly regained his mental faculties. Needless to say, this experience changed his views about consciousness entirely. Before, as a neurosurgeon, he subscribed to the belief that consciousness and self-awareness are simply illusions generated by neurons firing in the brain.

Change the patterns of neurons firing, and you change consciousness. Theoretically, you could change someone's entire identity by altering those patterns. Dr. Alexander now believes that consciousness resides outside the brain, and the brain's function is to slow down or limit thought.

There is some experimental evidence that supports this view. The Libet Experiment8 showed that exercising the will to perform an action is registered in the brain waves before the subjects are even aware of exercising their will. The time delay is significant – about ½ second. This changes the model of consciousness from the current conventional wisdom: Awareness → Thoughts, exercising will To this:

Thoughts, exercising will → Awareness

Finally, an article in “Science Daily” reports on research by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose that showed quantum vibrations taking place in the microtubules inside neuron cells. Microtubules are ultra-fine structures that certainly are at the right scale for quantum processes to take place. So instead of information correlation, computation, or whatever else is happening in the brain taking place between neurons at the synapses, the actual processing could be taking place at the quantum level inside the neurons. I'm not in a position to judge Hameroff's and Penrose's thesis, and naturally, they have their share of critics and detractors in the scientific community who claim the brain is “too warm, wet, and noisy” to carry out any sort of process involving quantum wave functions. “Science Daily” says the Hameroff-Penrose research raises the following questions: “Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” 9

I think there are important lessons about consciousness and the brain we could learn from near death experiences if scientists would just examine the evidence objectively. But as interesting as Dr. Alexander's case is, I don't think it will help that cause. Unlike many NDEs that provide objective data that could be cross checked scientifically, his NDE was entirely subjective. And since it can be argued that he lost his sense of identity purely because his neocortex shut down, his case could provide convincing proof that sense of self (consciousness) really resides inside the brain and nowhere else. But the argument of a missing neocortex then raises another question: If consciousness resides in the neocortex, then how could Dr. Alexander have experienced super awareness – super consciousness – while in a coma with the neocortex completely shut down?

8 9

This was actually a series of experiments performed by Benjamin Libet and validated by other researchers.

Uh oh. There's that offensive word “spiritual” again.

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The apex represents the Here and Now for that observer. Everything the observer “sees” by looking out into “2-dimensional space” lies along the visual surface of the light cone. The location of any object lying on this surface can be defined by two coordinates: r' and φ. The r' coordinate is the “distance” between the observer and the object; however, r' has both spatial and temporal properties so that it is only possible to “see” objects in the past.

Being 2-dimensional creatures, Flatlanders can't grasp the concept of a third dimension or visualize a 3-dimensional light cone, so they perceive reality as a flat space depicted in the first diagram.

Although their visual universe consists of the surface of the light cone, everything inside the light cone represents what is called a “causal patch.” The observer's causal patch contains everything that can – at least in principle – be observed. This is the principle of relativity carried to the extreme limit: There are no absolutes and only things that are observable – things within the causal patch – truly exist. Each Flatlander lives in the center of a separate reality; although causal patches may intersect and overlap each other, no two are the same.

Returning to our world, everything we “see” in “3-dimensional space” lies along a 3-dimensional visual surface surrounding a 4-dimensional hyper light cone that increases in all directions backward in time proportional to the speed of light.17 Being 3-dimensional creatures, we define locations of objects in “3-dimensional space” using three coordinates: r', φ, and θ. But as in Flatland, the “distance” r' has both spatial and temporal properties; the farther away an object is from the observer, the further back in time it is. The other two coordinates are simply altitude and azimuth angles between the object and some arbitrary line pointing away from the observer.

Everything we can visually observe is within a very thin 3-dimensional surface surrounding a much greater 4-dimensional causal patch. Now here's the interesting part: According to quantum mechanics, information (in the form of qubits) can never be erased.18 If I throw a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica into a bonfire, none of the information contained in it will be destroyed – it's only “rearranged” somewhat in the form of heat, smoke, and ashes. Therefore, everything that has happened in our causal patch must – by the laws of quantum mechanics – exist as indestructible information in the form of qubits. But where is that information stored? The answer must be in the Here and Now. It does no good to say, “Well okay, that information exists somewhere else, but not here.” That statement is tantamount to saying information was destroyed, because there is no Now anywhere else but Here. If it doesn't exist Here, it can't exist Now. I think this is the true meaning behind the so-called holographic universe: everything in our causal patch is encoded as indestructible information right Here and right Now. Here and Now are that information.

