Download Review by Robert Charman in Journal of the Society for Psychical

Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 2016, 80(2)
Baby was the first to ‘see’ Tom as an apparently solid external manifestation),
but I doubt if we will ever know.
In the final chapter, headed ‘Results’, Puhle analyses her own case
collection and others including the results of Gallup poll surveys concerning
such unusual experiences. She analyses the frequency of occurrence of twelve
core aspects of near-death and non near-death experiences (including unusual
light, acuity of visual perception, hearing voices, feelings of peace, etc.) and
the life-changing meanings that these experiences have for the experients,
especially the belief that they have been in contact with a Greater Reality
and — for many — a new certainty that life continues after bodily death.
These data are ranked and tabulated in a series of nine tables. As to the
source of such intensely personal experiences of a light distinct from ordinary
light, there is no definitive answer. It can be interpreted as somehow
originating from within the experient’s own visual centres in the hour of
intense need, or as the entry of light into the experient’s mind from an
external source to which they are momentarily connected. Those who, like
this reviewer, have never had such an experience will interpret them
according their prior belief as to the possible.
As for the organisation of the book, a major frustration for the reader is
that the cases grouped under different headings have remained numbered
as, presumably, they just happened to have been numbered during collection,
so Case 90 could be followed by similar Cases 131, 3 and 15. It would have
been more helpful if they had been renumbered to run consecutively
throughout the text. The index merely lists the pages on which, say,
‘reincarnation’ or ‘western mystic’ is mentioned but not the case numbers.
Many of the types of experiences described in this book will be familiar to
readers who are conversant with psychical research literature but there is
the advantage here of being able to compare like with like within the context
of an extended discussion and analysis, as long as you remember to note for
future reference the page on which any particular Case is presented.
Robert Charman
9 Mountbatten Close,
Cardiff CF23 5QG
[email protected]
REFERENCE
Arcangel, D. (2005). Afterlife encounters: Ordinary people, extraordinary experiences.
Charlottesville, Hampton Road Publ.
The Hyperspace of Consciousness: An Hypothesis About the Physics of
Creation and Non-Local Information Inside an Intelligent Universe by
Massimo Teodorani. Elementà, Sweden. 2015. 256 pp. ISBN 978-91-7637030-8
Massimo Teodorani is an Italian astrophysicist and science writer who
obtained his PhD from the University of Bologna on the physics of massive
binary stars. He is the author of 17 books (the previous two being Intelligence
Beyond Earth, 2013, and The Creative Mind, 2009). He has published many
102
Book Reviews
articles on subjects across the science spectrum from quantum physics to
bioastronomy (the search for extraterrestrial life within the ongoing SETI
Project) and the physics of strange atmospheric phenomena such as the
Norwegian Hessdalen Lights. His inquiry as to the nature of the universe
has led him to the hypothesis that matter and consciousness are one at
quantum level. Mainstream scientific inquiry limits itself to observing and
measuring the universe as a separate something that exists independent of
ourselves, but Teodorani insists that this stance can only ever provide partial
insights into the whole. For insights to include the whole, we must include
the nature of our personal consciousness. In this speculative 15-chapter book
he advances “several rather courageous hypotheses” into how quantum
physics can marry consciousness with the universe.
As far as I can understand his argument, he proposes that we are quantum
beings by nature and in the first part of the book he sets out some basic
quantum physics (including formulae) concerning the collapse of the wavefunction, quantum uncertainty, Schrödinger’s equation and the live/dead
cat-in-a-box paradox (which always reminds me of the Dead Parrot Sketch),
the double-slit experiment, particle entanglement and their continuing
relationship as an instantaneous non-local interaction, regardless of their
distance apart. All this is interpreted in terms of David Bohm’s theory of the
universe in which our everyday world of time, objects, space and causality is
termed the Explicate Order governed by the underlying quantum nature of
matter, mind and consciousness united in a ‘quantum potential’ or Q which is
termed the Implicate Order. According to Teodorani, the Explicate Order is
real in the sense of actual existence and the Implicate Order is one of virtual
existence that ‘allows’ something to exist. In Bohm’s theory, ‘consciousness’ is
not some immaterial entity but a quantum entity, and Teodorani interprets
this to mean that consciousness has the property of having a ‘non-local radio’
connectedness with the entire universe. As Teodorani sees it, the purpose of
the Universe as a whole is to exist in reality, as otherwise it could not become
aware of itself. The quantum ‘spirit’ or consciousness is related to material
reality through the DNA information that constructs the brain and its
interconnecting brainwave activity. Teodorani suggests that the spirit is
“actually located inside the quantum ‘cloud of probability’ that our instruments
cannot see but the spirit can see what is happening while inside the
probability cloud so doesn’t need to collapse it”. The spirit engages with
matter in the form of the brain but — “being made of pixels of consciousness”
— is governed not by matter but by information, so that matter obeys the
spirit’s orders and is bound to the pixels of consciousness “whose main
software is the Pauli Exclusion Principle” (I got more than a bit lost here).
