“When you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s over.”---Marlene Deitrich
“There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it.”---Robert Heinlein
There was a considerable kerfuffle in the wake of last week’s untimely death of Flying Pie friend and contributor Barbara Reissfelder---commiseration, emailings back and forth with friends and followers, even a rare discussion of the afterlife. Long-time Pie-taster and benefactor Court Lewis started it off with a note proclaiming its certainty. “I, for one, have no doubts about an afterlife,” he attested. “I had a ghost.”
Ah yes, those pesky ghosts, odd and irritating semi-creatures who delight in fouling up the post-death philosophies of those inclined to gravitate toward the Deitrich position. It’s a simple matter. If there are ghosts, there is an afterlife. And even the most hardened cynics will have a problem dismissing what happend in John G. Fuller’s book, Ghost of Flight 401. Too many people---normal, sane credible folks like Court Lewis---have encountered these spirits; how do we simply write them off?
Lewis’ ghost, a grouchy varmint, primarily haunted one room of a previous residence. “It was always freezing in there,” he remarks. “And we couldn’t get rid of him. It took forever.” Court promises to tell us how he did it at some future meeting rather than struggling with a five-page letter. Allegedly, Ghostbusters were not involved. Once the spook was evicted, Lewis promptly sold the house and moved to Unicoi, Tennessee, which has zoning laws prohibiting supernatural visitors. If you’re having trouble with a ghost of your own, we’ll give you his phone number.
Early Convictions
When we were kids, Religion Class took over at 11 a.m. each school day at St. Patrick’s. Nobody had any doubts about the afterlife then. You had only to open your shiny little catechism to view the possibilities, of which there were a meager two. First, on brilliantly printed pages emphasizing the color gold, beams from on high penetrating fluffy clouds and flocks of angels flittering to and fro, you got (trumpets ready?) HEAVEN. This was where you went after death if you led an exemplary life and died without sin on your soul. Your soul, best we could figure, was located somewhere inside your sternum near your heart. When you were born, the pretty soul was a pure white but each sin etched a dark spot on it until it eventually looked like blackened tuna. The only way to remove the sins was via the messy ordeal of confession, during which you entered a dim little box and presented a verbal list of your terrible indiscretions to a horrified priest, who absolved you and gave you a penance to perform, which usually involved the recital of thousands of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Oh, and let’s go back and scratch out that “exemplary life” requirement. Actually, you could dynamite a busload of orphans, go to confession five minutes later, die and then go to heaven. Confession was really important to God.
The second option was not so cheery. For this one, the catechism featured pictures of dark red demons carrying pitchforks and stoking the flames in a cavernous pit called HELL. Ever burn your finger on the stove? Hurt like….well, the devil, didn’t it? So you can imagine what Hell would be like. All body parts burning, all the time. Think Florida in August and you’ve got it. And no matter what we kids might be doing, Hell was always lurking in some recess of our minds. Even if you led a perfect life, joined the church choir and were an altar boy, you were never safe. All you had to do was take a quick look inside little Mary O’Malley’s underpants out behind the garbage shed, then get hit by a Nash Rambler on the way home; whammo, it was curtains for you. That big lug Lucifer was always looking for another shovel man for his brimstone quarry. Given the option, how many Catholics would pass on the afterlife? Plenty. And I was one of them.
Where Did You Come From? Where Did You Go? Where Did You Come From, Cotton-Eyed Joe?
Modern science seeks the answer. Where does human consciousness come from, what is its origin? Is it simply a product of the brain, or is the brain itself a receiver of consciousness? If consciousness is not a product of the brain, then our physical bodies are not necessary for its continuation. Awareness can exist outside our bodies.
Max Planck, the theoretical physicist credited with originating quantum theory (for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1918) offers an explanation why understanding consciousness is so essential. “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
In 2010, Robert Lanza, one of the most respected scientists in the world, published a book called Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding The True Nature of the Universe.
An expert in regenerative medicine and the scientific director of Advanced Cell Technology Company, Lanza is also very interested in quantum mechanics and astrophysics, an interest which led him on a path to developing his theory of biocentrism: the theory that life and consciousness are fundamental to understanding the nature of our reality and that consciousness came prior to the creation of the material universe.
