Tags: consciousness, non-local consciousness, brain, biology, self, NDE
Overview
What is the brain?
We all know that it is the center
of our existence. Our brain generates our consciousness, it is the reason that
we reason, the tool that helps us think, that makes me be… me!
The current model for
consciousness is a materialistic-reductionist local consciousness model:
Everything stems from the brain of my body as an organ. Everything can be
reduced to neuronal activity inside that brain. There is nothing more.
All conventionally accepted data
points to this as well. A severe head injury can leave you in a vegetative
state, unable to speak or feel. A neurological disease that affects it could
hinder your thoughts or your ability to walk.
And yet, here we are.
To question the obvious.
Isn’t that what scientists should
do?
Isn’t that what science is all about?
The quest for something more
For millennia humans have been
thinking about what is that thing that we today call ‘consciousness’. What are
these thoughts that we have inside our head, that point towards our sense of self?
To whom are we speaking when we think alone?
Philosophy has had many ideas
through aeons regarding the matter at hand. And even though thinking has been
the major element that makes us who we are, we have not gotten very far. Yet,
from time to time we did sense that something more could be involved, than just
a piece of our body producing thoughts like the liver produces bile.
For aeons, people entertained the idea of our spirit delving beyond the limits of their body. Philosophy and theology alike have been saying that perhaps something more than just thoughts reside in the brain – something eternal that transcends beyond the confounds of our skin and our limited life.
Goal of this paper
The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of the brain not being the generator of consciousness. The details of this brain model and the implications will be briefly explored, but the main outcome is clearly focused on providing arguments for non-local consciousness residing outside the brain.
Method used
Science in every sector of research progresses by discrediting the existing paradigm and formulating a new one. No theory can be considered scientific if it does not have a way to be falsified, as Karl Popper said. That will be the method used here: The paper will provide examples of consciousness existing without a brain, or without a working brain, thus providing evidence to challenge the mainstream belief that the brain is the factory producing consciousness.
Counter-Examples
The way to prove that something
is not true is rather simple: Just find one counter-example that shows the
exact opposite of what we believe to be true. The main section of this paper
consists of three types of such examples:
·
Type I: Examples that show how
consciousness can exist without a functioning brain,
·
Type II: Examples that show that
consciousness can exist when the brain is missing,
·
Type III: Examples showing how the
conscious experience can be unrelated to the ‘local’ brain a person has in their
body.
All these types of counter-examples show the same thing: How consciousness of a person is not solely related to their brain, hence providing an argument against the current model of consciousness.
Type I: Examples of consciousness without functioning brain
There are multiple cases of
people having consciousness while their brain is not working, usually due to a
life-threatening situation, like a cardiac arrest. Some of the most important
cases are the famous Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Besides those though, there
are also cases where people have been having conscious experiences while being
under extraordinary psychological circumstances that would make these
experiences improbable.
Resources for such cases (including Near Death Experiences) are listed below.
1. Dr. Lommel (Division of
Cardiology, Hospital Rijnstate, Arnhem, Netherlands) published a well-known
paper regarding patients who suffered a cardiac arrest and had an NDE. These
cases showed how a person can be clinically dead and still have conscious
experiences. The paper also tried to argue that the NDEs cannot be linked to a
simple brain-based explanation since, if that was the case, most patients
facing life-threatening experiences should have an NDE and that is not the case
(van Lommel et al., 2001).
Note that after the publication of Lommel’s research in The Lancet, no other research on NDEs has been published in that journal (dogmatism often leads to censorship).
2. Another paper has been published that shows that about 10% of people who experience cardiac arrest also experience a near-death experience. The paper notes that cardiac arrest in these cases was followed by an isoelectric (flat) line in the EEG waves within 10-20s, with the EEG activity not returning for many seconds or even hours after the cardiac output has been returned (Parnia et al., 2001).
3. A paper discussing Near-Death
Experiences and explaining how scientific dogmatism has hindered the
analysis of these phenomena. A scientist adhering to the materialistic
reductionist dogmatism cannot see or acknowledge other possible explanations of
the phenomena experienced, even if they stare back at him.
An excerpt from the paper notes:
“In order to safeguard the accepted axioms, odd comments have sometimes also
been reported. For instance, in order to justify the occurrence of NDEs, Bardy
(2002) questioned whether in cardiac arrest with flat EEG brain electrical
activity is really silent; however, it is well known that this is not the case
(Parnia and Fenwick, 2002).”
