Consciousness and the Physical World
Table of Contents
Introduction
Interface Theory of Perception
Four Views of Relationship of Physics with Consciousness
Subjective Evidence
Physical and non-physical
Non-dual view of reality
Introduction
Does God exist? This is one of the biggest philosophical questions that people have debated for thousands of years. However, this question is not well defined. There is no general agreement on who or what God is. Does he exist as the creator of the universe? Does he exist as an intervener in the affairs of humanity? Does he rule the afterlife? These questions have been endlessly debated and fought over for thousands of years. Some of the world’s major religions, such as Buddhism, have no need to posit the existence of God.
A more pertinent question is: does consciousness survive physical death? Equivalently, is our consciousness the product of our brains, or is it channeled through our brains from somewhere else? This question is well defined, and its answer has a strong personal implication for each of us. If we subscribe to the materialist view that consciousness is created by the brain, and that the physical world is the only world that exists, then from this perspective, consciousness can not survive physical death.
However, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary, described below under the heading “subjective phenomena”. If true, then consciousness survives physical death. This implies many things: 1) consciousness is not created by the brain, 2) consciousness is not a result of quantum phenomena, zero-point energy, or any other physical system, 3) the brain is more of a transmitter of consciousness rather than a creator of consciousness, 4) our physical world is not a closed system, so that 5) our physical world is not predetermined by initial conditions, and 6) there is a much vaster, richer reality that transcends the physical world.
These results have profound implications for our view of the world and what reality is. To start with, it provides a limitation on physics, neuroscience, and medicine. Physics can no longer claim to be a “theory of everything”, since it would be unable to explain consciousness. This is a very bold assertion – that future advances in physics would never be able to explain how awareness is created. How can this claim be made?
Interface Theory of Perception
The reality we perceive is not as real as we may think. This becomes more obvious when we look at the world view of particular animals. For example, in 1981 male Australian jewel beetles were found trying to mate with discarded beer bottles. These beer bottles were the same color as females, and had dimpled glass that reflected light the same way as the tiny bumps on the female beetles’ forewings. The males kept trying to mate with the bottles until they were exhausted, or eaten by ants. This is an example of what’s called an evolutionary trap - an animal’s perception is confused by an artificial object and so the animal behaves inappropriately. Another example are baby sea turtles, which when born follow the lights of nearby hotels instead of following the light of the moon into the sea. A third example are hummingbirds, which tried to feed on red electrical insulators, but got electrocuted instead. These examples were fixed when the beer bottles were made without the dimpled glass, when hotel lights were turned off while baby turtles were hatching from their eggs, and when the electrical insulators were manufactured in a different color.
In the interface theory of perception (D. Hoffman, M. Singh, and C. Prakash, Psychon Bull Rev (2015) 22: 1480, See https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-015-0890-8), the perceptions of an organism are considered the “user interface” between that organism and the world. Our human perceptions show separate objects interacting in a three-dimensional world. These objects include plants, animals, atoms and galaxies. These perceptions have enabled us to survive and thrive as a species. What Hoffman et. al. have proven mathematically is that world perceptions oriented towards fitness are evolutionarily favored over world perceptions oriented to truth. In the case of the Australian jewel beetle, the male beetle’s perceptions could not distinguish the difference between a beer bottle and a female. Before beer bottles entered their world, their perceptions worked and were fitted for the environment. Unfortunately for them, their perceptions did not reveal the truth of what they were doing.
An example of an artificial interface is the computer desktop. The reality of a computer, with its billions of transistors and circuits, would be unintelligible to us. Instead, the computer shows us a screen with icons that stand for programs or data, and by manipulating these icons, we can do useful work. A hypothetical being living on the computer screen would believe the fundamental particles to be pixels, which come in three colors, red, blue and green. A more realistic view of the computer would not be accessible to such a being, and would not be useful to us. So what would a more real version of reality look like to us?
Four views of consciousness
There are many theories of what consciousness is or where it comes from, and these theories can be divided into four main points of view: materialism, physicalism, panpsychism, and idealism.
In materialism, sometimes called scientism, or scientific materialism, consciousness naturally arises from the organization of the brain. This is the predominant view among scientists and doctors. In this view, the brain generates consciousness through its complexity, so that consciousness can best be understood through neuroscience.
A variant of materialism is physicalism: consciousness is generated by the physical world, and will eventually be explained by a theory of everything, the goal of physics. Consciousness is often linked to quantum mechanics, because of its weirdness and non-local nature. In this view, the brain generates consciousness not from its organization, but from its physical properties. Thus consciousness can best be understood through physics.
In panpsychism, consciousness is a fundamental part of the physical world. Everything has both physical properties and some form of consciousness, even elementary particles. The brain does not generate consciousness, but regulates the consciousness that pervades the body.
In idealism, consciousness is more fundamental than the physical world, and does not need a brain to exist. This is the view of spiritual teachers. In this view, the brain is a receiver of consciousness, analogous to how a radio receives information from outside itself and uses that information to generate speech and music. In this view, consciousness can best be understood from an enlightened perspective that requires a change in consciousness itself.
Materialism
Democritus in ancient Greece (460-370 B.C.) believed that everything could be explained by natural laws, with no need of a god or supernatural realm. This point of view is called materialism.
Materialism in the West strengthened as a result of the Catholic Church’s insistence on its doctrine, persecuting all those who disagreed. This doctrine applied not only to God and the world of spirit, but also to the physical world. In February 1616, the notion that the sun was the center of the solar system was deemed "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." In 1633, Galileo Galilei was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for holding the view that the sun is the center of the universe, and that the Earth moves around the sun. It wasn’t until 1822 that the Catholic Church allowed the printing of heliocentric books, despite strong evidence for its truth, and it wasn’t until 1979 that the Church officially declared that Galileo was right after all!
If the church was demonstrably wrong about the material world, could it be trusted with the world of God and consciousness? Where was the evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible? As science developed, the need for a God to run the world became less and less. Today the material world seems to explain itself. Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, came up with a model on how the universe could come into being spontaneously, without the need of a creator God (see “The Grand Design”, by S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, 2010).
In materialism, only physical reality exists. Consciousness is generated by the complexity of the brain, and upon physical death it ceases to exist. Psychic phenomena, miracles, God, and near death experiences are not real. Freud in 1907 called religion a “universal obsessional neurosis”.
In this view, consciousness emerges out of the interactions of the billions of neurons in our brains, and may arise in any similarly complex system. Thus the possibility exists that consciousness may arise in advanced computers. This point of view was illustrated in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” which came out in 1968. In this movie, a computer named Hal was sentient, and eventually began to disobey commands from the astronauts. Since our computers are getting more and more complex, eventually they will surpass the complexity of a human brain, and will at that point become sentient. In our galaxy alone, there are 100 billion stars, most of which have planets. Some fraction of those planets will have life, and some fraction of those will develop technological capabilities. Many of them could exist for millions of years, and would have far superior technologies. Could we all be simulations in one of their advanced computers? Elon Musk has said “he thinks there's a "one in billions" chance that we're not living in a computer simulation right now”. One version of this view are the Matrix movies, starting in 1999, in which our world is just a virtual reality created by machines in order to enslave us.
Many scientists believe in both God and materialism, and compartmentalize these views to avoid confronting the contradictions between them. When at work, they do their research with the assumption that everything can be explained by natural processes. When in church, they accept the reality of God and the doctrines of whatever church they belong to.
