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The Survival of Bodily Death Summary by Frank Poletti IntroductionEvery spring for more than a decade a group of scholars has gathered at Esalen Institute to inquire into one of the greatest mysteries of all time: What happens to us after we die? The following summary provides a brief introduction to the May 2010 meeting and contains links to further papers and websites. Because this is an ongoing conference series, the reader is welcome to look at the summaries of previous meetings for further information. In recent years this group of scholars has given more attention to how a new theoretical framework can help bring intelligibility to an array of well-verified empirical data pointing to the likelihood that some kind of "personalized consciousness" survives the death of the body. This data spans a range of reports and phenomena, such as: near-death experiences, multiple personality disorder, the possible existence of subtle dimensions or worlds, mediums who can communicate with dead spirit beings, telepathy, clairvoyance, and the spontaneous appearance of dramatic bodily changes, such as stigmata. The scientific evidence for these kind of phenomena is described in the book Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the Twenty-first Century, written by Ed Kelly and others from this group. MondayOn Monday morning the conference facilitator Adam Crabtree gave an introduction to the philosopher C.S. Peirce, whose foundational ideas can help this particular group forge a new theoretical approach to the survival question. This paragraph summary will briefly address only a couple of the salient points from Crabtree's overview of Peirce, so if the reader would like a more complete discussion, please see Crabtree's paper by clicking on this link. First, Peirce developed the idea that there are no eternal laws, nor eternal matter. Instead, we should view both from a thoroughly evolutionary perspective. For example, there is no law of gravity. Rather, gravity is a deeply rooted habit of our universe, so deeply rooted that it has acted the same way continuously for billions of years and thus we mistakenly think it is an eternal law. But according to the Peircian view, the force of gravity has been habitually built up over billions of years, which is why it so strong and regular. Likewise, matter is not an eternally existing thing. Instead, Perice said it is "mind hidebound by habit." That is, what we think of as a thing is really a process. What we think of as a noun is really just a slow moving verb. All laws and things are really habit-laden mental processes at their root. In this sense, Perice was a panpsychist-all is ultimately a form or process of mind. In general, Peirce applied the notion of evolution to its fullest extent by suggesting that everything-without exception-evolves and grows, and in the in process accretes habits, which then take on form when they get hardened. Second, another influential idea that Peirce developed is his theory of signs, or semiotics. Peirce lived before the birth of modern linguistics, and he puzzled over the various kinds of signs there can be in communication. When a bird chirps, how do the other birds interpret that signal? When a person speaks French, how do others know what the various sounds really mean (or signify)? Peirce thought that the view of nominalism, maintained by Hume, Kant, and others, failed to explain how people could experience and interpret meaningful signs. Thus, Peirce suggested that the universe as an entirety must be inherently meaningful and that it evolves a series of grades of signs (what he called firstness, secondness, thirdness) that can be interpreted. Thus, in the evolution from matter to life to human mental processes, there is a kind of meaningful signaling that occurs at each level. Human signs are thus not fundamentally different from the signs of rocks. The entire universe is a place of meaning, and meaningful signaling occurs from bird to bird or from human to human. This is a radically different view from the materialistic assumption that there is no inherent meaning in the universe, and thus humans alone can construct meaning. This brief summary can only introduce a few complex ideas. So, please see Crabtree's paper on Peirce for a fuller exposition. Also note: Crabtree has prepared a "Position Paper on Theory" to facilitate the aims of this conference. To see it, click here. On Monday afternoon the physicist Henry Stapp gave a presentation on quantum mechanics. This brief summary can only introduce this complex topic, so if the reader wants more detailed information, please consult Stapp's website listed at the end of this paragraph. Stapp started by noting how ironic it is that we are here today in the early twenty-first century still debating materialistic accounts of the mind-body problem. Why? Because materialism was issued a stunning defeat in the early twentieth century by the discovery of quantum mechanics. Although there are different interpretations for the results of quantum experiments, Stapp said that he prefers those of the mathematician John von Neumann. According to von Neumann's view, the dynamical laws of quantum physics are completely psycho-physical. Both the mind side and the brain side of reality are fully taken into account in von Neumann's understanding of quantum theory. Stapp said this has immense implications for how we study consciousness. For example, it helps us to model and measure what William James