It may be the ultimate unresolved mystery of human life,
how and why does consciousness exist?
Although some scientific literature acknowledges that the question remains open,
the overwhelming consensus among neuroscientists today
is that the brain alone creates conscious experience.
The brain is described as a genetically programmed computer
whose electrical and biochemical processes produce
what we experience as thought and decision-making.
It's therefore no surprise that science headlines today suggest
that the experience of free will is merely an illusion,
a byproduct of so-called background noise in the brain.
In popular media we are presented with a black and white dilemma,
we must choose between reason and rationality
or superstition and blind faith.
However, for decades some acclaimed scientists around the world
have conducted consciousness research that provides a very different picture.
The evidence these researchers present
suggests that the brain alone does not produce consciousness
but rather, the source and locus of consciousness is non-material.
Some proponents of this burgeoning field now refer to it as post-materialist science.
One of the most remarkable of these researchers is Dr. Gary Schwartz,
professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery
at the University of Arizona
and director of its Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health.
We asked Dr. Schwartz for his thoughts on the mystery of consciousness
beginning with the question,
how did institutional science arrive at its current position
that the brain alone produces conscious experience?
Conventional and contemporary neuroscientists, as a general rule,
all believe, in fact they assume, that the brain creates consciousness,
that consciousness is a by-product or side-effect of brain function
and this is what's called the materialist perspective.
It's the idea that reality is defined first and foremost in terms of matter
that it's only material things that exist
and therefore anything else that exists,
such as consciousness and subjective experience,
that by definition this has to be created by a material object
such as the brain.
And so the assumption is therefore that anything that we think or do
not only involves our brain but requires our brain
and therefore, when our brain ceases to function i.e. when it dies,
our consciousness "dies" too
because it's dependent entirely on the brain.
Now, that view, which is the current accepted view,
in my opinion and a group of other scientists' opinion, is wrong
and there is a new movement called Post-Materialist science
which, in fact, there was just a what's called a manifesto for Post-Materialist science
that was published in the scientific journal Explore
which was co-written by Mario Beauregard, myself, Lisa Miller
and a group of five other scientists including Larry Dossey and Rupert Sheldrake,
which explains the alternative scientific perspective.
Despite the extraordinary advancements in neuroscience and neuro technology,
according to Dr. Schwartz, the sciences have failed to prove
that the brain is the creator of consciousness rather than the receiver.
There are hundreds and hundreds of studies in cognitive neuroscience
and emotional neuroscience
all of which presume to "prove"
that mind and emotion are caused by the brain.
However, and I would like to explain this,
all of those studies, and there are hundreds if not thousands of them,
use 3 basic kinds of procedures,
it's important for your listeners to understand it.
those procedures are: correlation, stimulation and ablation.
Now what does that mean in plain English?
Correlation means for example, they'll put electrodes on the occipital cortex,
then they will, let's say, shine a light and show that there's a change in brain waves,
typically a reduction in what's called the Alpha frequency,
Alpha blocking in the back of the head.
Moreover, if a person imagines a light
you see a reduction in the Alpha frequency in the back of the ... of the brain.
So the first thing is we observe a correlation
between conscious experience and brain function.
Secondly, you could do stimulation.
So for example you can, if the brain is exposed in surgery,
you can literally use electrodes to stimulate the brain
(which is that) which has been done or you can now use external stimulator
so using a magnetism, focused magnetism to stimulate portions of the brain
and if you stimulate the occipital cortex people report seeing lights.
Also you can do what's called ablation,
now, typically we wouldn't do that purposely in humans,
you would do that in animals
but there are natural ablations either due to unfortunate accidents or diseases, strokes
where particular areas of the occipital cortex are damaged,
and you will find decrements (or) if not blindness in selective regions
of one's visual perception.
So those 3 factors; correlation, stimulation and ablation triangulate,
they all point to the idea that the brain is creating consciousness.
Now, why is that not sufficient to conclude that the brain causes consciousness?
And the reason is really very simple
and I actually learned this when I was in high school
and then started out my undergraduate education in electrical engineering
because the same three criteria are used to determine how a television set is working.
So for example you do correlations,
you put an oscilloscope probe on a particular portion of a circuit
and then you look to see if the signals are correlated with what you see on the screen.
Then you do stimulation.
There are literally electrical stimulators and you stimulate different parts of the circuit
and you look to see changes that occur in the visual part of the screen or the monitor.
