our first presenter this morning is dr.
Bruce Grayson dr. Bruce Grayson this is
a first visit to India and for the last
past three decades his research is
focused on near-death experiences his
work has resulted in more than 80
presentations and 100 publications and
academic and medical journals he is the
Chester Carlson professor of psychiatry
and neurobehavioral studies and the
director of the division of perceptual
studies at the University of Virginia
and he's also distinguished life fellow
of the American Psychiatric Association
dr. Bruce Grayson
yesterday morning His Holiness joked
that his brain was too cold to try to
speak in English I feel the same way
today I want to start by thanking Keshe
lockdoor and Brice Johnson for
organizing this conference and keeping
everything running so smoothly I also
want to thank karma and palden and all
the many other people who have been
working behind the scenes to take care
of us providing us with everything from
excellent translations to warm tea
yesterday we focused on some very very
big questions is there consciousness in
other galaxies what was the origin of
consciousness what is it like to be a
bat or an octopus or a tree this morning
I want to shift the focus to an easier
question what does it like to be a human
being
most Western scientists assume that
consciousness is produced in some way by
the brain there is of course a lot of
evidence for that position there is
common-sense evidence from our everyday
lives when you drink too much alcohol or
when you get knocked tiring on your head
you don't think very clearly we also
have more sophisticated evidence from
science of the link between the brain
and consciousness we can measure
electrical activity in the brain
during certain kinds of mental tasks and
identified correlations between
different areas of the brain and
different activities we can stimulate
parts of the brain and record what
experiences results and we can remove
parts of the brain and observe the
effects on behavior all of this evidence
suggests that the brain is indeed
involved in thinking perception and
memory but it does not necessarily
suggest that the brain causes those
thoughts perceptions and memories as you
are listening to be speak there is
electrical activity in the temporal lobe
of your brain in an area called Rodman's
area but does that electrical activity
in your brain suggest that your temporal
lobe is producing the sound of my voice
not at all all of the studies showing
brain areas associated with different
mental functions show only correlations
not causation they are entirely
consistent with the idea that thoughts
perceptions and memories could take
place
in a consciousness somewhere separate
from the brain but then received and
processed by specific areas in the brain
it's much like a telephone or a radio or
a television the signal the message is
created somewhere else but your cell
phone is necessary to receive and
process the message if we were to
measure the electrical activity inside
your cell phone or electrically excitin
parts of it or remove certain vital
parts of your cell phone we could show
that certain parts of the phone were
involved in your hearing the phone
message but we would not be proving that
their message originated within your
cell phone any more that we can prove
that our thoughts originate within our
brains Western science is largely
reductionistic that is it breaks
everything down to its component parts
which are much easier to study than the
whole but as Chris MP said yesterday the
component parts sometimes do not act
like the whole the brain is composed of
millions of nerve cells or neurons but a
single neuron as Chris told us cannot
formulate a thought a single neuron
cannot feel angry or cold
it seems that brains we think can think
and feel but brain cells can't we don't
know how many neurons you need in order
for them to collectively formulate a
thought and we don't know how that
collection of neurons can think when a
single neuron can't as Chris said
yesterday scientists get around this
problem by saying that consciousness is
an emergent property
of brains a property that emerges when a
large enough mass of brain cells get
together what does that mean we have no
idea what that means saying that
something is an emergent property is a
way of saying that it is a mystery that
we can't explain there is in fact no
known mechanism by which physical
processes in the brain or anywhere else
can produce non-physical things like
thoughts perceptions and memories the
materialistic understanding of the world
fails to deal with just how an
electrical impulse or a chemical trigger
in the brain can produce a thought or a
feeling or indeed anything that the mind
does and yet despite having no idea how
it could work most neuroscientists
continue to maintain this 19th century
materialistic view that the brain in
some miraculous way we don't understand
produces consciousness and they discount
or ignore the evidence that
consciousness in extreme circumstances
can function very well without a brain
now this idea that the mind and the
brain are separate things was what most
people in the world believed until a
couple of hundred years ago but in a
19th century at least in the West
beginning with the Darwinian and the
physiological psychologists we started
exploring the notion that the physical
brain might be the source of all our
thoughts and emotions indeed of all of
consciousness for the past century
psychologists have been moving toward
the hardcore materialism that
characterized 19th century physics
physics based on classical Newtonian
mechanics
they have been attempting to show that
consciousness is nothing more than the
working of the physical brain this
materialistic psychology was succinctly
captured by the American psychologist
John Watson who wrote quote psychology
as we view it is a purely objective
experimental branch of science that
needs consciousness as little as do the
sciences of chemistry and physics it is
ironic that while Watson was linking
psychology to classic Newtonian physics
physicists faced with overwhelming
experimental evidence were already
moving away from that materialistic view
with a universe to a quantum physics
that could not be formulated without
reference to consciousness playing an
independent role in the universe as
Harold Moritz a molecular biophysicist
at Yale University wrote quote it is if
as if the two disciplines psychology and
physics were on fast-moving trains going
in opposite directions
and not noticing what is happening
across the tracks
just as the materialistic idea that the
brain produces the mind is a reasonably
good model for our everyday lives so two
classical Newtonian physics was a
reasonably good model for everyday
objects moving at everyday speeds it was
only when physicists started
investigating extraordinary
circumstances about a hundred years ago
involving objects approaching the speed
of light or behavior of microscopic wave