Physicalism
As physics developed in the 19th century, what we considered the physical world was expanded to include electric and magnetic fields. In the 20th century, matter was shown to consist of quantum fields dancing around according to the equations of quantum physics. Materialism now includes quantum wave functions, space-time itself, and poorly-understood phenomena such as dark matter and dark energy. These are all physical quantities that are subject to the laws of physics.
These developments of physics led to a variant of materialism called physicalism, where consciousness is generated from the physical structure of the brain instead of its organization. John von Neumann in 1932, and Eugene Wigner in 1967, suggested that consciousness could collapse the wave functions of quantum mechanics - the Von Neumann – Wigner Interpretation. In 1975, Fritjof Capra published “The Tao of Physics”, which laid out numerous parallels between quantum mechanics and Eastern spirituality. Roger Penrose, in his book “The Emperor’s New Mind”, 1989, proposed a model in which consciousness results from the collapse of wave functions in the microtubules of the brain, and this collapse is due to the effects of quantum gravity.
Many have taken physicalism beyond what physics can support. Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who walked on the moon in Apollo 14, wrote that “The basis of subjective experience is rooted in the quantum attribute of nature called non-locality. … telepathy, clairvoyance seem to be easily explained by means of the nonlocal quantum hologram”. However, there is no such thing as a “quantum hologram” in the way Mitchell was using it. Some say that the non-locality of of entangled particles in quantum mechanics can explain psychic phenomena that requires knowledge of future events. However, quantum non-locality can not send information faster than the speed of light, and thus can’t explain psychic phenomena.
Panpsychism
In panpsychism, consciousness pervades the physical world and all the objects within it. Consciousness and quantum fields arise from the same fundamental field. It’s been propounded by Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, James and Whitehead. In this view, even elementary particles may have a rudimentary awareness. All consciousness is connected to some physical object, whether it’s an atom, human or planet. There is only the physical world, but this reality includes consciousness.
Idealism
In idealism, consciousness is more fundamental than the physical world, and does not need to be connected to a physical object, unlike panpsychism. Consciousness does not need a physical brain to exist, but can reside in a reality that is not physical. Our consciousness exists before birth and after death. Furthermore, only awareness can investigate awareness. This view underlies shamanism and most spiritual schools. Many movies are based on this view, including “What Dreams May Come”, a 1998 movie starring Robbin Williams, and “Heaven Can Wait”, a 1978 movie starring Warren Beatty.
Quantum Mechanics
Why have so many authors tried to link consciousness and spirituality with quantum mechanics? To better understand their arguments, we will digress into a brief description of quantum mechanics. Feel free to skip this section if it gets too technical!
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton showed that light consists of waves that can be diffracted and produce interference patterns. In the 19th century, Maxwell wrote down the equations of electromagnetism that provided a mathematical description of the wave nature of light, explaining diffraction and interference patterns. In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote a paper that showed that light comes in discrete packages of energy called photons. This paper was based on the photoelectric effect: when light is shined on a piece of metal, energetic electrons are ejected, and the energy of these ejected electrons depend on the frequency or wavelength of the light, but not the intensity of the light. Einstein explained this by postulating that all light comes in packets of energy called photons, and the energy of each photon is equal to its frequency times a constant called Planck’s constant, h = 6x10-34 erg-sec. Thus light could behave both as a wave and a particle.
DeBroglie postulated in 1924 that not only does light act as both a wave and a particle, but even particles such as electrons can also act as both waves and particles. The waves of electrons, called DeBroglie waves, have a wavelength given by l = h/mv, where h is Planck’s constant, as before, and mv is the mass times the velocity of the particle – its momentum. In 1925, Erwin Schrödinger discovered the equation, now called the Schrödinger equation, that describes these matter waves. When the Schrödinger equation was solved for the hydrogen atom, it explained in great detail the observed spectrum of light emitted by hydrogen – a triumph for quantum theory. To date, quantum mechanics is an incredibly successful theory – it has been verified again and again, and no experiment has ever contradicted quantum theory’s predictions.
In quantum mechanics, the wave nature of an electron, or any particle, is described by what’s called a wave function, which basically describes the probability of where the particle may be, or how fast it’s moving. For example, in a hydrogen atom, the wave function of the electron that is in the lowest energy state is spherically symmetric, and has its highest value closest to the nucleus and gets smaller the further it gets from the nucleus. Schrodinger’s equation gives a way to compute what that wave function is, and how it changes in time. If the electron is in an excited state, with more energy, then its wave function has a different shape. When the electron falls from a high-energy state to a lower energy state, its wave function changes in a discrete way, and it emits a photon whose energy equals the energy difference between the two states. The wave function of the photon then expands through space until it gets absorbed.
For example, when an atom at the surface of the sun emits a photon, the wave function of that photon expands as it travels through space at the speed of light, and by the time the photon reaches the earth, its wave function is millions of miles wide. The photon can appear anywhere within that millions-of-miles wide window. However, when the photon is detected on earth, say by someone seeing a flash of light as it enters their eye, the wave function of that photon collapses instantaneously to a point on that person’s retina. This collapse of the wave function does not obey the Schrödinger equation, but instead happens in a probabilistic way. The photon randomly appears at some point, and the probability of the photon appearing at that point is proportional to the square of the value of the wave function at that point. This introduces an element of randomness within quantum mechanics. In general, quantum mechanics can only predict probabilities of what may happen.
Before the 1920s, physicists believed the future was determined in principle – if we knew all positions and velocities of all particles at one time, we would know them for all future times. The probabilistic predictions of quantum mechanics introduces an essential randomness into the universe, making the future impossible to predict, even in principle.
Non-locality and entangled particles
One of the weirdest properties of quantum mechanics is entanglement, in which two particles share one wave function. For example, if an atom emits two photons, these photons share common properties, even though they fly off in different directions. If you measure the polarization of one photon, you immediately know the polarization of the other photon. This is like finding a right-handed glove, and knowing that its partner must be left-handed. However, this analogy fails to capture the strangeness of what’s happening. In the case of a pair of gloves, each one is already left or right handed, and we’re just seeing which one is which. In the case of entangled photons, the polarizations aren’t pre-existing. They aren’t chosen until a measurement is made. The polarizations can be measured at any angle, and once an angle is selected and the measurement made, the other photon’s polarization is instantly determined, even thought it may be many light years away. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use entanglement to send messages instantaneously – information can’t travel faster than the speed of light. However, entanglement can be used to send information securely. It is also the basis of quantum computing, where entanglement can enable computations far faster than is possible with a classical computer.
Uncertainty principle and zero-point energy
Everything we could ever know about a particular particle is given by its wave function. The wave function will give the probability of finding it at a given point, and also will give the probability of finding it moving at a certain speed. It turns out that the amount of uncertainty of its position, times the amount of uncertainty of its momentum (its speed times its mass), must be greater than or equal to Planck’s constant divided by 2 pi. This is called the uncertainty principle. The more accurately we know where an electron is, the less we know how fast it’s moving. Any particle confined to a small region, such as an electron inside an atom, must have some momentum given by the uncertainty principle. Thus in quantum mechanics, particles can never be at rest. Even in the lowest energy state, a particle must still move around, and this motion is called zero-point energy. Because the three quarks inside a proton are confined to a small volume, they must move around at speeds close to the speed of light.
