Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #403: Beyond the Brain: Where Does Consciousness Come From?

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Being Catholic #403: Beyond the Brain: Where Does Consciousness Come From? · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic,
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And we're going to, like I say, have a great show for you today.
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I'm here with my wife, Lynn, and we're going to talk a little bit today.
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We're going to do something a little bit mysterious, and that's we're going
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to talk about where consciousness comes from.
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And it's something that the scientists and so forth are addressing more and
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more these days, and religion and science are moving together in a lot of areas.
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And I want to make sure that everyone understands I'm not trying to challenge
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any theology here, but just a broad general idea of where consciousness might come from.
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And it has to do certainly borders on religion, that is for sure.
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And we'll get to that in just a minute. I'm going to turn this over to my wife,
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Lynn, and see if she has anything to say before we start.
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I do. And hello, everybody out there. Good to be with you.
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Another Saturday, a beautiful one in our part of the country,
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but we deserve it. We've had a lot of tornadoes and warnings and so forth.
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But I was thinking a good way to start this would be to review a little bit about creation.
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Now, St. John in his gospel said, In the beginning was the Word,
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and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through Him,
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and without Him not anything was made.
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In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And if you go back to Genesis.
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In Genesis, it talks about, in Genesis 2, the Lord God made,
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formed man of dust from the ground,
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and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
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and man became a living soul.
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So that's our creation, and that breathing in of life, that is the soul.
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And if everything was made through God, and breathing in, he breathed in life, we get to our topic.
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Where's the conscience? Where's our memory? Where's our mind?
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Where did it all come from? Where
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is it now? Can you answer some of those questions, Bob, in the article?
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Yes, they do, and at least touches on it. And the fact is, is that the Christian
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Bible, you know, John here, comes as close,
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as you could come to describing what a lot of scientists have arrived at at
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the same time, you know, in modern times today.
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Today the fact is is that if you interpret the word and,
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that where are the whole idea of being comes from the whole idea of consciousness.
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The the two things are very very close together and what i want to get at here
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before we start and we'll take our time and if this goes into next week or the
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week after that's fine too i'm going to read after a bit here from an article in the Epoch Times
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title, Where Does Consciousness Come From?
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But before I do, I want to talk about something I've mentioned before.
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We have to remember that this idea, you know, of our brain activity being electrons
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and so forth, and a lot of materialists try to somehow or another and think that it will happen,
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that the brain can be explained by material forces.
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But consciousness really can't.
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And the fact is that when we're talking about electrons on the brain and so
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forth, and there are, These things don't have any consciousness.
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I mean, an electron is an electron. It acts in a certain physical way,
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whether it acts in an electrical circuit outside the human body or whether it acts in the human body.
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But AI is a good example.
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We have computers that can compute at fantastically high speeds.
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That's AI, using tremendous amounts of energy and so forth, electrical energy.
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But these things are not conscious. That is, they have no intentionality.
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They are not self-aware.
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And they follow the programs that they're programmed to follow,
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the algorithms and so forth that are put into them by human beings.
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And they don't have the intentionality that human beings have.
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For example, we can decide things. We can decide to think about a certain thing.
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If I wanted to, I could say, I'm going to think about a unicorn.
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I'm going to think about something that doesn't even exist. And I can manufacture
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that existence in my own mind.
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Or I'm going to think about mathematics. Or I'm going to think about poetry.
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Or I'm going to think about art.
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I can decide what I want to do before I even do it.
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And electrons and so forth can't do those things. You can have computers and
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so forth. They can't make these kinds of decisions.
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If they do, they're actually programmed to do it pre-ahead of time by something else.
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But they're not conscious in the same sense. They're not self-aware.
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And that's why it can be dangerous for people to start talking to these AI chat
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boxes and so forth, thinking that somehow or another they're talking to another entity.
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Because basically they're talking to a program, this program in effect to simply
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build on what the human being says themselves on the logic of it and so forth.
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And ultimately, they're really talking to themselves. And it can be also very, very misleading.
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And AI can manufacture all kinds of false information and so forth if it doesn't
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have the proper information because it's just designed to fill in certain logical gaps and so on.
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And human beings are not that way at all. They can be self-aware that they're
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lying or that they're making a mistake or that they're not sure that they have
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all the information and can go back and recheck all that.
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Computers really can't do that. They have to be programmed to do all those things ahead of time.
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They can't change their minds like we can.