particles that we saw the limitations of
the classical Newtonian model and the
need for new paradigms the result was
the development of quantum physics which
explained the world in ways that
classical Newtonian physics could not
but the price physicists paid in
developing quantum physics was to
acknowledge consciousness as a
fundamental aspect of existence
independent of matter so - with the
question of the mind brain relationship
it is only when we look at extraordinary
circumstances of mental function such as
what happens when we approach death that
we see the limitations of the
materialistic model of mind brain
identity and the need for a different
paradigm
- a choten said yesterday that according
to buddhist teaching consciousness can
sustain itself without a brain or indeed
without any other physical form 19th
century reductionistic science via
consciousness as an emergent property
that evolved with complex brains but
just as quantum physics now have used
consciousness as an irreducible
component in the universe so -
scientific research in the past century
has explored human experiences that
suggest consciousness can function
without a brain the evidence that I'm
going to discuss this morning is derived
entirely from scientific research but I
do not want to give you the impression
that this evidence is widely accepted by
Western scientists in fact most Western
scientists are completely unaware that
this evidence even exists what then are
these data that challenge the
materialistic obsession conception that
consciousness is produced entirely by
the brain
this is the University of Virginia where
I work for the past half century the
University of Virginia has had a
research division dedicated solely to
the scientific investigation of these
human experiences that challenge the
materialistic philosophy that brain and
mind are the same and suggest instead
that the mainstream ideas about the
relationship between matter and
consciousness are incomplete in the
mid-1960s Chester Carlson a wealthy
American inventor who invented the first
photocopy machine which he called the
Xerox machine started giving away his
fortune he told his wife that as one
remaining ambition in life was to die a
poor man his wife introduced him to
Buddhism and he went on to fund several
buddhist centers in New York including
the Rochester Zen Center led by Philip
Kaplow in the die bosatsu zendo Congo G
Zen monastery led by a totai Shimano for
his good works Chester Carlson was given
the dharma name dai toko and zhen shan
carlson koji
but carlson was also a scientist trained
as a physicist and he wanted to support
a bridge between Buddhism and Western
science he had heard about very young
children in India who appeared to
remember their past lives and he
searched for a Western neuroscientist
who was interested in investigating
these children
he found an eager disciple in Ian
Stevenson the chairman of the department
of psychiatry at the University of
Virginia Carlson donated to the
University the funds to establish our
research division and with Carlson's
financial and moral support
professor Stevenson resigned as chairman
of the department to devote himself
full-time to the scientific study of
these children who seem to recall past
lives and to other human experiences
that suggests that consciousness may at
times function without the use of a
physical brain as it happened shortly
thereafter his Holiness the Dalai Lama
began periodic visits to the University
of Virginia to visit Geoffrey Hopkins a
professor of Tibetan Buddhist studies
who served as His Holiness is chief
translator in English until 1989 in this
photo you can see professor Hopkins
professor Stevenson and his holiness at
the University of Virginia in 1979 I had
worked with professor Stevenson since
the early 1970s when I was training to
be a psychiatrist at the University of
Virginia under his mentorship I studied
a variety of human experiences that
suggested consciousness functioning
separate from the brain but I focused
primarily on near-death experiences the
complex experiences that some people
have on the threshold of death when the
brain is shutting down ten years ago
professor Stevenson retired and I
succeeded him as director of our
research division so what are these
experiences that challenge the
prevailing materialistic paradigm that
consciousness cannot exist
without a functioning brain there are
four lines of evidence that I wish to
discuss with you this morning these are
first the unexplained recovery of
consciousness among people who have been
unconscious for prolonged periods of
time in the moments or days before their
death second the complex consciousness
among people who have minimal brain
tissue third surprisingly complex
consciousness in near-death experiences
when the brain is not functioning or
functioning at a greatly diminished
level and finally young children who
recall accurate details of a past life
the first challenging phenomenon I want
to discuss is the surprising recovery on
the deathbed of mental functions that
have long been lost this unexpected
return of mental clarity and memory
shortly before death in patients
suffering from severe neurologic or
psychiatric disorders has been reported
in the Western medical literature over
the past 250 years but has received
little attention there are cases
published in the medical literature of
patients suffering from brain abscesses
tumors strokes meningitis alzheimer's
disease and other dementias
schizophrenia and mood disorders all of
whom had long ago lost the ability to
think or communicate in many of these
patients there was evidence from brain
scans or from autopsies that their
brains had deteriorated to an
irreversible degree and yet in all of
these cases mental clarity returned in
the last minutes hours or sometimes days
before the patient's death we have
identified 83 cases mentioned in the
Western medical literature and have
collected additional unpublished
contemporary accounts complete recovery
of consciousness just before death is
not a common experience in 1844 a German
psychiatrist named Julius estimated that
it occurred in 13% of patients who had
died in his institution however in a
recent investigation of end-of-life
experiences in the United Kingdom
70% of caregivers in nursing homes
reported that they had observe
of patients with dementia and confusion
becoming completely lucid in their last
hours before death in a case that we
recently investigated a 42 year old man
developed a malignant brain tumor that
rapidly grew in size he quickly became
bedridden blind in one eye and unable to
communicate became completely incoherent
and bizarre in his behavior he appeared
to be unable to make any sense of his
surroundings and when his family touched
him he would slap as if he were slapping
at an insect he eventually stopped
sleeping and would talk deliriously
throughout the night making no sense
after several weeks of that he suddenly
one night appeared calm and started