And then thirdly, you do ablation,
meaning, you cut wires or you remove integrated circuits
and you look to see what parts of the signal (are a) go away.
But you don't conclude from those three procedures
that the television set created the signal!
We know that the television set is an antenna-receiver for the signals
so in other words, although correlation, stimulation and ablation
are consistent with the idea that a TV set or a brain could be creating the signals,
it's equally consistent with the idea that a TV set or a brain
could be picking up signals from outside the system.
And therefore you need to do additional kinds of research,
different methods to come to the conclusion about whether or not
we're dealing with a creator of consciousness or an antenna-receiver for consciousness
and that's why the research that I and my colleagues have been doing on
mediums, for example,
is so important for neuroscience and the brain.
Because, if the brain was the creator of consciousness
then when a person's brain died their consciousness would decease,
case closed.
But if our brains are really TV systems,
they are antenna- receivers for our minds,
Dr. William [-----] calls them even bio suits, if you would,
that then, if our brains die and if bodies physical die,
our consciousness hasn't died i.e. the signal hasn't disappeared
because that was not the origin of the signal in the first place.
and therefore other people's minds and brains,
for example the minds of mediums, could pick them up.
And that's why I've done so much research
under single-blind, double-blind and triple-blind (conclusion) conditions
and they all point to the conclusion
that some mediums are real and that the information is,
strongly supports the idea that consciousness survives physical death
and that's a post- materialist perspective.
Individuals who have experienced clinical death
may provide one of the most critical clues on the source and essence of consciousness.
While mainstream science attributes the so called 'near-death experience'
entirely to brain activity, as Dr. Schwartz explains,
this notion is complicated when all measurable brain activity has ceased.
The claim that staunch materialists would like to make
is that many of, what I called, near-death experiences
can be explained as residual firing
of either the cortex or subcortical structures
after it's been damaged or after the heart's stopped.
The problem with that, I call it wishful thinking,
is because if you look at the both human research and animal research,
it's well documented that literally all electrical activity ceases
within 40 seconds to a minute of the time that blood flow has stopped going to the brain.
There is no evidence of electrical firing of the brain at all.
So for people to therefore think that somehow
well, the brain is still firing, it's just that we can't electrically see it,
the reason why they're pushed to that conclusion
is because they find it impossible to believe
that once, consciousness could continue after the brain did stop functioning.
That's because they're stuck believing this simple materialist view.
Now those people have not thought through the issue
of the fact that neuroscience methods; correlation, stimulation and ablation
do not prove the conclusion that the brain creates consciousness
any more that correlation, stimulation and ablation
would conclude that a television set created the TV signals.
They don't understand that core logic.
The consensus theories of institutional science
tell us that nature and all the universe is purposeless.
What is institutional science contributing to human kind
in our quest for personal and collective identity and meaning?
At a surface level, the material approach to science, if anything, is taking it away.
It sees the universe as a material, cold, thoughtless, feelingless, loveless place
for which there is no meaning nor purpose.
It's a, it's sort of order that's derived from chance
and it's just one of an infinite number of possible universes
and that our ability to have meaning and to have subjective experiences
is really a by-product or side-effect of the evolution of matter
which is mostly driven by random processes.
That view, if anything, robs the cosmos of meaning and purpose.
However, when you take a non- materialist approach to all of this,
which I and a number of colleagues do,
this perspective, instead of taking you away from spirituality,
takes you to spirituality
and that allows you to experience and interpret the universe
in a very alive, living, conscious, intelligent, creative process.
And it leads you to re-examine what we experience as the material world.
Now for the record, I love material, I love the material world,
I think that the creation of matter and the capacities of material systems
is to be admired and celebrated
and I think that there are principles, that material systems show,
which actually reveal the deep intentions and meaning
to a universal consciousness, a universal mind.
So in other words,
studying the nature of matter in material systems and living systems
tells us something about the mind of the, of the creator.
You know, the mind of God.
And therefore, it can be very instructive
but we have to reinterpret what we're seeing from this grander framework.
So post-materialism does not throw out discoveries of material science,
quite the contrary, it celebrates them
but what it does is it says; we need to interpret them from a greater reality
so just like quantum physics and relativity theory was a bigger theory
and included aspects of for example Newtonian physics, Newtonian theory
as being a more special limited case of a grander theory,
post materialist theory will be an expanded vision
for which the material model becomes a more limited or special case of the bigger theory.