called "will" or "attention." When this is applied to specific research experiments, Stapp said consciousness researchers can use quantum mechanics to understand how attention affects brain activity. Stapp briefly described the process like this: Our wandering minds spontaneously bring forth a thought of a particular action into our conscious awareness, but instead of just passing away, our willful attention can hold this thought in place. This holding-in-place of an intentional thought (and its neural correlate) by a conscious effort tends to cause, in essentially the manner described by James, the intended action to occur, even in the face of strong countervailing physical tendencies. This key "holding-in-place effect" is a straightforward consequence of a well-known psycho-dynamical feature of orthodox quantum theory called the Quantum Zeno Effect. Stapp's central point was that although mental effort has a well-defined effect upon the physical aspects of nature, the choice of whether or not this conscious effort will be exerted is not determined by any known law. This choice (of whether or not to exert effort) is, in this very specific sense, a "free choice". Quantum mechanics, as understood and modeled by von Neumann, provides a perfect place for the entry of choices that are not determined by the physically described aspects of the world, but that can nevertheless influence the physical world we measure. Stapp contrasted this with the materialistic view of the universe, which assumes that physical reality is causally closed, meaning that consciousness and human choice are not efficacious-they have no impact on the causal mechanisms of the universe. Overall, Stapp emphasized that quantum theory is the best model for further research on consciousness because it is empirically validated and is fully open to our emerging understanding of what consciousness is. For further information about concepts like the Quantum Zeno Effect, Templates for Action, and Ion Channels and Brain Dynamics, please see some of the papers at Henry Stapp's website: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html On Monday evening the religious professor Jeffrey Kripal discussed his new book and film, both called Authors of the Impossible. A brief description follows, but for further information see this website http://www.authorsoftheimpossible.com/about.html Kripal said that the book and film profile four extraordinary thinkers: the British psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers, the American anomalist writer and humorist Charles Fort, the astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee, and the French philosopher Bertrand Méheust. This profile thus constitutes a history of psychical phenomena through the last two centuries of Western thought, and illustrates how psychical and paranormal events once considered mystical, spiritual, or occult are manifesting in our own modern, scientific culture. The film makes the bold assertions that many of the anomalous events denied and discarded by today's rationalistic mindset are, in fact, true, and that our present dismissals of these universally experienced realities reveal a broad cultural naiveté regarding our own consciousness and being. More specifically, Authors of the Impossible shows us how to think about the paranormal as an event that involves both a subjective or mental state and an objective or physical state. The paranormal, it turns out, is as much about meaning as matter. And we-not as surface egos, but as some still mysterious force of consciousness-are its final authors. If the paranormal, though, is as much about meaning as matter, as much about the subject as the object, then science can never truly grasp it, for science must turn everything into an object and cannot treat questions of meaning. We thus need a new way of knowing, a way that can embrace both the sciences and a new art of reading ourselves writing ourselves. If we think of the world as a text to be read, we need a new way to read ourselves into being. Likewise, if we think of the world as a film to be viewed-a projection of Consciousness-we need a new way of envisioning ourselves. Spiritual realization is the insight that we are being written, that we are caught in a story we did not write. Authorization is the decision to do something about it. If Realization involves the act of reading the paranormal writing us, then Authorization involves the act of writing the paranormal writing us. What the film is finally about, then, is us becoming our own Authors of the Impossible. TuesdayOn Tuesday morning the philosopher Eric Weiss summarized some of the main points from his forthcoming book, The Long Trajectory: Reincarnation and Life After Death. For several years now Weiss has been developing an understanding of subtle worlds that is resonant with the empirical data studied closely by the participants in this conference. By integrating the major ideas of Sri Aurobindo, A.N. Whitehead, and Jean Gebser, Weiss is in effect developing a Transphysical Process Metaphysics. Importantly, this view is fully aligned with the findings of quantum physics. Building on his presentations at Esalen in previous years, Weiss pointed out that the contemporary view from the hard sciences has a strangely inverted view of reality. Instead of starting with their immediate and direct personal experience ("I feel myself in this moment to be an actual person, not a robot"), most scientists start their thinking with highly abstract notions like