His theory implies that our consciousness does not die with us, but rather moves on. This suggests that consciousness is not a product of the brain but something else entirely, and modern science is only beginning to understand what that might be.
This theory is best illustrated by the quantum double slit experiment, which documents how factors associated with consciousness and our physical material world are connected in some way---that the observer creates the reality.
Lanza’s theory implies that if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle.
In 2005, R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, wrote this for the journal, Nature:
“According to Sir James Jeans, ‘the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.’ The Universe is immaterial---mental and spiritual. Live and enjoy.”
The Near-Death Experiences
Most of us have had a light brush with death, some more mysterious than others. As a mere youth, I fell from a very tall tree one day in front of the house of my friend Jackie Fournier, bouncing downward as I grabbed breaking branches which only slowed my fall, the end result seeming obvious. Then, as if by magic, I stopped falling, having come to rest on top of a telephone post, a long-odds proposition at best.
On another occasion, I was traveling east out of Austin on an Arkansas highway with first wife Marilyn Todd, piloting a weighty 1950 Cadillac hearse of dubious agility. Attempting to pass a slow tractor-trailer, I was suddenly faced with another one coming straight at me, no room to escape on a two-lane road. Marilyn and I both closed our eyes waiting for the impact but nothing happened. When we looked around, we’d passed the first semi and the second was tootling along as if nothing untoward had occurred. Maybe we briefly entered The Twilight Zone, because nothing else makes sense. In all my 76 years, however, I have never reached the stage others speak of, the one with the lighted tunnel and grandpa waving from the other end. And having known the predilections of my bar-owning grandfather, I’m not expecting a similar bid.
In 2001, the medical journal The Lancet published a 13-year study of Near Death Experiences, summing up their findings thusly:
“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) became flat, and if CPR is not started within 5-10 minutes, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.”
Researchers monitored a total of 344 patients and an astounding 18% of them had some sort of memory of the period they were “dead” or unconscious (no brain activity).
Another study out of the University of Southampton found evidence that awareness can continue at least several minutes after death, which was once thought impossible. The Southampton study is the world’s largest concerning Near Death Experience, involving 2060 patients from 15 hospitals.
Nikola Tesla said it best: “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of existence.”
Anecdotal Evidence
Over the course of decades, Doctor Ian Pretyman Stevenson, a Canadian-born U.S. physician, has been a busy man. For over forty years, he spent the bulk of his time meticulously researching and documenting cases of children who could remember past lives. Three thousand of them, if you will, all the kids under five years old.
In one recorded instance, a Sri Lankan toddler overheard the name of a town she’d never been to in her current life. Immediately afterward, she told her mother she’d been accicentally drowned there by her mentally-retarded brother. She described the town in great detail, supplied descriptions of her past family, what their house was like and what her name had been. Twenty-seven of her thirty claims were checked out and proved true. Neither the girl nor any of her current family had any prior connection to the town or the dead child.
Of course, ever since The Search For Bridey Murphy exploded in the early fifties, there have been extensive reports of reincarnation, many of them designed to generate a windfall for the claimant. This was one of the reasons Stevenson decided to work exclusively with very young children incapable of guile. In virtually every case he reported, Stevenson could link the subject child’s claims to an unconnected person. In every investigation, he left behind research so thorough it would put most mainstream academics to shame. Detractors have ranted about inaccurate translators, deceptive parents and confirmation bias but Stevenson’s overwhelming body of work speaks for itself. Poke a hole in a case here and there if you like, but poke a hole in 3000 of them?
So there you have it---ghosts, near-death experiences, reincarnations and the ever-popular quantum double slit experiment. Consciousness after death? Maybe it’s not so cut-and-dried as Marlene would have you believe. Many of us will find out soon enough. Oh, and if Barbara Reissfelder emails any corrections for this week’s column, we’ll let you know. That would be, as they say in basketball, the Ultimate Slam-Dunk.
That’s all, folks….
Next Week: We’ll try to pick our fifth Kentucky Derby winner in a row. This lucky streak can’t go on forever, especially since we haven’t really been paying attention this year and we only have one good eye. Maybe seven days of cramming will compensate for our laxity. Don’t bet on it.
