Abstract
Further scientific understanding of the nature of human consciousness
can best advance through the incorporation of modern scientific theory
with clinical research on altered states of consciousness such as near
death experiences. Unfortunately, our current scientific philosophy
embodies philosophical and scientific concepts several hundred years
out of date. This has led to a situation in which rational scientific
analysis of the data often does not occur as either the data or potential
explanatory models conflict with current scientific myth and are dismissed
without debate. In turn, this stiffing of rigorous scientific debate
has led to our current unhealthy "believer vs. skeptic" impasse concerning
possibilities of the survival of human consciousness after death.
This is not simply a theoretical or academic issue. The history of science
has many examples of new research being dismissed without thought simply
because there was no theoretical framework to help interpret the new
information. For example, simple techniques to prevent disease such
as hand washing and the use of antiseptics were documented as effective
in numerous clinical studies in the 1800s, by several prominent physicians
including Simmelweis and Lister, and yet were not accepted until the
germ theory of disease was developed. It is hard for scientific mainstream
to accept information that conflicts with current scientific theory.
Current survival research faces a similar dilemma. It has been over
one hundred years since a group similar to NIDS, the Society for Physical
Research, devoted itself to studying human consciousness. The group
was made of the leading physicians and scientists of the time, including
Sir William Crookes, an early pioneer of radiation research, and FWH
Meyers, author of the astonishing two volume text Human Personality
and its Survival of Bodily Death. They rigorously investigated all aspects
of modern paranormal research. Yet even with this mainstream and auspicious
assault on understanding the survival of a soul after death, no significant
progress has been made since that time. Statistician Jessica Utts has
pointed out that current scientific studies in parapsychology are typically
better designed and have cleaner results that most mainstream medical
and scientific research, yet are often ignored as there is no common
understanding of the meaning of the results.
As a result, there have not been the hundreds of small but important
studies on human consciousness; the tiny steps taken by hundreds of
graduate students or paper hungry assistant professors, whose work is
essential for the development of a new scientific paradigm. There is
no direction for the field. We do not see one research team building
on the work of another, or any sort of research resonance within the
field.
This conference is designed to provide that vision for the consciousness
research community. We will be developing a blueprint for consciousness
research in the 21st Century. Our emphasis will be the generation of
testable scientific hypothesis coupled with outlines of possible experiments.
Robert Kastenbaum has written that near death research has betrayed
its early promise and remains at the level of camp fire stories. It
is not enough, however, to criticize prior work. We need to take stock
of what the current level of research is, and clearly state what we
want it to be.
I am willing to take the first step, and propose a novel theory of
human consciousness based on both near death research and modern scientific
theory. I am proposing that the universe is primarily information based,
and that there are at least two forms of reality processed and interpreted
by our brain. The first is local reality derived from input from our
five senses. The second is nonlocal reality derived from input from
our right temporal lobe and its (speculated) ability to both receive
and transmit information from nonlocal reality.
I propose that what we call dissociation, or splitting of consciousness,
simply represents the dynamics of the perception of two different realities
by two different brain functions. We are receiving input from both local
and nonlocal reality at all times, but input from local reality such
as vision and hearing dominates our mental construct of ourselves and
often obscures right temporal lobe input.
Modern physicists believe that the hard scientific evidence concerning
the nature of reality indicates that there is a timeless spaceless nonlocal
reality which physicist Frank Tippler called the Omega Point. It would
then follow that if human beings can interact with such a timeless spaceless
place with their right temporal lobes, then clinical phenomena such
as remote viewing and precognition would be theoretically possible.
Furthermore, modern physicists also have documented that each of the
fundamental building blocks of local reality such as protons and electrons
have at least two other virtually identical corresponding particles.
This means that there are at least two other universes, one for example
with leptons instead of electrons, and one that is muon based. These
other particles exist for only a fraction of a second in this reality,
yet within a spaceless timeless all encompassing Omega point, they could
coexist with this reality. We could then access other realities with
our right temporal lobe.
There is every reason to suppose that conscious life would evolve within
these other particle based realities. Nobel Prize winning scientist
Christian de Duve states that there is an inherent evolutionary force
to evolve consciousness within the structure of the universe. Cosmologists
such as Fred Hoyle agree, based on their analysis of the makeup of the
universe. It is probable that consciousness has evolved in these other
particle based universes and possible that we interact with such consciousness
by using our right temporal lobe's ability to interact with the timeless
spaceless Omega Point.
