Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- 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 neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.
This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.
Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.
"Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg."
She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.
After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature."
Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house.
Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.
Robert Lanza, MD is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is the author of "Biocentrism," a book that lays out his theory of everything.
Robert Lanza, M.D.: Is There a God or Is There Nothingness? New Scientific Paradigm
If biocentrism is right, nature has much bigger plans for us than just this or that life -- plans far beyond anything religion has ever projected to any god.
Robert Lanza, M.D.: Anything Beyond The Universe? New Theory Changes Our Destiny
We think our destiny is to journey to Mars and beyond. Yet as we build our spacecraft, we're about to be broadsided -- from a different direction -- by the most explosive event in history.
Robert Lanza, M.D.: Do You Only Live Once? Experiments Suggest Life Not One-Time Deal
The results of quantum physics confirm that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
Death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Death (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Death And Dying: Nature Is Selfish, Get Over It
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A step further into no-thingness http://qua
There are so many flaws in your analogies and interpretations of physics that I can't even begin to list them. It's fine to have a poetic, coherent, and comforting belief system about reality, life, and death. But you mislead when you claim they are supported by the science you cite.
There is no backup mechanism in the universe that we know of, no little Time Machine hard drive is hooked up to each of us. I think we are all destined to have our minds disappear when our bodies break down. Certainly the many medical cases of brain injuries that altered personalities, like that of Phineas Gage in the 19th century, do not support the idea that our minds are separate from our bodies.
But beyond that exploration of mind vs matter, I think we're in danger of slipping off the Science track and onto a Philosophical one. No less interesting and important, as long as we remember that we're dealing exclusively with abstract concepts and ideas rather than -- as far as it's possible -- a consensually verifiable and reproducible description of the physical world. And I think it's a mistake to conflate them like this, comforting as it might be to imagine that our precious 25 W can somehow survive the shut-down of the electro-chemical engine that generates it.
But if I'm wrong, I'll be more than happy to admit it to your hopefully ethereal face when I see you.......
Without having a personal and meaningful experience of consciousness expansion, t's easy to be cynical about this kind of theory. To even entertain the possibility of its validity requires some experience with revelation, with touching reality directly. There's a kind of certainty in this kind of experience that is very different from the conceptual certainty of relative facts. There's a complexity, a fullness, a depth, a WHOLE sense of reality that defies factual explanation. But it has to be personally experienced to know it. So I don't blame anyone who has not had a revelatory experience for judging theories that attempt to include it as naive, fanatical, or obviously false. How could it be otherwise?
For those who may be compelled by empirical data, you may find Eugene Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit an interesting doorway into expanded consciousness. You can read about it here: http://www
However, there is some reason (though tenuous at this point) to suspect that, at the quantum level and the strange imperturbability of certain energies, consciousness could somehow remain coherent, thus allowing some form of it to remain intact to express itself. This sort of theory, however, would be impossible to prove outside of the subjective experience.
So, I am not willing to totally concede to the inevitability of death, just as I cannot deny the possibility that our sciences may discover ways to defeat it.
One of the best, most skeptical minds of our time (indeed, the founder of the Skeptics Society), Martin Gardiner, remarked upon the recent death of his wife: "I am not an atheist, but more of a 'fideist', in that, I choose to believe that there must be some sort of justice to existence.
We only *Live* in Hope, as always.
Another desperate attempt of what we refer to as the ego (in this case, the gigantic ego of a "scientist
The "MacClainian" subjectivists want their consciousness to be the instrument NOT of perceiving but of CREATING existence, and existence to NOT be the object but the subject of their consciousness - they want to BE that god THEY CREATED in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim.
This kind of "thought" will leave you "Out on a Limb" with Shirley waiting for a sweet chariot with wings made of chocolate feathers to swing low and carry you "home" to some imaginary necrodestinational "reward."
I've lived in 2 homes, for years, that were inhabited by spirits. Nothing harmful happened in either case - just the overwhelming feeling of another presence and at times objects would be moved. In addition - I have experienced both of my parents and other friends (who have long passed) with the help of gifted telepaths. When I am peaceful and meditate, I am able to access realms beyond that which I am currently inhabiting. Perhaps you say this is only in our heads - or our hearts - but the truth of the matter is - what else is there?