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So electrons cannot really explain consciousness.
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And an electron, it would be like I've said it before.
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If you had, say, a whole group of blocks, say, just like a child's toy blocks,
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just say square one-inch blocks of wood, and those blocks were, say,
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red through and through, you could put those blocks together in every way you
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would like to, and you're not going to get blue, no matter what you do. It's not there.
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You can smash them up. You can make them smaller. You can put them in the powder
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and everything else, and it'll be red.
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You're not going to get the blue because it simply is not there. It doesn't exist.
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You know, it's without blue.
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And it's the same thing with electrons. They simply do not have intentionality.
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And they do not have self-awareness. And they do not have consciousness in the
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same sense that human beings do.
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And you can put those electrons together in every way you can think of and mix
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them up and do this, that, and the other, and so forth.
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But you're not going to get blood out of a turnip.
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You're just not going to get something that isn't there. You're not going to
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make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, so to speak.
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So I just wanted to start out with that before we get going here.
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Right. And I'd like to add to it,
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you know, we have to realize that these electrons and stuff are material.
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Right. They aren't.
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They aren't in the abstract. Exactly. They're material things. Exactly.
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And if you want to read a book, read by Edward Fazer, The Last Superstition.
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And this explains why it's futile to try and explain the brain's activity on a material basis.
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It isn't going to work. It's like trying to somehow or another get two and two
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to add up to five instead of add up to four. It's not going to happen.
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And no matter how long you wait, you can push things to the future.
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You have people who are materialists saying, oh, someday we'll understand this,
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or someday we'll be able to explain everything in terms of material.
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But that's like saying someday we're going to get the answer that two and two
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is five instead of two and two is four.
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No, you're not. It's not going to happen.
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And you're going on a dead end in the brain simply in thought and so forth.
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Consciousness simply cannot be explained by material forces alone. It just simply can't.
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Take my word for it. If you don't take my word for it, read that book, The Last Superstition.
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And it's a very thorough investigation of and refutation of the whole idea that
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consciousness can ever be explained by material. It can't.
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Because consciousness can't grasp, it's not material. So when we say where does
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consciousness come from, then where does it come from?
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If it's not material and the electrical impulses of the brain can't manufacture consciousness,
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and just the material parts of the brain can't manufacture consciousness,
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then in effect we must probably can sort of like be conscious through the brain
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but not really conscious with the brain.
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It would be like, you know, we see through our eyes, but we don't really see with our eyes.
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You know, our eyes take in light and so forth, and then our brain processes
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that into images and so forth for us.
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But how does that all take place?
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It takes place not just in a material form.
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It has to take place other than that. And so the question all is among scientists
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themselves is where does consciousness come from?
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How does it work? And that's what we're exploring. And that's why you have to
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explore it, because you can't explain consciousness by the materials parts of the brain alone.
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And when I'm talking about that, I'm talking about consciousness,
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you know, exists not only in human beings, it exists to a certain extent in
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animals, too. Human beings, of course, are more fully consciousness and more
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in contact with God or whatever we want to call the universe.
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Than other creatures are. And this article is talking here about where consciousness
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comes from, and that's the title of it.
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And so, I'll go ahead and read from the article itself now that we understand
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that there has to be some basis more than just material for understanding consciousness.
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It says here, Dr. Eben Alexander was at the height of his career as a neurosurgeon.
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With a doctorate in medicine from Duke University and a residency at Harvard,
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he believed that he understood consciousness and the brain.
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However, on November 10, 2008, a rare and severe bacterial infection attacked
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his brain, challenging everything he thought he knew.
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He fell into a coma and seven days later awakened with a complete physical recovery.
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Yet while he was asleep, his mind was not idle.
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He recalls that his consciousness had gone to another dimension,
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a place furnished with clouds, shimmering beings, and ethereal sceneries.
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I was in a place of clouds, Alexander wrote in his book, A Proof of Heaven,
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that's the name of the book, A Proof of Heaven.
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Big puffy pink-white ones that showed up sharply against a deep blue-black sky.
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Higher than the clouds, immeasurably higher, flocks of transparent orbs,
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shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long streamer-like lines behind them.
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I witnessed all of that realm in all of its majesty, Alexander recounted during
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an interview with the Epoch Times.
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Though I didn't know where I was or even what I was, I was absolutely sure of one thing.
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This place I suddenly found myself in was completely real.