So how does all of this resolve a collection of seemingly very different paranormal phenomena?

Let's take the case of NDEs first. Recall that the Hameroff-Penrose model of consciousness involves some form of interaction between the quantum world of microtubules and the classical world of synapses and electro-chemical brain activity. All information within the causal patch is somehow encoded in the form of indestructible qubits that persist in the Here and Now. When a person's brain stops working – i.e., death has occurred – no information is getting through to the awareness. However, events surrounding the dead person – along with everything else that has happened in the causal patch – is encoded in the Here and Now. Upon being resuscitated, a person may occasionally “remember” witnessing those events, but what may have really happened is that the person being resuscitated would consider freshly-encoded information surrounding his or her death as being extremely relevant and important. The subconscious would recover that information at the microtubule level from indestructible qubits and project them into the person's awareness as 17 Actually, there is a major problem with this model. Whereas the size of the hyper cone grows larger as r' increases, according to the Standard Cosmological Model (SCM), the observable universe started out 13.8 billion years ago as a grapefruit-sized object. My conclusion is that this conflict simply means that the universe must be curved instead of flat.

18 This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics stated in a different way.

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“memories” of having witnessed those events. (Don't forget that being “conscious” is different from being “aware,” although the two are often conflated.) The success of this data recovery is quite unpredictable and hit or miss – not everyone who dies and is resuscitated will experience NDE. This makes NDEs very difficult to study scientifically, and lacking a physical basis to explain them, reports of NDEs are usually dismissed out-of-hand by scientists. The point I'm trying to make is that NDEs aren't through normal communication channels involving physical senses, so science is looking in the wrong places. There could be a very real physical basis to this phenomenon – on the quantum mechanical level – that science is simply overlooking.

One final note about NDEs. A very common feature of the NDE is the so-called “life review,” when the deceased person is invited to witness every thought, word and deed experienced during his or her entire life, along with other people's impressions of those experiences. These recollections are often reported as being instantaneous, not time-sequential like in a movie. This anecdotal evidence implies that information within the causal patch is encoded in some kind of holographic format where everything is condensed into the Here and Now and can be instantaneously retrieved.

Of course, science dismisses the “life review” as merely an hallucination within a dying brain, but the clarity and completeness of the information people reported seeing are remarkable.

What about reincarnation and transmigration of souls? Dr. Ian Stevenson devoted his entire career studying this phenomenon; I've read his work and I'm convinced he was no crack-pot. Stevenson examined thousands of cases involving children who seemed to have vivid and detailed recollections of past lives, and his strict methodology ruled out all cases where there was even a remote possibility that the child had received information about past lives through “normal” sensory channels. Many cultures accept recollections of past lives as fact; the most obvious explanation is the soul is reborn or transmigrates from one physical body to another, carrying along the memories of each incarnation. Of course, this would require a complete description of what a “soul” actually is. My take on this is slightly different: Information of events and circumstances surrounding every human life that occurred within a causal patch19 is indelibly encoded in the Here and Now, in accordance with fundamental quantum mechanical laws. For some unexplained reason, a child's subconscious might consider certain information as very important and relevant and will proceed to decode those qubits at the level of microtubules inside the child's neurons and project them as an awareness, or “memory” of a past life. The life was certainly in the past – the laws of causality prohibit seeing the future – but it's not the child's past life, but someone else's instead.

Traditions about reincarnation assert that souls frequently transmigrate within family units, and I don't find it at all surprising that a child's subconscious would be drawn to information about the past lives of close relatives. But what about some bizarre cases where a soul is apparently “reborn” into two separate bodies, or where a person's soul transmigrates while the person is still alive?