speaking coherently and then slept
peacefully the following morning he
remained completely clear and talked
with his wife discussing his imminent
death for the first time however you
stopped speaking in a few minutes and
died soon thereafter a second case
involving Alzheimer's disease was
reported by Erlander harrelson a
psychologist in Iceland an 81 year old
woman had been demented for a long time
and was living in a nursing home her
family took turns visiting her even
though she didn't recognize them and
hadn't spoken to them for a year on one
occasion her son Leiter was sitting at
her bedside working on a crossword
puzzle suddenly she looked up at him she
looked him directly in the face and said
my son lighter I'm going to recite a
verse for you
she then recited a poem clearly and
loudly she then lay back on her pillow
and remained quiet until she died there
is no known physiological mechanism for
this phenomenon it is indeed rare but
the fact that it happens at all has no
explanation in terms of how the brain
functions it suggests that the link up
between consciousness and the brain is
more complex than we usually think it is
as if the damaged brain prevents the
person from thinking or communicating
but then as the brain finally begins to
die consciousness is released from the
grasp of the degenerating brain
another challenging phenomenon is the
presence of normal or even high
intelligence in people who have very
little brain tissue there are again rare
but surprising cases of people who seem
to function normally in life with normal
intelligence and normal social function
despite having virtually no brain at all
in one case published in 2007 a
high-school honor student who had been
accepted into Smith College underwent
surgery after she was injured and
knocked unconscious in an automobile
accident
an x-ray of her head just before surgery
revealed that she had no cerebral cortex
at all
she had just a brain stem inside her
skull and when the surgeon opened up her
skull to operate that is exactly what he
found just a brain stem with no cerebral
cortex now our best understanding of the
normal brain is that the brain stem
relays motor and sensory signals to the
cerebellum and the spinal cord and
integrates heart function breathing
level of wakefulness and other animal
functions but the brainstem does not
have the connections to perform higher
cognitive functions like thinking
perceiving making decisions and so on
that can only happen in the cerebral
cortex which this young girl did not
have so this young college bound honor
student according to our best
understanding of the brain should have
been completely unable to formulate any
thought of any kind let alone function
at a high intellectual level
John Lorber our British neurologist
specialized in children who have
hydrocephalus or water on the brain
children with this condition have an
abnormal amount of cerebrospinal fluid
buildup in the cavities inside their
brain compressing the brain tissue and
usually leading to blindness seizures
mental retardation paralysis and if it's
not treated to death
however Lorber described dozens of
children and eventually some adults who
had severe hydrocephalus but seemed to
lead normal lives in fact in a sample of
children in whom the cerebrospinal fluid
filled up 95 percent of their skull
leaving virtually no space for any brain
tissue half of them had IQs greater than
a hundred thirty years ago Lorber
published an article in the prestigious
journal science entitled is your brain
really necessary
the brain scan on the left of this slide
is a normal brain the gray area is the
cerebral cortex the part of the brain
that thinks and the black area in the
very center is the cerebral spinal fluid
in the central cabin
on the right is the brain of an adult
with very severe hydrocephalus the vast
majority of his head is filled with
cerebrospinal fluid with only a very
thin rich of brain tissue pressed
against the skull hardly enough to allow
this person to live let alone function
normally
according to modern medical neuroscience
however this particular brain scan of
the person with hydrocephalus was
actually from a graduate student in
mathematics at Cambridge University with
an IQ of 126
some of the best evidence of
consciousness functioning independently
of the brain comes from near-death
experiences
profound experiences that some people
report when they have been on the
threshold of death of course there was a
de Benton tradition of people called
dialogues who have returned from death
to describe what they've experienced
their experiences are in some ways
similar to the near-death experiences
that I am talking about but the typical
dialogues you leave their body for many
days rather than just a few minutes and
their experiences usually include
extensive travel to a realm beyond death
the near-death experiences that I am
talking about are very brief accounts of
people who have been clinically dead but
are then resuscitated or revived
spontaneously after a brief interval
with memories of what they experienced
during that period they typically report
exceptional mental clarity vivid sensory
imagery a clear memory of the experience
and an experience that is more real than
their everyday life
all of this occurring under conditions
of drastically altered brain function
under which the materialistic model
would say that consciousness is
impossible
these near-death experiences are
reported by between 10 and 20% of people
who are revived from clinical death I
have investigated almost 1000 of these
cases the average age at the time of the
near-death experience was 31 years but
there was a very wide range one young
girl reported an experience she had had
when she was 8 months old and undergoing
kidney surgery
the oldest near-death experiencer I have
studied was 81 at the time of his heart
attack about one third of these
near-death experiences occur during
surgical operations one quarter during
serious illness and one quarter happened
happened during life-threatening
accidents the common features of
near-death experiences can be
categorized as changes in thinking
changes in emotional state paranormal
features and otherworldly features
changes in thinking during the
near-death experience include a sense of
time being altered often people report
that time stopped or ceased to exist
during the experience it also includes a
sense of revelation or sudden
understanding in which everything in the
universe suddenly becomes crystal clear
there is a sense of the person's
thoughts going much faster than usual
and being much clearer than usual and
finally there was a life review or
panoramic memory in which the person's
entire life seems to flash before them
typical emotions reported during the
near-death experience include an
overwhelming sense of peace and
well-being a sense of cosmic unity or
being one with everything a feeling of
complete joy and a sense of being loved
unconditionally
the paranormal features often reported
