Rick, my friend of forty years, only recently returned from the University of Arizona where he attended a series of lectures on advanced and popular physics topics by such frontline names as Lawrence Krauss ('The Fifth Essence'), Paul Davies ('God and the New Physics'), Martin Rees ('Our Final Hour') and Stephen Hawking ('A Brief History of Time'). Hawking's was quite electrifying and all the lectures more appealing by the fact they were delivered by unapologetic unbelievers, not prepared to stoke or foment their audience's belief in fairy stories or nonsense.
Now, Stephen Hawking has come out in a UK Guardian interview to reinforce that. As noted in a recent Guardian story ('Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'), the piece notes:
"A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.
In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain's most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.
But should any of this be new or astounding? No, not at all! It is a theme I've re-emphasized time and time again. There is nothing out there, nothing after death, only emptiness and void. When you're dead, that's it, finito! The plug is pulled finally and no "lights" are on. You yourself will be as unconscious as a rock and not be aware of whether you're being cremated or buried 6' under. The brain harbors the basis of consciousness within it, and once the brain expires, so does consciousness. No one has ever demonstrated scientifically that consciousness can exist apart from the brain and certainly no one has ever proven a "soul" exists other than as a persistent figment of the human imagination. Hawking supports that reductionist-physicalist view in his Guardian interview, noting:
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,"
These are all issues I explored in earlier blogs. By way of brief summation, let’s begin by realizing, as first pointed out by Dr. Richard Ornstein in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness (1991), that nothing, no perceived aspect of reality, enters consciousness whole. Everything is first processed, and it was Ornstein who first noted the unusual 1-second delay between a perception and its recognition in the brain. During that one second the brain’s neurons in specific regions had effectively processed that perception. Depending on prior conditioning, the perception that resulted could be completely false. A confection of the brain's neural assemblies.
If a perception is complex, say an event unfolding over seconds or minutes, then differing brain regions (Ornstein refers to “neuronal assemblies”) each do their work in assembling the processing bit by bit, piece by piece. At the end of the processing the human brain has some construct [C] which is derived from an original event [E] : {a, b, c, d, e} where the bracketed set denotes component subsets with likely differing time intervals t1, t2, t3, t4, and t5.
Thus, the brain processing on outer events is always via the template:
[E] -> [C]
And [C] => {a(t1 +t), b(t2 + t), c(t3 + t), d(t4 + t), e(t5 + t)}
Where t = 1 sec, the consciousness ‘delay’ interval
The processing is never: [E]-> [E]
The conclusion here is that the whole constellation of objects, events perceived must be assembled piece by piece by the brain, from an architecture embedded in its synapses, neural pathways and neuronal assemblies. The dynamic process of this assembly is what we refer to as “mind” to distinguish it from the physical brain. Thus, brain is the physical substrate, and “mind” the dynamic process of assembly towards recognition, cognition and interpretation.
As depicted in the earlier [E] -> [C], this means that all our experiences are second hand only not direct. It is this disconnect that raises profound questions and issues concerning whether a human brain can know anything directly. By the same token, an “afterlife" then can not exist as a concept or as a reality other than in connection with the mind, or the brain’s processing activity. To believe otherwise, i.e. that one can “know there's an afterlife” is to assert a one to one direct knowing which as we saw is impossible. To depend on what an ancient brain, probably even more deluded, states in a scripture is even worse.
Now, newer research reinforces all this. Brain activation studies using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography) and SPECT (single photon emission tomography) all show a detailed picture of specific functions of the brain which conform to the preceding view. Neuroscience researchers can now determine which brain regions are activated by motor behavior, which by the five senses and which by certain emotions – say stimulated by having a subject observe a particular image. More amazing, neuroscientists can actually see disparate brain regions turn on and off as differing emotions flare, or differing thoughts occur, or one changes from doing a simple subtraction say, to differentiating a complex function
Meanwhile, "afterlife" images appear to emerge in the brain's temporal lobes. It was Michael Persinger who did the original experiments on electrical triggering of afterlife imagery and out of body manifestations. He reported on his experiments in his book: The Neuro-Psychology Of God Belief. The key to coding all these "transcendent" manifestions was the TLT or temporal lobe transient. In his body of work, Persinger placed TLT experiences along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms would include circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references, divine "guidance", personal god talk etc.), perseveration, hypergraphia, altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity.
