The Canon / Living / Parapsychology & Survival
Living · 2010
Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience
Parapsychology & SurvivalConsciousness Beyond Life develops the implications of the author's prospective study of cardiac-arrest survivors, published in The Lancet. Its central claim is that consciousness may not be produced by the brain at all, but may be nonlocal and endless, a reality independent of cerebral function.
The argument rests on the observation that vivid, structured near-death experiences were reported from periods when the brain should have been incapable of generating organized awareness. From this clinical, peer-reviewed platform the author builds a theory of brain-independent mind.
The book is a key node for mind-power's most ambitious scientific claim, that consciousness is fundamental. Its interpretation is strongly contested: critics note that electrical silence does not guarantee total cortical inactivity, that the timing of experiences cannot be precisely fixed, and that the nonlocal framework remains speculative.
In its words
The four prospective NDE studies discussed in the previous chapter all reached one and the same conclusion: consciousness, with memories and occasional perception, can be experienced during a period of unconsciousness—that is, during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity and all brain functions, such as body reflexes, brain-stem reflexes, and respiration, have ceased.
As prior researchers have concluded, a clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain.
I am of the opinion that people who have had a near-death experience and who are capable of putting their experience into words can teach us a great deal about the relationship between human consciousness and the brain.
The process of accepting and integrating the NDE cannot begin until people feel capable of sharing their thoughts and feelings.
Lineage
The author
Pim van LommelProspective NDE study; nonlocal consciousness
Full voice →
Kindred books