The Re-discovery Of The Soul

A few days ago I began to read a brand new medical science study about death called Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death by Dr. Sam Parnia and Josh Young (February, 2013). They tell us some very interesting things about changing views of physical death . . . and human life. For instance, up to this point many scientists have concluded that human consciousness, the mind, subjective experience, the person or simply the soul, arises from the activity of the brain. However, all the brain-based theories "do not answer the fundamental question of how thoughts and consciousness or human experience may arise from the activity of neurons."

The authors go on to make a most important point about how thoughts, feelings, emotions and what makes us into who we are arises.

This limitation of all the theories has led to the suggestion that human consciousness or the soul may in fact be an irreducible scientific entity in its own right, similar to many of the concepts in physics such as mass and gravity, which are also irreducible entities. —Kindle location 2785 

They go on to speak about the views of Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles, considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists in the world.  The whole of Eccles' philosophical thought has been brought together in a book entitled Facing Reality published by Springer in the Heidelberg Science Library (1970).

Eccles' "view was that the mind, consciousness, or soul itself played an active role in selecting and integrating brain cell activity and molded it into a unified whole. . . He thought of the brain as an "instrument that provides the conscious self or person with the lines of communication from and to the external world" and that "does this by receiving information through the immense sensory system of the millions of nerve fibre that fire impulses to the brain, where it is processed into coded patterns of information that we read out from moment to moment in deriving all our experiences—or perceptions, thoughts, ideas and memories. . . 

Therefore, in (Eccles') view, the brain is an instrument that relays information to and from both the internal and external worlds, but consciousness  or the soul is a separate and subtle scientific entity that interacts directly with it. Furthermore, as the human soul or consciousness is a separate yet entirely real entity that determines the true reality of a person, it continues to exist after death. Therefore, when one dies, one is left with the same level of knowledge, understanding and perception as on earth. This is why people with actual-death or near-death experiences may interpret what they see based on their own level of education and thought. Thus, the level of perception of reality that exists after death is directly proportional to that acquired on earth. —Kindle location 2811-12

The authors describe how modern medical  technology is able to restore human life many hours after brain and heart activity has ceased. These new discoveries suggest that medical doctors must be very cautious about declaring a person dead ! This information also has some far reaching implications for the so-called harvesting of organs from people who have died.

If this question interests you as much as it does me, I can only urge you to read the book. In my next posts I will explore further what the Bible says about the soul and suggest that theologians and medical scientists must carry on with an even more extensive dialog about human existence as both body and soul.

Is The Book Dead?

I was fascinated by a comment (below) by Mark Booth, publishing director of Century, an imprint of Random House. He has a new book out called The Secret History of the World: As Laid Down by the Secret Societies. He presents his book as an alternate history of the cosmos and humankind, with the early chapters relating the creation of the world and later chapters devoted to all of crankdom's usual suspects: "Egyptian" hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, the Knights Templar, the pineal gland, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry -- you name it. I totally agree with Laura Miller's review of his book: "It is a mess of a book, disjointed and rambling, rife with puzzling non sequiturs that are obviously meant to be suggestive or evocative but that more often read like the symptoms of an advanced case of Attention Deficit Disorder."

As much as I found Booth's book about secret societies a bunch of drivel, I was still challenged by another comment he recently made. He says that the book is dead.:

"The evidence in 2008 ... suggests that book reading is in decline. I have worked in publishing for some 25 years and have also recently published a book of my own, conscious that it may be one of the last books. I think some people in the business don't want to admit that it's happening. To them it seems a betrayal of skills and standards that generations worked hard to maintain. They see apathy, short attention spans, illiteracy – what Auberon Waugh called the "proletarianisation" of Britain. . .

"Now the work of the novel is finished, and a new form of consciousness is emerging. It's easy to misread the signs of the times. What we're dealing with here is not a decline in reading, but a decline in reading printed books. I am fascinated to learn in The New Yorker that a recent survey in the States shows that a TV in a child's bedroom lowers academic grades, but a parallel survey shows that time spent on the internet encourages better grades!"

"Clearly interactivity is the key. Perhaps the creative things my children do on the net are less passive than reading books? If Caxton's was a revolution in reading, what we are seeing now is a revolution in reading and writing combined.

"The great new literary form that will replace the novel will, I believe, arise on the net and will take on its wild frontier spirit, its intellectual risk-taking, its two fingers at academic control-freakery. But it will also help forge a new form of consciousness in a much more fundamental way that has to do with the form of the internet.

"Because we are all plugging ourselves into one great electronic mind, we will gradually lose the sense of each being shut off in a private mental space, as esoteric philosophy has long predicted. Our mental space will be out there and, as with Facebook, everyone else will have access to it. I don't know what this new literary form will be, but I suspect it will be co-operative and as slinkily responsive to whoever is looking at it as Schroedinger's cat. I can't wait."

So much for Booth. Sorry for the extended quote. The problem is that I lean in his direction. Note the links I inserted above as examples. I found the comment by Booth by Googling. I knew nothing about the man until I stumbled (is that a good word?) upon his Blog. And then with further Googling I learned what Laura Miller had to say and I agree with her. Add to that Booth's reference to William Caxton, the 15th century British historian and printer who incredibly advanced the publishing of books. I didn't know that. Guess how I found out. The same thing is true with Schroedinger's cat. I read about that some time ago, but had forgotten about it until Booth lifted it up in his book. But now I can refer you to it with a yet another link.

And so it goes. Wonder upon wonder. We have all this immediately available to us on the Net. And add to that the email I got this morning from my granddaughter, writing from Facebook. Yup. Something is happening. Perhaps the book, as we know it, is indeed dead and is being replaced by--well--this very medium you and I are using to communicate with one another.