in near-death experiences include a
sense of leaving the physical body
sometimes called an out-of-body
experience an experience of the person's
physical senses such as vision and
hearing becoming more vivid than ever
before
sometimes people report seeing colors
and hearing sounds that do not exist in
this life and a sense of extrasensory
perception knowing things beyond the
range of the physical senses such as
things that are happening at a remote
location and finally visions of the
future
finally the many people report that in
their near-death experiences they
entered some other unearthly world or
realm of existence many report that they
came to a border they could not cross or
a point of no return that if they had
crossed they would not be allowed to
return to life many work report
encountering some kind of mystical or
divine being and some report seeing
deceased spirits often loved ones who
had died previously who seemed to be
welcoming them into another realm or in
some cases sending them back to life one
of the things about near-death
experiences that interest me most as a
psychiatrist is the profound after
effects people reliably report a
consistent pattern of changes in
attitudes beliefs and values that do not
seem to fade over time
near-death experiencers report
overwhelmingly that they are more
spiritual after the experience that they
have more compassion for others and a
greater desire to help others a greater
appreciation for life and a stronger
sense of meaning or purpose in life an
overwhelming majority of near-death
experiences report that they have a
stronger belief that we survive death of
the body and just as many report that
they have no longer any fear of death
about half report that they have
completely lost interest in material
possessions and many report that they no
longer have any interest in personal
prestige or in status or in competition
now some of you may be thinking that
these people are now following the
Buddha they show more compassion they
tend to try to help others they're less
attached to material possessions and
status
but as His Holiness pointed out
yesterday these are not these values are
not uniquely Buddhist these are
universal values almost all spiritual
traditions teach compassion and that the
trend the transients are worldly rewards
near-death experiencers are not simply
becoming more Buddhists they are
becoming more spiritual I want to
highlight three particular features of
near-death experiences that particularly
suggest that consciousness is not
produced by the brain these three
features of near-death experiences are
first clear-thinking perception and
memory while the brain is incapacitated
second accurate perceptions from a
visual perspective outside the physical
body and third encounters with deceased
persons who convey accurate information
that no one else could have known
including in some cases encounters with
deceased persons who are not known at
the time to have died or were not known
by the experience or at all perhaps the
most important of these features simply
because it is the most common is the
first
among several hundred near-death
experiencers that I have studied 47%
report that their thinking during the
experience is clearer than it is in your
normal waking State in addition 38%
record their thinking is faster than
usual
29% described their thinking as more
logical than usual and 17% say they have
more control over their thoughts than
they usually do furthermore an analysis
of their medical records shows that
mental functioning is significantly
better in those people who come closest
to death moreover many experiences
report that during their near-death
experience they had a panoramic life
review not just single brief images that
can be evoked by electrical stimulation
of the brain but elaborate events
sometimes from the entirety of their
persons of that person's life let me
give you an example of clear thinking
during a near-death experience a 25 year
old nurse had become deeply depressed
and decided to end his life by taking a
suicidal overdose he took some
medication from the hospital where he
worked
after taking the overdose he lay down on
his bed expecting to die instead he
became quite ill with nausea and painful
stomach cramps he then decided to
telephone for help so he got up out of
his bed and tried to walk to the
telephone however by now he was quite
sedated and confused from the overdose
and he had great difficulty standing and
walking in addition he was having
hallucinations of many small people in
his apartment who were stopping him from
getting to the telephone
in that confused state he suddenly felt
himself leave his physical body and he
found himself standing ten feet behind
his body and above it from that new
visual perspective he watched his body
sway unsteadily and he could see his
body looking around in confusion at the
imaginary people he remembered having
seen the hallucinations when he was in
his body and he could see his body still
appearing confused but he himself from
that position ten feet behind the body
was thinking very clearly and could not
see the hallucinating little people
so his center of consciousness had left
his body and was thinking very clearly
while his brain was still hallucinating
and confused
another important feature that
challenges the materialistic model of
consciousness and the brain is being out
of the body and accurately perceiving
things that one could not see normally
among several hundred near-death
experiences I have studied 48 percent
report out-of-body experiences in 1982
the American cardiologist Michael saebom
published a study in which he asked
near-death experiencers who had reported
leaving their bodies during
cardiopulmonary resuscitation to
describe in detail what they had seen he
also asked a matched group of seasoned
cardiac patients to imagine watching
their resuscitations and to try to
describe it from a third-person
perspective 80% of the matched group who
did not have near-death experiences made
major errors in their descriptions none
of the near-death experiencers made any
errors and 19% of them describes
specific idiosyncratic
unexpected events that happened during
their resuscitation a few years ago the
Welsh intensive care nurse penny Sartori
published a five-year study in which she
replicated these same findings she found
that all the near-death experiencers who
claimed to have left their bodies
described accurate resuscitations his
scenarios whereas all of the cardiac
arrest survivors who did not have
near-death experiencers gave incorrect
descriptions of the equipment and the
procedures the American psychologist
Kenneth ring reported a study of 31
blind near-death experiencers many of
them blind from birth who were able to
describe the scene around them while
they were out of their bodies in some
cases even including accurate
descriptions of the colors of some
objects
in a recent review of 93 published
reports of potentially verifiable
out-of-body experiences during the