All this speculation is bound up with the late Karl Pribram’s model of
holonomic brain processing (developed in association with Bohm) in which
the dynamic electrical fields that surround the fine structure of dendritic
‘trees’ can influence other dendritic trees of nearby neurons that are in nonlocal contact, creating a holographic consciousness in which the part contains
the whole. Dennis Gabor — who invented the hologram — described this
information transfer in terms of ‘holons’ of information, as in the quantum
holography that is the basis of MRI, PET and other image processing
103
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 2016, 80(2)
techniques. Central to Teodorani’s speculations is the concept of the quantum
brain-quantum mind as developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff,
based upon the theory that the microtubules that form the skeletal structure
(cytoskeleton) of all cells (including neurons) possess the property of
collapsing the wave function into informational computation creating
consciousness. This is known as “Orchestrated Objective Reduction”
(OrchOR).
The tubulin protein units that build the hollow structure of the
microtubules are electrical dipoles of opposite end charges that, in their
theory, can act as 1 or 0 ‘bits’. Each collapse of the wave-function by the
microtubules generates moments of consciousness, and the greater the
concentration of microtubules the greater the level of consciousness.
Teodorani estimates that as each moment of consciousness in humans lasts
for one sixtieth of a second about one million moments of consciousness per
day requires about one million microtubule wave-function collapses to be
experienced as conscious continuity. Teodorani suggests that amoebae, which
have many fewer microtubules, probably experience no more than a dozen
such moments of consciousness per day (hopefully, they fully treasure each
one). According to Teodorani, “microtubules are real units with their own
intelligence”, as demonstrated by the behaviour of single-celled, ciliated,
organisms of the paramecium genus that can swim in any direction, learn,
avoid predators and reproduce without the need for synapses and neuronal
circuitry that are considered by mainstream neuroscience to be essential for
learned behaviour. This quantum brain-quantum conscious mind inter­
pretation of microtubule function is rejected by mainstream physicists and
neuroscientists, although it does have some supporters.
All this leads us to what, for Teodorani, is his central concept of “The Big
Library Hypothesis” (BLH) which, he says, is the Cosmic Library that exists
everywhere throughout the universe, including the quantum vacuum and all
atoms with their subatomic units (Laszlo’s Akashic Field theory is a close
analogy). Where do we as individuals fit into the BLH? Teodorani’s scenario
is along the following lines: the essential ‘spirit’ of each of us exists in the
form of a quantum field that can become manifest as consciousness in any
biosystem that has the property of quantum coherence (such as the brain,
though mainstream physicists say that such neural coherence is not possible);
it acts as the ‘terminal’ of a big ‘supercomputer’ to work as software controlling
the hardware of the body to collect information about the physical world.
This information is automatically and non-locally ‘uploaded’ on a ‘hard disc’
located in the quantum vacuum at the Planck scale of 10–34 cm. All thoughts
and emotions are non-locally uploaded “like an Internet website by every
single spirit”. This creates an ever-expanding ‘cosmic database’ that records
all sentient life — as long as this includes emotion as a strong factor; if there
is no emotion associated with an event, then that event is not recorded. The
hypothesis is that ‘the void’ contains — or is — the memory of everything
thought and felt by everyone downloaded into the universal Big Library (BL)
of pure information. Teodorani says that “if information directing the
orchestra doesn’t exist, the Universe would have no reason to exist as well”.
It is special access to the BL that animates great scientists, artists, writers,
104
Book Reviews
poets and mystics through their BL spiritual terminals. He takes as an
example of shamanic communication with the BL the Dogon people’s apparent
awareness that Sirius-A, the brightest star in the sky, had a Sirius-B
companion as a binary star system (Sirius-B was discovered by telescope in
1862). It is only fair to add that how they acquired this knowledge when tiny
Sirius-B is invisible to the naked eye, whether shamanically or being informed
by anthropologists who visited after 1862, is a matter of much dispute even
among themselves. Teodorani proposes that the various manifestations of
paranormality such as telepathy, clairvoyance and psychic healing involve
accessing the BL. There is much more in a similar vein, including discussion
of tulpas as materialised thought-forms and the suggestion that the Universe
is, in effect, a tulpa formed from the virtual particle inflation at the moment
of the Big Bang.