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Similarly, Dr. Sam Parnia, a medical doctor and research scientist,
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observed that 7% of resuscitated patients
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recounted visits to an unearthly dimension during their near-death experiences, called NDEs,
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an experience that people sometimes have on the precipice of death and may remember after recovery.
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Further, Dr. Pim Van Lommet, a cardiologist from the Netherlands,
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reported that 29% of people with NDEs described entering a vast,
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beautiful realm beyond our physical reality.
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These shared elements have prompted experts to discuss the origin of consciousness.
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Can our consciousness be linked and travel to a dimension imperceptible to human eyes?
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While people of faith say they've had answers all along, medical doctors are
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still probing and physicists claim that they are close to finding an answer.
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So we're going to stop here and take a break.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back. But in the meantime, I want to stress here that the fact is, is,
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these people can be written off as just having all kinds of dreamlike experiences,
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while they're going through this.
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But as you see, or will see as we read the rest of the article,
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that is not going to be the case.
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So there's going to be more proof coming along on this. So, you know,
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don't leave with this idea that, oh, well, these people are just having hallucinations
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and so forth while they're unconscious.
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Yes. That's not the case. That's kind of where it's going to nowadays.
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With nursing, too, they're saying these near-death things are because hormones
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and electrons are, you know, stimulated to do this, to form things in your head.
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But we'll see as we go along that there's more than that as the case here.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
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with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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We're back from our break, and we're talking about where does consciousness
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come from? And I'm reading from an article in the newspaper,
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The Epoch Times, by that very title, Where Does Consciousness Come From?
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And we're talking about the fact that people do have what they call near-death experiences.
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And in those experiences, they feel as if they have traveled to another world
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or dimension, you know, beyond,
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this particular world to have these sort of fantastic experiences that really
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can't be explained by our ordinary means.
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And so we'll continue with that. One of the ideas that they may be experiencing,
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about what they may be experiencing is multiple dimensions.
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And this is, again, physicists are beginning to theorize along these lines and,
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look for answers that coincide a lot with religion.
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Physicists recognize that there may be numerous dimensions.
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Modern physics embraces the concept of multidimensional space and parallel universes
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as a serious scientific idea.
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And I've talked about this a little bit before, and we'll get into it a little bit again.
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Leading theories include string theory and m-theory.
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String theory posits that the fundamental building blocks of the universe are
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not just particles, but tiny, vibrating filaments or strings.
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Imagine analyzing an apple. As you magnify it, you discover layers of structure
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down to cells, molecules, and atoms.
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Conventional theories usually stop at subatomic particles.
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String theory posits that the infinitesimally small subatomic particles are
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actually strands of energy vibrating in different patterns, much like the strings of a violin.
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Each distinct vibration produces unique particles, creating a cosmic symphony
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that constitutes all matter.
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So, in effect, it's like a means of matter,
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so small that we don't see it dancing, you know, all over the universe,
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and these strings giving off different vibrations for different particles and different materials.
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Such theories are given credence because they provide a framework to unify the
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fundamental forces of nature,
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gravity, electromagnetic force, and nuclear force, and they unify this into one consistent theory.
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However, string theory posits a universe with at least ten dimensions,
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which is integral to its formulation and mathematical consistency.
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That's a lot of dimensions. We live, by the way, in four dimensions.
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We have three-dimensional. We have the back and forth, the up and down,
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the flat dimension on a piece of paper.
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If you draw a line on a piece of paper, vertically up and down and back and
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forth on that flat piece of paper, that would be two dimensions.
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And then if you take those lines and you extend them in depth,
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if you extended them outward and you created a box or, you know,
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an object, you know, a three-dimensional object, then that's three dimensions.
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And if you move that object from one place to another, that takes time to go
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from one place to another. So you have another dimension called time.
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So you have four dimensions, the three dimensions and then, you know,
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the time, which is four dimensions. And that's all the dimensions that we live
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in, see, and are capable, you know, of dealing with.
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But it goes on here, it says, such theories are given credence because they
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provide a framework to unify the fundamental forces, as I said.
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On a related note, M-theory is a concept in physics that combines different
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theories about tiny strings thought to make up the fabric of the universe.
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It suggests 11 dimensions instead of the four we experience,
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three spatial dimensions and the one time dimension that I just mentioned.
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M-theory aims to explain how the forces of nature, including gravity,
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work together in a single framework, making it a potential theory of everything.