near-death experience the American
psychologist Jan Holden found that 92%
were completely accurate 6% contains
some minor error and only 1% was wrong
even in cases in which the out-of-body
perceptions were reported to an
independent witness before they were
verified the numbers were greater than
90% accurate if you asked all of us what
we saw here yesterday I don't think we
could be more than 90% accurate let me
give you an example of an accurate
out-of-body perception a 56 year old van
driver had an acute heart arrhythmia due
to blockage of his coronary artery and
the underwent emergency coronary bypass
operation during the procedure while he
was fully anesthetized he left his body
and was able to look down and see his
body on the operating table to his
surprise he also served the saw the
surgeon standing by the operating table
appearing to flap his wings as if you
were trying to fly
that's not something that you would have
expected a certain to be doing the day
after the operation
he asked the surgeon why he had been
flapping his arms during the procedure
the surgeon seemed very embarrassed and
he angrily asked the patient who had
told him about that the patient
responded that no one had told him that
he had seen it himself from above
during the operating operation when he
eventually got over his embarrassment
the search and explained that he was
watching his assistants perform the
operation and that he was supervising
them in order to ensure that his hands
which were in sterilized gloves did not
touch anything that was contaminated he
put them somewhere he knew they wouldn't
touch anything
flat against his chest and he instructed
his assistants in the operation by
motioning with his elbows of where to
cut looking like he was trying to fly
finally among several hundred near-death
experiences I have studied 42 percent
reported meeting recognizable deceased
acquaintances in their near-death
experiences these encounters were more
likely to be reported the closer the
person has come to death in 33 percent
of these cases the person was not
someone that the experiencer wanted to
see or expected to see but was instead
someone else someone they didn't
necessarily want to see that would be
surprising if these visions were
hallucinations that were caused by
someone's expectations and wishful
thinking most impressively some of these
deceased persons sing during the
near-death experience were people who
are not known to be dead at the time let
me give you an example an American
pediatrician dr. K M Dale treated a nine
year old boy with meningitis who hovered
near death for 36 hours before his fever
finally broke during those 36 hours he
was surrounded by his anxious parents
who never left his hospital bed during
that vigil when his fever finally broke
as soon as he opened his eyes the boy
described having gone to heaven where he
saw several of his deceased relatives
and then he added that he had also seen
his sister Teresa who told him that he
had to go back to his body now the boy's
father got very upset when he heard this
because his daughter was at college
1,500 kilometres away in another state
and was perfectly healthy but the boy
insisted that Teresa had sent him back
and told him that she had to stay there
his father then left the hospital
promising his wife that he would call
their daughter as soon as he got home
but when he tried to telephone Teresa he
learned that the college officials had
been trying unsuccessfully all night to
reach the family to tell them the tragic
news that Teresa had in fact been killed
around midnight in an automobile
accident
even more impressively sometimes the
deceased person seen in the near-death
experience was someone the experiencer
had not known even existed
the Swiss American physician Elizabeth
kubler-ross
published the account of a girl who had
a near-death experience during heart
surgery and later said she had met her
brother although as far as she know she
knew she never had a brother her father
moved by this vivid account acknowledged
that her parents had in fact had a son
who had died before she had been born
and they never mentioned him him to her
now of course if consciousness is
produced by the brain then when the
brain dies consciousness ends it cannot
continue into another incarnation so if
some of us do remember our past lives
then those memories cannot reside solely
in the brain
the final phenomenon I want to discuss
with you are these cases that my mentor
Ian Stevenson investigated of very young
children who claimed to remember their
past lives the majority of these
children live in societies that have
some cultural belief in rebirth and a
great many of those live here in India
to study these children Stevenson
travelled many times to remote villages
throughout India to interview these
children and their families our group at
the University of Virginia has studied
more than 2500 400 cases of these very
young children who spontaneously start
talking about their past life about half
of these children live in Asia most of
them in India Burma Sri Lanka and
Thailand they usually begin speaking
about these past life memories between
the ages of two and five years and in
most cases those memories tend to fade
between the ages of six and nine years
the child gives enough detailed
information that we can identify the
past life in 60% of these cases
the average age of death in the past
life is 33 years but that varies from
country to country in places like the
United States and Europe where there is
less of violence in a culture and
healthcare is more available the age
tends to be higher in 60% of cases the
past life remembered ended violently
either in a tragic accident or by
intentional wounding the average time
that passes between the death in the
past life and the birth in the present
life is 12 years but that too varies in
keeping with cultural beliefs for
example among the Druze in Lebanon the
children tend to be born immediately
upon the death of the past life which is
in keeping with their cultural belief as
you might expect these cases are not
easy to investigate this is a picture of
Ian Stevenson interviewing a young girl
and her parents in an Indian village
with an interpreter sitting next to him
these children often live in remote
villages that are hard to reach and they
often require Western researchers to
interview the children through a
translator there's there are several
features of these cases that challenge
the assumption that all our thoughts and
memories are produced by the brain first
these children often have detailed and
specific memories that correspond to the
life of someone who had lived and died
in a distant location of whom they could
have had no knowledge by normal means
they will mention the names and
occupations of relatives and friends
from the past life and often the
specific details of how that past life
ended in many cases we can take the
child to the remote village where he or
she claimed to have lived previously and