So far, this theory is agnostic to the possibility of the survival
of consciousness after death. It does, however, fit with the clinical
information we have about virtually every so called paranormal ability
and experience. Near death experiences, past life memories, false memory
syndrome, medium encounters, ghosts, precognition, spiritual healing,
telepathy, and other paranormal experiences and abilities now can be
studied and understood as right temporal lobe functions. Intuition is
probably a right temporal lobe function.
For example, there does not now currently exist a commonly accepted
theory of memory. Wilder Penfield, at the end of his career, simply
concluded that the right temporal lobe interpreted memories, but that
they were stored elsewhere in the brain. Not much more is known than
that statement made over 50 years ago. With my theory, it is possible
that memories are stored outside the brain in the information pattern
in the timeless spaceless reality, and processed and interpreted by
the right temporal lobe. This would explain past life memories and false
memory syndromes. The concept of extra cebebral reality does not conflict
with modern memory theroy and is supported by numerous clinical studies.
This theory explains Rupert Sheldrake's theories of morphic fields
and morphic resonance. The patterns of information known as morphic
fields would be stored within the Omega Point, and the mechanism of
morphic resonance would be the function of the right temporal lobe interacting
with the Omega Point.
This theory would also demystify many of the more perplexing aspects
of UFO and alien encounters. I believe that UFO and alien encounters
represent an interaction between ourselves and nonlocal reality, and
are primarily perceived by our right temporal lobes. This explains many
of the intersections between UFO and alien encounters and our collective
mythic unconscious.
I mean to present this theory as an icebreaker. I hope that someone
will show me exactly why it is all wrong or half baked, or just plain
dumb. It is hard for me to feel too self conscious about presenting
it. After all, our current "scientific" understanding of human consciousness
involves the hypothesis that the human soul is some sort of gaseous
vapor which floats out of the body at death. To prove this, people are
designing studies to see if blind people can have near death experiences
or can see numbers posted ceiling side up in operating rooms. I believe
that it is in the heated, no holds bared debate over such issues that
a new truth will emerge.
I recognize that my theory does not attempt to answer the question
of the survival of human consciousness. It is however, a model of human
consciousness which permit such a question to be asked. In the hundreds
of scientific studies which could be designed to analyze to answer aspects
of this theory, the answers about consciousness may be achieved. Many
times, in scientific progress, there is initially no clear cut logical
link between the initial study and ultimate answer.
What kinds of studies am I talking about? Just as I have gone out on
a limb to describe a novel theory that human dissociative states are
simply our right temporal lobes interacting with nonlocal reality, I
will present one such possible study.
To date, there is no empirical local reality based marker for near
death experiences. They are subjective experiences reported by research
subjects who often have suffered brain dysfunction. Although such experiences
have been shown to occur at the point of death, it is possible that
they are simply hallucinations of the brain. My theory conversely proposes
that in fact they represent real events of nonlocal nature, and strongly
suggest the possibility of the survival of human consciousness. There
is not, as yet, any clear cut way to define a near death experience
in objective terms, making further research in the field problematic.
Near death experiences have been anecdotally related to remarkable
healings. These are recoveries from fatal illness associated with highly
mortality rate even with modern medical care. For example, I was involved
with a case in which an eight year old girls survived fulminate E.coli
poisoning which had killed several other children. Her chance of survival
was less than 5% and yet she made a full recovery. She reported three
vivid near death experiences at times she was clinically dead and resuscitated
by medical technology. It is not clear if the NDEs are the cause of
her recovery or simply associated with it.
Survivors of near death experiences further undergo a transformation
which usually involves a healthy mental and physical lifestyle. Such
a lifestyle has been documented as being associated with a particular
immune profile. These studies were not done on survivors of near death
experiences, but rather of people who were optimistic or who felt connected
with their fellow men, or who exercised regularly, all psychological
and behavioral factors associated with NDEs. No studies have been done
associating NDEs or spiritual experiences with similar immune system
markers.
If near death experiences were likewise found to have a specific immune
system profile, such a finding would then be an invaluable research
tool which could be used in dozens of other studies. Studies, for example,
could be done to analyze the similarities and differences of clinically
versus experimentally induced NDEs, with an objective finding (immune
functions) which would greatly assist in the analysis.
I realize that these studies are not exciting and sexy, and unlikely
to result in a best selling book. The field of consciousness research
is similar to a basketball game, in which currently each participant
is trying to win the game all by him or herself with a dramatic slam
dunk. We are all looking for the smoking gun, the case that proves life
after death: the white feather that proves all crows aren’t black.
I charge this conference with a different mission: to come up with
half a dozen half baked theories and two dozen tiny projects that any
graduate student looking for an easy idea for a dissertation can implement.
In other words, to do the boring, hard work that will bring this field
out of the 19th century and into the 21st century.