The paper correctly reminds us
that even though we can have loss of consciousness with an EEG activity still
present, there can be no consciousness with flat EEG activity according to our
current knowledge. (Agrillo, 2011)
4. Another resource reporting on
NDEs analyzes how physiological explanations of NDE experiences are implausible.
Patients who went through cardiac arrest had zero (flat) EEG since they have
not been resuscitated within 20 sec and a body under such conditions cannot support
the coordination between various areas of the brain that supposedly generate
consciousness (Walach et al., 2011).
5. The case of Pam Reynolds reported
by Sabom in “Sabom MB. Light and death: one doctors fascinating account of
near-death experiences”, is also interesting. Pam was a patient who was treated
with a high-risk operation that essentially put her to death (zero EEG) and she
experienced an NDE that proved to be detailed and accurate (Greyson, 2003; Sabom,
1998).
6. The Jan Kerkhoffs
case: In his book “Droomulucht in coma” (Dream Flight in Coma), Jan
Kerkhoffs tells us about his conscious experience after neurologists declared
him brain-dead following complications during brain surgery. His family refused
organ donation, and he was able to recover after three weeks, telling the world
about his experience. Again, zero EEG does not seem to mean lack of
consciousness (van Lommel, 2010).
7. Fred Schoonmaker
research: Known cardiologist Fred Schoonmaker conducted an 18-year
study of 1,400 near-death experiences, including those of about 55 persons
whose experiences took place while flat EEG readings were recorded. The
near-death experiences reported during the absence of brain waves are a very
good argument against viewing the brain as the source of consciousness (Habermas,
1996).
8. Cased of born-blind
people seeing in Near Death Experiences have been documented and
reported by Kenneth Ring (Ring & Cooper, 1999). A brain-generated
consciousness cannot support such a scenario.
9. Results from doctors
researching NDEs indicated that some of the patients examined reported
experiences even though they were in the state clinically defined as ‘death’ (Parnia
& Fenwick, 2002).
10. A large-scale resuscitation
study showed that consciousness may be present when the circumstances make
that impossible. This major study of NDEs focused on how we should
approach the subject without prejudice. In some cases of cardiac arrest,
memories may indeed correspond with actual, verifiable events in the operating
room (Parnia et al., 2014).
NDE experiences remain part of an
ongoing debate regarding their nature. However, the more science analyzes those
cases the more legitimate they appear to be. Materialistic explanations of such
experiences – arguing that activity stemming from the brain can explain what we
observe – are discarded under serious scientific scrutiny when the cases
mentioned in this paper are examined. The sources mentioned above already
contain such refutations, although the debate is far from settled. Many other
papers arguing against the materialistic interpretation of NDE experiences
exist (Mays & Mays, 2008).
Type II: Examples of consciousness without a brain
Multiple cases of people having
consciousness and a fully functioning life without a complete (full) brain have
been documented. Note that even though we mention “without a complete brain”
instead of “without a brain” for the sake of being accurate, in all of the
cases mentioned the percentage of the brain missing is such that it can adhere
to the goal of the paper. When someone can see, feel, think without the 90% of
his brain, then surely there is something more going on beyond that brain.
Those cases are well known as John
Lorber cases. John Lorber studied people with "virtually no
brain" that had a normal conscious life (Lewin, 1980).
To those cases we can add cases
of people with half-hemisphere missing from their brain and
who are still able to live a normal life (Kliemann et al., 2019).
Other references of persons
without a brain and yet a normal life, include the case of a French man who
lived normally even though he lacked 90% of this brain, that has been reported
first in The Lancet (Feuillet et al., 2007).
Type III: Examples of non-local consciousness
As in the cases of people that
are conscious without a working brain or with a significant part of their brain
missing, there are also examples of people who have conscious awareness of the
environment without having local presence in that environment. These cases are
a different way of proving how the brain is not the source of consciousness; if
consciousness can expand to distant places not physically near our brain, then
there is no need to consider the brain as its source anyway.
Some interesting evidence showing
the non-locality of consciousness is mentioned below.
1. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) (find
archived page here)
Princeton University conducted an
extensive research study into non-local consciousness. Pages of the university
regarding the study can now be found only in Internet Archive. (Princeton
Engineering Anomalies Research, n.d.)
The research revolved around three major axes that are
listed below.