None of this makes any sense if we consider a soul as “belonging” to a specific individual, but it makes perfect sense if we consider reincarnation as simply a case of information being indelibly encoded about one individual and decoded by one or more other individuals. It's interesting to note that when a child recollects a past life, the memories seem to fade as the child grows older, higher brain functions develop, and he or she becomes less intuitive and more rational.

A disproportionate number of cases studied by Dr. Stevenson involved recollections of very unhappy lives or traumatic and violent deaths. It is not surprising the subject's subconscious would be drawn to such information. Given the panoply of past lives to choose from, those lives having extremely unpleasant or grotesque features would tend stand out from the rest, just as lurid and violent movie trailers would tend to capture someone's attention more than ones involving dull, tranquil scenes.

19 Obviously these lives must be in the past in order to preserve causality. In this universe, there's no “looking ahead.”

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Appendix F – It's All in the Mind English is a very powerful language, but there are times when the meanings of English words get mixed up, so it's very important to apply the correct labels to things. Intelligence, consciousness, awareness, and mind are terms that are similar, but there are subtle differences that need to be clearly defined. This is especially challenging because those things are entirely non-physical.

The Turing test is designed to determine if a machine's intelligent behavior is indistinguishable from that of a human. I think machines have already gone way beyond passing that test in many areas.

For example, I doubt if you could tell whether you were playing chess against IBM's Big Blue or Garry Kasparov, if the only things you saw were the board and the chess pieces. So within the framework of the game of chess, IBM's Big Blue passes the Turing test with flying colors. Similar examples are Apple's Siri and driverless Google cars.20 So “intelligence” is apparently pretty easy to fake. But what about “consciousness”? Is there a test for that?

Here's where we get into a bit of difficulty with definitions. What exactly do we mean by terms such as “consciousness” or “awareness” or “mind?” I prepared a Venn diagram, below, showing what I believe are the relationships between those three things.

In Appendices L, M, and N of my essay Order, Chaos and the End of Reductionism, I described what I believe are two complementary and codependent states of reality: Causal Space (CS) and Non-Causal Space (NCS). I refer the reader to the other essay for a complete picture of that concept, but briefly CS is our ordinary time plus 3-dimensional space and NCS is roughly equivalent to quantum space. CS and NCS are linked together mathematically and they mirror each other. Mathematics is a product of Mind; therefore, Mind is the bridge that connects CS with NCS. Mathematical objects like cosines, logarithms, and integrals are not physical, after all, but exist solely as mental constructs. But these things aren't an invention of the human mind. Cosines, logarithms, etc. still exist even if humans or other physical beings aren't around to contemplate them. So Mind would be the overarching non-physical medium that links two complementary and codependent facets of reality together with mathematics.

Quantum wave functions are also non-physical. According to QM the wave function “collapses” when an “observation” occurs. This has bothered physicists for a long time. They wonder where does the old wave function went after it collapsed. That's kind of like asking where the old cos(θ) went after its argument θ was changed from 30° to 45°. NCS is similar to the QM wave function in that regard. The NCS vector fields respond to changes in physical CS states, but it would be wrong 20 I used to be against the idea of driverless cars from a safety standpoint. Although accidents are inevitable, Google's engineers claim that accident rates with driverless cars will actually be lower than with human drivers. I believe them, based on what I've seen human drivers doing on the roads lately.

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Appendix C – Cogito Ergo Sum and the Turing Test René Descartes formulated the famous statement, “I think, therefore I am” in 1637. He recognized that limitations in our sensory apparatus often cause us to misread reality. As an example based on modern physics, a granite table seems heavy and solid to the touch although granite is mostly empty space. The apparent heaviness comes almost exclusively from the mass contained in tiny nuclei at the centers of empty atoms that comprise granite. The apparent solidity results from two laws: 1) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which forces electrons to maintain their distances from atomic nuclei, and 2) Pauli's exclusion principle, which forbids electrons in the granite from occupying the same quantum states as electrons in our hands. Without those laws, our hands could penetrate granite as easily as they penetrate fog. So is the table really an object that is heavy and hard, or is it just a set of physical laws, framed mathematically, that make it appear that way?

Descartes realized that thoughts entering consciousness while awake were no more “real” than thoughts that enter consciousness while asleep and dreaming. Then he made the following observation: “But immediately upon this I observed that, while I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am” and Descartes concluded that this truth was the first principle of philosophy he was searching for.

