[Edit: This is an English translation of an interview of Professor Wilfried Kuhn (image here), conducted by Susanne Wiedemann of the Main Post newspaper in Germany. Heartfelt thanks to Ms. Wiedemann for her kind efforts in obtaining permission from the Main Post and Professor Kuhn to post this translation in full. -- Doug]
http://www.mainpost.de/regional/schweinf...42,7386290
Death is not the End
by Susanne Wiedemann
Professor Wilfried Kuhn, is chief physician at the Neurological Clinic in the Leopoldina Hospital in Schweinfurt, and has worked there for over 20 years. He has an interest in the borderline between science and spirituality. In 1977 he read Dr Raymond Moody's book "Life After Life," the reports of people who had been clinically dead and were revived to speak of their experiences. These people typically saw themselves lying on the operating table, watching doctors fight to save their lives, experienced passing through a tunnel towards a bright light sometimes accompanied by or meeting deceased relatives. And they returned because they were told their life's work was not finished.
Sceptics say it's 'esoteric nonsense,' all medically explainable as hallucinations and brain processes. For Kuhn, however, near-death experiences are an indication that consciousness can exist without matter. He has studied the phenomenon for many years and in his opinion, they cannot be fully explained neurobiologically.
Question: Do you believe in a life after death?
Kuhn: Yes, definitely. I do not want to attribute this to just the phenomenon of near-death experience, though. Objectively, they are not proof of a life after death. Subjectively, they are an indirect indication that physical death is not the end, that there is something beyond that. But there are also reports from mediumistic people who contact the deceased on behalf of the living. There are fascinating reports emerging. In addition, there are a number of studies that have already been undertaken scientifically. There are numerous reports and studies.
You give lectures on the subject of near-death experiences. Do people tell you about their experiences, or do they not take the risk?
Kuhn: Very few people tell me anything in the official question and answer session. But in the personal conversations after the lecture, they do. I have met people who not only talk about near-death experiences, but also about contacts with the deceased. On the one hand, there are apparitions, visions that, for example, forewarn someone possibly of a misfortune, as well as simple messages such as "I'm fine (now)." There is also much evidence and wisdom in the Eastern and Western 'teachings' that mainstream thinking in science and religion ignores, or does not accept. All this leads me to say: I believe in a life after death.
That is unusual for a scientist ?
Kuhn: Yes, until I was about 40, I was still sceptical. I have tried to examine the various sources: Over the years, certainty about a transcendent reality has increased. But that is certainly not synonymous with someone who has actually had a near-death experience.
Every now and then a scientific sceptic is converted. Like the neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander, a professor at Harvard. He was in a coma for seven days, and reported on his journey to another dimension in his book, "Proof of heaven"
Yes, Dr. Eben Alexander has changed from "
Saul" to "Paul." A very personal, fascinating report.
Alexander writes: My experience has shown me that the death of the body and the brain is not the end of consciousness - that the human experience extends beyond the grave.
At a lecture you once said that near-death experiences are a 'thorn in the side' of the materialistic worldview. Can consciousness or spirit therefore exist separately from matter?
Kuhn : Consciousness has to be independent of matter. Near-death experiences often occur in people whose brains are no longer functioning, nevertheless, these people experience a clear, enhanced consciousness. This paradox challenges the theory that these experiences are only hallucinations.
I have always been very bad at physics. In a space where time and distance are irrelevant, in which there is no matter, particles can interact instantaneously over a long distance. This is what the cardiologist Dr Pim van Lommel, who studies near-death experiences, explained in an interview. In other words, modern physics might explain something that religions have been teaching us for millennia?
Kuhn: In general, the neurobiological world view is an outdated worldview. It is a worldview of classical physics. Since then, the theory of relativity has been developed, but above all, quantum theory. Consciousness cannot be explained or understood materialistically. Perhaps quantum theory can contribute to the solution of this phenomenon more than classical physics, since the interaction of consciousness and matter plays an essential role in this process.
We still do not know how consciousness can be generated by brain cells, as it is postulated. However, it is dogmatically scientifically
assumed that it must be so. However, near-death experiences show that certain ideas of neurobiology are not correct.
There are (dogmatic) colleagues of mine who say that near-death experience
can be explained neurobiologically. The dying neurons firing off, oxygen deficiency (causing hallucinations). These are their explanations, but they are not proven. There are now numerous pointers that allow for the conclusion that near-death experience cannot be fully explained neurobiologically.
