Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world’s deepest questions without paywalls: https://shorturl.at/l3q6G
Life after death is explored in the context of diverse theories of consciousness, from strict Materialism/Physicalism to those of ancient wisdom traditions. We explore the view that the haunting and deeply personal question of life after death relates to theories of consciousness.
Watch more videos on consciousness and life after death here: https://shorturl.at/vNC3W
Iain McGilchrist FRSA is a British psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscientist who wrote the 2009 book \.
The idea of a consciousness after death — or of a consciousness which exist independent from the brain is very doubtful
1) when persons who were decleared to be dead by a doctor — ´survived´ and report e.g. of ´Near-Death Experiences´: then they have not ´survived´ death but only a wrong diagnosis
2) When persons who were under general anaesthetic — report about conscious perceptions: then is this not a hint about a consciousness which is independent/seperated from the brain.
It is well known, that 1 of 250 to 1 of 1000 persons awake for a short period during a general anaesthetic — with the ability of a conscious perception
3) When a long-standing partner died, then a lot of bereaved persons can have an ´after-death-contact´, when the deceased person is recalled/remembered like real — sometimes even a mental-talk is perceived.
Such experiences are not a hint of an afterlife or of an existence after death!
Such experiences are the result of a CONTEXT DEPENDENT RETRIEVAL:
When people live very close together then is the partner stored in the memory together with the house/flat, furniture, animals, smells, clothes. And when one person died then can it be that the memory with the deceased person is reactivated together with the house/flat… which still exists.
About 9 % to 60 % of the bereaved persons might have such an ´after death contact´ with a deceased person. These experiences will vanish after several weeks — when it will be learned by the brain that the deceased person is no longer in the flat — or when the flat or details of the flat will be changed
4) The phenomenon ´Near-Death Experience´(NDE) is already completely explained by me since 2006: In a NDE we can perceive LIVE + CONSCIOUS how a single stimulus(thought, situation) is processed by the brain — step-by-step. This is a DIRECT access to the working brain — as a conscious perception. NDEs have NOTHING to do with lifethreatening, dying, death or afterlife!
(Book-source in German language: Kinseher Richard “Auflösung grosser Fragen: Was ist Bewusstsein? Was ist Zeit?” )
5) On cool places we can sometimes perceive the experience as to be touched by ´something / someone´ although no other person is nearby — a horrifying experience. Such ´touches´ can be the result of infrasound: INFRASOUND is a sound which we can not hear but which we can feel
Such experiences as 1) to 5) are often discussed as a ´proof´ for the existence of a consciousness (or of a life after death) which exist independent from the human brain.
The idea of a consciousness/life after death will be flawed/doubtful — when we study how the brain is working. Some ´unexplainable´ experiences can be explained — when we study how thinking, perception is processed by a working brain