Modern neuroscience has its own version of cogito ergo sum, namely that thinking is nothing more than a complex electrochemical process in the brain, so the “I” who Descartes said must exist is just the sum total of these electrochemical processes; therefore, subjective consciousness and the sense of personhood are mere illusions. Okay, I can go along with the idea that thoughts coincide with electrochemical responses in the brain; after all, we can measure brain wave activity and see regions of the brain “light up” when certain thoughts and emotions occur. In fact, thinking might really just amount to those electrochemical responses. But who or what is observing them? Can thoughts observe themselves? I don't think so, because of the obvious subject-object problem.

The Turing test is a thought experiment11 where a human being communicates with a machine, posing questions to the machine and eliciting responses from it. If the human cannot tell whether the responses are coming from another human or a machine, the machine is said to have passed the Turing test. The possibility that computer hardware could actually “pass” the test is what fuels current AI research.12 But here's my question: Is any “person” actually doing this test, or are both participants machines? You see, material reductionism attempts to objectify consciousness by reducing it to a set of electrochemical processes and brain wave patterns. That may work for evaluating the person sitting next to you; i.e., you objectify him or her and conclude that he or she passed the Turing test and is therefore either human or a cyborg with AI and a very sophisticated operating system.13 But how can you objectify yourself? Even if I am solipsist who thinks all of reality reduces to me as a brain in a jar, exactly who perceives what goes on in that brain?

Identifying your brain chatter as your own self is the root of what Hindus refer to as māyā, meaning illusion or magic. Imagine sitting all alone in a dark movie theater and being completely absorbed in the film being shown on the screen. The movie screen represents the brain. Obviously, you don't identify the images on the screen as being you – that would be māyā. Since consciousness cannot directly observe or objectify itself, it needs a brain for self-awareness. Sure, many of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we experience might arise as automatic electrochemical responses as neurologists say, but there still needs to be someone alone in the movie theater to perceive them, and my guess is that this someone can also put images up on the screen.

11 Here we go again with more thoughts.

12 This will never succeed in producing anything close to human intelligence in my opinion.

13 I doubt if the OS is Windows, however.

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Appendix G – The Boundless Ocean of Cosmic Mind

We are spray above the Wave of Eternal Becoming rising from a boundless Ocean of Cosmic Mind. The Wave is the sum total of everything there is and ever was, receding at the speed of light away from the Beginning toward an unknown Future, when spray reunites with Ocean and ceases becoming.

I developed a cosmological model near the end of my essay Order, Chaos and the End of Reductionism, which posited a curved temporal surface of the Now moment, centered at the Beginning and expanding at the speed of light. Everything that exists or has existed in the past is encoded as information on the surface of the Now. I am convinced that information forms the ground level of reality. In a very real sense, matter and energy are comprised of information. From the special theory of relativity we know that matter and energy are equivalent; accordingly, energy has mass and it bends space and time just like matter.

Likewise, energy and information are equivalent, as Szilárd Leó discovered in 1929, but his discovery went largely unnoticed (and ignored) until Shoichi Toyabe of Chuo University and his colleagues performed a laboratory experiment in 2010 that proved that this is indeed the case. This suggests that the conservation law of {mass + energy} for an isolated system22 should be revised as the conservation law of {mass + energy + information} instead.

Space and time exist solely for separating events by preventing transfers of information at speeds faster than the speed of light. Thus, information is the very the basis for physical reality – matter, energy, space and time. According to the definition of information developed by Claude Shannon, information depends on probability, which measures a level of uncertainty. It is self-evident that only sentient beings can possess uncertainty; it only exists as a state of mind. Therefore, physical reality must rest on a bedrock of the mind. Since there is but a single Reality, this suggests everything is connected through a universal Cosmic Mind, which must preexist matter, energy, space and time. Individual minds are just like spray droplets returning to the boundless Ocean.

22 Strictly speaking, I believe the conservation law is only approximately true for small, isolated systems over short time intervals, but the law certainly must be violated for the universe as a whole due to cosmic expansion.

