I think I may say that for my part I should be slightly more annoyed than surprised if I should find myself in some sense persisting immediately after the death of my present body. One can only wait and see, or alternately (which is no less likely) wait and not see.
Professor C. D. Broad, philosopher, 1962
“BEING born twice,” said Voltaire (always one to question orthodoxy), “is no more remarkable than being born once.” Scientists, or at any rate orthodox Western scientists, would beg to disagree. Science knows exactly how it stands on man’s capacity to survive death and on the possibility of reincarnation. The scientific view is simple. Our consciousness of the world is generated by brain function. Memory is located entirely within the brain. Reincarnation involves the continuation of memories independently of a brain, something that, from the point of view of science, is impossible. There is no mechanism that science knows for storing or accessing memory outside the body or in the absence of a brain. When, at death, the brain dies, so do our memories and so does our consciousness of the world. There is nothing beyond this, and any step in this direction is into the unproven and speculative.
Reincarnation is the belief that we do not live one single life, but many. With each new incarnation we acquire a new body. What distinguishes a belief in reincarnation from other beliefs centred on the immortality of the soul is the importance attached to personal identity, and the belief that this, too, can survive and be reborn with many of our physical traits from previous lives.
Even if we accept that, whatever terminology we use, some part of us, our essence, or spirit, or soul, or psychosphore, can survive death, there are still intellectual stumbling blocks to accepting reincarnation. Why doesn’t everyone have past-life memories? If we exclude those cases for which there is a clear scientific explanation, at the most—the very most—there are probably only a few hundred cases that demand some explanation, whether or not reincarnation is that explanation. Against those we have to set the billions of human beings of whom the only lasting trace is the legacy of their genes.
Then there is the question of arithmetic. The numbers simply do not add up if reincarnation involves a one-to-one transmission of a human soul that has already lived. In the last 2,000 years the population of the earth has increased from 200 million to something approaching 6 billion, and it is still rising. This makes a nonsense of the argument that every one of us has lived another human life before. If one argues that reincarnation is not everyone’s lot, what is it that determines that some of us have lived before and will live again, and some of us haven’t and won’t? Is violent death the criterion, as some cultures believe?
Many other cultures and communities believe reincarnation to be possible because they are not restricted by a Western scientific framework. And in the Middle Ages, before science gained a firm foothold in our culture, the Western world, too, believed in the existence of a soul that inhabited the body and survived its death. So how did we get ourselves into this scientific straitjacket which allows for no soul and no survival? Simply because of the way that scientific thinking has developed.
An excellent review of this process can be found in Richard Tarnas’s book The Passion of the Western Mind. At the time of the Greeks the soul was considered to be an integral part of nature; there was no question of the separation of physical reality and soul. The split started to develop in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as Western thinkers began to question the nature of the soul, and became complete in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the influence of Descartes and Galileo.
The philosophy of Descartes was a dualist philosophy based on the notion of God as separate from the world. Descartes defined two substances: the res extensa and the res cogitans. The res extensa, or “the extended thing,” had a precise location in space and was synonymous with the body. The res cogitans, or “the thinking thing,” was synonymous with the mind and the soul, and had by definition no spatial location, although it was connected to the body by the pineal gland. It was, so to speak, outside the world. This splitting off of body from mind has caused endless difficulties, as it is not clear how the two are meant to communicate and where the mind and soul are located.
In saying this, Descartes set in motion a train of thought that has led our current scientific story into great difficulties when mind and consciousness need explanation. This view was very helpful to Descartes because it protected him from the wrath of the Church. The mind and the soul were split off from the body, and given to the Church to do with what they would, and the body became an objective entity in space.
Galileo changed the way in which we viewed the world. It was in the seventeenth century, at the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, that he formulated the belief structures that underpin our science and on which it is based today. He suggested that objects existed in their own right and had properties that could be weighed and measured and, more fundamentally, that objects would remain even if they were not observed.