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In other words, scientists are always looking for a theory of everything.
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In other words, some kind of a theory that will unify all of these forces together,
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just like the theory of electromagnetism has been unified so that you can explain
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electromagnetism by, you know, one particular formula.
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And so forth that unifies the whole theory.
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But there's no real unification theory of all of these different forces that
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we're talking about here, and they think that maybe string theory or M-theory will do that.
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Although the string and M-theories are mathematically rich and elegant frameworks
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to help explain certain aspects of particular physics and gravity,
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they do not have empirically verifiable predictions.
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Nevertheless, other dimensions, although invisible, may exist simultaneously among us.
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And I've said it before, you know, think of a creature called a flatlander.
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Think of a creature that lived in total flatland that lived in an effect picture,
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a piece of paper in which you have two dimensions.
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You have the line you can draw up and down on a piece of paper,
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and the line you can draw back and forth, you know, sideways on a piece of paper,
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and that's all you have, but there's no depth. It's just flat.
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If you had flatlander creatures that lived on the surface of that paper or totally
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flat, they wouldn't be able to even conceive of the third dimension,
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the dimension that we have, you know, of objects such as, you know, books or,
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blocks of wood or rocks and so forth, things that have three dimensions,
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they would not be able to even conceive of such things.
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They would only be able to conceive of those two dimensions.
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And if something entered their
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world, let's say they lived in a little square on that piece of paper,
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and they thought that those four flat walls that did not have any extension
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whatsoever were, you know, totally enclosing them and nothing could get in and
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you came from the outside and,
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put something in from the outside from the top of that piece of paper and dropped
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a, say, you know, a tiny baby or something else on that square,
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they would wonder where in the world it came from.
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It would suddenly appear and then if you took it away, it would suddenly disappear
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and they would know where it went because they'd have no concept of depth.
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They would have no concept of up or down.
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They would only have the concept of back and forth, you know,
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and they were up and down on, you know, from the top of the paper to the bottom
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of the paper, but no depth going in and out.
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Hmm. Maybe that's one of those UFOs come from. It's possible that there's a different dimension.
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And we're simply unable with our senses and so forth to see or understand that dimension.
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And if this happened, then in such a scenario, we would experience only length
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and width, up and down and side to side, but not depth, if we were one of those flatlander creatures.
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We couldn't even conceive of it. And.
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Burke, this man that's talking about this, subjected that NDEs,
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near-death experiences, might be like our two-dimensional consciousness, peeling away from,
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a flat painting and entering a three-dimensional world, a realm that has always
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existed beyond our perception.
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In other words, if to a flatlander, our three-dimensional world would be beyond
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their perception, And if we suddenly were able to show them this three-dimensional
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world, it would be a whole new surprising world that, you know,
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we're totally familiar with.
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But the Flatlander, for the first time in his life, would be seeing something
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that he had never ever seen or perceived before.
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From this new viewpoint, we could look back at our flat world and understand
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it as part of a greater dimensional reality.
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Just like the flatlander living on a flat piece of paper would suddenly understand
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that his flat piece of paper was part of a greater world with more dimensions.
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When our consciousness leaves the body, it is likely to enter these wider multidimensional spaces.
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Michael Pravika, who holds a doctorate in condensed matter physics from Harvard
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University and is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
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told the Epoch Times about this.
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Individuals who have NDEs, near-death experiences, also often describe passing
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through a tunnel-like expanse, what they light at the end before entering the other dimension.
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In other words, they have an experience of passing from our world of three dimensions,
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and four dimensions if you consider time, into another world with more dimensions.
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Ned Doherty, a former director of the International Association for Near-Death
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Studies, wrote about his personal tunnel experience in his book Fast Lane to Heaven.
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In it, he explains that after losing physical consciousness,
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he was drawn to an immense tunnel.
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At the distant opening of the tunnel he saw another universe.
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I pondered the purpose of the tunnel, Doherty wrote. It seemed to stretch from
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earth into the universe for a distance measured in light years.
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Interestingly, the tunnel described by people who have NDEs bears a striking
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resemblance to a concept explored
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in string theory, in which wormholes connect different dimensions.
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And this idea of wormholes in space, you know, string theory explains this,
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that somehow we can move from one place to another through the so-called wormholes.
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This is just a term coined by these people that instead of having,
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it would be as if you picture two points on a flat piece of paper.