In a way this is very analogous to the approach (in physical models) to solar flare triggers. They're placed in a continuum that ranges from “mild” disturbance effects like a low grade coronal mass ejection or erupting prominence, to a full blown type X-9 solar flare. But whatever the place on the spectrum, the trigger ultimately gives rise to all of the above. And so it may well be with TLTs as well, and to suppose or hypothesize such is, imho, not to abuse Persinger’s work. Nor is it to abuse Hawking's dismissal of afterlife ruminations as "fairy stories". In a geniune sense, given the ample evidence for manufacture of imagery in the brain and the fact we can monitor it (e.g. with SPECT or PET scans) he's absolutely correct. In fact, the most recent work based on SPECT –scans appears to zero in on the region designated “OAA” – the orientation association area. Much of this work has been done by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and his asosciate Eugene Daquill.
In his interview with Persinger, Jack Hitt ('WIRED') noted:
“Persinger is not the first to theorize that a Creator exists only in the complex landscape of the human noggin. In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics. Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics”
(Hitt) also noted – from Persinger’s own words- how he envisioned a series of EM (electro-magnetic) patterns that might work the way drugs do. Causing a predictable result like an antibiotic or better, some form of mind altering thing. Thus, one might be exposed to precise EM patterns that would signal the brain to carry out comparable effects. This is feasible because the de Broglie waves associated with electrons in the human brain exhibit a similar form to propagating electro-magnetic waves, e.g. (See: 'Soliton Model Of Einstein’s Nadelstrahlung in Real Physical Maxwell Waves', Nuovo Cimento, Vol. 35, No. 8, 1982):
E(x, t) = E_o exp [i(kx – wt]) (j)
B(x,t) = B_o exp [i(kx – wt]) (k)
j, k directional unit vectors.
or, re-writing the factor of the electric, magnetic amplitudes, E_o, B_o (since: exp (ix) = cos (x)- i sin(x)):
E (x,t) = E_o cos (kx – w t) – i[sin (kx – wt)] (j)
B(x,t) = B_o cos (kx – wt) – i[sin (kx – wt)] (k)
where k = 2π / L is wave number vector, x is displacement in wave propagation, w is
angular frequency (w = 2 π f), while t is time.
Nor is it a stretch to believe the preceding electric (E(x,t)) and magnetic (B(x,t)) waves could be modulated to enfold specialized imagery much like a TV signal does. For example, a typical frequency modulation would use a carrier frequency (f_c) and signal frequency, f_s, such that the amplitude A ~ f_s/ f_c. A modulated ampltude might then have the form:
y = (1 + cos 2πf_m t) cos 2πf_c t
where f_m denotes the modulated frequency. and one ultimately finds:
y = cos 2πf_c t + ½ cos 2π(f_c + f_m)t + ½ cos 2π(f_c - f_m)t
Could this basis explain the popular phenomenon of "near death experiences" (NDEs)? It very well might, though much more research needs to be done. The point is that NDEs so far remain the only remotely recognizable "evidence" for claims of an afterlife that have any potential to meet scientific demands, but alas, they are too anecdotal over all. To refine measurements we would need to get inside the brain's temporal lobes with highly refined instruments and be able to measure energy changes on the scale of the smallest increment based on statistical mechanics, which is:
E(H) = 0.693 kT
where k is Boltzmann's constant, and T is the temperature in Kelvin degrees. Now if k = 1.38 x 10-23 J/K and T is at room temperature, e.g. T = 300K or about 27 C, we find for E(H):
E(H) = 2.8 x 10-21 Joule
I submit that NO instruments currently available will measure energy deviations at that threshold, but that doesn' mean they don't exist - because we know quantal- level information signals (e.g. in quantum computers) generate energy at that level. In a 1987 paper, Persinger boldly stated that:
"The God Experience is an artifact of transient changes in the temporal lobe”
This wording on the nature of the TLTs etc. is as clear and explicit as it can be. There is no “wiggle room” in interpretation. The same applies to afterlife confabulations, which are all a twin product of brain creativity and image manufacture, combined with the ineluctable human desire for both a crutch to get through life and a need to live forever. Alas, both Hawking and Persinger are correct in that the latter is a pipe dream. And no, drawing "Hell" cartoons or "Heaven" cartoons doesn't make them real, other than in the fabricator's brain - where they were all instilled by imagination anyway!
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