the child is able to identify people and
places he had never seen before in this
life
second these children sometimes exhibit
unusual personality traits likes and
dislikes the Fed are incompatible with
their present lives for example some of
these children repair call a past life
of the opposite gender and they want to
dress and play like someone of the
opposite gender a child born to a hindu
family may recall a past life as a
muslim and he will reject the food his
mother cooks because it was not prepared
in the muslim manner several young
burmese children claim to remember lives
as japanese pilots who were shot down
over burma in world war ii they rejected
the spicy burmese food and requested
japanese cuisine such as raw fish and
they rejected the traditional Burmese
clothes and wanted pants like the
Japanese war many children who recall
past lives have fears that they relate
to their past lives for example a child
who recalls haven't been drowned in a
well may have an unusual fear of water
finally Oh third some of these children
exhibit unusual skills that they have
not been taught and indeed that no one
in their village knows for example a
child may be able to play a musical
instrument without being taught or may
have skills related to their occupation
in the past life we have studied
children in Sri Lanka in villages where
only the Tamil language is spoken and
yet the child can converse in Sinhalese
finally some of these children have very
unusual and unexplained birthmarks or
birth defects that they attribute to
their death in a past life
these birthmarks and birth defects that
are said to correspond to the past to
the death wounds in the past life occur
in about one third of the children we
have investigated sometimes the birth
marks fade as the child grows up but in
other cases they do not and of course
birth defects persist throughout the
life of the child in 18% of these cases
we can confirm through medical records
or autopsy reports that the death wounds
from the past life do indeed correspond
to the birthmarks or birth defects in
the present child let me give you a few
short examples of these unusual birth
defects these are the hands of man Thane
a Burmese girl born in 1956 she
remembered the life of a man who was
riding home on his bicycle when he was
stopped by a gang who had been hired to
kill him
they made him get down on his knees and
prepared to cut his head off with a
sword at the last moment of his life as
he was on his knees facing the swordsman
he suddenly raised his hands to plea for
mercy or maybe to protect his face from
the sword and the fingertips on both his
hands were cut off by the sword as a
child
this girl moon Thane insisted on wearing
boys clothes and referred to her actions
with masculine verb forms these are the
hands of luck pal an Indian boy born in
Uttar Pradesh he remembered the life of
another boy named hukum Singh who lived
in a distant village who when he was
only 3 years old got his right hand
caught in an automatic fire chopping
machine and he loved fingers of just at
one hand when lek Powell was eventually
taken to the village where hukum Singh
had lived in the past life he
identify percolation where the accident
had taken place and he also correctly
identified the man who was operating the
fodder chopper machine when the
three-year-old hukum Singh had caught
his person this is the back ahead of a
little girl named Jacinta Agbo born in
Nigeria she was born with this
unexplained three centimeter wide
birthmark that goes ompletely around her
head
there is no physiological mechanism that
can explain a birthmark of this type she
remembered the life of a man who had
been hit on the head with a club during
a quarrel ten years before she was born
and the man had surgery to brain drain
the blood from his head and reconstruct
the broken skull bones this photo was
taken when she was 2 years old when we
interviewed her several years later she
showed definitely definite masculine
traits and habits although many of the
strongest cases of children who remember
past lives come from cultures where
there is a belief in rebirth we also
have some very impressive cases from
Christian families in the United States
in which there is no prior knowledge of
rebirth and certainly no interest or
belief in it this is a 2 year old boy
named James Leininger who was born in
Louisiana who seemed to remember being
shot down over the Pacific Ocean in
World War 2 nearly 60 years earlier the
boy would often play with airplanes and
wake up screaming from nightmares about
being trapped in an airplane that was on
fire when he was 3 years old his mother
bought him a toy airplane and pointed
out what she thought were bombs under
the wings but little James corrected her
saying that those weren't bombs they
were dropped tanks something she had
never heard of
he eventually gave many more details of
his past life saying that he flew an
airplane called a Corsair that used to
get flat tires frequently something that
military historians confirm is often
true of Corsairs he also gave the name
of the aircraft carrier he flew from as
the Natoma and he said that he was
killed flying over yo Jima and that his
best friend was another pilot named Jack
Larson now little James's father was a
policeman and a devout Christian a
Baptist who was quite opposed to the
idea of rebirth he researched the story
trying to discredit it instead he found
that there was an aircraft carrier
called the Natoma bay at the Battle of
Iwo Jima in 1945 and that only one
American pilot was shot down in that
battle a man named James Houston when
his Corsair airplane was shot down and
caught on fire this is the 21 year old
James Houston in his Corsair airplane
shortly before the Battle of Iwo Jima
little boy James loungers parents tried
to find this pilots family they
eventually found his sister who lived in
California nearly 3,000 miles away and
here's a little boy with the person he
claimed to be his sister in the past
life she confirmed that her dead brother
James Houston did have a friend named
Jack Larson and the little boy
spontaneously identified several objects
in her home that had belonged to her
dead brother she is convinced that this
little boy is indeed the rebirth of her
brother
so in summary there is abundant evidence
from life and from scientific research
that the brain under extraordinary
circumstances seems to come unlinked
from consciousness and consciousness can
in fact function better without the
mediation of the physical brain again I
want to say that this evidence is not
accepted by most American scientists in
fact is not known by most American
scientists nevertheless it is there and
it is reliable and reproducible evidence
we have cases of people whose brain have
been deteriorating for years who
suddenly think clearly on their
deathbeds
we have people who function normally
sometimes with high intelligence who
have virtually no brain tissue
we have people who during near-death
