Awareness after death
The mystery of whether consciousness survives the death of our physical body, I suspect, has been the most pressing question in human history.
Even Albert Einstein seemed mystified by the nature of how and why consciousness infiltrates the cells of our material bodies. This ultimate enigma of an aware existence lies at the center of science, philosophy and theology.
Despite our spectacular advancements in science, the source and nature of consciousness remains what Australian philosopher David Chalmers has called life’s “hard problem.”
Reporter Claudine Zap of Yahoo News reports that a philosophy professor at the University of California at Riverside and his graduate assistant have been since August using a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to examine this very question and teach college classes on what they discover over the next three years.
Among other areas of inquiry, Professor John Martin Fischer and his assistant Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin will study widespread religious and nonreligious views on the immortality of consciousness. Fischer’s research will encompass the human view of such faith-based aspects of human belief systems as heaven and hell, karma and purgatory.
“One thing that we’ll study is whether human beings would want to live forever; would it be boring? Would it lose its meaning and beauty and urgency? Does death give meaning to life?” noted Fischer.
The professor said he’ll study the phenomenon of near-death experiences and how they appear to vary from one culture and country to another. For instance, he said experiencers in Western culture often report a tunnel with a light at the end, while similar Japanese experiencers report finding themselves tending a garden.
Fischer said he’ll pay particular attention to the near-death experience and any patterns, attempting to catalog them so to perhaps gain deeper perspective on whether these welldocumented reports are biological illusions or plausible metaphysical events.
“Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous,” he added. “We’re not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports.”
In the process, Fischer said, he’ll solicit relevant studies and research from respected philosophers, theologians and scientists whose work will be reviewed and published.
That research could include a variety of issues including the faith-based belief systems in heaven and hell. One academic study might deal with how a person’s physical body could exist in a heavenly afterlife.
The university plans to hold two conferences to discuss the findings of the research to “sift fact from fiction” in the survival of consciousness after physical death, thereby enlightening the public on a matter of universal interest and concern.
Some readers may recall my columns from a few years back about Professor Gary E. Schwartz who directs the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health.
I’d like to suggest that Fischer contact the Harvard-educated Schwartz as part of his research. Schwartz has conducted numerous double-blind studies that scientifically proved to his satisfaction (and that of others,
despite skeptics’ criticism) that consciousness indeed survives the end of our physical bodies.
Schwartz, whom I admire for his courage to take on a subject he knew would trigger ridicule among some of his colleagues, wrote two books on his findings— The Living Energy Universe and The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life after Death.
There’s no question in my mind that Schwartz is an unflinching pioneer in applying science to this controversial field of study.
There also are many thousands of accounts of near-death experiences in papers and books published worldwide.
For his purposes, I suggest that Fischer Google the name “Pam Reynolds” and “NDE” for one of the most well-documented and credible examples of a scientifically inexplicable near-death experience.
This lady’s out-of-body adventure during several hours of a lifethreatening brain surgery, when surgeons had shut off all of her brain activity, is nothing short of amazing.
After experiencing the oft-reported vision of brilliant light and a reconnection with long-deceased relatives, Reynolds said she was pushed back into her chilled body by her dead uncle when she wavered on taking the leap on her own.
Her doctors also realized something very unnatural to measurable physical existence had occurred after she’d been revived, according to the book Consciousness Beyond Life by Pim van Lommel.
Reynolds, who related her experience in an interview with the BBC for The Day I Died (available on the Internet), said joyous relatives who came to her in a golden glow explained that the brilliant light wasn’t God as she initially assumed, but God’s breath in which she was standing.
Back once more in this world with her children, Reynolds concluded quite confidently that “death is an illusion.”
And if she’s right, what does that make the experience we call life?