Many scientists continue to insist that the mind is in the brain. A growing number, though, have concluded that it is not. The days when people like Richard Dawkins (of The God Delusion fame) can claim that it is are surely numbered!
How can Dawkins, who thinks he is an ape, get away with presenting television programmes that claim we are finite animals, the product of a purely physical creation? Perhaps it’s because the programme-makers set their own agenda and we, the public, meekly accept it.
You will not hear Tarzan being asked: "Where is the mind or consciousness in the brain, or where is memory?" Why not? Because he cannot say, and nor can anyone else.
As Spiritualists, we have always known that the mind is not the brain, and can exist independently of it. Proof of survival alone confirms this. There is also no scientific proof of the mind being located in the brain. It has been exhaustively mapped using CTs, MRIs, PETs and EEGs.
It is known approximately how many cells the brain contains, the number of molecules in each cell and the number we lose everyday. Yet nowhere has the mind been found, nor is there an explanation for conscious thought.
Of course, thought is there; but who is doing the thinking? Who requested it? A thought is brain activity, but what caused it to be active? How, in other words, do we have a ‘consciousness’ experience?
This is what neuroscientists call the ‘problem of consciousness’, or the ‘hard problem’. Here is a sample of their comments:
Stephan Pratt, of the Institute of Pathology at Friedrich Schiller University, says, "All these experiments, and descriptions of brain activation processes, do not explain how neural activity is the cause for consciousness."
Writing in the December 1999 issue of Scientific American, Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, says, "We seem as far from understanding cognitive processes as we were a century ago."
David Presti, Ph.D., Professor ofNeurobiology, says, "Little progress has been made in the scientific understanding of mental phenomena."
David J. Chalmers, Ph.D., of the Australian National University, says, "Consciousness, the subjective experience of an inner self, could be a phenomenon forever beyond the reach of neuroscience."
No evidence there, then, that the mind is in the brain. Now let us look at memory.
It is assumed that memory is held in the brain cells. The trouble is, though, that tens of thousands of them die every day. (If some of them hold the memory I am using to type this, some or all of it will have been lost before I finish!)
Hold on, though! What about all the other memories, especially those from long ago? I can remember climbing out of my cot and taking a few tentative steps. Have the brain cells that remember that lasted all this time? Well, no. Apart from brain cells dying and being replaced, the molecules within each are renewed about 10,000 times in a lifetime. Moreover, about 50 billion body cells are replaced daily. That means a new body each year. Physically, the little chap that climbed out of the cot has vanished many times! How, then, is memory preserved if it is held in cells that are constantly being replaced?
There is also the question of whether the brain has the capacity to store much memory at all.
Pim van Lommel is a cardiologist. In the December 2001 issue of The Lancet, he described the work of American Simon Berkovich, a computer science expert, and Dutchman Herms Romijn, a brain researcher.
Van Lommel points out that working independently of one another, the two men came to the same conclusion: it would be impossible for the brain to store everything we think and experience in a lifetime.
Even watching an hour’s television would exhaust its capacity. "If you want to store that amount of information," says van Lommel, "along with the associative thoughts produced, your brain would be pretty much full."
This is a normal brain we are talking about, three to five pounds of fat and protein. What about an abnormal one with a large chunk missing?
Dr Lionel Feuillet and colleagues attheUniversité de laMéditerranée in Marseilles reported on a married father of two who was a civil servant. This is from a Reuters’ news agency story on 19th July 2007:
"A man with an unusually tiny brain managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, caused by a fluid build-up in his skull. Scans of the 44-year-old man’s brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber, called a ventricle, took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue."
So much for the physical evidence that the mind cannot be in the brain and memory cannot be stored there. The mind, then, must exist independently of the brain.
R. Craig Hogan, Ph.D., a university professor and author, is convinced, not only that it does, but also that it is a part of ‘Self’, which is eternal.
From his own experiments, and the examination of many others’, he has drawn two fundamental conclusions, "Your mind is not confined to your body, and you are an eternal being having a physical experience."
Hogan also has the psychic gift of remote viewing. He conducted a series of experiments with Bill Walker, a computer systems analyst, who wrote the following on his website:
"Craig Hogan and I communicated only via e-mail. He lives about 700 miles away from me. All he knew about me was my name, e-mail address, and that I lived in New Jersey. I would place an object on my table and Craig would e-mail me his impressions. He said that he also got impressions of other objects in the room. "The impressions included sketches, and sometimes written descriptions. In between sessions, the only feedback I gave to him were the photos of matched items... For each session he gave me anywhere from five to twenty impressions." In the first session, Craig Hogan saw a "green light shining down on gold brassy parts". He then described other objects. Bill Walker confirmed that the green light was the banker’s lamp in his office with a green shade and a gold bottom.
