Does death exist?
New theory says ‘No’
One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
By Dr. Robert Lanza / December 9, 2009
Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). A new scientific theory — called biocentrism — refines these ideas.
There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling — the “Who am I?” — is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past.
Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air — if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us… know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.
This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband — Ed — started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.
Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.
“Ed,” she said “I can’t feel my leg.”
She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.
After the death of his son, Emerson wrote “Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.”
Whether it’s flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it’s the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister’s dream house.
Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.
[Robert Lanza, MD, is considered one of the leading scientists in the world, especially for his pioneering work in stem cell research. He is Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the author of Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe , a book that lays out his theory of everything.]
Source / The Huffington Post
Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog
Jeezus F. Krist, is this a broma? I thought religion was silly but this takes the cake.
“Wisdom gained in the clouds is cloudy wisdom indeed.” Wilhelm Reich
A doctor you say? Gawd save us from health care.
A good physicist can be a bad poet – or, vice versa.
I hate it when you fight. I’m going to my room.
They all laugh at angry young men. They all laughed at Edison and also at Einstein. So, why should I feel sorry if they just couldn’t understand the reasoning and the logic that went on in my head? I had a brain. It was insane. Oh, they used to laugh at me when I refused to ride on all those double-decker buses, all because there was no driver on the top.
Also, in an infinite universe, are not all things true? Does not everything exist in an infinite universe?
I’m just sayin’….
Damn, I am sorry I missed the deleted comment!!!
What is really interesting to me is the degree to which modern physics supports the “many-worlds” theory first explored by adventure/sci fi writer William Seabrook. In Seabrook’s “fan-shaped destiny”, supposedly revelaed to him by an African priestess on one of his real-life adventures, every choice leads to an amoeba-like splitting of reality along alternate, but equally valid, paths, a yes/no for every choice.
In one of those worlds, Richard is a priest; in another, there are no priests or gods.
Wild and imaginative tho this notion may be — so imaginative that it was stolen by many succeeding science fiction writers — modern physics theory asserts that exactly such a thing is not only possible, but perhaps a logical outcome of forces we can more readily observe.
For more on the many worlds, see the novel by former olden daze Rag writer Paul Pipkin, the Fan-shaped Destiny of William Seabrook (Time-Warner Books, 2001). Although this is a novel (“a romance”, in fact), it is the most complete exploration to date of Seabrook’s theory, and its later adoption by sober scientists.
I find the theory intersting…but its like the notion that the orchestra you hear on the radio is not to be found in the radio. Of course, that is true….but one can ultimatley find the real orchestra, and so far, no one has found this “fountain” of energy that might exist outside my body (my brain is part of my body, the the brain leads my nervous system and my nervous system leads the rest of my body so I refuse to say “brain” and “body” separately).
However, one of the reasons I call myself a dieist is out of respect for the mysteries and in recognition that humanity knows very, very little. One ought NEVER to be dismissive or arrogant. This disease affects the right, but also, apparently, the left.
Heavy holiday season stuff. I have been a student of Theravada Buddhism for a long time and while the Dhamma doesn’t talk about flipping switches, the teachings basically make the same observations about time and space that Dr. Lanza reviews. The infinite number of universes he mentions were called Jhanas by the Buddha. They are “the ecstasies” or higher levels of enlightenment until Nibbana, or what Westerners call Nirvana, or supreme enlightenment, is attained.
Sitting beneath a Bo tree until supreme enlightenment is attained, or using a particle accelerator to create an atomic particulate mashup that may seem to reference or mutate the past, both are using the 30 watt neural mass on top of our shoulders. Man somehow must attempt to make sense of just what it is we think we are perceiving.
Organized religions make an easier social pablum out of it which requires only a few of the 30 watts to satisfy a great many people. Theist, deist, nihilist, skeptic, or whatever all acknowledge a grand mystery. Some even claim to have the answer, the ultimate truth.
Making it through what we see as time till the 30 watt reality generator burns out is a lot easier if material stuff is not important.
But for the next couple of weeks or so, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, etc. I wonder if Willie Nelson spends a lot of time wondering who he is?
Keep your two cents. We are delighted you are no longer trashing the comments on TRB. Folks who want to constructively exchange ideas and not endure your pathological tirades will be inspired to donate to TRB just because you are NOT present any longer. Good riddance. Richard has not been on the editorial staff for some time . . . find someone or something else to blame.
Dospesentas: What is your basis for this claim? It is patently untrue. We NEVER remove comments because we disagree with them. What would be the point of having a “comments” section then? We want and encourage spirited discussion. Surely that is obvious to anyone who reads the comments to our articles.
We do have a stated policy that we will remove comments that include hate speech or personal attacks — but we have rarely deleted a comment even for those reasons.
The deletion above, you will notice, was made by the author of the comment, not by us. We don’t even moderate comments as many blogs do; when you make a comment it is automatically posted.
We rarely remove a comment and when we do it is usually because it is spam, often robot-produced advertising, that has no relationship to the content of the article.
I want some of what Dr. Lanza was smoking just before he wrote that article 🙂
These notions of "after death" "life" keep on rolling like some wild mix of DMT and weed!
Ha ha, maybe what Dr Lanza is referring to, and maybe something that exists in an "alternate universe", is the "flashbacks" we were promised if we used psychedelics! I used to think, "Money in the bank, boy, money in the bank for when I am old and can no longer score good acid!" The money, too, has proven to be illusory.
Interesting article. Watch the DVD, ‘Mind Walk’ – it’s also very interesting; discusses quantum physics and similar ideas.