experiencers think more clearly than
ever when their brains are not
functioning and we have very young
children who can barely speak who talk
about their past lives with accurate
details these phenomena all well
investigated by mind modern scientific
methodologies and building upon decades
or centuries of prior research strongly
suggest that under extraordinary
circumstances consciousness can be
produced and can function without the
intercession of a physical brain thank
um thanks very much Bruce I was
extremely fascinating provocative talk
I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about
and so I encourage the audience to start
to formulate questions and we'll gather
them and fold them into the discussion
and I'm going to take moderators
prerogative to ask a first question so
to me as a scientist you know this is a
sociological question if you have a
field which where all you have is a
correlation rather than a causative
testable physical theory for why mind
and brain should be linked and you have
data that you need to explain what is
what is the reason why in the field of
gravity you know the advancing
perihelion of mercury a small effect
perhaps a fly in the ointment but a
persistent data that had to be explained
led to the downfall of Newtonian gravity
and the rise of general relativity a
completely new paradigm why in your view
has no analogous progress been made it's
an excellent question my decision
get this on yeah that's an excellent
question
Chris why has no new paradigm come up to
explain these data I think associated
with that of course why is the
resistance been so relentless right
right there is tremendous resistance
among Western scientists to the idea
that consciousness and brain are
separate because most of Western
scientists is science is built on this
materialistic model
the materialistic way of looking at
things has produced many good things in
our society the problem is that many
scientists confuse the materialistic
philosophy with a scientific method and
all these great things that we enjoy the
modern technology we enjoy the results
of the scientific method not necessarily
of the materialistic philosophy but
they've been linked so tightly together
for the past several hundred years that
is hard for scientists to think of a
science without materialism now that has
changed in the last century among
theoretical physicists they study things
that can't be seen or felt or measured
directly particles that are so small and
last such a short period of time they
cannot be seen it cannot be measured so
what they do is they shoot these
particles through what's called a bubble
chamber of link of a box full of liquid
and as the particle goes through the
liquid it leaves a trail of bubbles so
you measure the effects of the particle
but you can't measure the particle you
assume that there was a particle there
to produce the bubbles and from the
trail of bubbles you can learn a lot
about these particles that can't be seen
in the same way the things that we're
talking about consciousness cannot be
seen but it does leave effects
consciousness leaves a trail of bubbles
that we can follow and through the
effects we can make inferences about
consciousness the reason we don't have a
good model to rival materialism is that
I think the question is too complicated
we'll get there eventually but I think
as His Holiness said yesterday Western
science is geared towards studying
physical phenomena it has not even
thought about how to approach mental
phenomena and maybe when we combine the
two
thousand-year-old tradition of
meditation introspection we will find
some way of merging science and
consciousness research thank you I'd
like to encourage the caches if they
have any questions at this point
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it seems that like most of the modern
neuroscientists the belief that
consciousness is produced by
consciousness is something that is
produced by the brain or the function of
the brain
and since we have different layers of
consciousness or different types of
consciousness like a happy happy state
all the assets there so there are
different states and can we recognize a
different physical entity or a physical
particle that is responsible for
different mental states and if that is
the case then is there any way that we
can produce these respective physical
entities which is responsible for
different mental states like happiness I
think the problem comes in saying that
these physical entities are responsible
for the states are causing the states we
can find
some physical phenomena that are
associated with those states but they're
not necessarily causing them for example
when people are severely depressed there
there are changes in the neuro chemicals
in the brain but it's not clear whether
those changes in the neurotransmitters
are causing the depression or are the
result of the oppression they're what we
call biological markers so we can
associate the mental state with the
biological changes but we can't say
which one is causing which one is effect
I'd like to go to some very good
questions from the audience let me pick
one here there seems to be some
significant parallelism between the
research you've done and the phenomena
you described and things that seem to
happen in dreams that enhance mental
function paranormal phenomena a you know
hyper sense hyper realization of senses
is there is there any deliberate attempt
to make connections there to use the
dream research in a way that illuminates
what you're talking about we have not
done that but certain people some people
have tried to do that they have tried to
associate the phenomena in near-death
experiences with a phenomena in a
variety of states not only dreams but
drug-induced States meditative States
and there are certainly some experiences
that are common to all these altered
states of consciousness and there are
some people who will argue that it
doesn't matter how you get to that
altered state whether you do it through
sleep through lucid dreams through drugs
through hypnosis through electrical
stimulation but we do find that there
are some differences for example almost
everyone who has a near-death experience
will be profoundly affected by that
change and they will be transformed in
their attitudes beliefs in values
people who have the same type of unusual
experience in a dream do not necessarily
change their lives around and in fact if
you ask them 10 years later they may not
remember the dream but they will
remember their near-death experience and
sort of a sort of connected question is
what is it about the quality of
compression of a near-death experience I
mean life itself is a near-death
experience but what is it about I mean
and it sounds like what we really want
is near-death in a pill so we can just
all take the pill and be more
compassionate and have all these
benefits of the near-death experience
well that that's the American attitude
we wanted until near death experience
