The Immortal Mind: Science and the Continuity of Consciousness beyond the Brain

PROLOGUE

THE BIG QUESTION

Does our consciousness—mind, soul, or spirit—end with the death of our body?*1 Or does it continue in some way, perhaps in another realm or dimension of the universe? This is the big question thoughtful people have asked throughout the ages.

Let us come down to the bottom line right away. Are we entirely mortal? Or is there an element or facet of our existence that survives the death of our body? This question is of the utmost importance for our life and our future.

In one form or another, the idea that consciousness persists beyond the living brain and body has been affirmed in thinking about the nature of reality for thousands of years. It was based, however, on personal insight, handed down on the strength of its intrinsic meaningfulness and spiritual authority. In recent years more solid evidence regarding the big question has come to light. Some of it has been subjected to controlled observation, and some of the observations have been recorded. In the chapters that follow we review some of the truly credible and robust strands of the evidence.

There are three fundamental questions we need to address, and we address each of them in turn.

First, is there such a thing as consciousness not associated with a living brain? There appears to be something that can be experienced on occasion, and even engaged in communication, and it appears to be the consciousness of a person who is no longer alive. We review the robust strands of the evidence in this regard in part 1.

Second, assuming that there is something we can experience that appears to be a discarnate consciousness, what does this mean for our understanding of the world—and of the human being in the world? Who and what are we, if our consciousness can survive our body? And what kind of a world is that in which consciousness can exist beyond the brain and the body? These are the questions we take up in part 2.

Third, what kind of explanation do we get for the possible persistence of consciousness beyond the brain and the body, and for contact and communication with such a consciousness, when we confront the evidence with the latest insights coming from the natural sciences? This is the question we ask in part 3.

These tasks are ambitious, but not beyond the scope of science. We know that conscious experience can occur in the temporary absence of brain function: this is the case in so-called NDEs—near-death experiences. Could conscious experience occur also in the permanent absence of brain function—when the individual has died? It makes sense to ask this question as well, because it is important, meaningful, and not without observational evidence.

Mainstream science—the science taught in most schools and colleges—does not confront these questions: it denies the very possibility that consciousness could exist in the absence of the living organism. However, unlike the Ten Commandments Moses brought to his people, the tenets of mainstream science are not engraved in stone. In its next development science could expand its scope to investigate phenomena that address these questions. And when it does, it is likely to reach insights that are of vital interest not just to scientists, but to all people in the living, and perhaps not entirely mortal, human community.

PART 1

THE EVIDENCE

Consciousness

beyond the Brain

1

NEAR-DEATH

EXPERIENCES

Could human consciousness exist in the absence of a living brain? There is credible evidence regarding this question, provided by persons who had conscious experience while their brain was clinically dead. They reached the portals of death but came back. Their conscious experience is known as NDE: the near-death experience.

NDEs tell us that conscious experience is possible during the time the brain is temporarily dysfunctional. Temporary cerebral dysfunctions may occur in cases of severe illness or brain damage, where signs of cerebral activity cease but are subsequently recovered. If the time without brain functions does not exceed a critical threshold—counted in seconds—the brain can regain normal functioning. Then the consciousness that was previously associated with that brain can reappear.

Conscious experience during the time the brain is clinically dead is an anomaly. It is not accounted for by the current materialist paradigm in science, where conscious experience is considered a product of cerebral functions. That paradigm maintains that when those functions cease, the consciousness they have produced ceases as well.

However, evidence furnished by documented cases of NDEs show that consciousness does not always cease when the brain is clinically dead. Conscious experience during this critical period is not always recalled, but recall occurs with significant frequency; in some studies in 25 percent of the documented cases. Moreover, the recall is often veridical: it embraces things and events a person with normal brain functions would have experienced at the given time and place.

In the last forty years there has been a growing fascination with the NDE. Numerous survivors of cardiac arrests, car crashes, and severe illnesses have reported conscious experiences. There was no widely recognized name for this experience, nor was any modern book written on it, until Raymond Moody published his Life After Life in 1975 and suggested near-death experience as the generic name for it. Moody amassed a large collection of firsthand reports by people who returned from a near-death state, and he was struck by the consistency of the reports. He noted that the experience includes several core features, and these he termed traits. The basic traits are: a sense of being dead; peace and painlessness; the out-of-body experience*2; the tunnel experience; encounters with family members and other people from one’s environment; rapid rise into the heavens; a reluctance to return; the past-life review; and encounter with a being of light.

Reports of such experiences can be found throughout history. One of the oldest reports of a near-death experience is described by Plato in the Tenth Book of the Republic written around 420 BCE. Plato describes the experience of Er, a Pamphylian soldier who was killed in battle. His body was returned to his home village for cremation. It was noted by his family that even after ten days the body was showing no signs of decay. However, two days later they proceeded with the ceremony. As the body was placed upon the funeral pyre Er suddenly revived. He excitedly informed the mourners that he had seen the world beyond. Plato wrote:

He said that when his soul went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two others, and the judges were sitting between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upward through the heaven with tokens attached to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left and downward, they too wearing behind signs of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger to mankind to tell of that other world, and they charged him to give ear and to observe everything in the place.¹

Plato described how Er journeyed and arrived at a place where he met with disincarnate entities who were judging him. There were, Er said, many others beyond himself (a great company). After the judgment, for reasons unknown, Er was informed that he must go back and inform the living of what he had witnessed.

