48. Consciousness never dies – Pim van Lommel
Few fields of research offer more insights into what we really are and why we are conscious about things at all than the study of near death experiences. It is also one of few areas where science truly spans the perceived borderline with spirituality. That is why cardiologist Pim van Lommel has made such a tremendous contribution by conducting large, longitudinal studies on hundreds of people who have suffered cardiac arrest and have been declared clinically dead but later resuscitated. Many of these patients experience being clearly conscious during the period of clinical death. Around four percent of those who have had a flatlined EEG report some kind of experience of enhanced consciousness in another realm, despite the fact that their brains have not been functioning ”To me the brain has a facilitating function, not a producing function. It is like a computer connected to the internet. When you turn it off, the internet is still there”, says Pim van Lommel. ”Consciousness is like gravity. We can not measure gravity, we can only measure its physical effects. It is the same with consciousness, we can only measure the effects.” Van Lommel started out as a hard-nosed physicalist himself, but an encounter in 1969 with a resuscitated patient, who was very disappointed that he had been revived, had a profound impact on him. In 1986 he read George Ritchie’s book ”Return from Tomorrow” about a profound NDE, which made him even more intrigued. Van Lommel started to ask resuscitated patients about their experiences, and to his big surprise, 12 out of 50 patients he asked gave accounts about NDE’s. That was when he decided to kick off a large study, which lasted for more than a decade. The results were published in The Lancet in 2001. The article gained much attention, as did van Lommels book ”Consciousness Beyond Life”, which came out in its first edition six years later. Much has happened since then. More studies have been made, notably by Bruce Greyson at the university of Virginia. Science is slowly embracing the nonphysical. But there is still a hard core of physicalist skeptics. The Wikipedia page about Pim van Lommel has for instance been hijacked by skeptics. ”They are frightened, because this threatens their world view”, says van Lommel. This also goes for many active scientists. ”If they said consciousness is not in the brain, they would lose their research money. Some professors have told me privately that they agree with me, but openly they will say that my conclusions are nonsense. Until they retire…”