After Death - Life?

Mark J. Glover

My father's grave. Where is, or 'is' he now?

Do not stand at my grave and weep
(Formerly attributed to Native American sources)

Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow. I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain. I am the fields of ripening grain.I am in the morning hush. I am in the graceful rush of beautiful birds in circling flight. I am the star-shine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom. I am in a quiet room. I am the birds that sing. I am in each gentle thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there, I did not die.
[Mary E. Frye]

Crossing the Grave

I see you did not try to save the bouquet of white
flowers I gave,
So fast they wither on your grave.
Why does it hurt the heart to think of that bitter
abrupt brink,
Where the load shouldered coffin sink?
These living bodies that we wear,
So changed by every seventh year,
That in a new dress we appear.
Limbs, spongy brain and slogging heart,
No part remains the self same part.
Like dreams they stay and still depart.
You slipped slow bodies in the past,
Then why should we be so aghast,
You flung off the whole flesh at last.
Let he who loved you think instead,
That like a woman who has wed,
You undressed first and went to bed.
[REV. Andrew Young]

This is a new blog to assess and discuss the evidence for the existence of life after death and its relevance to daily life.

Beatle George Harrison said that there are three key questions we should concern ourselves with:

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Where am I going?

These questions, and the subject matter of this blog, are relevant and central, to what exactly consciousness is, or may be. I hope to attempt an examination of the arguments for whether the origin and nature of consciousness is biological or metaphysical. This argument falls into two essential camps: skeptic (atheist) and believer; with another group that lies outside of them: agnostics. This is just an introductory note, for the time being. [8th October 2007]

The evidence

The main problem with evidence, or proof, of life after death is that it is accepted as being a non-physical reality. Unless, of course, the deceased possess bodies (? etheric/astral) of a sort which have metaphysical properties that enable them to appreciate their world, or dimension of reality, as though it were solid; as this one appears to us. Rather like the experience of the character played by Robin Williams, after he dies, in the film - 'What Dreams May Come'. There are different theories as to the nature of this process. It may be that it consists of a type of interactive and integrated holographically, or mentally, projected reality which they perceive and experience. The way we experience our dreams, when asleep, as real. Indeed, according to Hinduistic teachings and quantum theory, this apparently dense physical world we ourselves inhabit is not actually 'solid' in an absolute sense. Hinduism calls it Maya, or illusion. This is not to say that nothing is actually 'real', it just means that, ultimately, all realities are viewed as manifestations of consciousness vibrating at different frequencies or rates. Of course a sceptic will tell you that this notion is complete nonsense, despite the fact that conventional physics accepts the notion that the physical world consists of atoms which are deemed solid by virtue of the flux of the electron shells that surrounds their subatomic particles. Of course the existence and functioning of anything metaphysical is extremely difficult to postulate and demonstrate in a rational and empirical sense. Which is part of the reason for the scepticism in the first place. But quantum mechanics is also like that. The astronomical dollar question is: Dose matter give rise to consciousness? Or is it the other way round? Does consciousness give rise to matter? More of this later. [9th October 2007]

Addressing the sceptic's view

The problem is that many sceptics demand scientific evidence which is based on empirical objective proof as propounded originally by Galileo and Bacon. However, as John Spencer - the former Chairman of the British UFO Association (BUFORA), pointed out in a paper he delivered at the BUFORA Conference of 1996 (Sheffield) - it is not usually possible to adequately prove empirically what appears to be a 'non-physical' reality, or any apparent manifestation of it, as in the case of let's say a haunting. And many paranormal phenomena, such as poltergeists, just don't manifest to order ('how convenient' a sceptic might say). This view of Spencer's, by the way, is very similar to what the father of modern psychology - William James believed regarding introspective experiences or perspectives, which are non-physical and although non-empirically provable, are nevertheless accepted because everyone reports having them. [17th October 2007]