This idea of the permanence of objects is so common today that we hardly give it a second thought, but in Galileo’s time it was a radical concept and led to a totally different way of thinking. Until then, objects and the person perceiving them had been linked together, forming a unity. Galileo split this unity and produced a disunited world. On the one hand was an external, objective world that was independent of its observer. Objects in this external world had what he termed primary qualities because even when the object was unobserved these qualities (weight, mass, etc.) would continue unchanged. But he also recognised that there existed a second, subjective world, the world of sense perception. When an object was perceived, the very act of perception bestowed what he called secondary qualities on it—secondary because these qualities were dependent on the individual observer and disappeared when no observer was present. No object is red unless it is seen to be red, or hot unless it is felt to be hot.
Newton’s theory of colour was based on the concept of an external world independent of the observer. In his experiments on colour, Newton showed that a thin pencil of white light passed through a prism produced a much expanded beam of light divided up into different colours. He argued that the splitting of this beam was due to a different angle of refrangence (now called refraction) for each colour, and he had various theories about why this should be different for different colours. We know now that Newton’s theory was correct, that different coloured lights vibrate at different frequencies, are slowed by the prism by different amounts and are therefore refracted differently.
However, the whole of Newton’s theory was based on the fact that he did indeed perceive different colours. The outside world was constructed in his subjective consciousness. If Newton had been colour-blind, he would have perceived the extended pencil of light which came out of the prism as different shades of grey; looking at this grey spectrum, it would have been almost impossible for him to have defined a coherent theory of colour. Obviously, then, secondary qualities are very important to our science; in fact, most scientific theories start as observations—that is, they are secondary-quality theories, and later become primary-quality theories only when they are made more formal, usually by mathematics.
And yet in Galileo’s view it was the external, independent world, with its own qualities, uncontaminated by our perception, which was primary. The internal, subjective world was of little value because in the last resort its secondary qualities are temporary, existing only for as long as they are perceived.
The stage was now set. Before Galileo made his astonishing perceptual breakthrough, the world was a unity. Afterwards the world was defined as something outside ourselves, something objective from which could be culled the truths about its structure and behaviour which we call scientific facts. It was a dead world, a random world, a world without meaning and purpose. It was also a world which had no ethics and no moral values because those are purely subjective, secondary qualities, and the secondary-quality world of perception was unimportant and subordinate.
The science of Galileo and Newton was quite brilliant and has been highly successful. Without it, modern science would not have flourished or modern technology developed. There would have been no cars, no microchips, no understanding of the flow of electrons in wires, leading to radio and television. There would be no theories of the universe. It has allowed us to set up hypotheses, form theories and make predictions apparently quite independently of ourselves and to achieve deep insights into the structure of nature.
Galilean science has helped us understand the brain, the way neurons fire, how they group together in pools, how features of the outside world are extracted from the stream of neuronal firing which makes up the information entering the brain. It has helped us understand some of the rules governing the way in which the brain puts together a sensory picture of our environment, both external and internal. Modern neuroimaging has shown that the brain deals with different functions in different areas. It is common knowledge that hearing, vision, smell and sensation all take place in separate brain areas. Even the transcendental feelings of being at one with God and the universe are being mapped on to the brain. Neuroimaging pictures taken while the person is under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs such as cylocybin, LSD and ketamine, which induce such transcendental feelings, show that specific brain areas are activated. Even God appears to manifest in a particular brain area.
Correlations between subjective experience (for example, seeing an angry face) and neuronal firing (for example, amygdala response) abound in the brain. But nowhere in this picture is there any theory which suggests how you get from neuronal functioning to conscious experience. And this is our dilemma. For without a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness and the way in which that consciousness interacts with brain function, we cannot even begin to approach the question of a soul and the possibility of reincarnation. Galilean science has told us almost everything about the nature of the world—and almost nothing about the nature of our own consciousness as, by definition, its theories exclude consciousness (secondary qualities).
And yet there is little truth in the idea of an independent, objective world. The whole scientific enterprise can take place only in the consciousness of the human mind. Without consciousness, there would be no theories and no science. Galileo argued that matter was the primary quality of the universe and consciousness was secondary, but it is now clear that consciousness is primary and that the material world takes on the form that it does only because this is the way in which it is structured in our consciousness.
