Evidence for Consciousness separate from body
Dr. Bruce Greyson is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Science at the University of Virginia. He is considered one of the fathers of near-death studies. At a conference held by the United Nations, Dr. Greyson described documented cases of clinically dead individuals with no brain activity, actually observing from above everything that was happening on the medical table in an out of body experience. He spoke about many such individuals who could clearly describe everything that should have been impossible to describe. Dr. Greyson was very categorical in stating that such studies are discouraged due to the shallow understanding of science as completely materialistic. According to him, everything that is not explainable by materialistic means is straightaway discredited. Many a scientist is truly troubled by the fact “consciousness” itself is non-physical and so is very difficult for them to comprehend. This has erroneously impelled them to believe that science cannot study it.
NDEs have been receiving scientific attention for some time. Two such 13 year-long studies involved 344 Dutch patients. An astonishing 18% of them showed some memory from when they were dead or in a phase of unconsciousness (no brain activity). Another impressive 12% showed a powerful and profound experience. What is significant to note is that these experiences occurred when there was no electrical activity in the brain following cardiac arrest.
A gist of these works published in the international medical journal Lancet is:
“Our results show that medical factors cannot account for the occurrence of NDE. All patients had a cardiac arrest and were clinically dead with unconsciousness resulting from insufficient blood supply to the brain. In those circumstances, the EEG (a measure of brain electrical activity) becomes flat. If cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not started within 5-10 minutes, irreparable brain damage can happen, and the patient will die.” Lancet, 2001.
In another study involving much larger subjects from the University of Southampton, England, provided evidence for the continuation of awareness for several minutes after death. This is something that shakes the scientific world and its dictum. Probably, the world’s largest-ever NDE study, its findings got published in the journal ‘Resuscitation’.
” A large-scale study involving 2060 patients from 15 hospitals in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Austria was launched in 2008. The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study, sponsored by the University of Southampton in the UK, examined the broad range of mental experiences related to death. Researchers also tested the validity of conscious experiences using objective markers for the first time in a large study to determine whether claims of awareness compatible with out-of-body experiences correspond with real or hallucinatory events.” Resuscitation, December 2014.
Be Pragmatic: Accept the Hitherto Unacceptable
To quote Nikola Tesla: “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
Over the last few years, many unbiased leading scientists are striving to bring this commonly overlooked topic into the attention of the mainstream scientific community. It is clear to them that matter (protons, electrons, photons or anything that has mass) is not the only reality. Studying or holding on to physical reality alone will not help us understand the nature of our existence. It is a grave mistake not to accept the fact that the ‘unseen’ makes the significant bulk of it.
The relation between the non-physical system or Consciousness and the physical system or matter is the most relevant aspect that needs understanding in the right perspective.
Here is what T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”: Discover 22:37-43, 2001. “Despite the unrivalled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger.”
Study and understanding of ‘consciousness’, the non-physical system, should form the focus of modern science. Only then would we be able to grasp the crux of the structural and functional aspects of universes and existence. This understanding could at its best be called not only as post-materialist science but even as pre-materialist science.