I. Human-Machine Anomalies
According to the site, the most
substantial portion of the PEAR experimental program examined anomalies arising
in human-machine interactions. From the site: “In these studies human
operators attempted to bias the output of a variety of mechanical, electronic,
optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions,
without recourse to any known physical influences.” Using machines that
produced random data, “the experiments showed changes in information that can
only be attributed to the consciousness of their human operators.”
II. Remote Perception
This involved the study of –
according to the site – “the ability of human participants to acquire
information about spatially and temporally remote geographical targets,
otherwise inaccessible by any of the usual sensory channels”. Again,
according to the university’s site “(this ability) has been thoroughly
demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted experiments.”[1]
2. Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics offers a
variety of ideas that are compatible with a non-local interpretation of
consciousness. For example, Wheeler's delayed choice experiment (Wheeler
& Zurek, 1983), or other experiments related to the measurement of quantum
phenomena, indicate that matter may be inherently governed by non-local laws
that allow the transfer of information from here to the end of the universe
without a problem. Combining this with interpretations calling for a pivotal
role of human consciousness in the process (rf. to the Wigner-Neumann
interpretation), we are very close to a way of thinking that is way beyond the
current local consciousness paradigm.
An example of such a case is research
related to PK Effects with Pre-Recorded Random Events. During a
study, the result of a random numbers generator was recorded in two sound
cassette tapes. Depending on the random result, the machine recorded a click in
the right or the left sound channel of the tape. One tape was put in a safe.
The other was listened to by someone, who had the intention to alter its
contents by consciously thinking hard that he "wishes" more right
clicks than left, while he was listening at the tape. In the end, the results
he heard were what he thought and not what one would expect from the random
process (i.e. an equal number of right and left clicks). Most astonishingly,
the tape inside the safe was also altered and presented the same result as the
one heard by the observer as if the initial phenomenon in the past was retroactively
altered (Schmidt, 1987).
3. Connecting brains - Nonlocality psi experiments
Controlled experiments concerning
subtle connections between subjects removed in space, and occasionally also in
time, date back to the 1930s, with J.B. Rhine's pioneering card-and
dice-guessing work at Duke University. In 1970s, Russell Targ and Harold
Puthoff conducted experiments on connections and transfer of images between
distant subjects.
Other research regarding remote viewing (involving distances from half a mile to several thousand miles) or a brain of a person affecting the brain of another (rf. to Stanley Krippner’s research on "dream ESP” at the Dream Laboratory of Maimondes Hospital in New York City) have been conducted. They all show that our brain may be something more than just a local consciousness factory and that most likely it resembles a receiver or transmitter of consciousness (Laszlo, 1999).
4. Dean Radin’s studies on consciousness.
Dean Radin has shown how multiple
mental powers that have been tagged as ‘pseudoscience’ can be more grounded in measurable
reality than most people believe. As Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic
Sciences (IONS) he presented persuasive experimental evidence for the existence
of such phenomena, like precognition.
For example, in one experiment,
Dean Radin measured the pupils of women in a lab who were being shown ‘negative’
(horrifying or stressful) images flashed in sequence against ‘positive’ images
of flowers and landscapes. The results showed that women's pupils dilated prior
to a horrible image being shown (Radin & Borges, 2009).
A consciousness that is produced
by the brain as a result of organic functions cannot explain such an
experimental result. Such results that question the current model have been further
validated by other research. For example, a research in mass events showed that
collective brain activity can influence the environment. (Radin et al., 2012)
Another type of consciousness theory – as the one mentioned below – could
explain such phenomena, but not the current materialistic one.
5. Voluntary out-of-body experiences
A surprising case of someone with
the ability to have out-of-body experiences at will, offers a valid
argument against the local consciousness paradigm we currently accept (Smith
& Messier, 2014).
One example is enough
As said in the beginning of the paper,
one counterexample for an existing scientific theory is enough to refute that
theory. The above-mentioned cases try to offer exactly that, in the form of…
·
Cases where the brain does not function and yet,
there is consciousness (e.g. in the case of people experiencing an NDE while
having a cardiac arrest)
·
Cases where people with almost no brain have a
fully functional conscious life (e.g. someone with 90% of his brain missing and
still having a normal life)
·
Cases where people have conscious experiences completely
unrelated to their local physical environment (e.g. remote perception)
If even one of these experiences
is scientifically legitimate, then the current scientific way of thinking needs
to be revisited.
