Near-Death Webmaster

Through quantum decoherence and superposition, the idea of parallel universes offers the best possibility for the existence of a parallel universe acting as a person's afterlife universe when death occurs. As derived from the many-worlds interpretation of QM, it is theoretically possible a living person (including the electrical discharges occurring throughout their nervous system) to exist in superposition in a parallel universe. Many-worlds views reality as a many-branched tree where every possible quantum outcome is realized including the possibility of branches to universes that doesn't lead to a living person's death. Theoretically, this makes it possible for a living person to continue living in a parallel universe when the person dies in this current universe.

What about the first law of thermodynamics? Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only converted? Since the mind involves quantum mechanical processes occurring in the brain as a form of energy, then according to the first law of thermodynamics, this energy cannot be destroyed. Nor was it created because this energy was first passed along from mother to fetus. Although the first law doesn't offer PROOF of the mind surviving after death, doesn't my argument offer EVIDENCE supporting the HYPOTHESIS of life after death? Evidence is not the same as proof. If a person say's "There is no evidence from quantum physics of life after death", shouldn't they back it up with facts? The burden of proof applies both ways does it not? Please advise.

But evidence from quantum physics suggestive of life after death = Evidence from quantum physics suggestive of survival of consciousness after death. What's the difference? And why aren't these quantum theoretical models evidence supporting the afterlife hypothesis?

NEARDEATH wrote: The AWARE study will release its preliminary findings in 2014. STRANGE replied: Presumably their findings were negative, then, as there were no world-changing announcements about the results. NEARDEATH's replies: The final results came out in 2015. Of the 2,060 cardiac patients experiencing clinical death, 330 patients were resuscitated and survived, 46% of patients had cognitive memories during the experience, 9% of these patients reported having core elements of a near-death experience (NDE). Of these, 2% recalled having out-of-body (OBE) perceptions of actual events related to their resuscitation. Of these, only one patient had a verifiable period of conscious awareness during which time cerebral function ceased. Although no patient reported seeing the preset targets, this one patient's case of verified OBE perception is notable. The 57-year-old patient described floating up to a corner of the room, seeing medical staff work on him, and watching himself be defibrillated. Details of his resuscitation which he observed were later validated. What's more, after triangulating the patient’s perceptions with the actual events in the ER, it was determined the patient's OBE perceptions lasted for as long as three minutes after clinical death. The brain typically flatlines on an EEG within about 20 seconds of the heart stopping. Resuscitation efforts will get enough blood flowing to slow cell death, but not enough to regain brain function for conscious awareness. So unlike an unconscious brain under anesthetic or coma, this patient brain was in flatline and not functioning while the validated perceptions were occurring. Only when his heart started beating on its own was enough brain function restored. This study concluded that future studies with larger patient participation would be necessary to collect enough evidence for conclusive proof of survival of consciousness after death. Although the study involved roughly 1,000 preset targets at various hospitals, only 22% of the cardiac arrests occurred anywhere near these targets. The one validated patient wasn’t one of them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STRINGJUNKY wrote: Quantum physics works at the quantum scale; mind/consciousness is an emergent,macro phenomenon. Read about emergence. NEARDEATH replies: Quantum processes in living systems is an emergent field termed "quantum biology" and in theory supports consciousness survival. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEARDEATH wrote: Quantum theory does not rule out the possibility of the survival of consciousness after death beause ... "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" (Orch-OR) ...developed by the joint work of theoretical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose ... SWANSONT replied: Discussion of "quantum consciousness" or permutations of that phrase, are off-topic. NEARDEATH's replies: OK, I will stick to theoretical physics related to evidence of survival of consciousness after death such as (1) David Bohm's holographic principle: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a04 (2) Pribram's holonomic model of brain function: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a05 (3) Quantum superposition: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a08 (4) Dewitt's many-worlds interpretation of QM: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a09 (5) Zeh's many-minds interpretation of QM: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a10 (6) Leonard Susskind's M-Theory: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a12 (7) Papers on NDEs and quantum physics: http://www.near-death.com/science/research/science.html#a15

