Week 1 - Jane Kwak

           Though ideas within the spirit realm and near death experiences have been researched extensively, we do not have a complete understanding of these experiences.  Pereira and Reddy attempt to explain disembodiment involved in near death experiences using quantum entanglement.  Two types of consciousness, bodily and functional, partake in quantum entanglement in order to explain the creation of memories beyond just the brain and body.  Bodily and functional consciousness work together to allow a disembodied conscious state that people may experience when near death. A truck driver named Al Sullivan was able to experience this state when undergoing a surgery.  He felt as though he was no longer in his body and was able to watch the full procedure from above.  After his surgery, Sullivan spoke about specific actions that his surgeon demonstrated during the surgery.  Sullivan’s comments startled the surgeon, because it was very unlikely that Sullivan knew those facts beforehand (957).  Though this can be used as a piece of evidence for experiencing surroundings while in a disembodied conscious state, it is difficult for me to accept that one’s consciousness is able to leave the body, observe the situation, and return to the body with certain memories.  These types of personal accounts are not enough to explain the spirit realm and consciousness.  Paul, Devnath, and Islam attempt to study near death experiences using mathematics.  Their article analyzes a relationship between time experienced during a Near Death Experience and the consciousness of the brain using a mathematical equation. Using this equation, they concluded that consciousness is not limited by time and space and that, “… consciousness of a human being will exists for infinity and he’ll feel the emotional state of NDE for infinity time” (7). Both of these studies are interesting, because they are unable to put a quantitative value on their variables.  Instead, these ideas are mostly based off of self-reported or observed instances.  This is one of the reasons why the ideas of the spirit realm and near death experiences are unable to be fully understood.  The use of self-report studies can be unreliable due to demand characteristics as well as individual differences.

Question: Would it be possible to put a quantitative value on variables that are involved in near death experiences in order to determine a correlation to further understand consciousness during near death experiences?

References:

Arindam Kumar Paul, Liton Devnath, and Md. Rafiqul Islam. An Approach to Prove the Existence of After Life by Analyzing Near Death Experience’s Data with Mathematical Logic.” 2016. Academic Research International. Vol 7(4)

Contzen Pereira and Shashi Kiran Reddy. “Near Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway.” 2016. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research. Vol 7(11)

Visual Reference:

https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/gettyimages-519685592.jpg