In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny swallows nitroglycerine and gunpowder, and springs back to life even when he gets flattened by a boulder. But it's not just Bugs. Experiments suggest that life can't be destroyed either.
As discussed in Part I, the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum physics states that there are an infinite number of universes (the 'multiverse'). Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The 'Who am I?' feeling is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can't be created or destroyed.
Scientists think they can say where life begins and ends. We generally reject the multiple universes of Star Trek as fiction, but it turns out there is more than a morsel of scientific truth in this popular genre. According to Biocentrism, space and time aren't the hard objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put everything together. When bodies die, they do so not in the random billiard-ball matrix but in the inescapable-life matrix.
Consider all the days that have passed since the beginning of time. Now stack them like chairs, and seat yourself on the very top. Isn't it amazing that you just happen to be here now, perched seemingly by chance on the cutting edge of infinity? Science claims it's a big accident, a one-in-a-gazillion chance. But the mathematical possibility of being on top of infinity -- of your consciousness ending -- is zero.
Imagine existence like a recording. Depending on where the needle is placed you hear a certain song. This is the present; the music, before and after is the past and future. Likewise, every moment endures always. All songs exist simultaneously, although we only experience them piece by piece.
Why are the laws of nature exactly balanced for life to exist? There are over 200 parameters in the universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose they are random. These fundamental constants (like gravity) all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for existence of life. Tweak any of them and you never existed. Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg agrees this fine-tuning is "far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident."
Consider, too, everything else that had to happen for us to be here. There are trillions of events, such as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs -- what if its trajectory had been slightly different? The odds are astronomically against everything happening exactly right. Is it just dumb luck?
Being here is no accident. Perhaps Biocentrism is right -- the past is simply the spatio-temporal logic of the observer. If the present determines the past as Stephen Hawking and others suggest, then it couldn't be any other way. In fact, scientists recently published a landmark experiment in Science showing that flipping a switch could retroactively change an event that had already happened in the past.
When I bought my house it was run down. My friend Dennis helped me fix it. He's one of nine children who grew up in a housing project and became a firefighter. When a car went through the ice on the pond, he dove in and pulled a man out of the submerged car. A few years ago he cut a limb off a tall tree. "We're supposed to be having fun," I said. "I don't want to spend the night in the emergency room." We laughed. A few seconds later the massive branch started to swing and bashed into his head like a ramming-rod. "Dennis!" I yelled as he tumbled through the air. But the only response was a terrifying thump when his body hit the ground.
There my best friend was draped over the branch like a rag doll. He had no pulse and wasn't breathing. He was air-lifted to the hospital. While the alarms were going off on Dennis' monitors, a nurse called the ICU and pleaded, "We have more LifeFlights on the way and can't handle him here." The problem was they couldn't get housekeeping to change the sheets on the empty ICU bed.
Dennis laid in the corner teetering on the edge of life and death. When I told his family the doctors didn't know if he was going to make it, his 13-year-old son started to sob. It all seemed surreal. As when my sister died, I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments showing a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I knew Dennis was both alive and dead, outside of time.
When you lose a loved one, you can't imagine a happy ending. But consider: you and I, indeed the entire human species could have been wiped out like the Neanderthals a hundred times over. Whether it's flipping the switch in the Science experiment or falling out a tree, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result in the multiverse. But by definition, you can't experience nonexistence (you'll always seem to be alive, now, on top of time).
After Bugs gets blown up, there's a moment when you think he's dead. But the show always continues. Likewise, according to Biocentrism, consciousness can't be extinguished in a timeless, spaceless world. That's why you're here despite the preposterous odds against it. Bottom line: you may get flattened now and then, but life can't be stamped out.
Last year, Dennis' son scored a touchdown at the football game. Dennis and the other parents went wild.
Remember, the silly rabbit never dies.
Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.
Follow Robert Lanza, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertLanza
www.theEternalStateofBeing.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
I love the supposedly scientific minded 'sheeple' here that are repeating a reductionist argument they do not even understand.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527427.100-you-wont-find-consciousness-in-the-brain.html
Consciousness is a very hard problem in science. There is inconclusive evidence that suggest it is 'birthed' in the human brain.
That the universe can create a 'dimension' that can reflect on itself is very profound, and it is rational to suggest that the universe may wish to conserve consciousness for the sake of it's own existence.
Sorry reductionist sheeple, this philosophy belongs to the futurists, not the creationists or fundamentalists you are only capable of surmounting in a philosophical debate!
As for the statement "Consciousness is based on the complexity of the pattern of interaction and NOT the hardware that supports it."
I would pretty much agree but I think you are misunderstanding attempts by psychologists and philosophers to understand consciousness. Saying that consciousness requires SOME hardware (brain or computer) is not reductionist in the narrow sense that you imply. In fact there are whole areas of philosophy and computer science that study cognition and language in the abstract, without caring whether the machine that processes the language is a brain or sillicon chip. One of Chomsky's major accomplishments that made him famous in lingistics was to provide a mathematical model to analyze languages that works for computer languages such as Java and C or natural languages such as English.
Om Purusha Ye Vedam Sarvam Yad Bhutam Yaccha Vavyam,
Uta Mritatwa Sesyano Yad Annena Tirohati.
[ Purusha (Energy) is all that has been and that will be; And he is the Lord of immortality which transcends through matter ]. (R. 10. 90.2; Y. S. A.)