Quantum theory does not rule out the possibility of the survival of consciousness after death. Because quantum vibrations have just recently been discovered in microtubules in the brain which supports the much derided 1990s theory that consciousness is derived from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. Read more about this recent scientific discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm . This theory of "quantum consciousness" is the theory known as "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" (Orch-OR) which was developed by the joint work of theoretical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. Penrose approached the problem of consciousness from the view point of mathematics, while Hameroff approached it from his career in anesthesia that gave him an interest in brain structures. Mainstream theories of consciousness use classical mechanics in assuming consciousness is produced from "goo". So they focus particularly on complex computation at synapses in the brain allowing communication between neurons. But Orch-OR assumes classical physics cannot fully explain consciousness. In the June 1994 issue of Discover Magazine, an article ran called "Quantum Consciousness" about how consciousness and quantum physics are intimately connected. This theory of quantum consciousness suggests that consciousness is processed inside the microtubules of brain cells. At death, the quantum information processed inside these microtubules doesn’t disappear; but instead, is retained in on the edge of the universe's event horizon allowing such information to be retrieved after death. One of the fundamental laws in physics, the first law of thermodynamics, states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed - it can only be converted. So if it is true that consciousness is a form of energy, then according to the first law of thermodynamics, consciousness cannot be created nor destroyed. Instead, it is converted into something else. The reductive materialist model on which conventional science is based is fundamentally flawed. At its core, it intentionally ignores the fundamental component of existence - the nature of consciousness. The pioneers of quantum mechanics demonstrated that consciousness has a definite role in creating reality. But it was the "quantum eraser experiments" (Google it) performed in 2000 and later which strongly demonstrated that consciousness itself is deeply rooted in quantum processes. Quantum eraser experiments by Wheeler and others reveal that an experimenter is able to successfully choose and predict the random outcome of an event even after the outcome has already taken place. Quantum eraser experiments show how the outcome of whether or not a photon of light is a wave or a particle can be predicted after the fact by the experimenter making a random mental choice of the experiment's outcome. In other words, the experimenter's "after the fact" choice of the outcome actually determines the experiment's outcome. These astonishing findings dramatically shows that our choices made today may determine the outcome of our past. This astonishing finding, where quantum information is processed backward in time as well as forward, is supported by the "Holographic Principle" (google it) developed by Leonard Susskind which theorizes the universe to be a hologram. Just recently this theory has been verified. See this article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=universe-really-is-a-holo The universe as a single hologram solves the mystery of "quantum entanglement" which Einstein called "spooky actions from a distance." This holistic view of the universe (as opposed to the reductionist view) can also be applied to the human brain. A holographic universe and holographic brain also falsifies dualism as it relates to the mind and body. The Holographic Principle was a catalyst towards a theory of "quantum consciousness" called the "Holonomic Brain Theory" (google it) which explains how the brain encodes memories in a holographic manner. The Holonomic Brain Theory originated from David Bohm and Karl Pribram who synchronistically arrived at a holographic model of the universe and mind at the same time. Taken all together, these holographic theories support a newly emerging paradigm called "holism." Holism is the principle of a whole system being more than just the sum of its parts as opposed to reductionism. The best way to study the behavior of many complex systems is to treat it as a whole. One of the most amazing things about the human thinking process being holographic is that every piece of information is instantly cross-correlated with every other piece of information both inside and outside the brain - another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, the human brain is perhaps one of nature's supreme examples of a cross-correlated, holistic system. Encoding and decoding light frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a lens which translates meaningless blurs of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram theorizes the brain also comprises a lens (e.g., our eyes) and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert frequencies received by the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. This holistic and holographic theory of how the brain processes information and stores it in a nonlocal manner becomes more understandable when, according to the theory, the brain acts as a filter which translates the avalanche of frequencies the brain receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, etc.) into the concrete world of our perceptions. An impressive body