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Appendix D – The Effects of Belief and Non-Belief on Psi Experiments Experiments were performed to determine if people could actually sense when they are being stared at. To remove as much subjectivity as possible from the experiment, the subjects were observed remotely through closed-circuit television (CCTV), and the electrical conductivity of their skin was used to record the sense of unease experienced by being stared at. This eliminated any direct physical contact between the starer and the subject (the staree). Skin conductivity has been shown to be a very sensitive indicator of stress, which doesn't depend on a subject's conscious awareness.

Marilyn Schlitz was the President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (INS) and is a true believer in occurrences of psi phenomena. Richard Wiseman is a professor at the University of Hertfordshire (U of H) in the UK and is a skeptic concerning all things paranormal. Schlitz and Wiseman performed essentially the same remote viewing experiments utilizing CCTV and skin conductivity, but the two teams got very different results. The INS experiments used Schlitz as the starer and produced statistically significant positive results, whereas the U of H experiments used Wiseman as the starer and produced nothing out of the ordinary. Believers in psi phenomena say Wiseman's own negative bias automatically inhibited any response to his stares, so his experimental results proved nothing. Scientists say that's hogwash – experimental results aren't affected by a person's attitude toward the experiment. Needless to say, the INS isn't held the same level of esteem as Harvard Medical School, and it would be pretty hard for institutions such as INS to get any peerreviewed (i.e. skeptic-reviewed) papers published in established scientific journals. So I wouldn't be surprised at all by the absence of articles supporting the existence of paranormal phenomena published in Science.

So here's my suggestion: Let Wiseman collaborate with Schlitz, and use her as the starer. He could then publish any positive or negative results in Science with Schlitz as a coauthor, the full stature and reputation of U of H standing behind the paper. I think that's eminently fair to both believers and skeptics alike. In fact, from now on all psi research should be carried out with both the believers and skeptics participating on the same research teams together.

I also have some innovative ideas for doing further remote-staring research. First, it would be very interesting to see if subjects can sense (via changes in skin conductivity) whether someone will stare at them in the future from a taped TV recording. This involves three kinds of experiments.

The first experiment would randomly turn the TV camera on and off in the present. The future starer would then be shown recorded clips of the subject. Would there be any correlation of skin conductivity with the TV camera turned on, indicating the subject senses being watched in the future? The second experiment would randomly turn the TV monitor on and off in the future while the starer is staring at it. Would there be any correlation of skin conductivity with the monitor being turned on in the future, indicating the subject senses which portions of the tape will be stared at?

Finally, have the starer consciously turn the monitor on and off and later check for correlations between those “on” times and previously-recorded skin conductivity.

My guess is that the first two future staring experiments might show some statistically significant correlations, indicating that psi phenomena can transcend both space and time (subject to certain restrictions). These experiments would be brain-to-brain versions of delayed-choice experiments using particle-to-particle quantum entanglement, in which weird correlations that seemingly transcend space and time. However, I strongly doubt the third experiment would reveal any statistical correlations at all, and for a very good reason: If subjects could be aware of deliberate decisions to stare at videos of them in the future, this would set up the possibility of sending messages from the future to the present (or from the present to the past).14 This would be a serious violation of causality that I'm convinced would disrupt any messages we try to send back in time.

14 The possibilities for manipulating lotteries and the securities markets would be staggering.

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Appendix I – Cosmic Mind as the Cosmic Screen In my essay Order, Chaos and the End of Reductionism, I derived a “theory of everything” based on the premise that time, space, energy, and matter are really just alternative forms of information (entropy), which is a metric of uncertainty.23 In the real world, information requires some form of material substrate that can be acted upon. Take for example common USB flash drive sticks, which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and are extremely handy for storing data. Here I want to make an important distinction between the terms information versus data: Information pertains to the total number of possible ways the flash drive can be configured, whereas data are a particular configuration. For example, a 32GB flash drive has 274,877,906,944 bits of information, meaning it can be arranged in any of 2274,877,906,944 unique states.24 Writing 274,877,906,944 bits of data into the drive establishes just one of those states, and there can be only be one state at any time.