All life is programed to stay alive. Why this compulsion? If there is no life after death, then it doesn't matter and we will be no worse off for it when we die. However, if there is something after death then we are obviously not meant to know what it is. It would appear that what's important is the here/now and what we do with our brief lives. I believe this is why we/life are compelled to stay alive. If we knew that something better came afterward then we would end it all to get there thus circumventing evolution/creation. This suggests to me that our lives and the here/now are very important even if we're not conscious of what that importance is.
Consciousness is the key. And consciousness will always be one step removed from comprehension. Therefore, those here looking to science to prove or disprove life after death are looking in the wrong place.
Isn't that what was once said about going to the moon?
If we were meant to go to the moon, we'd all have wings?
If man can think it, it's there to explore.
And I agree, consciousness is the key and beliefs is the
keyhole. The two combined opens doors.
Later, we realized that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun. This is known as the "Heliocentric Theory."
Then there is "Biocentrism" in which the universe revolves around you. This is more commonly known as the "Egocentric Theory."
In 1000 years, how far will our tech have come? already we can create a black hole. In 1000 years, we could potentially create a black hole and install the laws of our universe into it, creating another big bang universe somewhere else.
Since our universe is so grand, and we have an eternity to play with, this most likely has happened already. In an eternal or infinite system, anything that CAN happen DOES happen, an infinite number of times.
Consistent with that desire, but without the mythology, I am hoping as are many others, that quantum mechanics offers parallel universes so that we continue to live in another place when our body dies on this place.
manifestation of the human organism's desperate attempt
at self preservation."
Interesting observation. Now, substitute 'science' for 'religion
or an afterlife' and its still just as interesting. Darwin would
love it!
In exactly the same manner, Richard Feynman remarked that everyone always asks about the unknown (in Physics), but the KNOWN is so beautiful and alive.... I feel the same way. How many hundreds of people are arguing about life after death in this post? But no one is remarking about the miracle of life we're in the middle of. We're all quite remarkable idiots.
"another kind of convergence has been alleged between modern physics and eastern mysticism. The argument goes essentially as follows: Quantum mechanics .... is deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Therefor eastern mystics must have been talking about quantum theory all along. ... Sorry mumbo -jumbo is precisely what it is ... even down to the trademark misuse of 'energy'. ... It is also religion masquerading as science"
That is my favorite line. The energy in our brain is electricity, and when we die, it stops. Our body stops breaking down glucose to produce this energy. The electricity that would have been pulsing through our brains had we not died remains as stored energy in the glucose that hasn't been broken down. It's a pretty simple concept what happens to the "energy" in our bodies when we die.
And I'm afraid you are missing the point, which is that people take quantum physics, which is very hard even for physicists to understand and also very counter intuitive to common sense logic, and then apply it in all sorts of inappropriate ways, which is exactly what this author is doing.
I just hope that when I'm dead, I'm dead. Done, over and out, no more anything.
To charlot, the most likely thing that happens when you die is the same thing that happened before you were born. Nothing. It's why I don't remember the 70's. I didn't exist. I won't remember the year 2100 either, because I won't exist.
120 just out of spite--to Soc. Sec., and to those people
who think they are going to experience Utopia here on
earth! Oh, and because I have smoked since my early
teens. At 110, I want someone to convince me that I'm
gonna die if I don't quit.
Those 90 year olds? Try talking to them about something
other than iPods or Political Action Committees. They
are a fount of information of the human condition, you
know, what you and I are, human beings.
We're not machines that need an occasional check up
from the neck up. We don't exist for spare parts or the
next round of new bells and whistles. That's for your
generations. You'll eventually grow tired of it too.
And you'll sit there and contemplate your life. As boring
as you think it might have been, it has some really
bright and shining moments. You'll cherish those.
Happy dreams.
Someone pointed out that without facts and evidence, there's no science, that one's interior experience via "mediation" doesn't really work with the scientific method. That, of course, is a valid point. How can one differentiate between perception of the actual and imaginative creation of false experience? If anyone wants to reply, I'm happy to start a conversation.
For example, rods and cones in our eyes capture light, and send signals to our brain based on the wavelength of light. The colours that we perceive are a representation of the different signals (photons of light) that were captured by our eyes. The mechanism is the same in all humans (except those with color blindness), and our other sensory organs work in a similar way. Therefore, we can literally test a person's ability to perceive the world compared to what is "normal", or what our senses are designed to do.
Chances are that if someone claims to be communicating with spirits, hearing voices, or essentially having hallucinations, it can be linked to a defect in the nervous system - which can be tested. If a defect isn't found, then it still proves nothing for the simple fact that the experience is not reproducible. It is unique to the individual. They could even be lying and making it up.
The truth is people are coming up with these "theories" of energy transfer and spirits and yadda yadda, without any solid evidence to back it up, nor even any ideas on how to test it. People should simply admit what they don't know, and OBSERVE the universe to find an explanation. We shouldn't be inventing an explanation and then searching for evidence to support it. That is pseudoscience.
experience is not reproducible..."
An experience is yours, and yours alone. It isn't something
to prove, to put in a test tube and mix chemicals with. it's
an event to learn from. An accumulation of experiences
and your beliefs about those experiences is who you are.
But you are greater than the sum of your parts. Aren't you?