Let us take a very good example of a non-physical reality by looking at the mundane phenomena of dreaming. Do you dream? I expect you do. Do you believe other people dream? I expect you do. Does science except the process of dreaming? I believe it does. If so, there must be some veridical evidence of this other than anecdotal hearsay. Yes there is. Sleep studies show there are rapid eye movements (REM) when a person is asleep (supported by electro-encephalographic [EEG] readings). Researchers associate, or correlate, these responses with dreaming because when the researcher wakes the person up, the subject informs the researcher that they were indeed dreaming at that particular point. But remember, this is merely an inference or assumption that rapid eye movement and EEG changes seem to correlate with what we might call 'blind visualisation'. We cannot literally get inside someone's head to see and verify the dreams (at least not yet). Yes, we can use PET and MRI scanning to indicate correlating activity within the visual cortices of the brain and compare the activity with viewing imagery in awake subjects; and as Wilder Penfield showed in his epilepsy patients, you can evoke past memories and emotions by employing direct electrical stimulation to certain parts of the brain, but you are still relying on the person's declaration to verify those memories, emotions or dreams. We all assume that none of us , or at least most of us aren't lying about this extremely common 'experience' of dreaming; so no-one questions it's reality. Even prior to the invention of scanning techniques, science readily accepted the correlation between REM and dreaming, based on the evidence available at the time. [20th October 2007]

All the readings regarding dream research are interpretations of invisible events purportedly taking place in the brain. Of course I believe, as most people do, that the above is probably evidence of dream activity taking place in the brain, but the word probable is key. At the end of the day, we can still only infer what is 'probably' happening. There is still the chance that we may discover one day that it is just a coincidence. For instance, some research now suggests that raised cholesterol is not the cause of arterial disease, but rather a result, or symptom, of it. Homocysteine (a by product of protein synthesis) has now been implicated as a culprit. But it's more complex than that, for the symbiotic relationship of atheromatous plaque formation (within arterial walls) to those two substances is difficult to untangle; and even the immune system is also involved some how. [23rd October 2007]

In the 18th century the father of modern chemistry - Lavoisier declared that reports of rocks falling from the sky were not possible, since there were no rocks in the sky. Logical? However, thanks to the unbiased, diligent and painstaking, collection of data by Jean Baptiste Biot over several decades, rocks were indeed eventually proven to fall from the sky. We call them meteorites today, and there is nothing particularly mysterious about them, now. Might a similar fate await UFOs? Possibly not, I hear you say. Oh well, perhaps you are right! I don’t know, but as Biot said: "Judgement should never precede observation. It is always the case that when there is a controversial question, that the ignorant believe naively and the semi-schooled come to a decision; but one who has any real understanding examines the facts, because he does not have the temerity to set limits on the capacity of nature." I'm sure you'll agree that his statement could equally apply to sceptics and believers alike. [28th October 2007]

How could any scientist prior to Newton have possibly proposed to his contemporaries that one day science would find a way of communicating through the air by utilising invisible natural energy waves, which we take completely for granted today, and refer to as microwave radiation. After having a good laugh at him (or her), they would no doubt have eventually had them tried and imprisoned for heresy, or else declared completely insane. No-one even experienced such phenomena until very recently, apart from visible and audible spectra. Didn't the sci-fi writer - Arthur C. Clarke once say that an advanced alien technology might appear, to us, as indistinguishable from that of paranormal phenomena? You only have to look at the actual quantum 'non-locality' experiments of the spin of polarised photons undertaken in the 1970s and 80s by Freedman & Clauser and Aspect & Grangier (demonstrating Einstein's 'spooky effect at distance') to realise that. And if we are expected to believe astrophysicist's inference that the entire universe began from an incredibly tiny point of singularity, manifesting out of goodness knows what, why should we be so aghast, or find anything paranormal so difficult to accept, once we understand how it might work?

**** But returning to dreams. If relatively few humans reported dreaming (like paranormal phenomena) it is doubtful that science would have been interested in the process at all. And it would probably be considered, like paranormal phenomena, as worthy of very little scientific attention and we might find a proliferation of 'dream sceptics'. What makes dreaming important and relevant to science is that it is a common universal experience (or CUE). Relatively rare phenomena such as: UFOs, ghosts and some diseases, tend to engender discrimination and disinterest by science; as the meteorite example demonstrates. [11th November 2007]

After Death - Life? [Copyright]