Cartesian grids, atoms (or insentient energy, or randomly collapsing probability fields), and mathematical equations. Yet, the truth is that no one directly experiences grids, atoms, probability fields, and equations. These are abstractions, or mental constructs that are related to actuality but not in any sense actual in their own right. Thus, in a great irony, modern scientists use elaborate theoretical edifices and spend millions of dollars in order to explain away what is directly at hand: their very personal and immediate experience as actual humans with subjectivity. Put differently, scientists have built elaborate models and now take those models to be more real than the actual experiences from which they are drawn. After describing the historical process that led to this situation, Weiss said that Whitehead's metaphysics is really quite simple: It all starts with moments of real experience. Indeed, if everyone just started with his or her own experience-and just trusted that as actual-then a metaphysical model of reality could be constructed therefrom. This model would illuminate everyday experience, the results of science, and the domain of parapsychology by showing that they are coherently situated in one actual world. But the key is that everything in that metaphysics would be a moment of experience, what Whitehead calls an actual occasion. All further notions like laws, energy, telepathy, subtle worlds, reincarnation, and so forth can be explained as long as one starts with the fundamental fact of experience itself. This is what Weiss does in his forthcoming book, The Long Trajectory, which is fully accessible at this weblink: http://ericweiss.com/ On Tuesday afternoon physicist Bernard Carr touched upon some major points concerning his cosmological model of higher dimensions and its implications for psi. He had written an extensive paper on this topic, "Worlds Apart? Can Psychical Research Bridge the Gulf Between Matter and Mind?" in 2008, and he had also written another article, "Matter, Mind and Higher Dimensions", in preparation for the 2010 meeting. His slides can be found at: http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~bjc/esalen2010.pdf This brief summary provides only an introduction to his ideas. In his 2009 talk Carr had distinguished the field of "paraphysics", which extends the basic concepts of physics to include psi phenomena, from the field of "parapsychology," which emphasizes psychological aspects of psi. There is much less emphasis on paraphysics than parapsychology at present, but in Carr's view the field will not be part of mainstream science until this imbalance is redressed. However, psi involves mental experiences and these are not usually regarded as part of science at all. So if psi is real, one needs a radically new scientific paradigm which accommodates mind at a very fundamental level and must also involve some extension of physics. Although there are several different theoretical approaches, Carr's main interest was in models that involve extra dimensions and he had already sketched his own approach in his 2009 talk. The key point is that many psychic phenomena (eg. ESP, dreams, apparitions, OBEs, NDEs, survival) seem to involve some form of space, which is different from physical space but subtly interacts with it. He argued that this space should be related to the higher-dimensional space of modern physics. In his 2010 talk, Carr took these ideas much further. He started by reviewing the current physical paradigm, with particular emphasis on the link between the macrophysical and microphysical domains. Although the materialistic approach of the physical sciences appears to have been triumphant in understanding the world, there is a missing jewel in the crown of physics - consciousness - and a final theory of physics must surely take account of it. He argued that a crucial clue came from the long-term trend in the history of physics to invoke extra dimensions. The 3-dimensional Newtonian space was the norm for more than two centuries, only to be expanded by Einstein who taught us that reality is more accurately described by 4-dimensional space-time. Then, in the 1920s the physicists Theodor Kaluza and Oscar Klein proposed a 5-dimensional model to integrate electromagnetism and gravity, but with the 5th dimension being wrapped up very small so that it cannot be seen. Nowadays many more interactions are known and physicists invoke even more wrapped-up dimensions to describe these. For example, there are eleven dimensions in M-theory. Particularly relevant is the Randall-Sundrum picture, in which the physical world is viewed as a 4-dimensional "brane" in a higher dimensional "bulk". Another key ingredient of a physical theory of mind must be a proper understanding of time. Although time plays a profound role in modern physics, it is still not fully understood and Carr argued that a resolution of the linked problems of time and consciousness requires a higher-dimensional extension of General Relativity. In this model, the higher dimensions are associated with a hierarchy of times. This is different from standard M-theory but not inconsistent with it and it may also elucidate quantum theory. Carr then moved on to discuss psi phenomena, updating and expanding some of the discussion of his 2009 talk. He first emphasized that one needs a model that accommodates all forms of mental experience (normal, paranormal, transpersonal) and not just psychic ones. He then discussed the relationship between objects and percepts, thereby