We now turn to the “Intelligent Plasma Hypothesis (IPH)”. Plasma gases
are often seen in the atmosphere as luminous plasma streaks, balls or
tubules, sometimes changing colour and pulsating. Plasma is the fourth
fundamental state of matter after solids, liquids and gases. Plasmas are
formed from localised regions of freely moving positive and negative ions,
from electrons and protons to molecules in constant interaction, emitting
light and with temperatures up to several thousand degrees centigrade.
Typical examples of plasma forms include lightning, electric sparks, and
neon lights. Teodorani has investigated the atmospheric plasma lights known
as the Hessdalen Lights that frequently occur above the Hessdalen valley in
Norway. He speculates that plasma lights — also termed plasmoids — may
exhibit elementary levels of intelligent behaviour, and plasma may even be a
form of life that is widely distributed throughout the universe. He suggests
that, at quantum level, plasma balls may have quantum coherence and even
interact with the brain’s microtubules in resonant frequency of pulsation.
Teodorani quotes from an internet source concerning a hilly location
between southwest Missouri and northeast Oklahoma, where atmospheric
‘Joplin Spooklights’ over a valley are often seen. A viewer trained in remote
viewing claimed to be in telepathic communication with these lights, saying
that they were aware of their surroundings, including the presence of
humans. A more mundane explanation is that the atmosphere above the
valley is in line with headlight beams from traffic on Route 66 near Interstate
44, as demonstrated when flicking headlights on and off resulted in Joplin
Spooklight pulsation. He speculates that if what he calls ‘spirit’ is an
“information package” that survives bodily death but during life was a
“quantum coherent electrodynamic field” that governs the electromagnetic
bio-field of the body, then “as a non-collapsed superposition of quantum states
frozen inside the Planck field as an information databank” it could reconnect
either with a biophysical structure such as the human brain or a plasma ball.
Either way, it would be in communication with the Big Library. I end this
section of this review by quoting Teodorani’s final paragraph:
The goal of the Cosmic Big Library — whose role is both communicating
information non-locally and of creating new matter starting directly from the
information stored in it — is to lead all sentient beings in the Universe towards an
asymptotic limit approximating God. This is the only way God can take cognisance of
105
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 2016, 80(2)
himself; from an orchestrated fire made of an infinite number of sparks wanting to
revive him.
I should add here that Teodorani does not mean God in any conventional
religious sense, but as a universal intelligence. How we assess Dr Teodorani’s
“rather courageous hypotheses” depends upon our prior beliefs as to what is
possible, and that — as the late Renée Haynes, once Editor of the Journal of
the Society for Psychical Research, very sagely remarked — depends upon
our ‘boggle threshold’. I must confess that this has been a very difficult review
to write, as my boggle threshold concerning his various quantum hypotheses,
including the BLH and plasma balls demonstrating interacting intelligence,
has been exceeded regularly throughout the book. The one point on which I
am in complete agreement is that any attempt to explain the nature of the
universe must include the nature of ourselves and, by inference, all other
animals. In fairness to Teodorani, I hope I have conveyed enough of his
thinking through my selection of quotes for you to consider exploring his
ideas for yourself.
Robert Charman
9 Mountbatten Close,
Cardiff
CF23 5QG
[email protected]
A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Post-mortem Survival
by Michael Sudduth. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke 2016, 236 pp
ISBN: 978-137-44093-8
The Palgrave series Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, of which this book
is part, seeks to incorporate developments in empirical science in current
philosophical debate. Although the author concludes that so far para­
psychological data fail to establish the theory of personal survival, his
approach is not the usual dismissive scepticism. Indeed, it comprises a
sympathetic exposition of the relevant data produced by psychical research.
He states (p. 11), “I will not be challenging the reliability or credibility of the
data, [since] first-hand experience over many years has persuaded me that
we have reasonably established phenomena”. He does not question
paranormality in near-death experiences, mediumistic communications or
reincarnation cases, but concentrates on the theory of strong, unattenuated
personal survival, which is compatible with the typical spiritualistic belief
that consciousness resumes after death much like waking from sleep, with
memory, interests and personality unchanged and with a capacity to interact
with other deceased persons and the possibility of some awareness of and
contact with those they knew in life.
Three chapters consist of an up-to-date review of the psychical research
literature on empirical observations favouring survival. The first deals with
OBEs. These include OBEs under experimental conditions when concealed
targets are allegedly ‘seen’ while the subject feels separated from his body
and correctly described on returning to normality. Among OBEs reported on
awakening from surgical anaesthesia, patients have described accurately
106