Quantum Theory Could Explain Life After Death
If consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, it’s possible that it continues to exist after the death of the body.
Today, one of the most discussed topics in neuroscience is the near-death experience. Many people report having mystical visions as their vital organs begin to shut down. And although many explain the result as a sort of neurological blip, some scientists believe that it is possible to discover the basis for these experiences and perhaps even prove that there is indeed life after death, or at least some remnant of life that doesn’t expire along with the body.
The most recent case of this in the field of neurology is when the Harvard doctor Eben Alexander believed to have seen proof of the persistence of consciousness after death in his own near-death experience. His subsequent work has become a polemical topic in the world neuroscience. But before he came out to the media with his alleged “proof of heaven”, the anesthesiologist and neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff had already postulated a quantum theory of life after death.
According to Hameroff, consciousness is based on small structures that are called microtubules and are found inside the brain. The experience of self-consciousness is the effect of quantum gravity on these microtubules, which serve as something like processing nodes. That is, if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, then it is constituted of the same substance that makes up the rest of the universe, which has existed since the beginning of time and is made up of the geometry of time itself.
Under normal conditions, Hameroff explains, consciousness occurs at the geometric plane of space-time within the brain. But when metabolism, which runs the brain’s quantum coherency, starts to slow down, the quantum information filters back into the space-time of the entire universe. The remaining consciousness is thus interlaced with Everything and consciousness (or even subconsciousness) may even continue to exist.
The theory doesn’t mean that upon death we are conscious of ourselves (or carry with us our personalities) but that our consciousness or memories will return to the universe, perhaps even feeding into a sort of cosmic library: the profundity of ourselves filtering back into its primordial truth.
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