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Let's say you took a sheet of writing paper, a sheet of notebook paper,
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a flat sheet, and you put a dot at the top of that sheet and a dot at the bottom
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of that sheet, and you draw a line between the two dots.
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You have a long distance between those two dots.
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And if you had to travel that distance, that long distance, you know,
29:43
over the sheet of paper, let's say, you know, at, uh.
29:48
It would take quite some time to get from one dot to the other dot at the other
29:54
end of the sheet of paper.
29:56
But if you folded that paper over, you could cause the two dots to actually
30:01
coincide, the dot at the top to coincide with the dot at the bottom by folding
30:05
the top over onto the bottom and the two dots touching each other.
30:09
And they're saying that it's possible that there are wormholes in space that are like this,
30:16
where instead of having to travel across a long distance of space, you simply,
30:21
move from one point to another without moving any real distance,
30:26
just as if you folded the space like you folded the paper so that the two dots
30:32
on the paper would coincide.
30:34
And to travel from one to the other, you wouldn't have to travel any distance at all.
30:38
And they're saying it may be that this is how creatures could travel through
30:42
space if they knew how to transverse from one dimension to another.
30:49
So that's what they mean by wormholes in space.
30:54
In a 2022 study published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
31:01
Parnia and a team of medical experts from the prominent universities provided
31:06
the first comprehensive medical
31:08
consensus documenting the existence of near-death experiences. this.
31:14
Notably, the team identified tunnel experiences as one of the main characteristics
31:20
of near-death experiences.
31:21
In other words, most of the people who experience near-death experiences,
31:26
they talked about traveling through a tunnel from one place to another,
31:31
from one universe to a different one.
31:34
The tunnel, according to the study, appears to be a connection to another dimension,
31:39
where people report seeing magnificent, luminous beings and relive their entire
31:45
lives in a way unconstrained by time,
31:48
a phenomenon called the life review.
31:51
And before we get to that, I just want to mention again, Linda,
31:55
the fact is that a lot of people,
31:59
when we talk about these wormholes and going from one place in space to another,
32:04
a lot of people conclude that it's possible that these.
32:10
Lights and so forth and moving objects that we see, and you hear more about
32:14
on television now, and the government is admitting that, you know,
32:18
they record a lot of unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena.
32:24
I think they're called UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomenon.
32:28
We used to call them UFOs, unidentified flying objects,
32:32
that a lot of these things, if people ask, well, how could something,
32:37
let's suppose these things are from other stars,
32:40
they're so far away, how could people, you know, get here to travel from a near
32:45
star all the way to the earth would take so long that it seems like it would
32:50
be impossible for even advanced,
32:54
aliens and so forth to be able to do something like this.
32:58
But suppose there are these wormholes in space where space is folded over and
33:03
you could travel from one place to another without traveling really any distance
33:08
because you're simply going from one dimension to another.
33:12
If that's possible, and string theory and M-theory says that it could be possible,
33:18
then you could have people who understood how to do this travel from great distances to us,
33:26
which would be no distance at all to them, by traveling through these so-called,
33:30
quote, wormholes in space and being able to go from one place to another
33:35
without traveling any real distance, but just simply by moving from one dimension to another.
33:41
And that might be a possibility if there are actually alien,
33:45
life forms that are visiting, you know, our Earth or something,
33:49
if they could be coming from somewhere that would be to us far away,
33:53
they could be doing it by being able to understand how to move from one dimension to another in space.
34:00
Does that make sense, Lynn? Yes, it does. You know, they could even,
34:05
you know, probably advance themselves to the point, you know,
34:09
through thought and so forth, know where these wormholes were all the time.
34:15
You know, and then they could just go directly there and use them. Exactly.
34:21
And a science fiction writer that wrote about this was Robert Heinlein,
34:27
I think, in one of his science fiction novels.
34:29
He wrote about exactly that, about aliens being able to travel that way and
34:35
coming, you know, into our area.
34:37
And then he wrote, I think, also about the development of that by human beings
34:43
being able to travel to the stars by actually traveling through.
34:49
A machine that bent space like that, that sort of, you know,
34:55
in a way caused space to fold over like a piece of paper being folded over.
35:00
So you could go from one spot to another on the piece of paper without actually
35:04
traveling any distance, but instead traveling from one dimension on the paper to the other.
35:10
And like be me up, Scotty.
35:14
Could be something like that. So at any rate, we're going to stop here and take
35:18
a break. But the point is, is that a lot of this is bordering on what especially
35:24
our Christian Bible says.
