Do Human Beings Have Souls that Live on After Death?

Part 3 of a philosophical enquiry into the nature of humankind.

THE IDEA THAT HUMAN BEINGS LIVING ON AFTER DEATH is ancient. The concept came into the Western religious tradition through the Greek philosophers starting with Pythagoras who visited India looking for truth. Reincarnation is common to Buddhists, Hindus, and Philosophy (they called it the transmigration of souls), and of course you need some sort of vehicle that lasts after the body dies, a soul. Christians and Muslims also believe in souls, but not necessarily reincarnation.

But how do we know we have a soul? Can we see souls, hear them, touch them or sense them in any way? If not, how do we know souls exist, especially after death?

I am going to address this question through the review of a YouTube video by Dr. Bruce Greyson, a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Viriginia.  How the university got into this kind of research is interesting. Chester Carlson, the inventor of the Xerox copying machine became a Buddhist, decided he wanted to die a poor man, and gave his money to open Buddhist centers and fund research in people who had memories of their previous reincarnation. The Rochester Zen Center with Philip Kapleau being quite famous. It is interesting that this video is on the “Science for Monks” series on YouTube and was filmed in India with an audience of Tibetan Buddhist monks.

This is an excellent presentation by Dr. Greyson. He is scholarly, professorial, well organized, and speaks with confident authority in the voice of science.

Dr. Greyson starts by saying it is “common sense” that the brain and what we are conscious of are linked – you can measure electrical activity in the brain for or remove part of the brain and see what happens. So based on this evidence, we think that consciousness is produced by the brain. This is especially since science went materialistic with Darwin. I mention this in reference to the previous essay where Y. N. Harari believes materialistic Darwinism proves human beings don’t have souls. However, Dr. Greyson also notes that although this theory has been around for millennia, there is” no known mechanism by which physical processes in brain can produce nonmaterialistic experiences like thoughts and feeling.” Classical physics breaks down at the extremes – speeds approaching the speed of light, or the smallest in quantum physics. Here we are at the extreme between life and death. How can electrical process cause consciousness of a tree with green leaves, or how it feels to be a child at play. Dr. Greyson concludes that consciousness is more likely to be explained by quantum physics than brain activity.  “Quantum physics cannot be formulated without consciousness playing an independent role.” “Quantum physics acknowledges consciousness as a fundamental factor of existence independent of matter.” The key to understanding the Schrodinger’s Cat problem is that we do not know if the cat inside of the box is alive or dead until we or some consciousness observes whether the cat is alive or dead.  

Dr. Greyson provides four sets of examples, I will supply the fifth. He starts with an example I had not heard much about, but apparently there are those who have been in an extended comma with serious brain damage (brain tumor, incoherent, with bizarre behaviors, not allowing family to touch them, etc.) Then they wake up suddenly, quite coherent, talk with relatives, and then die. The problem with them waking up was that the brain was still not working right. Their brains are still totally disabled. “It is as if the damaged brain pre-empts consciousness, then consciousness is released after the brain finally does die.”

The second group of people Greyson addresses is people with normal to high intelligence, but no cerebral cortex. In one case, all that was there was the brain stem. The cerebral cortex is supposed give us the capacity to talk and formulate ideas, not the brain stem. Dr. Greyson provides the example of a graduate student with an IQ of 126 having hydrocephalus where 95% of his cerebral cortex was missing. This seems to be a problem of understanding how the brain works, but you need a cerebral cortex to think, don’t you?

The third group had near death experiences. This is the area that Dr. Greyson researches. In near death experiences, the person dies and has no brain activity, and then is resuscitated or otherwise revived, and lives to tell the tale of what happened when dead. These people report they had acute mental clarity, “it was more real than real life,” vivid sensory imagery, and a clear memory of the experience. They reported leaving the body, active senses, ESP or otherwise knowing things they shouldn’t, like a relative dying far away and the family not knowing yet. They said they found themselves in another realm of existence, met a mystical divine being of light and love, and met deceased friends, family, but sometimes people they didn’t know. Afterwards, they became more spiritual, compassionate, appreciated life, had no fear of death, and lost interests in material objects and status.

He includes surgical out of the body experiences with the near-death experiences group, and I don’t think it should be. The people go out of their bodies, for example in surgery, and observe the doctor operating on them. Although they have out of body experiences, they don’t seem to have the whole near-death experience, go through the tunnel, experience the Being of light, etc.

The last group Dr. Greyson discusses is people who remember past lives. How did they get the memories from if they came from a previous life? This is how the University of Virginia program began, and they spent a lot of time in India. But the best example was a young boy born to a Baptist family is the US. The boy said he was shot down in a carrier-based fighter plane over Iwa Jima. The father didn’t believe it, checked it out, and everything added up. The boy ended up visiting his elderly sister and recognizing objects and pictures of people around the room. One of the peculiarities of this group is 60% died violent deaths. Many showed birthmarks or birth defects reflecting these events. Gender and religious tradition switching seem to be a problem, but often they come into the world with specific unlearned skills, like knowing the previous language or being able to play a musical instrument.

My addition to these out of body and near-death experiences are mystics like Ramakrishna who put themselves into Samadhi so deep their bodies don’t need to breath. “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God,” light and love Spirit energy. During his lifetime British medicine was advanced and doctors could find neither heartbeat or breathing in Ramakrishna’s body when he was in Samadhi.

I encourage people to watch Dr. Greyson’s video. It is longer than I remembered, and the professor speaks deliberately. My recommendation is turn up the speed of replay at YouTube settings to 1.23 or even 1.5X. YouTube does a good job with the sound being normal even with the higher speed so it doesn’t sound like the Chipmunks.  

CONCLUSION:

How does Sophia fit in? That mystical Being full of Light and Love that they are in Communion with is Sophia. She is gloriously beautiful, pure, and loving.

Many people are suspicious of this testimony as it is subjective. But perhaps that is the lesson, as consciousness is the only thing we can be sure of. It is not “I am thinking, therefore I am,” but “I am conscious of thinking, therefore I am.” Consciousness is what we are, and without it we are not.

I also think traditional science is overrated in its understanding of the universe. We are not as sure of the “Big Bang” or “String Theory” or Darwin’s theory of evolution as we are that one plus one equals two. Everything keeps changing and evolving and now we have not only quantum physics, but quantum field physics, and even Harari says he doesn’t understand the first. But life after life experiences have occurred throughout history, and much of this information has been established in mystically based religious traditions, especially the Buddhist tradition in this video.  

If you now had to pick someone to plan humanity’s destiny, which would you pick, the soulless, Godless materialism and Nihilism of Y.N. Harari, or the mystically based soul living on after death as a child of God.  

Next:

We will explore the near-death experience further, but through the person who introduced me to these people and their experiences – Dr. Moody, Author of Life After Life.  Dr. Moody also has videos on YouTube which I will be reviewing. Dr. Greyson has examples and statistics, but Dr. Moody provides an overview of the entire experience from leaving the body, through the tunnel, and on and on. They are personal stories, so quite interesting.