Reincarnation is another belief system and it, too, is dependent on our consciousness. Because it depends more on thoughts and feelings than on objective Galilean evidence, it is impossible, without a secondary-quality science, either to prove or disprove. The science of the Reformation denied the possibility of either a soul—that is, the continuation of personal consciousness after death—or the possibility that reincarnation could take place. There is thus little point in looking to Galilean scientific theory for validation of ideas concerning reincarnation. All we can do is to suggest the kind of world-view that would make reincarnation a possibility, even though we might still have no idea of its modus operandi. For example, is the world as fixed and are objects as separate as Galilean science would suggest?
Theories of reincarnation, as we have seen, require a comprehensive theory of consciousness, an explanation of the way in which the brain interacts with conscious processes and some general mechanism for storing individual experience. There is not one word about consciousness, except descriptions of the way it is reflected in neuronal firing, in any scientific theory of the brain. It is only the correlates of consciousness that are mentioned. The process involved when the colour “red” comes to consciousness, for example, is not—cannot—be described; all we know is that a particular set of neurones fire in response to light at that particular wavelength.
At the moment physicists are way in front of biologists in beginning to form a general theory of consciousness. Theories such as quantum mechanics are beginning to be developed in which consciousness is an integral property of the world, and these theories are being applied to the brain. If consciousness is an integral property of the world, then there is no reason why individual consciousness cannot exist outside the brain. This is getting very close to saying that some component of man exists outside the body. If brain processes could be shown to modify structures beyond the brain, or could themselves be modified by such structures, then there is the possibility of a soul outside the brain. There is also the possibility that this soul could be released by death.
It has now been recognised that what is needed is a new science of consciousness, a totally subjective science which recognises the primacy of conscious experience. This new science would set about healing the rift produced by the Galilean/Newtonian revolution. It would include consciousness within its theories. One suggestion is that matter should be regarded as having two “faces,” a subjective, internal face, and an objective, external face. The scientist, viewing objectively, sees the external face of matter; the internal face has to be experienced, and is seen subjectively. Patterns of vibrating air particles are heard as music, because brain processes extract the internal face of matter and allow it to become conscious. There need no longer be a divide between an objective, external world and a subjective, internal world because they are both simply different views of the same thing.
In the early twentieth century two major new advances—the theory of relativity (dealing with very large masses) and the theory of quantum mechanics (dealing with the atomic world)—have shown that matter may indeed be highly interconnected. These theories have shown not that Newton and Galileo were wrong but that their view was incomplete, and that the simple Newtonian view of the world needs to be expanded.
One of the most important and earliest quantum-mechanical experiments showed that light could exist as either waves or subatomic particles (photons). If an experiment were so set up that the track of the photons could always be known—for example, if a beam of light were passed through one small pinhole—then light behaved as a particle. On the other hand, if there were two pinholes so that it was impossible to know which pinhole light had passed through, then light behaved as waves. These waves of light interfered with each other and produced an interference pattern on the screen behind the pinholes.
In quantum mechanics, then, particles can be defined as either a wave or a particle. When the wave description is used, then every wave is connected with every other in the universe. At the everyday level (the macro level), matter behaves as particles and the interconnectedness is less apparent. This suggests that although the Galilean view of independent objects is correct at the macro level, from the point of view of each individual particle the universe is highly interconnected.
An important quantum-mechanical concept is that until the precise position of the particles is measured the state of the system is undefined, The significance of this finding is that in order for the world to become manifest, it has to be acted on in some way. Until then, it remains in a virtual form. Measurement in a quantum-mechanical experiment can be carried out by a remote sensor or by a human observer. The important point is that the measurement has to be made before the quantum-mechanical state collapses into a defined physical state. This is the closest that any physical theory has come to incorporating consciousness.