There is a similar uncertainty principle for electric and magnetic fields. The laws of quantum mechanics require that electric and magnetic fields can never both be zero everywhere inside any volume. Thus what we call a vacuum must contain electric and magnetic fields that fluctuate all the time. These fluctuations of the electric and magnetic fields are part of the zero-point energy, and it pervades all space.
In the relativistic version of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle also applies to the number of particles inside a given volume. Pairs of electrons and their anti-particles, positrons, appear and disappear all the time. These are called virtual particles, since they appear briefly and then disappear, and they are also part of the zero-point energy that pervades all space.
This zero-point energy is very real. If two parallel conducting plates are brought together with a small gap between them, then the electric fields of the zero-point energy between the plates are constrained to go to zero at each of the plates. This constraint reduces the total zero-point field allowed to be there, so on average there is less energy between the plates than outside them. This results in a force that pulls the plates together: the Casmir effect.
The zero-point energy can also be thought of as a source of spontaneous motion and randomness. For example, each electron feels the random tugs of the zero-point energy, so its position and motion fluctuate in random ways.
Subjective phenomena
Modern science is silent about consciousness and how it’s produced. Most scientists believe that it’s produced somehow by the brain, and that as we understand the functioning of the brain better, we will eventually understand how it produces awareness. However, there are several lines of subjective phenomena that strongly suggest that consciousness is not produced by the brain – that the brain is more like a radio receiver that can tune into a pre-existing awareness, rather than producing that awareness directly. Here I will present several lines of evidence: remote viewing, reincarnation, near-death experiences, the experiences of professional ghost hunters, and stories of intervening spirits. These will each be explored in turn.
Remote Viewing
In a typical remote viewing session, the experimenter choses two people, a sender and a receiver. The receiver sits in a room with no outside view, and is shielded from all outside electromagnetic signals such as radio waves. The sender opens a sealed envelope which contains a destination, and drives to that designated place. He/she gazes at what’s there, mentally trying to send an impression to the receiver. The receiver then chooses one of four pictures provided that best matches any impression received. From chance alone, we would expect a 25% success rate. Many labs across the world have done this, and the success rate is closer to 33%. Four examples: the Psychophysical Research Lab in Princeton, New Jersey, had a success rate of 32% in 329 sessions. The University of Amsterdam had a success rate of 37% in 124 sessions. The University of Edinburgh had a success rate of 33% in 97 sessions, and the Institute for Parapsychology in North Carolina had a success rate of 33% in 100 sessions (see http://www.academia.edu/9540484/Through_Time_and_Space_The_Evidence_for_Remote_Viewing).
The remote viewing at the Stanford Research Institute, from 1973 to 1988, and at Science Applications International Corporation, from 1990 – 1995, together had 26,000 trials in 154 experiments over the years. The results were very significant, with a chance result of only 1 in 1020. Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at U.C. Davis, in “An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning” (1995), wrote “It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated. This conclusion is not based on belief, but rather on commonly accepted scientific criteria. The phenomena has been replicated in a number of forms across laboratories and cultures.” (see http://www.academia.edu/9540484/Through_Time_and_Space_The_Evidence_for_Remote_Viewing)
The U.S. Government operated a remote viewing program in the Stargate program, with Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Christopher Green, Pat Price and others. They found a downed Russian aircraft in North Africa, located a kidnapped American general in Northern Italy, discovered a hidden Soviet weapons factory in Siberia, described the construction of a top-secret Soviet submarine, and predicted the failure of a Chinese atomic bomb test three days before the test. (A fascinating account of all this is in “ESP Wars East & West” by E. May, V. Rubel and L. Auerbach, 2014)
Can this be explained by the correlations of quantum mechanics? Even though the correlations of entangled particles appear instantaneously, these correlations can’t be used to send Information faster than the speed of light. Because there’s no acceptable physical model for psychic phenomena, most scientists don’t believe that psychic phenomena are possible.
Reincarnation
There are many accounts of children who apparently recall previous lives. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia has documented and published many of these accounts (see https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/who-we-are/dr-ian-stevenson/). Typically, a young child 3 to 5 years old will start talking about a previous lifetime, naming his former self and close relatives, stating where he lived and how he died. One of the most famous cases is that of Shanti Devi, 1926-1987 (see https://www.carolbowman.com/dr-ian-stevenson/case-shanti-devi/). As soon as she could speak, she talked about a previous lifetime as Lugdi Bai, who was born in a nearby village in 1902. Lugdi married Kedernath Chaube, and died 10 days after her child was born in 1925. Shanti remembered many details of Lugdi’s life, such as who had affairs with whom and where the money was buried. When she was nine years old, Shanti finally met her previous husband Kedernath, and he became convinced she was the reincarnation of Lugdi. What convinced him was that Lugdi had arthritis, and this nine-year-old girl described in detail how their sexual relations were modified to accommodate Lugdi’s arthritis. No one else could possibly have known about this. Mahatma Ghandi put together a commission of 15 people who took Shanti to Lugdi’s village, and verified that Shanti knew many details of Lugdi’s life there, including words of the local dialect and many family secrets.
Another account is that of Titu Singh (1983-), who remembered being shot in the head as Suresh Verma. Titu met his wife from that former life, and convinced her that he was Suresh when he remembered giving her sweets on a particular outing. Titu identified the man who killed him in his previous life, and the man confessed his crime to the police when they questioned him. Amazingly, Titu’s head has two birthmarks that correspond to the entrance and exit bullet wounds to Suresh’s head! (see http://www.iisis.net/index.php?page=suresh-verma-titu-singh-reincarnation-past-life-physical-resemblance-birthmarks&hl=en_US)
Near Death Experiences
A near death experience occurs when someone, near death or in a coma, experiences visiting a non-physical place, often calling it the place that the soul travels to after death. One of the most famous near death experiences occurred to Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, who was in a meningitis coma for a week in November 2008 (see http://ebenalexander.com/), during which his cortex was flat-lined. Nevertheless, he recalled being escorted around a world of extraordinary beauty by a woman he didn’t recognize. He met an all-loving, all-powerful deity that we could call God. He was told “you are loved, deeply cherished, forever. There is nothing you have to fear.” Some years later, he made contact with his biological family – he had been adopted when he was a few weeks old. He found he had a biological sister who had died years before, and when he saw a picture of her, he realized she was the woman who escorted him around heaven! Before his near death experience, he was a strict materialist who didn’t believe in God. Afterwards, he believes in God and the eternity of our souls – “it’s the only thing that makes sense”.
Ghost stories
There are many stories of ghosts that haunt specific locations. One famous account is of Lois of Livermore (see “Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Ghost Hunter’s Guide” by L. Auerbach, 2005). A family moved into a recently purchased house, and everyone in the family saw a ghost who would walk through the house, wave, and then disappear. The 12-year old son, Chris, was able to talk with her, and she told him her name was Lois, and that she used to live in that house. The family contacted Loyd Auerbach, a ghost hunter, who drove down to Livermore to visit them. On the way, he had trouble with his car, and talked with his assistants about buying a new car. When he got to the house, Chris was able to translate Lois’s words to Loyd. Lois told Loyd that she knew he would be getting a new car. When asked how she knew that, she replied that she knew he was coming, and was afraid he would be bringing machines like those used in the movie “Ghostbusters”, so she travelled to him and listened in as he drove. Lois described how she lived in that house, and one day went to the hospital and died there. She then came back to the house. One question was why Chris would see her in so many ages and outfits. She replied, “I’m just a ball of energy, like those aliens on Star Trek!” Her story was verified by a living relative who had never spoken with Chris or his family. Since then, Chris’s children see and talk with Lois when they visit their grandparents.