of evidence suggests the brain uses quantum holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists. A good analogy of this theory of the brain acting as a filter of information (as opposed to the brain acting solely as the originator of information) is that the brain acts much like a radio receiver. When death occurs, the brain's receiving and filtering function dies along with the brain; but the nonlocal quantum information of consciousness does not. In the same way, if you destroy a radio, the nonlocal radio frequencies which the radio processes into the radio announcer's voice is not destroyed but continues to exist in the airwaves. In a holographic universe, this nonlocal quantum information of consciousness is stored (i.e., "painted") like all quantum information in the universe as interference patterns upon the two-dimensional edge of the event horizon of the black hole from which our universe was projected from. As with any hologram, it is from these two-dimensional interference patterns that a three-dimensional hologram is produced. So the brain's process of quantum information being stored upon the edge of our universe's event horizon may be the basis for consciousness transcending and surviving physical death as revealed in near-death experiences. This holographic paradigm supports the idea that consciousness does not originate from "goo" (i.e. material brains.) So, in this sense, looking to see how consciousness originates in the brain is much like looking inside a radio for the announcer. I could go on and mention other interpretations of quantum mechanics supporting a transcendent consciousness such as the Many-Worlds Theory, and its corresponding Many-Minds Theory, and the Zero-Point Field Theory; but I don't have the time or space. The old materialistic paradigm, prevalent mostly in the West, disregards the possibility of out-of-body dimensions; whereas, the new paradigm supports them. For this reason, open-minded scientists have acknowledged the time is now to abandon the old paradigm and focus on the new one. Disregarding the old paradigm became even more reasonable when, in December of 2001, The Lancet (the United Kingdom's highly respected journal of medicine) published the results of a study by Dr. Pim van Lommel showing 18 percent of clinically dead patients having NDEs. Lommel's study documented verified events observed by such patients from a perspective removed from their bodies - called "veridical perception" - suggesting the existence of a transcendent consciousness. Such studies beg the question of why the scientific community at large remains mostly silent about these facts. Current near-death studies, such as "The AWARE Study" (google it) is trying to determine if consciousness transcends the body after death. The director of this study, Dr. Sam Parnia M.D., is a critical care physician and director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York and is recognized as an authority on the scientific study of death, the human mind–brain relationship, and near-death experience. Dr. Parnia has been part of the AWARE study, launched by "The Human Consciousness Project," in which 25 participating hospitals across Europe and North America have been examining reports of patients after their clinical death, several of whom are expected to have an out-of-body experience with physical perceptions of their surroundings. A major objective of the AWARE study is to test whether these out-of-body perceptions reported by these patients can be validated. One method involves visual targets being placed near the ceiling where it can only be seen by someone reading it from above their body. Patients who report OBEs are then asked to describe what they saw. If what they saw matches the target information then out-of-body perception has been scientifically validated.. Near-death studies contain multiple reports of veridical perception of events which were outside the range of the NDE experiencer's sensory perception and, therefore, of brain mediation. In some cases, such perceptions occur while the NDE experiencer has no brain activity. Hundreds of such cases are published on www.iands.org, www.nderf.org, www.oberf.org and www.near-death.com. Taken altogether, the evidence strongly suggests the possibility of NDE and OBE perception occurring without the help of the physical senses or the brain. Therefore, for skeptics to refer to NDEs and OBEs in general as "illusions" or "delusions" is ignoring much evidence to the contrary. According to veridical NDE experts Jan Holden and Jeffrey Long: "Even if future research convincingly demonstrated that electrical stimulation of a particular area of the brain consistently induced typical OBEs, this finding would not explain veridical perception associated with OBEs." The AWARE study will release its preliminary findings in 2014. If cases of out-of-body veridical perception have been scientifically proven, then the hypothesis of consciousness surviving death will come very close to being a scientific fact. Here is one doctor's describing a patient who successfully read a 12-digit number while out of their body: http://www.npr.org/books/titles/263101025/the-death-class-a-true-story-about-life#excerpt Also note that anyone who doesn't understand these principles of quantum theory and consciousness (usually magician/skeptics) often refer to this as "woo woo." So whenever you read or hear anyone referring this as "woo woo," you know they haven't done their homework. Hope this helps. Kevin Williams, B.Sc. "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve." - Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum mechanics