One may ask what kind of “substrate” is there for the information comprising the physical universe, and what are its attributes? My answer is the substrate is Mind, which has no attributes, and is in fact physically unmanifested. Logically, if Mind does not have any physical attributes, it cannot consist of energy or matter because every physical attribute is derived from information which operates on the substrate of Mind itself. By the same logic, Mind cannot be constrained temporally or spatially because time and space are also derived from information on the substrate. Being selfsufficient, Mind is detached from the physical state of the universe; therefore, it does not interact physical universe by altering its data. In other words, to be an effective substrate for physical information, Mind must remain completely unmanifested within the physical universe.

This immediately raises the following question: “If Mind is physically unmanifested (it cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, nor can it be detected by any physical instrument), and if it not constrained by time and space, then how can Mind be said to ‘exist’ at all?”25 It’s a legitimate question, and I think it can best be answered using the metaphor of a movie screen. A movie screen should be indiscernible while a movie is projected onto it. There should be no holes, tears, or stains on the screen so it is capable of reflecting, or expressing, any configuration of data points that could be arranged on a particular movie frame. In that unblemished state, the screen represents complete uncertainty with a virtual infinity of information. The screen itself doesn’t have any particular configuration or bias that would affect the images being projected onto it, and by the same token, the screen is not affected or changed in any way by those images. So although someone might make an argument that an unmanifested screen does not “exist” in the same way the movie exists, it is also quite obvious it would be impossible to reveal the movie without the screen! In other words, it is best to manifest the movie by keeping the screen itself unmanifested. Furthermore, although the screen and the movie’s reflection are separate things and have completely dissimilar natures, they are still in intimate contact with each other. I think this is a perfect metaphor for understanding the relationship between Mind and the material universe.

Carrying this metaphor to another level, the movie screen can become manifest or visible to the audience when the movie projector is turned off and theater is illuminated. This serves as a parable of meditation techniques, which aim to experience Mind by turning off the “movie projector” (external thoughts) and experiencing the “blank screen” illuminated by its own light.

23 This idea was further developed in another of my essays, The Universe on a Tee Shirt.

24 It would take a very long time to guess the true configuration, meaning there’s a lot of uncertainty. Information increases linearly as the number of bits increases, while the number of states increases exponentially.

25 The same point has been used to argue against the existence of the Deity. This is why theists usually wind up giving their favorite deities all kinds of attributes that all too often reflect human imperfections. The closest any religion has come to a Deity that fits my description of Mind is the Hindu concept of Brahman, which has been alternatively described as both “nothing” (no attributes) and “everything” (the sum of all possible attributes).

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Appendix J – The “Perfect Anesthesia” and Quantum Entanglement Earlier in this essay, I discussed anesthesia and the research by Stuart Hameroff, who is professional anesthesiologist. There are many kinds of anesthetic substances that can render a person unconscious, including nitrous oxide (NO), commonly referred to as laughing gas, diethyl ether ((C2H5)2O), various opioid compounds such as morphine (C17H19NO2), sodium thiopental (C11H17N2NaO2S), and even plain old ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH). I didn’t show the chemical formulas of these substances in order to impress you (I’m not a chemist), but rather to illustrate that most of them, with the exception of laughing gas, consist of rather large molecules, and all of them (including laughing gas) are chemically-active compounds. Along with removing consciousness, they can also induce some serious side effects, including death.

There is another anesthetic, however, that isn’t a large molecule and isn’t chemically active: Xenon, which has been touted as the “perfect anesthesia” because it will knock people out without some of the serious side effects of the other compounds. The main drawback of xenon is cost; procuring xenon gas is very expensive because it’s a rare element found only in trace amounts in the Earth’s atmosphere. The funny thing is that nobody knows why xenon is capable of rendering someone unconscious.26 Xenon atoms have outer electron shells that are “full” so they don’t bond chemically with anything, including themselves. So whereas hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms form diatomic molecules (H2, O2, N2), xenon atoms stubbornly refuse to bond with other xenon atoms.

