To infinity and beyond: Eternal/external existence?

I attended a Bioethics Conference, two packed days of lectures hosted by leading bio-scientists. The topic was the unexplored frontier of another dimension where “time” and “space” do not apply. The topic was death and dying.

Promega founder Bill Linton assembled respected scientists from the world over —  including Dr. Raymond Moody, who originally coined the term “near death experience” (NDE) —  for a discussion of NDEs and the scientific study of this phenomenon. Are they real? Or is an NDE a defensive reaction to the terror of death by an advanced human brain?

The phenomenon appears to be real. Much work has focused on the clear, concise, and orderly thinking patterns that continue even after brain stem activity stops. But to understand and accept the notion of "Life of Soul After Death of Body and Brain", we have to abandon the notion that the brain creates thought or identity.

WHAT? Heretofore, we’ve lacked the ability to mentally form the language or the understanding of how that could be, but that is changing in scientific circles, as new languages and reasoning platforms beyond Euclidean logic emerge. We lay people, too, are becoming more personally familiar with cyberspace and the realities of technology today.

I’ll share two examples of the kind of NDE thinking that rocks my world.

Cloud computing: Is your soul “downloaded” and synchronized in your brain?

Imagine, as today’s scientists are willing to do, that your “soul” does not reside in your brain. Your brain is like the world’s fastest and most sophisticated computer (on steroids), but it is not the source of your soul. Your “soul” is downloaded into the desktop computer (brain) and you work on it, adding personality and “identity” in this life experience.

This is not an anti-Christian or an anti-Godhead view of the world. In fact, the belief these scientists had in a divine creator who is all and knows all was discussed at length, along with the notion that part of creation resides in each of us (“Holy Spirit,” as some religions refer to it), which connects us directly to the source. That’s the Ethernet, in my way of explaining this today. The more they study the phenomenon of life after death, the more “connected” researchers become to the belief that LOVE is the energy that fuels our existence and connection to the source. While some scientists understandably remain agnostic with regard to adopting a religious viewpoint, I didn’t find any outright atheists in the foxholes during private discussions with the presenters.

Life review: Every thought and action, every reaction

NDE survivors tell us that we must abandon our present reasoning tools and language of science to understand the scientific truths of the near death experience. There is no sense of “time” or “space,” and so it is hard for these resurrected among us to say what happened during their “clinically dead” experience.

But one presenter framed the discussion in this manner: It might take seconds in our reality, or an eternity, but the life review process is recorded sort of like this:

Imagine a tabletop, with figures standing on the tabletop and points of light connecting all of them to a central figure, like lasers. These “rays” are rays of comprehension and understanding. You are the central figure, if it is your NDE. And every thought or deed that you have done in your conscious physical life is laid out before you. As you look at it from your perspective – one deed, let’s say – you immediately grasp WHY you behaved as you did toward another figure on the tabletop. All of your “baggage” is explained to you and accepted. Then, mentally turn the table and assume the position of the person to whom the deed was done – the human receiver of the good, bad, or neutral deed. You will fully comprehend the complete ramifications, as experienced by that person, of the deed as well.

What does it all mean? Hope, I believe. Hope.