This is an intriguing theory, but, because it deals with atomic and subatomic particles, can we really apply it to a macro object like the brain? The recent cosmology which states that the universe at its inception was smaller than half the size of the electron, but yet contained everything that has flowed from it, has linked together the very large and the very small, so that the distinction between them no longer applies. For many years it was thought that the brain was also too large, too hot (too much thermal noise or too much atomic movement) and too wet for quantum-mechanical events to take place. However, recently a doctor, Stuart Hammeroff, and a mathematician, Roger Penrose, have suggested that there are areas inside the brain cells, the microtubules, in which it is possible for quantum-mechanical events to take place. If this is indeed so, then these effects are certainly widely distributed throughout the nervous system, and it is likely that the whole brain and nervous system work as a quantum-mechanical computer.
The implications of this are exciting. If the brain did work as a quantum-mechanical computer, then the rules governing information transfer within it would be quite different. Because quantum-mechanical events are spread throughout the universe, it can be argued that brain function would be extended in space beyond the skull.
If we take these ideas and use them as quantum allegory—that is, extending precise quantum-mechanical concepts outside their strict scientific frame of reference—we could postulate that the soul exists as a virtual field. This field need not even have a spatial location. When the field interacts with a brain, it would collapse from its virtual form into that of a defined soul. At death, the field would return, modified by life experience, to its virtual form. This would then await its interaction with another brain to again become manifest. One could argue that only in a small number of cases would there be sufficient overlapping of the two soul states for previous memories to condense from the field. This would explain why not everybody has a previous-life memory. Virtual fields would also solve the problem of location of memory outside the brain, and the apparent “population problem” of soul transfer, as you could argue for a field with extensive properties that are not significantly diminished by the condensation of a single soul. The morphogenetic field of Rupert Sheldrake, although not identical to this concept, contains several similarities and points in a similar direction.
Quantum mechanics contains another important key concept which is related to the amount of information it is possible to get from quantum states. The usual example is that of a particle. If you wish to know its position accurately, then quantum mechanics will not allow its velocity to be precisely known, and vice versa. This is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It is as if nature puts a limit on the information it will give. Again, using quantum allegory, it is possible to postulate a theory whereby soul “stuff” is of such a quality that it falls below this theoretical level of detection, and thus cannot be “found.” It could, however, still have effects in the Galilean world of the brain. This idea then removes the stumbling block of having to define the location of the soul.
A new quantum mathematical theory, developed by Amit Gotswarni, a physicist at the University of Oregon and described in his book The Self-Aware Universe, postulates that the basic structure of the universe is consciousness, not matter. From this, a number of surprising and interesting features arise. First, that there is only one observer in the whole universe. If you wish, you can call this observer God, although it might be better described as part of the universal conscious process. A further consequence of this is that all individual consciousnesses are one, a belief already held by the mystics, who see no division between individual consciousnesses.
Consciousness then becomes a realm of possibilities that exist, out of which the actual “matter” of the world arises. There is no difficulty in incorporating either souls or the possibility of reincarnation into this theory, as the soul, on its transition from actual (interacting with a brain) to virtual ( reentering the realm of possibilities) could carry with it any amount of information that it had “acquired.”
Next, there is the concept of parallel universes. The concept here is that a virtual quantum state observed in different ways can lead to different results. This means that whenever an observation is made, a whole set of results may flow from it. The idea of parallel universes is that different observations will lead to different results, moving you from one universe to another. Either universe is equally possible, but they are slightly different. To put this more simply, using quantum allegory you could decide to take the left-hand fork on the way to town, which will lead you into a universe where a whole set of experiences arise. But it doesn’t exclude the possibility of another universe that you would have entered, with a different set of experiences, if you had taken the right-hand fork. The argument here is that universes branch every time, an observation is made. On this scale, using this idea, the concepts of soul and reincarnation would fall easily into place as they would simply be in another universe.
There is now a huge amount of data which shows that, as your level of consciousness changes, the perceived world alters. There are descriptions of mystical experience in which the world is totally transformed. People who have had these experiences say that when they are in this altered state of consciousness the world has a quite different structure. Often, they will describe the world as being composed of love, and say that every element of the universe is alive and conscious.