Xenon is in the same column in the periodic table as helium, neon, argon, krypton, and radon; therefore, all of these elements have similar chemical properties, which is to say they don’t have any. So wouldn’t helium also be an anesthetic? No, because deep-sea divers breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen, called heliox. They do this specifically to prevent narcosis or “rapture of the deep,” which is a kind of anesthetic effect by breathing air at high pressures caused by elevated concentrations of nitrogen and oxygen in the blood. So if helium doesn’t produce an anesthetic effect even at high pressures, then why is xenon an anesthetic even at low pressures when both gases are so similar and completely chemically inert?

The strange part of this is that certain isotopes of xenon produce more potent anesthetic effects than others. The only difference between one isotope and another is the number of neutrons in the atomic nucleus, which has absolutely nothing to do with chemistry which would affect how atoms interact with living tissues. One thing the number of neutrons does have an effect on, however, is the quantum “spin” of the nucleus. It turns out that isotopes 132Xe and 134Xe have zero spin and are better anesthetics than isotopes 129Xe and 131Xe with spins of 1/2 and 3/2 , respectively. In other words, it seems that xenon atoms disrupt consciousness more effectively when their nucleii don’t have spin. So while physicalist doctrine insist that consciousness is based solely on classical electrochemical processes, it seems consciousness involves deep quantum interactions as well.27 Roger Penrose argues that human consciousness has features and abilities that logical algorithms cannot replicate. This harkens back to the Turing “halting problem,” which involves questions no computer can answer. For example, humans “know” certain logical axioms are self-evidently true even if neither computer algorithms nor logical arguments can prove they’re true. In other words, although the human brain incorporates neural networks to process data, neural networks alone aren’t conscious to the extent they “know” answers to problems that classical computers can’t solve.

This doesn’t mean everything humans “know” is necessarily true. It simply means humans can come up with answers to questions that classical computers (Turing machines) can’t solve. This suggests that consciousness may arise from a cloud of information at the quantum level. I suspect 26 Of course nobody really understands how any of the other anesthetics work either, but that’s beside the point.

27 One explanation is that consciousness emerges from quantum entanglement among neurons throughout the brain, and nuclear spin enhances entanglement. Reference: Quantum Spin and Consciousness

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consciousness is a quantum phenomenon because quantum logic alone is reversible.

Classical boolean logic can be always be reduced to a collection of universal NAND gates, which are irreversible as illustrated below. The input pair A and B have four distinct values {0,0}, {0,1}, {1,0} and {1,1}, which produce a single output AB having only one of two values: 0 or 1.

Inputs

Output

A

B

AB

0

0

1

0

1

1

1

0

1

1

1

0

It’s impossible to tell if an output AB = 1 is the result of {0,0}, {0,1} or {1,0}. In other words, the uncertainty surrounding the input values is greater than the uncertainty of the output value, so information is lost for each NAND gate cycle. Compare this to the controlled-NOT (C-NOT) gate, used extensively in quantum computing, as shown below.

Inputs

Outputs

A

B

A

A B

| 0

| 0

| 0

| 0

| 0

| 1

| 0

| 1

| 1

| 0

| 1

| 1

| 1

| 1

| 1

| 0

Each A and B input pair has four possible states, and each output pair, A and A B, also have four possible states with a 1:1 correspondence between the input states and the output states. Because each each output state uniquely corresponds to only one input state, there is no information loss with the C-NOT gate. Additionally, the C-NOT is reversible.

It’s easy to show reversibility. Any of the three terminals of the  operator can be used as an input.

If A is applied to any terminal and A B is applied to any other, A (A B) = (A A)  B = B will automagically appear at the third terminal. Thus, the C-NOT is not only logically-reversible, it’s also physically-reversible. All quantum-logic gates are both logically and physically reversible.

A quantum computer using physically-reversible gates can do any computations a classical Boolean computer can do; however, I suspect the converse isn’t true.28 This is all well and good, but one might ask what all this mumbo jumbo has to do with consciousness or PSI phenomena. The answer lies in the entanglement phenomenon.