Intervening spirits
William Bird (1891-1984) was a journalist whose life was saved by his dead brother during World War I. He belonged to the 42nd Battalion of the Canadian Black Watch, stationed near Vimy Ridge in France. One night he was awakened by two hands on his back. He looked up to see his brother Steve, who had been killed two years before. Steve never talked, but motioned for William to follow. He led William out of the trench, onto no man’s land, and into a crater. The spirit disappeared, and William fell asleep in that crater. When he woke up, he returned to the bunker he had been in before, only to find that a shell had killed everyone in the bunker after he had left. Had he not been woken up by his brother Steve, he would have been killed as well (see “Ghosts Have Warm Hands” by W. Bird, 1997).
My own grandfather was an electrician. A few days after he died in 1972, my grandmother heard a noise. The chain on a lamp that hadn’t been working was moving around. After awhile, the lamp started working again. When our family heard this, we looked at each other and acknowledged that our grandfather had come back to fix that lamp.
When I give talks about these intervening spirits and ask the audience for their own stories, about one third have similar stories to tell.
Idealism
These subjective phenomena strongly support the view of idealism, that our consciousness is not based on physical reality. Materialism and physicalism can’t acknowledge the reality of psychic phenomena, reincarnation, near-death experiences, ghosts, or intervening spirits. If any of these exist, then neither materialism nor physicalism can be correct. Physicalism can accommodate reincarnation if we posit that memories can be stored somehow in quantum fields, such as the zero-point energy that pervades all space, and that we can sometimes pick up these stored memories. However, both materialism and physicalism have trouble explaining how disembodied spirits can exist. Even panpsychism requires some kind of physical object to accompany consciousness. In the case of near-death experiences, ghosts, and intervening spirits, there is communication with disembodied spirits - conscious beings that have no physical bodies. Only idealism can accommodate communication with discarnate spirits. Idealism can also help explain the teachings of spiritual schools, mediums, channeling of spirits, and indigenous practices such as ancestral worship and shamanism.
The distinction between physical and non-physical
This is a good place to emphasize the distinction between what’s physical and what’s non-physical. By physical, I mean anything that is part of our physical reality. It can be measured quantitatively and obeys the laws of physics. Examples of what is physical includes our physical bodies, electricity, magnetism, light, gravity, quarks, the extra dimensions of string theory, dark matter, dark energy, black holes, quantum wave functions, and zero-point energy.
Non-physical means beyond space and time, not quantifiable, and does not obey the laws of physics. Examples of what is non-physical include consciousness, ghosts and spirits, the Being of Light often seen in near-death experiences, the upper and lower worlds of shamanism, subtle energies like chi, prana, and Reiki, and boundless presence.
Our body’s fear response, which includes adrenaline and the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, is physical. Our experience of the fear is non-physical.
Non-dual awareness unites the physical and non-physical
Materialism tries to include consciousness as an epiphenomenon. But it ignores all conscious phenomena except for ego activity.
Physicalism and panpsychism see consciousness as co-emerging with the physical world. Many people are hopeful that new discoveries in science will unify consciousness and the spiritual world with the physical world. However, I don’t believe this is possible, as science only deals with the physical world.
Idealism sees the physical world as emerging out of consciousness. However, ordinary consciousness does not perceive the unity of the physical with the non-physical. The experience of this unity requires a change of consciousness to non-dual awareness. Non-dual awareness is the awareness of this unity, and subjectively feels very different than ordinary awareness. So how can we change our consciousness to non-dual awareness?
Technology of consciousness
Traditionally, there are many ways to achieve non-dual awareness. These include meditation, inquiry, drumming, dancing, entheogens, breathwork, prayer, fasting, lucid dreaming, and shamanism.
Meditation
Perhaps the simplest technology of consciousness is meditation. One of the most important effects of meditation is the quieting of the mind. This allows the dissolving of the ego, with all of its defense mechanisms. Then more subtle realms of awareness become visible, like the stars becoming visible as the sun sets.
Inquiry
Another technology of consciousness is the technique of inquiry. Here inquiry is not a mental process of following ideas, but instead it’s following the thread of a feeling or sensation. For example, if we notice we’re angry at someone, or at some situation, we allow ourselves to fully feel the anger, to the point where it’s a strong sensation in our body. If we dis-identify from the trigger, we may notice that the anger has a sense of expansion and strength in it. This sensation of expansion and strength is a deeper layer than the anger itself, and represents the transformation of anger into an aspect of awareness that is pure strength and expansiveness. In this way, inquiry allows our awareness to follow feelings and sensations to deeper layers inside us.
Drumming
A third technology of consciousness is the use of drumming to stop the mind, and to carry conscious awareness to other realms, typically called the Upper and Lower worlds. This is a common shamanic technique used around the world. In Scandinavia, the church made drumming illegal in an attempt to disrupt shamanic practices.
Dancing
Some cultures use dancing as a way to cultivate non-dual awareness. Two examples of this are the whirling dervishes in the Sufi tradition, and the Ghost dance of the American Lakota.
Entheogens
Many indigenous cultures use entheogens: psychoactive plants that change the quality of our awareness. In the Amazon basin, native tribes use ayahuasca, which combines MAO inhibitors from the ayahuasca vine with DMT from the chacruna plant to produce a potent brew. In the Mexican desert, the indigenous people eat psilocybin mushrooms to attain altered states. In the Peruvian highlands, they use San Pedro cactus, which contains mescaline. In the southwest part of the United States, the native Americans use peyote, which also contains mescaline. Shamans in the Sonoran Desert smoke the venom of the Sonoran Desert Toad, which contains 5-Meo-DMT, a variant of DMT that’s perhaps the fastest route to non-dual awareness.
Non-dual view
What is the non-dual view? It is the realization that we are not our physical bodies, or our emotions, or our thoughts. We are conscious awareness itself. This conscious awareness does not feel separate, but feels part of an infinite consciousness that transcends space and time. This may be experienced as an oceanic feeling of oneness that embraces both the physical and the non-physical. This may also be experienced as a vast emptiness that is the source of all being. Everything, including our awareness, is an expression of this source. The direct experience that “I” am this emptiness is called self-realization, and we can talk and act as an expression of this source.
In this non-dual view, consciousness is inherently non-local. We are all part of a Cosmic Unity, which brings all space and all time together. This provides a natural way to allow for psychic phenomena.
What can we gain from a non-dual perspective? It shows us the true reality beneath our perceptual world, what’s underlying our “user interface”. It leads to self-discovery and wholeness – Who am I? What am I? It has the potential to heal our emotional wounds, allowing us to experience joy and bliss. It allows us to connect with our internal guidance, and to connect to nature in a profound way.
My perspective on life has completely changed. I used to live in a model of the world created in my head. It was known and felt safe. I explored the physical world, extending my understanding as far as science could reach. Now I live more in the unknown in my heart. I’m exploring non-physical worlds through meditation and shamanism, and feel awe and humbled when I realize how little I know compared to the Infinite Mystery.