In recent years the NDE has been subjected to controlled observation and scientific assessment. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist specialized in the resuscitation of cardiac arrest victims, examined the cases he treated in regard to the recurrence of the basic NDE traits. He found that of the seventy-eight patients he interviewed thirty-four (43 percent) reported an NDE, and of them 92 percent experienced a sense of being dead, 53 percent the out-of-body experience, 53 percent rising into heaven; 48 percent saw a being of light, and 23 percent had the tunnel experience. All his patients who had an NDE reported a reluctance to return.²

Current interest in NDEs has been sparked by a clinical study carried out over more than two decades by Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel. Van Lommel conducted standardized interviews within a few days of resuscitation with survivors of cardiac arrest, patients who had recovered sufficiently to recall and recount their experiences. He asked them whether they could remember the period of unconsciousness, and what they recalled of that period. He coded the experiences reported by the patients according to a weighted index. Van Lommel found that 282 out of 344 patients had no recollection of the period of cardiac arrest, but 62 reported some recollection of what happened during the time they were clinically dead, and of these 41 had a deep NDE. Half of the patients who had an NDE were aware of being dead and had positive emotions. Among them 30 percent had a tunnel experience, observed a celestial landscape, or met with deceased persons. A quarter of these had an out-ofbody experience, communicated with the light, or saw colors, 13 percent had a life review and 8 percent perceived the presence of a border.³

A study by Bruce Greyson in the United States involved 116 survivors of cardiac arrest. Eighteen of the patients reported memories from the period of cardiac arrest; of these, 7 reported a superficial experience and 11 had a deep NDE. Greyson concluded that a clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain.⁴ British researchers Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick concurred. The data suggest, they wrote, that near-death experiences do arise during unconsciousness. This is surprising, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures that underpin subjective experience and memory must be severely impaired. Complex experiences should not arise or be retained in memory.⁵

A SAMPLING OF

DOCUMENTED CASES OF NDE

A wide variety of cases testify to the presence of consciousness during a period when the subject is clinically brain-dead. A remarkable case was reported in August 2013. The British media was woken out of its late summer torpor by a piece of breaking news. It concerned the unexpected results of experiments carried out on the brains of rats by Dr. Jimo Borjigin of the University of Michigan and a team of researchers. The results of the experiments were published in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This study, performed in animals, is the first dealing with what happens to the neurophysiological state of the dying brain, said the study’s lead author, Dr. Borjigin. We reasoned that if near-death experience stems from brain activity, neural correlates of consciousness should be identifiable in humans or animals even after the cessation of cerebral blood flow.⁶

Borjigin’s team anesthetized each rat and, by artificial means, stopped its heart. At that point the rat’s brain had no blood flow, which means no access to oxygen. For a brain to function, it needs energy, the energy supplied by oxygen carried by the blood. Yet it was clear from the results that not only was there brain activity where none was expected, but there was greater activity than in a normal waking brain. This suggests that before death there is a surge of activity in the brain. The brain appears to be processing information and may be presenting an experience to consciousness.

An early report on human NDE concerns the experience that took place in November 1669, in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England (or, in some reports, in South Wales). The report is in a religious pamphlet written by Dr. Henry Atherton and published in London in 1680. Atherton’s fourteen-year-old sister, Anna, had been ill for some time, then was thought to have finally died. The woman attending to her used the only method available at the time for ascertaining death: placing a mirror to her mouth and nose. There was no evidence of breathing. They then placed red hot coals to her feet and received no response. She was clearly in a state of what would now be termed clinical death. However, she subsequently recovered. When she was able, she described how she had visited heaven and was guided there by an angel. This being showed her:

things glorious and unutterable, as Saints and Angels and all in glorious apparell. She heard unparalel’d Musick Divine Anthems and Hallelujahs. She was not allowed to enter Heaven but the angel told her that she must go back again for a while, and take leave of her friends, and after short time she should be admitted.

As predicted by her Angel, Anna died four years later and according to the pamphlet she departed with great as[s]urance of her happiness hereafter.⁷

While she was in her near-death state, Anna reported seeing people she had known, all of whom had died. There was one individual who, as far as Atherton knew, was alive. However, he subsequently discovered that this individual had passed on a few weeks earlier.⁸

The earliest known systematic research into experiences in which an individual comes close to death yet survives was undertaken by Swiss geologist Albert Heim in the 1870s. As a keen mountaineer, Heim had heard stories from his associates of strange states of consciousness experienced when falling as a result of a climbing accident. His interest was stimulated by his own brush with death in 1871 when he fell seventy feet from a cliff face in the Alps. He said that as soon as he realized what was happening, time began to slow down, and he slipped into an altered state of consciousness. He describes this state as follows:

Mental activity became enormous, rising to a hundredfold velocity. . . . I saw my whole past life take place in many images, as though on a stage at some distance from me . . . Everything was transfigured as though by a heavenly light, without anxiety and without pain . . . Elevated and harmonious thoughts dominated and united individual images, and like magnificent music a divine calm swept through my soul.⁹

This experience was perceived in great detail, although it seems to have taken place in a microsecond of actual time:

I saw myself as a seven-year-old boy going to school, then in the fourth grade classroom with my beloved teacher Weisz. I acted out my life as though I were