35:26
It comes very close to saying things like this and explaining things along these
35:31
lines and this whole idea of a different world and that we would call heaven.
35:38
Or hell or other worlds and so forth.
35:40
Become more realistic along these theories.
35:44
So stay with us. We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic
35:47
with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio. Congratulations to Heather Rankin,
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37:02
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37:31
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37:47
Hi, this is Bob Johnston you're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic
37:51
Spirit Radio we're back from our break and we're talking about an article here in the Epoch Times,
37:57
newspaper, where does consciousness come from and the idea that,
38:03
consciousness can't come simply from our brains alone,
38:07
that electrical impulses and so forth really can't manufacture consciousness,
38:12
that that's not possible.
38:14
Computers and so forth are not conscious, and electrical impulses are simply physical impulses.
38:20
Phenomena that are the same everywhere, and they're not alive,
38:25
and they don't have intentionality, and they don't have self-awareness,
38:28
and that it's possible that consciousness is something greater than that.
38:33
And our church, for example, might say, and I'm not trying to be a theologian
38:39
here, that consciousness comes from God, that our minds are in touch with God,
38:44
that the human And, you know, in praying,
38:47
that we are conscious through our brains, but not necessarily with our brains.
38:51
And that consciousness actually comes from what we would call the consciousness
38:56
of God that informs, you know.
38:59
Our brain with the whole knowledge and so forth, the ability to understand and
39:08
perceive what's around us in the universe and so forth.
39:11
All of that is a gift from God given to us.
39:15
The scientists are saying, in effect, that the universe itself could give us
39:21
that consciousness through string theory.
39:23
But that would be not much different at all than saying that this is another
39:28
natural means that God and nature are pretty much one and the same thing.
39:37
And that religion is bordering on physics here.
39:41
And so it's a very interesting theory, and we're reading from that.
39:46
So I'll go ahead and continue with it.
39:48
And it goes on. It talks about a 2014 study published by the Near-Death Experience
39:54
Research Foundation that examined 617 near-death experiences.
40:00
14% of the people who had near-death experiences experienced a life review also.
40:06
This experience felt like watching stereoscopic movies of their lives.
40:11
Overall, 50% of near-death experience survivors in the 1976 Tangshan earthquake
40:19
were reported to have experienced life reviews.
40:22
According to Bernard Carr, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at
40:28
Queen Mary University of London,
40:31
many elements of near-death experiences, such as the tunnel phenomenon,
40:36
intense light, and life reviews, align with the idea of transitioning through
40:41
or interacting with higher dimensions.
40:44
He interprets these experiences not as hallucinations or brain-generated phenomena,
40:50
but as glimpses into the true multidimensional nature of reality.
40:54
In his book, Evidence of the Afterlife, Dr.
40:58
Jeffrey Long, a practicing radiation oncologist and researcher who has studied
41:04
near-death experiences for more than 25 years, recorded the case of a man named
41:09
Roger who was returning from Quebec City,
41:13
when he had an out-of-body experience during a car crash.
41:16
I then began to see my whole life unfolding before me like a film projected
41:21
on a screen from babyhood to adult life.
41:25
It was so real, Rogers recalled.
41:27
He said the experience was more realistic than a 3D movie as he could sense
41:33
the feelings of the people he interacted with over the years and the good or
41:38
bad emotions he made them feel.
41:40
Those who experience a life review during a near-death experience often recount
41:46
it with a deep sense of realism.
41:48
This includes re-experiencing long-forgotten events often confirmed to have
41:54
occurred as well as a deep understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others
41:59
during the past interactions.
42:01
According to a study published in Missouri Medicine, these life reviews are
42:06
consistently accurate.
42:08
Life reviews appear to access a dimension in which all events are recorded in
42:13
their entirety and time flows differently, allowing one to review one's entire life in an instant.
42:22
The book Lessons from Light, co-authored by Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus
42:27
of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, who has published nearly 100
42:32
papers on near-death experiences,
42:34
recorded the case of a man who reported re-experiencing every event in 22 years of his life.
42:42
The brightness showed me every second of all those years in exquisite detail
42:48
in what seemed only an instant of time, he said.
42:52
Alexander said it's a reliving of events, not just a remembering of events.
42:58
He said that during the life review, if you had acted selfishly toward others
43:03
during your lifetime, you would experience those events again,
43:07
but now from the viewpoint of the people who experience the suffering.