Explore the Great Mystery
Our Earth is an insignificant speck in a vast universe, with around 1023 inhabitable planets within our cosmic horizon, about 13.8 billion light years away. Nevertheless, in the infinitely larger non-physical reality, as conscious beings we are very special: we are all part of the Divine Reality. Ultimately, we can only explore these worlds through our own subjective experience. Follow your heart!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Interface Theory of Perception
Four Views of Relationship of Physics with Consciousness
Subjective Evidence
Physical and non-physical
Non-dual view of reality
Introduction
Does God exist? This is one of the biggest philosophical questions that people have debated for thousands of years. However, this question is not well defined. There is no general agreement on who or what God is. Does he exist as the creator of the universe? Does he exist as an intervener in the affairs of humanity? Does he rule the afterlife? These questions have been endlessly debated and fought over for thousands of years. Some of the world’s major religions, such as Buddhism, have no need to posit the existence of God.
A more pertinent question is: does consciousness survive physical death? Equivalently, is our consciousness the product of our brains, or is it channeled through our brains from somewhere else? This question is well defined, and its answer has a strong personal implication for each of us. If we subscribe to the materialist view that consciousness is created by the brain, and that the physical world is the only world that exists, then from this perspective, consciousness can not survive physical death.
However, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary, described below under the heading “subjective phenomena”. If true, then consciousness survives physical death. This implies many things: 1) consciousness is not created by the brain, 2) consciousness is not a result of quantum phenomena, zero-point energy, or any other physical system, 3) the brain is more of a transmitter of consciousness rather than a creator of consciousness, 4) our physical world is not a closed system, so that 5) our physical world is not predetermined by initial conditions, and 6) there is a much vaster, richer reality that transcends the physical world.
These results have profound implications for our view of the world and what reality is. To start with, it provides a limitation on physics, neuroscience, and medicine. Physics can no longer claim to be a “theory of everything”, since it would be unable to explain consciousness. This is a very bold assertion – that future advances in physics would never be able to explain how awareness is created. How can this claim be made?
Interface Theory of Perception
The reality we perceive is not as real as we may think. This becomes more obvious when we look at the world view of particular animals. For example, in 1981 male Australian jewel beetles were found trying to mate with discarded beer bottles. These beer bottles were the same color as females, and had dimpled glass that reflected light the same way as the tiny bumps on the female beetles’ forewings. The males kept trying to mate with the bottles until they were exhausted, or eaten by ants. This is an example of what’s called an evolutionary trap - an animal’s perception is confused by an artificial object and so the animal behaves inappropriately. Another example are baby sea turtles, which when born follow the lights of nearby hotels instead of following the light of the moon into the sea. A third example are hummingbirds, which tried to feed on red electrical insulators, but got electrocuted instead. These examples were fixed when the beer bottles were made without the dimpled glass, when hotel lights were turned off while baby turtles were hatching from their eggs, and when the electrical insulators were manufactured in a different color.
In the interface theory of perception (D. Hoffman, M. Singh, and C. Prakash, Psychon Bull Rev (2015) 22: 1480, See https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-015-0890-8), the perceptions of an organism are considered the “user interface” between that organism and the world. Our human perceptions show separate objects interacting in a three-dimensional world. These objects include plants, animals, atoms and galaxies. These perceptions have enabled us to survive and thrive as a species. What Hoffman et. al. have proven mathematically is that world perceptions oriented towards fitness are evolutionarily favored over world perceptions oriented to truth. In the case of the Australian jewel beetle, the male beetle’s perceptions could not distinguish the difference between a beer bottle and a female. Before beer bottles entered their world, their perceptions worked and were fitted for the environment. Unfortunately for them, their perceptions did not reveal the truth of what they were doing.
An example of an artificial interface is the computer desktop. The reality of a computer, with its billions of transistors and circuits, would be unintelligible to us. Instead, the computer shows us a screen with icons that stand for programs or data, and by manipulating these icons, we can do useful work. A hypothetical being living on the computer screen would believe the fundamental particles to be pixels, which come in three colors, red, blue and green. A more realistic view of the computer would not be accessible to such a being, and would not be useful to us. So what would a more real version of reality look like to us?
Four views of consciousness
There are many theories of what consciousness is or where it comes from, and these theories can be divided into four main points of view: materialism, physicalism, panpsychism, and idealism.
In materialism, sometimes called scientism, or scientific materialism, consciousness naturally arises from the organization of the brain. This is the predominant view among scientists and doctors. In this view, the brain generates consciousness through its complexity, so that consciousness can best be understood through neuroscience.
A variant of materialism is physicalism: consciousness is generated by the physical world, and will eventually be explained by a theory of everything, the goal of physics. Consciousness is often linked to quantum mechanics, because of its weirdness and non-local nature. In this view, the brain generates consciousness not from its organization, but from its physical properties. Thus consciousness can best be understood through physics.
In panpsychism, consciousness is a fundamental part of the physical world. Everything has both physical properties and some form of consciousness, even elementary particles. The brain does not generate consciousness, but regulates the consciousness that pervades the body.
In idealism, consciousness is more fundamental than the physical world, and does not need a brain to exist. This is the view of spiritual teachers. In this view, the brain is a receiver of consciousness, analogous to how a radio receives information from outside itself and uses that information to generate speech and music. In this view, consciousness can best be understood from an enlightened perspective that requires a change in consciousness itself.
Materialism
Democritus in ancient Greece (460-370 B.C.) believed that everything could be explained by natural laws, with no need of a god or supernatural realm. This point of view is called materialism.
Materialism in the West strengthened as a result of the Catholic Church’s insistence on its doctrine, persecuting all those who disagreed. This doctrine applied not only to God and the world of spirit, but also to the physical world. In February 1616, the notion that the sun was the center of the solar system was deemed "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." In 1633, Galileo Galilei was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for holding the view that the sun is the center of the universe, and that the Earth moves around the sun. It wasn’t until 1822 that the Catholic Church allowed the printing of heliocentric books, despite strong evidence for its truth, and it wasn’t until 1979 that the Church officially declared that Galileo was right after all!
If the church was demonstrably wrong about the material world, could it be trusted with the world of God and consciousness? Where was the evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible? As science developed, the need for a God to run the world became less and less. Today the material world seems to explain itself. Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, came up with a model on how the universe could come into being spontaneously, without the need of a creator God (see “The Grand Design”, by S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, 2010).
In materialism, only physical reality exists. Consciousness is generated by the complexity of the brain, and upon physical death it ceases to exist. Psychic phenomena, miracles, God, and near death experiences are not real. Freud in 1907 called religion a “universal obsessional neurosis”.
In this view, consciousness emerges out of the interactions of the billions of neurons in our brains, and may arise in any similarly complex system. Thus the possibility exists that consciousness may arise in advanced computers. This point of view was illustrated in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” which came out in 1968. In this movie, a computer named Hal was sentient, and eventually began to disobey commands from the astronauts. Since our computers are getting more and more complex, eventually they will surpass the complexity of a human brain, and will at that point become sentient. In our galaxy alone, there are 100 billion stars, most of which have planets. Some fraction of those planets will have life, and some fraction of those will develop technological capabilities. Many of them could exist for millions of years, and would have far superior technologies. Could we all be simulations in one of their advanced computers? Elon Musk has said “he thinks there's a "one in billions" chance that we're not living in a computer simulation right now”. One version of this view are the Matrix movies, starting in 1999, in which our world is just a virtual reality created by machines in order to enslave us.
Many scientists believe in both God and materialism, and compartmentalize these views to avoid confronting the contradictions between them. When at work, they do their research with the assumption that everything can be explained by natural processes. When in church, they accept the reality of God and the doctrines of whatever church they belong to.