providing the philosophical background to his model and providing some connection with ideas of Eric Weiss. He next expanded his earlier discussion of mental space to produce what he termed a "Grand Unified Theory of Mind", analogous the physicists' "Grand Unified Theory of Matter." He argued that one needs a sequence of mental spaces and formulated this notion rather precisely by invoking what he termed a "Universal Structure". This is a sort of higher-dimensional information space. It has a hierarchical structure, associated with a hierarchy of times, and includes both the physical world at the lowest level and the complete range of mental worlds at the higher levels. The model provides a new psychophysical paradigm with interesting implications for physics, psychology and philosophy. Overall, Carr stressed the need to think about mind and space in a radically new way. In a nutshell, we need to mentalize space and spatialize the mind. He regarded the higher-dimensional approach, linking matter and mind in a single mathematical structure, as the best way of achieving this. WednesdayOn Wednesday morning, Harald Atmanspacher discussed the intellectual partnership between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Jung during the mid-twentieth century. Atmanspacher has drawn upon their seminal exchanges to develop a more holistic understanding of quantum theory, which he has been describing to the Esalen conference participants over the past few years. Atmanspacher started by pointing out that Descartes broke mind and matter into two ontologically separate substances-the infamous Cartesian split. But the monumental developments in both archetypal psychology and quantum psychics during the twentieth century pointed toward a re-unification of mind and matter. Jung and Pauli were at the center of these developments in their respective fields, and during the time they spent together they explored how to integrate their discoveries. Jung often used the alchemical phrase unus mundus to describe a deeper unity between mind and matter that is not often apparent in daily life, but becomes more apparent in the case of synchronicities. As Jung's thought developed during the course of his life, he came to regard the Cartesian split as only an epistemological one: mind and matter can be described as distinct aspects of the universe, but ultimately they are two inseparable aspects of the unus mundus. As is well-known, Jung postulated that humanity shares a collective unconscious with its reservoir of archetypes, and for much of his life he thought those archetypes were only psychic factors. That is, they existed only in the interior of humanity's unconscious mind. But as a result of his several conversations with Pauli, Jung's view of the archetypes was broadened to include the exterior world as well. Pauli encouraged Jung to think of the archetypes as ordering factors that inform both sides of the mind-matter distinction. In a letter from 1948, he summarized his view: The ordering factors must be considered beyond the distinction of 'physical' and 'psychical' - as Plato's 'ideas' share that character of a notion with that of a 'natural force.' I am very much in favor of calling these ordering factors 'archetypes,' but then it would be inadmissible to define them as contents of the psyche. Instead, the inner images are psychic manifestations of the archetypes, which, however, also would have to create, produce, and cause everything in the material world that happens according to the laws of nature. The laws of the material world would thus refer to the physical manifestations of the archetypes. . . Each natural law should then have an inner correspondence and vice versa. . . In short, Pauli speculated that the laws of physics and the laws of human psyche were ultimately the same laws, or same ordering principles. Jung was favorably impressed by Pauli's ideas, and during the early 1950s they published a book together titled, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Jung's contribution to the book was his famous essay that is now published frequently as an independent piece, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. After summarizing the conversation between Jung and Pauli, Atmanspacher made a few comments about synchronicities. When one unexpectedly experiences (or interprets) an external event as a meaningful symbol of one's inner psychological state, it suggests that matter can be a vehicle for expressing "mind" or "mind-like" characteristics. That many people report these surprising correlations supports Jung and Pauli's contention that there is a deeper unity between mind and matter in the unus mundus. But Atmanspacher emphasized that we need a semiotic approach to understand synchronicities. Their inherent meaning and symbolism cannot be reduced to statistical analyses alone. On this note, Atmanspacher said he agreed with Adam Crabtree and Jeff Kripal, who both think that synchronicities (and other paranormal events) must be interpreted for their symbolic meaning. For further papers by Atmanspacher, please see these websites: On Wednesday night, the biologist David Presti gave a public presentation to the larger Esalen community. Presti discussed the fascinating history of psychedelic chemicals, plants, and fungi. He also made several comments concerning how psychedelics might become increasingly appreciated as tools to explore the neuroscience of mind and consciousness. Thursday
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