yes I think anyone who comes close to
death may be changed by that experience
most people who almost die tend to value
their life more highly but there are
many differences between just coming
close to death and doing that and having
a near-death experience for example if
you just come close to death but do not
have a near-death experience you usually
become more frightened of dying and you
become much more cautious if the doctor
tells you to stop drinking you will stop
drinking if you have a near-death
experience you are not afraid of dying
anymore and paradoxically that makes you
not afraid of living to the fullest you
take more risks you become much more
joyful in your life that also makes you
a better lousy patient because the
doctor tells you to stop drinking you
won't stop drinking because you're not
afraid of dying any questions from our
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Takashi tour channel first of all I
would like to thank you for the
presentation and also thank you for the
for giving opportunity to ask this
caution so it doesn't matter whether the
consciousness is produced by the brain
or consciousness is something else then
the brain or the function of the brain
but what is obvious is that this mine or
the consciousness can if I can have
effects on our body and
in contemplative traditions we have
methods to deal with mind and brain
problems and reduce using mind and for
reducing physical discomforts
so other than contemplative traditions
from the sign scientific point of view
or the from scientific methods how is
then what kind of scientific methods we
should adopt to solve this mind-body
problems or reduce physical discomforts
that's it that's an excellent question
I'm hoping that we'll get the answer in
this conference I think most Westerners
are aware that there is a long tradition
of consciousness research in Eastern
cultures that they know nothing about
and they've been reluctant to learn more
about it because they are so wedded to
their way of thinking and I understand
that consciousness does have strong
effects on the body and on health the
problem with getting Western medicine
interested in that is there there is no
profit in consciousness if you produce a
pill or a procedure or a device to
affect the body you can make a lot of
money in it and you can make a lot of
money doing research into it but if
you're talking about a contemplative
discipline you don't make much profit
so we are fighting an uphill battle with
trying to get the attention of people
who fund research to look into this
question but I think it is the place
where Western medicine has to go and
that is increasingly becoming popular
among the fringes of Western medicine I
think it's only a matter of time before
people see the power of some of the
meditative techniques do another
question from the audience about well
you can you speculate maybe on why it is
that the clarity and incidence of the
rebirth experience plays out
particularly in the very early childhood
stages and then fades or or is there an
end is there anything you know if it's a
universal you know if it's a general
phenomena what is is there anything
special about the instances that are
found about those people that's that's a
very good question we don't really know
why some people remember a past life at
all whereas most people do not if you
assume as Buddhists do that everybody is
reborn then obviously the normal
procedure is to forget your past lies
because most of us do not remember so
why do a few people remember is it
something that has gone wrong that lets
them remember they don't seem to have
any advantage it does not seem to be
that people who are particularly
virtuous remember their past life the
few cases we have suggests that a strong
attachment the past life is one factor
for example people who were killed
prematurely or violently tend to
remember their past lives seventy
percent of cases in some culture ended
the past life in a violent manner also
some people who have some other strong
attachment as a past life for example
people who were monks in the past life
and see themselves in a non spiritual
home
they remember the past life as a monk
the children tend to remember it at very
early ages h23
often when they're in some altered state
when they're sleepy when they're being
given a bath when they're not engaged in
normal activities and then they will
start to remember these things and they
come up sporadically the memories come
up sporadically during the day as the
child gets to be the age to go to school
and gets more involved in this life they
tend to forget the past life and by the
time they are 6 8 9 years old they tend
to forget now we have done some
psychological testing with these
children in Sri Lanka in Lebanon and in
the United States and if you test these
children when they are 2 3 4 or 5 years
old they have higher IQs than their
peers they have much better verbal
skills than their peers you would think
that would make them more successful in
life but it does not continue if you
test them again when they are teenagers
when they are forgotten they are just
like everybody else they've lost that
advantage we don't know why they
remember at all and we don't know why
they don't continue to remember now
there are some cases very few cases
where we have identified the family the
child claimed to have been in in the
past life and the family has accepted
the child and continue to see the child
year after year and in those cases the
memories may persist because of the
continued contact with the past family
but those are unusual as a postscript
question on this from the panel is what
is your personal view on rebirth what is
my personal view of rebirth
many of the cases that we have are
unexplainable in terms of Western
medicine but they're also unexplainable
in the terms of the reincarnation
hypothesis sometimes you will see two
children who seem to remember the same
past life sometimes you will see a child
who remembers the past life of someone
who died when the child was six years
six months old so the two lives
overlapped so it is not a clear model
that we can follow when I talk to
near-death experiencers they always say
when they start out explaining their
experience they say first words cannot
explain my experience I cannot describe
it for you and then I say that's great
tell me all about it
so we forced them to tell us what it
what they what they experienced and we
know that they're not telling us what
they experienced they're putting it into
words that things that don't fit into
words and I think the same is true of
these rebirth memories what actually
happens is something that we that our
brains cannot understand so the models
that come up with do not really approach
the reality so if you ask me what I
believe I say that what happens after
death is something that I can't possibly
understand while I'm in this brain I'd
like to thank Bruce and the panel to an
extraordinary session actually thank you
you