Physicalism
As physics developed in the 19th century, what we considered the physical world was expanded to include electric and magnetic fields. In the 20th century, matter was shown to consist of quantum fields dancing around according to the equations of quantum physics. Materialism now includes quantum wave functions, space-time itself, and poorly-understood phenomena such as dark matter and dark energy. These are all physical quantities that are subject to the laws of physics.
These developments of physics led to a variant of materialism called physicalism, where consciousness is generated from the physical structure of the brain instead of its organization. John von Neumann in 1932, and Eugene Wigner in 1967, suggested that consciousness could collapse the wave functions of quantum mechanics - the Von Neumann – Wigner Interpretation. In 1975, Fritjof Capra published “The Tao of Physics”, which laid out numerous parallels between quantum mechanics and Eastern spirituality. Roger Penrose, in his book “The Emperor’s New Mind”, 1989, proposed a model in which consciousness results from the collapse of wave functions in the microtubules of the brain, and this collapse is due to the effects of quantum gravity.
Many have taken physicalism beyond what physics can support. Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who walked on the moon in Apollo 14, wrote that “The basis of subjective experience is rooted in the quantum attribute of nature called non-locality. … telepathy, clairvoyance seem to be easily explained by means of the nonlocal quantum hologram”. However, there is no such thing as a “quantum hologram” in the way Mitchell was using it. Some say that the non-locality of of entangled particles in quantum mechanics can explain psychic phenomena that requires knowledge of future events. However, quantum non-locality can not send information faster than the speed of light, and thus can’t explain psychic phenomena.
Panpsychism
In panpsychism, consciousness pervades the physical world and all the objects within it. Consciousness and quantum fields arise from the same fundamental field. It’s been propounded by Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, James and Whitehead. In this view, even elementary particles may have a rudimentary awareness. All consciousness is connected to some physical object, whether it’s an atom, human or planet. There is only the physical world, but this reality includes consciousness.
Idealism
In idealism, consciousness is more fundamental than the physical world, and does not need to be connected to a physical object, unlike panpsychism. Consciousness does not need a physical brain to exist, but can reside in a reality that is not physical. Our consciousness exists before birth and after death. Furthermore, only awareness can investigate awareness. This view underlies shamanism and most spiritual schools. Many movies are based on this view, including “What Dreams May Come”, a 1998 movie starring Robbin Williams, and “Heaven Can Wait”, a 1978 movie starring Warren Beatty.
Quantum Mechanics
Why have so many authors tried to link consciousness and spirituality with quantum mechanics? To better understand their arguments, we will digress into a brief description of quantum mechanics. Feel free to skip this section if it gets too technical!
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton showed that light consists of waves that can be diffracted and produce interference patterns. In the 19th century, Maxwell wrote down the equations of electromagnetism that provided a mathematical description of the wave nature of light, explaining diffraction and interference patterns. In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote a paper that showed that light comes in discrete packages of energy called photons. This paper was based on the photoelectric effect: when light is shined on a piece of metal, energetic electrons are ejected, and the energy of these ejected electrons depend on the frequency or wavelength of the light, but not the intensity of the light. Einstein explained this by postulating that all light comes in packets of energy called photons, and the energy of each photon is equal to its frequency times a constant called Planck’s constant, h = 6x10-34 erg-sec. Thus light could behave both as a wave and a particle.
DeBroglie postulated in 1924 that not only does light act as both a wave and a particle, but even particles such as electrons can also act as both waves and particles. The waves of electrons, called DeBroglie waves, have a wavelength given by l = h/mv, where h is Planck’s constant, as before, and mv is the mass times the velocity of the particle – its momentum. In 1925, Erwin Schrödinger discovered the equation, now called the Schrödinger equation, that describes these matter waves. When the Schrödinger equation was solved for the hydrogen atom, it explained in great detail the observed spectrum of light emitted by hydrogen – a triumph for quantum theory. To date, quantum mechanics is an incredibly successful theory – it has been verified again and again, and no experiment has ever contradicted quantum theory’s predictions.
In quantum mechanics, the wave nature of an electron, or any particle, is described by what’s called a wave function, which basically describes the probability of where the particle may be, or how fast it’s moving. For example, in a hydrogen atom, the wave function of the electron that is in the lowest energy state is spherically symmetric, and has its highest value closest to the nucleus and gets smaller the further it gets from the nucleus. Schrodinger’s equation gives a way to compute what that wave function is, and how it changes in time. If the electron is in an excited state, with more energy, then its wave function has a different shape. When the electron falls from a high-energy state to a lower energy state, its wave function changes in a discrete way, and it emits a photon whose energy equals the energy difference between the two states. The wave function of the photon then expands through space until it gets absorbed.
For example, when an atom at the surface of the sun emits a photon, the wave function of that photon expands as it travels through space at the speed of light, and by the time the photon reaches the earth, its wave function is millions of miles wide. The photon can appear anywhere within that millions-of-miles wide window. However, when the photon is detected on earth, say by someone seeing a flash of light as it enters their eye, the wave function of that photon collapses instantaneously to a point on that person’s retina. This collapse of the wave function does not obey the Schrödinger equation, but instead happens in a probabilistic way. The photon randomly appears at some point, and the probability of the photon appearing at that point is proportional to the square of the value of the wave function at that point. This introduces an element of randomness within quantum mechanics. In general, quantum mechanics can only predict probabilities of what may happen.
Before the 1920s, physicists believed the future was determined in principle – if we knew all positions and velocities of all particles at one time, we would know them for all future times. The probabilistic predictions of quantum mechanics introduces an essential randomness into the universe, making the future impossible to predict, even in principle.
Non-locality and entangled particles
One of the weirdest properties of quantum mechanics is entanglement, in which two particles share one wave function. For example, if an atom emits two photons, these photons share common properties, even though they fly off in different directions. If you measure the polarization of one photon, you immediately know the polarization of the other photon. This is like finding a right-handed glove, and knowing that its partner must be left-handed. However, this analogy fails to capture the strangeness of what’s happening. In the case of a pair of gloves, each one is already left or right handed, and we’re just seeing which one is which. In the case of entangled photons, the polarizations aren’t pre-existing. They aren’t chosen until a measurement is made. The polarizations can be measured at any angle, and once an angle is selected and the measurement made, the other photon’s polarization is instantly determined, even thought it may be many light years away. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use entanglement to send messages instantaneously – information can’t travel faster than the speed of light. However, entanglement can be used to send information securely. It is also the basis of quantum computing, where entanglement can enable computations far faster than is possible with a classical computer.
Uncertainty principle and zero-point energy
Everything we could ever know about a particular particle is given by its wave function. The wave function will give the probability of finding it at a given point, and also will give the probability of finding it moving at a certain speed. It turns out that the amount of uncertainty of its position, times the amount of uncertainty of its momentum (its speed times its mass), must be greater than or equal to Planck’s constant divided by 2 pi. This is called the uncertainty principle. The more accurately we know where an electron is, the less we know how fast it’s moving. Any particle confined to a small region, such as an electron inside an atom, must have some momentum given by the uncertainty principle. Thus in quantum mechanics, particles can never be at rest. Even in the lowest energy state, a particle must still move around, and this motion is called zero-point energy. Because the three quarks inside a proton are confined to a small volume, they must move around at speeds close to the speed of light.