Given the academic credentials of
many of the authors of the sources mentioned above, this re-evaluation is
already overdue. If not to change the current materialistic models for the
generation of consciousness, at least to consider other models as well.
But what could those other models
be?
Proposed solutions
Instead of the brain generating
consciousness as a byproduct of its functioning, an alternative model views the
brain acting as a receiver and/ or transmitter of consciousness. In this model,
the brain could be a means through which consciousness is manifested in our
bodies, or rather through our bodies, rather than as a factory producing it
(Kakos, 2018). In other words, it operates in the same way a TV is working as a
medium for the shows that you love to see.
This solution was first proposed
in the modern era by William James, who explained that the brain could be acting
as a ‘transmissive’ or ‘permissive’ filter to allow the experience of
consciousness from a broader pre-existing conscious environment (Hawkins, 2011).
The idea of a non-local pre-existing conscious environment in which our brain
acts as a “consciousness receiver” has been entertained by many other
scientists ever since (Rouleau & Dotta, 2014; Taylor, 2020).
This alternative model seems to
solve the problems created by the sources mentioned above: A field of
consciousness that is there for anyone to access can explain how someone with
no brain can be conscious or how someone without a functioning brain and with
zero EEG activity can still have experiences.
Surely this model, as well as the mainstream one, does not explain many things. This is not a weakness of model but rather of our general knowledge in the area. In the field of consciousness, research is at an embryonic stage when trying to answer the most basic questions regarding the nature of consciousness per se.
Does the receiver model fit the existing data?
But does this ‘receiver’
viewpoint fit the extensive existing neurological data that we already have regarding
the brain and its biological functions?
The short answer: Yes.
It is crucial to note that the transmissive
model for consciousness fits all the data that we currently have equally well
with the materialistic one. As explored already in previous Harmonia
Philosophica articles and papers, the TV analogy is great in realizing how both
solutions – the materialistic/ reductionist one and the brain-receiver one –
fit all the data with equal success (Spyridon Kakos, 2018):
·
A TV seems to be producing the TV show you are
watching.
·
If you look inside the TV, you see things
happening that are related to what you are watching.
·
When a TV breaks, then the show is not
transmitted anymore.
In a similar manner:
·
The brain seems to be producing what we call
consciousness.
·
If you look inside the brain, you see things
happening that are related to what you are feeling as consciousness.
·
When the brain malfunctions, consciousness stops
existing.
In the case of the TV, we know
that the TV is just a medium of the TV program we are enjoying. In the case of
the brain, we can choose the same solution and the data we have will fully
support it. So, from an empirical perspective, there is absolutely no way to
determine which model is true based on that data alone.
Gods under construction…
In his famous insight, the
prince’s nephew in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s renowned novel of social
upheaval, “The Leopard,” claimed that “everything needs to change, so
everything can stay the same” [2].
Of course, he was talking politically.
But...
Could that mystical phrase be
true for the Cosmos as well?
Could that phrase capture the
true essence of what we call "reality"?
Numerous scientific experiments
show that consciousness is not limited to our body. Even Princeton University
conducted experiments and reached impressive conclusions. As physicist Chris
Clarke, of the University of Southampton, says, “On one hand, Mind is
inherently non-local. On the other hand, the world is governed by quantum
physics that is inherently non-local. This is no accident, but a precise
correspondence.” (Dossey, 2009)
Consciousness could be something not
related to a specific brain, but a non-local phenomenon that transcends the
body we are in.
And the implications could be immense.
If consciousness is non-local (Kakos, 2013)...
If what makes me, ‘me’ is something beyond me...
If our mind is what creates "reality"...
If our brain is not what causes consciousness,
But what filters it and is potentially blocking it.
Then we ARE God!
We just have to open our minds to another way of thinking.
And potentially stop relying so much on our brain to see…
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400854554.1
[1]
Needless to mention the military uses of such a capability. The reader can surely
relate this research with other similar military research that is now known
through declassified documents. Delving into those goes beyond the scope of
this paper though – we only focus on the science.
Harmonia Philosophica related articles
·
Harmonia
Philosophica – Consciousness related articles
·
Humans
with no brain. MIND is all we need...
·
NDE and other consciousness without brain references
·
Non
local concsiousness. Being God.
·
Mind,
Morphogenetic fields, Quantum physics...