43:11
So this whole idea of your life passing in front of you and people have experienced
43:16
this for many, many years. You know, this has been one of the things that many
43:20
people have said, you know, that has happened to them as they've had a near-death experience.
43:27
And this goes back a long, long way. Maybe that's why we believe when we die, we are judged.
43:35
It seems to be the judgment is right there. It's right there.
43:39
In and of itself. Yeah. In all of it.
43:43
And then it goes on here, it talks about also that they're beginning to understand
43:48
that there are even memories that people have before birth, if you can elicit
43:56
these at an early enough age.
43:59
As near-death experience suggests, evidence of other dimension studies on pre-birth
44:04
memories have also yielded intriguing insights.
44:08
And Dr. Akira Ikigawa is an obstetrician-gynecologist in Japan.
44:15
Between 2002 and 2003, Ikigawa surveyed 3,000 parent-child pairs in Nagano, Japan.
44:24
His research into prenatal memories aimed to provide guidelines for prenatal care and education.
44:31
During his investigation, he interviewed many children and parents across Japan,
44:36
collecting reports of memories from before birth.
44:39
He discovered that 33% of the children interviewed remembered being in the womb
44:46
before their birth, while 20.7% recalled their birth experience.
44:51
Most children with memories were two to three years old, and the memories seemed to fade over time.
44:58
Virtually none were reported after six years old.
45:02
To his surprise, a recurring theme in their recollections was that the children
45:07
described coming from a place above the colorful clouds where there were angels
45:13
and fairies, according to their descriptions.
45:16
Ikigawa recorded these findings in his research books such as,
45:20
When I See My Mom on the Clouds.
45:23
Children recall being on a cloud in a higher dimension and coexisting with angels and fairies.
45:30
When they found their mothers, they left the clouds and flew into their mothers' wombs.
45:34
It all sounds great and fantastic, but the thing is, is so many of these children
45:39
reported the same thing.
45:41
For example, a boy named Yuki was three years old when he stared at a wedding
45:47
picture of his parents and told his mom, I was watching the wedding from the sky.
45:52
The boy said he saw his mom and dad spending time at the beach at that time.
45:57
His mother confirmed that after the wedding ceremony, they had gone to the beach.
46:02
A girl named Natsumi recounted that before birth, she was one of the angel-like
46:07
cherubs flying above clouds and searching for their future mothers.
46:12
There were six of them, including me, she said. The mom I saw at the time was
46:16
walking down the sidewalk wearing a dress with a navy blue background and a
46:21
white water droplet pattern.
46:23
Nesumi's mom confirmed that she did have a maternity dress with that pattern and that color.
46:29
So it may sound fantastic and so forth. I don't know.
46:34
A lot of it is, you know, being confirmed and a lot of these memories and so
46:38
forth prove to be very, very accurate.
46:44
So, what were you saying then? I was going to say, it makes you take a different
46:48
look at abortion, doesn't it? Yes, it does.
46:52
That, you know, a life is a life from conception. And the fact is that,
46:58
you know, many of the things that the church has been teaching and professing has been,
47:05
taught and professed for about 2,000 years.
47:07
And a lot of people in it have had very, very,
47:14
strong religious experiences, and there have been the church verifications of
47:20
miracles over the years, and some of.
47:25
The saints and so forth who have seen,
47:29
The saints who have been passed away and so forth have all these explanations.
47:36
A lot of this physical, the physicists and so forth, ideas go a long way toward
47:43
explaining a lot of these things or, you know, in a different way.
47:46
But coinciding with a lot of the religious experiences that people have.
47:51
And so it seems to point that there are a lot of this, you know,
47:57
things that have been around for a long, long time, and that people do indeed experience them.
48:04
And as Hamlet said to Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth,
48:09
Horatio, than your philosophy has ever dreamt of. That's right.
48:14
Who knows the mind of God?
48:17
At any rate, it goes on here, it says, the mind is the playground of the infinities,
48:22
Pravika told the Epoch Times.
48:24
Our ability to conceptualize higher dimensions beyond the four we experience,
48:30
suggests their existence.
48:32
If we could think about these dimensions, they likely have a basis in reality,
48:37
even if we cannot directly perceive them.
48:41
That to me, you know, we are able to think about things that are not real in this world, at least.
48:48
It shows how powerful and the ability that the imagination and so forth has.