There is a similar uncertainty principle for electric and magnetic fields. The laws of quantum mechanics require that electric and magnetic fields can never both be zero everywhere inside any volume. Thus what we call a vacuum must contain electric and magnetic fields that fluctuate all the time. These fluctuations of the electric and magnetic fields are part of the zero-point energy, and it pervades all space.
In the relativistic version of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle also applies to the number of particles inside a given volume. Pairs of electrons and their anti-particles, positrons, appear and disappear all the time. These are called virtual particles, since they appear briefly and then disappear, and they are also part of the zero-point energy that pervades all space.
This zero-point energy is very real. If two parallel conducting plates are brought together with a small gap between them, then the electric fields of the zero-point energy between the plates are constrained to go to zero at each of the plates. This constraint reduces the total zero-point field allowed to be there, so on average there is less energy between the plates than outside them. This results in a force that pulls the plates together: the Casmir effect.
The zero-point energy can also be thought of as a source of spontaneous motion and randomness. For example, each electron feels the random tugs of the zero-point energy, so its position and motion fluctuate in random ways.
Subjective phenomena
Modern science is silent about consciousness and how it’s produced. Most scientists believe that it’s produced somehow by the brain, and that as we understand the functioning of the brain better, we will eventually understand how it produces awareness. However, there are several lines of subjective phenomena that strongly suggest that consciousness is not produced by the brain – that the brain is more like a radio receiver that can tune into a pre-existing awareness, rather than producing that awareness directly. Here I will present several lines of evidence: remote viewing, reincarnation, near-death experiences, the experiences of professional ghost hunters, and stories of intervening spirits. These will each be explored in turn.
Remote Viewing
In a typical remote viewing session, the experimenter choses two people, a sender and a receiver. The receiver sits in a room with no outside view, and is shielded from all outside electromagnetic signals such as radio waves. The sender opens a sealed envelope which contains a destination, and drives to that designated place. He/she gazes at what’s there, mentally trying to send an impression to the receiver. The receiver then chooses one of four pictures provided that best matches any impression received. From chance alone, we would expect a 25% success rate. Many labs across the world have done this, and the success rate is closer to 33%. Four examples: the Psychophysical Research Lab in Princeton, New Jersey, had a success rate of 32% in 329 sessions. The University of Amsterdam had a success rate of 37% in 124 sessions. The University of Edinburgh had a success rate of 33% in 97 sessions, and the Institute for Parapsychology in North Carolina had a success rate of 33% in 100 sessions (see http://www.academia.edu/9540484/Through_Time_and_Space_The_Evidence_for_Remote_Viewing).
The remote viewing at the Stanford Research Institute, from 1973 to 1988, and at Science Applications International Corporation, from 1990 – 1995, together had 26,000 trials in 154 experiments over the years. The results were very significant, with a chance result of only 1 in 1020. Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at U.C. Davis, in “An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning” (1995), wrote “It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated. This conclusion is not based on belief, but rather on commonly accepted scientific criteria. The phenomena has been replicated in a number of forms across laboratories and cultures.” (see http://www.academia.edu/9540484/Through_Time_and_Space_The_Evidence_for_Remote_Viewing)
The U.S. Government operated a remote viewing program in the Stargate program, with Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Christopher Green, Pat Price and others. They found a downed Russian aircraft in North Africa, located a kidnapped American general in Northern Italy, discovered a hidden Soviet weapons factory in Siberia, described the construction of a top-secret Soviet submarine, and predicted the failure of a Chinese atomic bomb test three days before the test. (A fascinating account of all this is in “ESP Wars East & West” by E. May, V. Rubel and L. Auerbach, 2014)
Can this be explained by the correlations of quantum mechanics? Even though the correlations of entangled particles appear instantaneously, these correlations can’t be used to send Information faster than the speed of light. Because there’s no acceptable physical model for psychic phenomena, most scientists don’t believe that psychic phenomena are possible.
Reincarnation
There are many accounts of children who apparently recall previous lives. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia has documented and published many of these accounts (see https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/who-we-are/dr-ian-stevenson/). Typically, a young child 3 to 5 years old will start talking about a previous lifetime, naming his former self and close relatives, stating where he lived and how he died. One of the most famous cases is that of Shanti Devi, 1926-1987 (see https://www.carolbowman.com/dr-ian-stevenson/case-shanti-devi/). As soon as she could speak, she talked about a previous lifetime as Lugdi Bai, who was born in a nearby village in 1902. Lugdi married Kedernath Chaube, and died 10 days after her child was born in 1925. Shanti remembered many details of Lugdi’s life, such as who had affairs with whom and where the money was buried. When she was nine years old, Shanti finally met her previous husband Kedernath, and he became convinced she was the reincarnation of Lugdi. What convinced him was that Lugdi had arthritis, and this nine-year-old girl described in detail how their sexual relations were modified to accommodate Lugdi’s arthritis. No one else could possibly have known about this. Mahatma Ghandi put together a commission of 15 people who took Shanti to Lugdi’s village, and verified that Shanti knew many details of Lugdi’s life there, including words of the local dialect and many family secrets.
Another account is that of Titu Singh (1983-), who remembered being shot in the head as Suresh Verma. Titu met his wife from that former life, and convinced her that he was Suresh when he remembered giving her sweets on a particular outing. Titu identified the man who killed him in his previous life, and the man confessed his crime to the police when they questioned him. Amazingly, Titu’s head has two birthmarks that correspond to the entrance and exit bullet wounds to Suresh’s head! (see http://www.iisis.net/index.php?page=suresh-verma-titu-singh-reincarnation-past-life-physical-resemblance-birthmarks&hl=en_US)
Near Death Experiences
A near death experience occurs when someone, near death or in a coma, experiences visiting a non-physical place, often calling it the place that the soul travels to after death. One of the most famous near death experiences occurred to Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, who was in a meningitis coma for a week in November 2008 (see http://ebenalexander.com/), during which his cortex was flat-lined. Nevertheless, he recalled being escorted around a world of extraordinary beauty by a woman he didn’t recognize. He met an all-loving, all-powerful deity that we could call God. He was told “you are loved, deeply cherished, forever. There is nothing you have to fear.” Some years later, he made contact with his biological family – he had been adopted when he was a few weeks old. He found he had a biological sister who had died years before, and when he saw a picture of her, he realized she was the woman who escorted him around heaven! Before his near death experience, he was a strict materialist who didn’t believe in God. Afterwards, he believes in God and the eternity of our souls – “it’s the only thing that makes sense”.
Ghost stories
There are many stories of ghosts that haunt specific locations. One famous account is of Lois of Livermore (see “Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Ghost Hunter’s Guide” by L. Auerbach, 2005). A family moved into a recently purchased house, and everyone in the family saw a ghost who would walk through the house, wave, and then disappear. The 12-year old son, Chris, was able to talk with her, and she told him her name was Lois, and that she used to live in that house. The family contacted Loyd Auerbach, a ghost hunter, who drove down to Livermore to visit them. On the way, he had trouble with his car, and talked with his assistants about buying a new car. When he got to the house, Chris was able to translate Lois’s words to Loyd. Lois told Loyd that she knew he would be getting a new car. When asked how she knew that, she replied that she knew he was coming, and was afraid he would be bringing machines like those used in the movie “Ghostbusters”, so she travelled to him and listened in as he drove. Lois described how she lived in that house, and one day went to the hospital and died there. She then came back to the house. One question was why Chris would see her in so many ages and outfits. She replied, “I’m just a ball of energy, like those aliens on Star Trek!” Her story was verified by a living relative who had never spoken with Chris or his family. Since then, Chris’s children see and talk with Lois when they visit their grandparents.