For example, when someone who was born blind describes their surroundings ? Or someone recounts a situation he could not actually have witnessed because he was clinically dead?
Kuhn: The verified cases are not enough for them. Pim van Lommel once said that if we had ten cases, my colleagues would demand a hundred ! If one admits that near-death experiences are not hallucinations, one would have to recognize a parapsychological phenomenon. I have been familiar with the sceptical arguments for 40 years. There are always people who say that it doesn't exist. There will always be people who doubt everything. Also because most argue on a completely different level, for example in Internet discussions. They have hardly read any of the literature, they only know it superficially and they have a materialistic worldview. Anyone who has worked intensively with this subject, as a scientist, rather says: There's something else. Or: We cannot explain it yet.
If we assume that consciousness survives the body, would there have to be something like a great, collective consciousness?
If you read how Dr. Eben Alexander describes his near-death experience, you get an idea of how that could be. He speaks of knowledge that is there immediately, of many worlds. The awareness of the near-death experience goes far beyond the earthly consciousness. Dr Alexander suspects the brain is a filter.
We only partially experience consciousness, downgraded to our reality. But the real consciousness, which emerges during the near-death experience, is something far more fantastic. The paradoxical awareness of a near-death experience is unexplainable: how can someone whose brain is shut down, who is not properly perfused, experience such clear, lucid consciousness that goes far beyond the earthly consciousness in itself, even beyond space and time?
The near-death experiences are marked by feelings of happiness, the feeling of not needing to be afraid of death. Are there any accounts of people going into a negative kind of world? I do not like to talk about hell now. . .
Kuhn: There are actually such cases. The American doctor Barbara Rommer has dealt with this. She has come to the conclusion that these experiences were ultimately also positive for the people. They were fearful/ scared at first, but then they were motivated to change their lives positively.
To change one's life, to reorient oneself - is that the tendency after a near-death experience?
Kuhn: Such an experience often has a transformative factor that influences people sustainably. Many become spiritual.
What can we, those who have not had a near-death experience, learn from this? Is there a message for all of us: we don't need to be afraid of death?
Kuhn: Dr Kenneth Ring, the US's best-known near-death researcher, speaks of the gift of transformational changes, people who can learn to better understand reality and their lives. In the last ten years so many reports and books have appeared, many people are daring to talk about their experiences. Even if science still claims at the moment, that they can be explained, the increasing interest of the public in the topic shows that people no longer really trust science. You are wondering if maybe our worldview should be different from what we imagine. People see that many scientific ideas are only theories and hypotheses. That there are other explanations.
You can analyse a brain, examine it, look at the individual neurons. ? But you do not know how the mind works, right?
Kuhn: Exactly. You can see connections, they explain a lot, but there are areas that are not completely explainable. There are more and more people, including philosophers, who critically deal with neurobiology. Neurobiologists claim that when the brain is dead, then there is nothing left. Wrongly, this idea is presented with an absoluteness, as if that were proved. But I think that people are smarter than that and they wonder if that's really true?
There is no evidence it is the case, it is just a dogmatic belief. That leads me to the topic of science and materialism. Science as a method is good, science can also deal with the hereafter. Science does not exclude the possibility of a hereafter. Only materialism says it cannot exist. In the minds of many, materialism and science are equated, the same.
Maybe it needs a new degree program: Neurophilosophy ?
There are some people at the universities who deal with neurophilosophical issues. But the taboo of the subject and the scientific dogma is so strong that you only receive a shake of their head when you express such ideas among academic colleagues, or you are simply shunned or ridiculed.
Death is not the end, is a comforting thought. No matter what from it takes. A gathering of consciousness, for example.
That's a Buddhist notion. In the Christian concept, God remains above man. Everyone thinks differently.
Near-death experience
Four million people in Germany have at least once, after an accident, serious illness, childbirth or spontaneously had an extraordinary experience that shaped their lives. The most common features of a near-death experience include: floating out and observation of one's own body, seeing brilliant light, often persons known to be dead at the end of a tunnel, extraordinary happiness, life review, meeting with deceased relatives, disappointment with the "return" to the body, a changed life lived without fear of death (Source: Near death experience Network).
Professor Wilfried Kuhn was born in 1952 in Würzburg. After studying chemistry he entered medicine, followed by specialist training in neurology and psychiatry, in 1989 specialising in the subject of neurology at the University of Würzburg.