One of the uses of the C-NOT gate in quantum computing is to produce an entangled pair of quantum states. If the upper input terminal is set to A and the lower input terminal is fixed at | 0, an A will appear at both outputs since | 0  A = A. However, the anti-cloning theorem in quantum 28 Some computer scientist will argue that quantum gates can be “simulated” using classical logic gates, and therefore classical computers are equivalent to quantum computers (albeit quantum computers run much faster). For example, the truth table of a classical XOR gate will mimic the truth table of a C-NOT quantum gate by extending one of the XOR inputs over to the output. However, the XOR gate is not physically-reversible, because simply placing both A  B and A at the outputs will not automatically generate A and B at the inputs.

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mechanics prohibits copying or cloning a quantum state. Thus, the output A and | 0  A isn’t A plus a copy of A; instead, it’s an entangled pair, A and A'. Whereas a quantum state and its clone could supposedly go their separate ways, an entangled pair are figuratively joined at the hip. This results in some very strange quantum effects, such as the phenomenon of non-locality.

The sole purpose of time and space is to separate causes and effects.29 However, such separation is meaningless for an entangled pair because they don’t live in a conventional causal relationship. A pair of entangled particles are in effect a single particle.30 Particle A' immediately “knows” whatever is happening to Particle A, and vice versa, no matter how great the distance between them.

Such non-locality has been repeatedly demonstrated experimentally. Not only does Particle A' know what is happening to Particle A while it happens, under certain circumstances it even seems to sense what will happen to Particle A before it happens!31 Entanglement = knowledge.

So what if quantum entanglement actually does occur in the brain? Penrose’s statement that computer algorithms cannot create consciousness would certainly be true if consciousness involves entanglement generated by physically-reversible quantum computations that conventional Boolean logic simply can’t duplicate. As mentioned previously, the Penrose-Hameroff theory of consciousness is based on the premise that quantum computations occur within tiny microtubules in the interior of a neuron, causing the cell to “fire” when a certain energy threshold is reached.

Quantum entanglement would not only significantly speed up the thinking process far beyond anything conventional computers or neural networks can achieve, but it also could integrate different regions of the brain to produce “qualia,” a mysterious feature of consciousness.32 Physicalists insist it’s impossible for quantum computation to occur within microtubules because the environment inside the brain is “too wet, too warm, and too noisy” for sustained quantum entanglement. However, it is becoming clear that photosynthesis can efficiently convert water and carbon dioxide into glucose in plants because chlorophyll molecules enhance this process through entangled quantum energy states. If plants can enhance photosynthesis this way in tropical climates that are supposedly “too wet, too warm, and too noisy” for quantum entanglement, why couldn’t the brain also manage to overcome that obstacle?

In conclusion, it seems the “xenon effect” is an important clue that strongly suggests a connection between consciousness and quantum entanglement. As a footnote, Hameroff proposes that the microtubules within living cells perform a host of seemingly miraculous functions that appear to be directed by some kind of intelligence. He wrote this essay on The Cambrian Explosion, which began approximately 540 million years ago. The diversity and complexity of animal life on Earth literally took a quantum leap at that time. While pre-cambrian life consisted mainly of single-cell organisms or simple colonies of undifferentiated cells, suddenly in a relatively brief period, complex multi-celled organisms evolved, almost as if living cells spontaneously began to organize themselves. Hameroff attributes this behavior to the appearance of microtubules, which not only intelligently direct activities within a cell, but also may orchestrate cellular differentiation through quantum entanglement among many cells throughout an organism.

29 There is a famous quote, “The purpose of time is to prevent everything from happening at once.” John Wheeler’s corollary is, “The purpose of space is to prevent everything from happening to me.”

30 A quantum “particle” exists as a wave function until it’s observed, at which time a particular set of eigenvalues is chosen and the wave function collapses.

31 Refer to the quantum eraser experiment, which seems to involve “time travel.” Unfortunately, these effects cannot be used to send messages instantaneously or backward in time. Non-local effects are real, but they can only be measured through statistical correlations between remote observations. Any “non-causal messages” that one might try to send would be indistinguishable from random noise. Nature enforces causality with a vengeance.

32 Non-local entanglement could also explain some of the peculiar PSI phenomena that are occasionally observed, where the brain seems to process information in ways that defy the laws of physics. PSI phenomena are quite “hit and miss” and are difficult to reproduce experimentally, possibly because Nature always steps in to disrupt any experiments that could possibly violate causality (see Footnote 30).

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