Inside the Mind of God
Breaking Down the Doors of Perception, Part 8
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B Y   D R.   M A N J I R   S A M A N T A - L A U G H T O N,   M D

Chapter 7:
Pretty Vacant, Part Three

LIFE AFTER LIFE
A surprisingly large percentage of people who have been close to death report having had an experience whilst their bodies were physically dead or almost dead. Few extensive epidemiological studies have been done on this subject, but some small surveys have found the number close to 50 per cent of those who have almost died.(30) Some can even report that they viewed the room in which they 'died' and even their own body. Sometimes conversations and actions of health professionals who are in attendance to that person are recalled, yet at the time that the events happened, the person was physically dead.

Despite the accumulation of data and reports, and increasing admittance of the existence of such cases by health professionals, this is a subject that is often seen as not worthy of scientific consideration. The concept of NDEs does not fit the orthodox view of the brain being the originator of consciousness.

According to reductionist neuroscience, if the brain isn't functioning, it is impossible for the person to experience anything. Reports of NDEs are often attributed to the abnormal and chaotic neuronal activity of the brain due to lack of oxygen.(31)

This does not easily explain why many reports of NDEs have similar elements; many people report seeing a white light, meeting 'people' known to them, and some report incidents that happen in the room where they 'died', viewed from a perspective outside their body.

One of the most dramatic recorded cases is of a lady named Pam Reynolds.(32) This professional musician needed to undergo brain surgery to remove a large aneurysm in one of her brain's arteries. In order to safely do this, she needed to be taken to the edge of death. Her brain and heart were effectively stopped from activity during the surgery and both were monitored. Due to this monitoring, the evidence exists to show that her brain did not demonstrate electrical activity during the procedure.

Reynolds reports that she had a sentient experience during the time that her brain was not showing any electrical activity. She reports incidents in the room and even noted a surgical instrument which she had not seen before, but was able to describe when she recovered from surgery. She had detailed experiences at a time when all her vital signs showed that no experience could have been possible according to orthodox models of consciousness.

Is it possible for our consciousness to live on after our deaths? We have discussed during this book how some physicists are saying that consciousness is more fundamental than matter and how biology makes more sense if a sentient quality pervades every single cell and atom of our bodies.

Is consciousness the ghost in the molecular machine of the body that imbues us with the quality of life? If consciousness is more fundamental than the body, could it exist beyond physical death and out of space and time? Could it be that when we die, the part of us that we call our consciousness, returns to the sea of light from which it came?

Are we eternal beings who inhabit a physical body for a short moment in time? Is the information of each person, their fundamental consciousness, stored in the field for eternity?

If so, are the people who claim to speak to the dead telling the truth?

The Science Of Mediumship
The art of mediumship has received a lot of attention recently. This is a skill that can be found in many cultures and essentially consists of a person acting as a medium between those who have died and their relatives left behind. Recently, this tradition has merged with modern entertainment creating some interesting social consequences.

Following the success of television shows such as Crossing Over with John Edward, a new entertainment genre has been born. In the UK, Living TV's Most Haunted also features psychic mediumship, whilst visiting sites that are reportedly haunted. During its live broadcasts, visitors to the website can reach almost 20 million; it is rare to attract this sort of attention in modern broadcasting. Speaking with the dead is now a cultural phenomenon.

Popular though these shows may be with the public, the issue of the scientific validity of mediumship is another matter. As with most topics considered paranormal, mediumship is often simply dismissed as fraud. Armed with the knowledge we now have of the QV, can we explain mediumship scientifically? Do we have any evidence that mediumship actually exists?

John Edward is perhaps the best-known celebrity medium. His show is often a combination of group and personal readings for people he has never met before. He claims to be able to hear messages from people's family members who have died and these can bring comfort to a bereaved family.

The content of the messages often include mundane details from daily life which would be very hard to know if someone is not a family member because they are of little value outside the family and therefore not likely to be communicated. Sometimes he communicates messages regarding events that have occurred after the passing of that person. How does this occur? First let's look at the evidence that Edward is actually doing something at all.

In 1999, Edward was involved in research with Professor Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona.(33) The study design consisted of five professional mediums asking questions of subjects directly or through another person. Questions were only allowed to be answered in a yes/no fashion. The mediums had no contact or prior knowledge of the subjects before the session. After the session, the subject would rate the information obtained in terms of accuracy on a scale of -3 to +3. Schwartz would only count a +3 as a hit.

Taking an average of the five mediums, an 83 per cent accuracy rate was obtained. This is compared with studies of the general public who are not mediums; their accuracy is 50 per cent at best.

This and further studies by Schwartz provide a scientific validity for the readings done by Edward and others. What we need now is an explanation for how mediumship works, which we can now piece together from the information in this chapter.

A talented individual such as Edward is able to tune into the QV where information transcends space and time. This is the particular genius of Edward, under our new definition of genius.

The fact that he obtains information pertaining to events after the death of the person suggests that consciousness does indeed transcend the physical body. Even after death, the fundamental aspect of a person retains a sentient presence. Consciousness is the aspect of ourselves that can neither be created nor destroyed. The QV may be the storage system of this aspect of us when our bodies no longer exist.

It is as if we are born from a sea of light and for a while we inhabit the world of mass and charge, held together by thought. And when we are done with the dance and no longer need to be weighed down with the burden of form, the essence of who we are returns once more to the light.

So if the spirit world exists, where is it? Why is it that some people claim to see spirits in the form of ghosts? Why are we not all John Edwards or Mozarts? Why do we all relate to the QV in a different way? If our thoughts are all in the field, how do we know which thoughts are ours? We shall go on to discuss these issues in the next chapter when we explore the world of vibration and of multidimensions.

Pretty Vacant Conclusions
The world of the pretty vacant is teeming with activity. It could also hold the answers to some of the secrets of the universe. From understanding our interaction with this sea of light, we can understand some of the greatest mysteries of our universe.

The new era of physics is starting to give us answers to age-old questions such as; can consciousness exist after death? In the old physics there was no room for consciousness and the answer was an unequivocal no. Yet as science has moved on, concepts such as consciousness and non-locality have entered the realm of physics and we can start to open up new ideas in how we view the world.

A Brief Note About Time
A few times in this chapter we have discussed the concept of being out of space and time. This is compatible with what we know about the universe. Surprisingly, since the era of relativity, science has introduced the concept that time does not actually exist at all. The idea that the field holds information that transcends time is not out of the question. We shall discuss the nature of time in more detail later on in this book.

Here ends our serialization of
Dr. Manjir Samanta-Laughton's Punk Science.

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© 2006, Dr. Manjir Samanta-Laughton, MD, All Rights Reserved

Excerpted with permission from Punk Science: Inside the Mind of God by Dr. Manjir Samanta-Laughton, published by O Books (ISBN 1905047932). Available for purchase from your local bookseller, or any of the following online locations: www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.o-books.com.

For more information, check out www.PunkScience.com.

 
References for Chapter 7, Part Three
(30) Holt J. Blindsight and the Nature of Consciousness. (Broadview Press) 2003.
(31) Magueijo J. Faster than the speed of light. (Arrow) 2004.
(32) Radin D. The Conscious Universe. (Harper Collins) 1997.
(33) Puthoff H, Targ R. Mind-reach. (Hampton Roads) 2005.
(34) Ring K. Life at Death. (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan) 1980.
(35) Blackmore S. Dying to Live: Science and the near death experience. (London, Grafton) 1993.
(36) Sabom M. Light and Death. (Zondervan) 1998.
(37) Schwartz G. The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death. (Simon and Schuster International) 2000.