One way of interpreting these observations is to postulate a transcendent reality which coexists with and interpenetrates our ordinary reality. We see one reality when the brain is working one way, and another when it is working differently, Taking this as the model, it would not be too difficult to assume that there are other realities which interpenetrate our usual world and of which we may never be aware. If this were the structure of the universe, then the idea that souls coexisted with us would be perfectly tenable. An interpenetrating, transcendental reality would also provide an answer to the problem of what happens to the soul after the death of the body; it allows a location for the soul, coexistent with the material universe and yet outside it.
We could make some predictions from this model. On page 302 for example, is an eyewitness account by a doctor who saw something apparently leave the body at the moment of death. The theory of interpenetrating realities would suggest that what he saw was the transition of the soul from one, material universe to another. What is interesting about his account is that he seemed to find it harder to see what happened towards the end of the process, as if there were a gradual change in materiality of whatever it was he saw, with a parallel change in its visibility.
This theory has further predictions. It suggests that there may be people who have differently functioning brains and who are able to be aware of a different level of reality. This, at least, is testable—and in an experiment we did some years ago we set out to test it. Twenty mediums agreed to be given tests of brain function. We compared the results with those of a control group of people who were given similar tests. For various technical reasons we predicted that the right temporal lobe would be functioning abnormally in the mediums, probably because it had been damaged. And this is precisely what we found.
There are two ways of interpreting this. First, one can say simply that a damaged, malfunctioning brain produces a distorted view of the world. But equally valid is the suggestion that such a brain allows a different view of the world, opening a “window” through which a different reality could be seen. Recently, two patients in a head injury unit run by one of the authors of this book reported that after their head injury they developed some unwelcome precognitive ability; often when they passed people in the street they could see that something unpleasant was going to happen to them in the future. Both were upset by this, one so much that she would never go out.
Modern experiments in parapsychology certainly provide evidence for precognition. But what kind of universe would we have to postulate to allow for knowledge of the future or the possibility of time travel? Causality would be quite different in a universe in which the present could influence the future and the future influence the past. Events would not be random, as at any point the present might be interrupted by the future; synchronicity would be a normal characteristic of such a world. Reincarnation might also be a possibilty, with future lives running concurrently with present lives.
If one accepts that a soul can exist independently of the brain, then it is merely a matter of choosing the form of survival which seems either the most appealing or the most intellectually credible.
One can acquire a belief in the possibility of life after death through either faith or experience. Many people have the intuitive certainty, which we call faith, based on no objective evidence, that the soul can survive the death of the body. Others acquire the same degree of certainty through some kind of personal experience (revelation)—the near-death experience, for example. Reincarnation is a particular case of this general belief in survival. There are people with faith who “just know,” who seem to have been born with a belief in reincarnation, and there are others who believe because they have experienced what seem to them to be past lives.
What we believe does seem to structure the world that we create for ourselves. Most Westerners are now disinclined to believe in miracles in the New Testament sense. R. Gardner, in the 1983 Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal, writes a most attractive article on miracles in which he quotes the following story, which illustrates the power of belief.
When modern missionaries left some gospel books behind in Ethiopia and returned many years later, they not only found a flourishing Church but a community of believers among whom miracles like those mentioned in the New Testament happened every day—because there had been no missionaries to teach that such things were not to be taken literally.
It is easy to look around us and say reincarnation doesn’t exist when it is our culture that has made it disappear. To come to a wider conclusion on reincarnation we need to stand well back from our culture so as to be able to take a different view. Because our current belief systems,do not allow for miracles, we do not either experience them or see the evidence to support them. We have been converted to the new faith of science by scientific missionaries.
The fortunate few have some personal experience to guide them; for the rest of us there is only uncertainty. But perhaps we need some uncertainty about our chances of survival. As Martin Gardner, in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, points out: “If we knew that the celestial Emerald City were around the bend of death, and knew it with the kind of certainty that we know the existence of London or Paris, our lives would be disrupted by our impatience to get there. You must travel a road to reach the end of it, but jumping out a window will get you off the earth in just a few minutes.”