The brain and the problem of consciousness

This was, to me, an extraordinarily interesting article, for several quite distinct reasons:

“Is Science Infinite?  Science will never tell us who we really are, and that is why it will last forever”

The notion that there may be some aspects of reality — very expressly including consciousness — that are, in the end, altogether beyond the reach of science, is striking, of course.  So is the claim that most scientists reject religious belief, which seems a bit overblown; even if it’s strictly true, the figures aren’t quite as dramatic as some assume.  But I’m especially taken with the suggestion that “mind might be more primary than matter.”

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Here are some further notes from Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), by the Dutch cardiologist and researcher Pim van Lommel:

The brain is the messenger to consciousness.  (Sir John Eccles [1903-1997], Australian neurophysiologist and winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, cited on page 203))

So far we can locate no single region in which the neural activity corresponds exactly to the vivid picture of the world we see in front of our eyes.  (Francis H. C. Crick [1916-2004], British molecular biologist and neuroscientist and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, cited on page 185)

The things that can be measured are the chemical, electric, or magnetic changes in brain activity; the content of thoughts, feelings, and emotions cannot be measured.  If we had no direct experience of our consciousness through our feelings, emotions, and thoughts, we would not be able to perceive it.  (xvi)

On the basis of prospective studies of near-death experience, recent results from neurophysiological research, and concepts from quantum physics, I strongly believe that consciousness cannot be located in a particular time and place.  This is known as nonlocality.  Complete and endless consciousness is everywhere in a dimension that is not tied to time or place, where past, present, and future all exist and are accessible at the same time.  This endless consciousness is always in and around us.  We have no theories to prove or measure nonlocal space and nonlocal consciousness in the material world.  The brain and the body merely function as an interface or relay station to receive part of our total consciousness and part of our memories into our waking consciousness.  Nonlocal consciousness encompasses much more than our waking consciousness.  Our brain may be compared both to a television set, receiving information from electromagnetic fields and decoding this into sound and vision, and to a television camera, converting or encoding sound and vision into electromagnetic waves.  Our consciousness transmits information to the brain and via the brain receives information from the body and senses.  The function of the brain can be compared to a transceiver; our brain has a facilitating rather than a producing role: it enables the experience of consciousness.  There is also increasing evidence that consciousness has a direct effect on the function and anatomy of the brain and the body, with DNA likely to play an important role.  (xvii)

The following passage seems, to put it mildly, very Mormon:

There is no beginning and there will never be an end to our consciousness.  For this reason we ought to seriously consider the possibility that death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another and that during life the body functions as an interface or place of resonance.  (xviii)

Compare Doctrine and Covenants 93:29:  “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”