Intervening spirits
William Bird (1891-1984) was a journalist whose life was saved by his dead brother during World War I. He belonged to the 42nd Battalion of the Canadian Black Watch, stationed near Vimy Ridge in France. One night he was awakened by two hands on his back. He looked up to see his brother Steve, who had been killed two years before. Steve never talked, but motioned for William to follow. He led William out of the trench, onto no man’s land, and into a crater. The spirit disappeared, and William fell asleep in that crater. When he woke up, he returned to the bunker he had been in before, only to find that a shell had killed everyone in the bunker after he had left. Had he not been woken up by his brother Steve, he would have been killed as well (see “Ghosts Have Warm Hands” by W. Bird, 1997).
My own grandfather was an electrician. A few days after he died in 1972, my grandmother heard a noise. The chain on a lamp that hadn’t been working was moving around. After awhile, the lamp started working again. When our family heard this, we looked at each other and acknowledged that our grandfather had come back to fix that lamp.
When I give talks about these intervening spirits and ask the audience for their own stories, about one third have similar stories to tell.
Idealism
These subjective phenomena strongly support the view of idealism, that our consciousness is not based on physical reality. Materialism and physicalism can’t acknowledge the reality of psychic phenomena, reincarnation, near-death experiences, ghosts, or intervening spirits. If any of these exist, then neither materialism nor physicalism can be correct. Physicalism can accommodate reincarnation if we posit that memories can be stored somehow in quantum fields, such as the zero-point energy that pervades all space, and that we can sometimes pick up these stored memories. However, both materialism and physicalism have trouble explaining how disembodied spirits can exist. Even panpsychism requires some kind of physical object to accompany consciousness. In the case of near-death experiences, ghosts, and intervening spirits, there is communication with disembodied spirits - conscious beings that have no physical bodies. Only idealism can accommodate communication with discarnate spirits. Idealism can also help explain the teachings of spiritual schools, mediums, channeling of spirits, and indigenous practices such as ancestral worship and shamanism.
The distinction between physical and non-physical
This is a good place to emphasize the distinction between what’s physical and what’s non-physical. By physical, I mean anything that is part of our physical reality. It can be measured quantitatively and obeys the laws of physics. Examples of what is physical includes our physical bodies, electricity, magnetism, light, gravity, quarks, the extra dimensions of string theory, dark matter, dark energy, black holes, quantum wave functions, and zero-point energy.
Non-physical means beyond space and time, not quantifiable, and does not obey the laws of physics. Examples of what is non-physical include consciousness, ghosts and spirits, the Being of Light often seen in near-death experiences, the upper and lower worlds of shamanism, subtle energies like chi, prana, and Reiki, and boundless presence.
Our body’s fear response, which includes adrenaline and the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, is physical. Our experience of the fear is non-physical.
Non-dual awareness unites the physical and non-physical
Materialism tries to include consciousness as an epiphenomenon. But it ignores all conscious phenomena except for ego activity.
Physicalism and panpsychism see consciousness as co-emerging with the physical world. Many people are hopeful that new discoveries in science will unify consciousness and the spiritual world with the physical world. However, I don’t believe this is possible, as science only deals with the physical world.
Idealism sees the physical world as emerging out of consciousness. However, ordinary consciousness does not perceive the unity of the physical with the non-physical. The experience of this unity requires a change of consciousness to non-dual awareness. Non-dual awareness is the awareness of this unity, and subjectively feels very different than ordinary awareness. So how can we change our consciousness to non-dual awareness?
Technology of consciousness
Traditionally, there are many ways to achieve non-dual awareness. These include meditation, inquiry, drumming, dancing, entheogens, breathwork, prayer, fasting, lucid dreaming, and shamanism.
Meditation
Perhaps the simplest technology of consciousness is meditation. One of the most important effects of meditation is the quieting of the mind. This allows the dissolving of the ego, with all of its defense mechanisms. Then more subtle realms of awareness become visible, like the stars becoming visible as the sun sets.
Inquiry
Another technology of consciousness is the technique of inquiry. Here inquiry is not a mental process of following ideas, but instead it’s following the thread of a feeling or sensation. For example, if we notice we’re angry at someone, or at some situation, we allow ourselves to fully feel the anger, to the point where it’s a strong sensation in our body. If we dis-identify from the trigger, we may notice that the anger has a sense of expansion and strength in it. This sensation of expansion and strength is a deeper layer than the anger itself, and represents the transformation of anger into an aspect of awareness that is pure strength and expansiveness. In this way, inquiry allows our awareness to follow feelings and sensations to deeper layers inside us.
Drumming
A third technology of consciousness is the use of drumming to stop the mind, and to carry conscious awareness to other realms, typically called the Upper and Lower worlds. This is a common shamanic technique used around the world. In Scandinavia, the church made drumming illegal in an attempt to disrupt shamanic practices.
Dancing
Some cultures use dancing as a way to cultivate non-dual awareness. Two examples of this are the whirling dervishes in the Sufi tradition, and the Ghost dance of the American Lakota.
Entheogens
Many indigenous cultures use entheogens: psychoactive plants that change the quality of our awareness. In the Amazon basin, native tribes use ayahuasca, which combines MAO inhibitors from the ayahuasca vine with DMT from the chacruna plant to produce a potent brew. In the Mexican desert, the indigenous people eat psilocybin mushrooms to attain altered states. In the Peruvian highlands, they use San Pedro cactus, which contains mescaline. In the southwest part of the United States, the native Americans use peyote, which also contains mescaline. Shamans in the Sonoran Desert smoke the venom of the Sonoran Desert Toad, which contains 5-Meo-DMT, a variant of DMT that’s perhaps the fastest route to non-dual awareness.
Non-dual view
What is the non-dual view? It is the realization that we are not our physical bodies, or our emotions, or our thoughts. We are conscious awareness itself. This conscious awareness does not feel separate, but feels part of an infinite consciousness that transcends space and time. This may be experienced as an oceanic feeling of oneness that embraces both the physical and the non-physical. This may also be experienced as a vast emptiness that is the source of all being. Everything, including our awareness, is an expression of this source. The direct experience that “I” am this emptiness is called self-realization, and we can talk and act as an expression of this source.
In this non-dual view, consciousness is inherently non-local. We are all part of a Cosmic Unity, which brings all space and all time together. This provides a natural way to allow for psychic phenomena.
What can we gain from a non-dual perspective? It shows us the true reality beneath our perceptual world, what’s underlying our “user interface”. It leads to self-discovery and wholeness – Who am I? What am I? It has the potential to heal our emotional wounds, allowing us to experience joy and bliss. It allows us to connect with our internal guidance, and to connect to nature in a profound way.
My perspective on life has completely changed. I used to live in a model of the world created in my head. It was known and felt safe. I explored the physical world, extending my understanding as far as science could reach. Now I live more in the unknown in my heart. I’m exploring non-physical worlds through meditation and shamanism, and feel awe and humbled when I realize how little I know compared to the Infinite Mystery.
Explore the Great Mystery
Our Earth is an insignificant speck in a vast universe, with around 1023 inhabitable planets within our cosmic horizon, about 13.8 billion light years away. Nevertheless, in the infinitely larger non-physical reality, as conscious beings we are very special: we are all part of the Divine Reality. Ultimately, we can only explore these worlds through our own subjective experience. Follow your heart!