48:57
And so everything that we think about and imagine can't necessarily be something
49:02
that is going to be proven in another world or another dimension.
49:06
But nevertheless, again, so much of this,
49:10
is being studied for the first time, and a lot of this evidence is coming in
49:15
and showing that there's a lot more to this than just,
49:18
dust it off as being something fantastic or simply being a hallucination or
49:23
something else along that line.
49:25
And what the religious people have reported over 2,000 years and so forth that
49:30
has been given to them by religious experiences and so forth,
49:35
is proving to be far more substantial than people have ever thought. I think, yeah.
49:41
He goes on, he said that we can think outside the box about multidimensionality,
49:47
through cross-discipline approaches, including mathematics, philosophy, and contemplation.
49:52
Although the discussion may sound purely philosophical, a particular type of
49:57
empirical brain measurement suggests a link between consciousness and higher dimensions.
50:03
And the fact is, again, is the mathematicians have been talking about other
50:07
dimensions for a long, long time that are possible. The human brain.
50:17
Electroencephalograph program, EFG, have five common types of waves of which
50:24
gamma waves have the fastest frequency and the smallest amplitude.
50:29
Gamma waves are associated with higher-level cognitive functions and,
50:34
including perception, problem-solving, and consciousness.
50:38
They often emerge when a person is in a highly concentrated state of profound
50:43
mental peace and tranquility.
50:45
A study published in PNAS by Emo Boregan,
50:52
an associate professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan
50:57
School of Medicine, reported an unexpected surge of gamma waves in the dying
51:02
brains of two patients, an event that followed the withdrawal,
51:08
of their ventilator support.
51:11
Notably, both patients showed bursts of brain activity in a different frequency,
51:16
range in a specific area at the back of the brain, which is thought to be essential
51:22
for our conscious awareness.
51:24
However, the origin of these gamma waves cannot be explained by brain activity,
51:30
as the patient's bodies were dying and their brains were deprived of oxygen.
51:36
In Alexander's view, the brain is serving as a transceiver, receiving signals
51:41
from another dimension to which the consciousness is connected.
51:46
It is plausible that the spurt of gamma waves seen when people are dying indicates
51:51
a change in the dimension that consciousness is linked to.
51:55
So again, this is an explanation of consciousness itself coming from outside,
52:02
somewhere else in the universe besides inside the brain itself.
52:06
And again, it makes sense that the material of the brain simply cannot do what's
52:13
the activity that we credit to the brain.
52:16
It just simply can't. And again, I would tell people to read that The Last Superstition,
52:23
which is a great explanation of why material alone simply can't explain our brain activity.
52:31
Gamma waves are common in talented musicians, top athletes, and other high achievers.
52:38
Studies have shown that long-term meditators exhibit significantly more dominant
52:45
gamma waves in their brain EEG readings.
52:49
According to Hammerhoff's microtubules theory, however, consciousness-related
52:55
information is transduced from a quantum realm at frequencies much higher than gamma rays.
53:04
The previous three articles in this series, and I've read some in an earlier time,
53:11
it says, we have provided large volumes of modern biomedical research on people
53:15
living with minimal brain matter and near-death experiences.
53:20
And there has been people who have had much, much damage to their brains,
53:26
and yet there still is a tremendous amount of conscious activity that goes on.
53:31
All these reports and studies offer valuable insights into the origin of consciousness,
53:36
which appears to be intricately linked to a higher destination.
53:41
In the 2022 study published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
53:46
in addition to the Tunnels and Life Review,
53:49
many people with near-death experiences reported returning home,
53:54
a place often described as having heavenly-like entities and celestial landscapes.
54:01
I was going back to my origin and the origin of everything a participant in
54:06
the study reported, and I've talked about this as well. And we're going to have to stop here.
54:11
We're coming to the end of the program. We'll take it up again next week and
54:16
talk a little bit more about this and see if we can resolve some of these things.
54:21
But it's very, very interesting, and it makes a lot of the religious experiences
54:26
over the centuries that especially Catholicism has been around far more plausible,
54:34
and more understandable.
54:36
And there's more information coming in on these things that we may learn more here in the future.
54:41
And I say again, you know, the world is a much stranger place than we might think.
54:48
So, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,
54:53
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil,
54:56
may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host,
55:02
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all evil spirits who wander
55:08
through the world through the ruinous souls. Amen.
55:11
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
55:16
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55:21
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