The other sketches and descriptions, however, matched nothing in his office. It was only when he arrived home that he saw they were of objects on the tables there! This can only be a verifiable example of remote viewing.
They, and countless more, show that we are able to see without using the physical eye – the way a medium works. Further scientific evidence involves near- death and out-of-body experiences.
What actually happens during a NDE? Dr Sam Parnia, Director of the Human Consciousness Project at Southampton University, explains: "Death is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop, and as a consequence, within a few seconds the brain ceases functioning and enters a ‘flatline’ state. "From this point on, oxygen deprivation leads brain cells into a ‘panic’ state before they incur substantial damage and ultimately die over a period of minutes to hours."
Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and leading researcher into NDEs adds: "But yet, after one of these experiences (a NDE), you come out with clear, lucid memories... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
Craig Hogan offers the following case of a remarkable NDE and OBE of a woman named Sarah. Dr Larry Dossey, former chief of staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital, describes what happened:
"The surgery had gone smoothly until the late stages of the operation. Then something happened. As her physician was closing the incision, Sarah’s heart stopped beating..."
She was fully anaesthetized and unconscious during surgery, cardiac arrest and resuscitation. In other words, her brain was not functioning. Physically, she was unable to see or hear anything, or even dream. Yet she was able recall in detail the surgeons’ and nurses’ attempts to resuscitate her, and their frantic conversation.
She described the layout of the theatre – indicating she saw it from above – even the colour of the sheets on the operating table.
At some point she left the theatre and saw the surgery schedule board in the hall. Then she went into the doctors’ lounge further along the corridor. Surgeons were waiting there for the operation to be completed. She must have heard them talking because she remembered their names.
She also remembered trivia such as the head nurse’s hairstyle and the anaesthetist’s socks. There is just one more thing to add: she was blind – yes, blind from birth!
Craig Hogan has collected other examples of blind people being able to see, from picking up objects to walking, or riding a bicycle, through an area filled with obstacles. Sarah’s case is not unique and there are other NDE cases where the blind have seen.
Dr Parnia says, "It has consistently been shown that 10-20% of people who are revived back to life report some activity of the mind."
As reported in PN, Dr Parnia has announced the launch of AWARE, a three-year study project by Southampton University. "During AWARE," he says, "investigators will place images strategically in hospital bays, such that they will be visible by looking down from the ceiling and nowhere else."
The purpose of AWARE is to demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off. This would allow for the possibility that the mind, or consciousness, is a separate entity.
Many distinguished scientists, however, have long concluded that the mind survives death. Much has been written about the work of Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge. Both asserted to the end of their days the truth of what they had witnessed.
Dr Ron D. Pearson, featured in PN in the past, wrote Survival Physics, in which he asserts that survival is a natural fact of physics.
Physicist Dr Jan Vandersande’s interest in Spiritualism dates from his freshman days in the Sixties. A NASA consultant, manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and professor at Cornell University, he has just published Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence.
Dr Robert Hare, an emeritus professor of chemistry and a prolific inventor, set out to prove that there is no such thing as messages from the dead. His conclusion? "I sincerely believe that I have communicated with the spirits of my parents, sister, brother and dearest friends, and likewise with the spirits of the illustrious Washington and other worthies of the Spirit World; that I am by them commissioned, under their auspices, to teach truth and to expose error."
James J. Mapes, a professor of chemistry and natural philosophy, also set out to expose mediums as frauds. Not only did he fail: hechanged his mind entirely. His wife and daughter became mediums!
Dr Alfred Russel Wallace, co- originator with Darwin of the theory of evolution, and convinced materialist, changed his mind too. "My position is that the phenomena of Spiritualism in their entirety do not require further confirmation. They are proved quite as well as facts are proved in other sciences."
Dr Robert Crookall, a university lecturer and staff member of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, resigned from his post to devote the rest of his life to psychical research. "The whole of the available evidence is explicable on the hypothesis of the survival of the human soul in a soul body. There is no longer a ‘deadlock’ or ‘stalemate’ on the question of survival. On the contrary, survival is as well established as the theory of evolution."
Further information and scientific evidence can be found on Craig Hogan’s own website at http://greaterreality.com. "Our loved ones," he writes, "have never left. There in the afterlife, they’re enjoying a life more wonderful and more real than this life, with youth, vitality, and no pain, sickness or worry. There, they wait lovingly, knowing soon we’ll step in to join them."
