Peter Fenwick's Studies of End-of-Life-Phenomena

Excellent post, so much so I needed to take some time to collect my thoughts.

As you say for me the question is no longer Survival but what aspect of the person survives. When one considers the possibility of being flooded with past-life memories upon death it is indeed difficult to see how such an entity would be the person we are in this life.

However, there is some comfort in knowing children have claimed contact with dead loved ones and that loved ones have reincarnated back into this world to be close to family. 

Another thing to consider is that we can look back on memories of youth and see them from a new perspective, giving hope that each life is not just a drop in an endlessly growing bucket of experiences but a growth of the whole that takes in the perspective of our current life.

Beyond that we may not maintain all our memories of childhood but we still do carry those formative years inside of us. And so while this life may only be a piece of our immortal existence, it still matters and still carries meaningful weight in what Eric Weiss calls the "Long Trajectory" of existence.

I find solace in the view I've had and others report in states of expanded awareness which relativise ones identification and attachment to ones contrived adaptive identity. The experience for me is of remembering a sense of authenticity and familiarity that feels more real - similar but not as vivid as an nde which feels more like a gain and inclusion rather than a loss of personal identity.
I don't get any sense from nde reports that there is a lot of concern about loosing one,s earthly persona's but more of a welcome home feeling

Excellent post, so much so I needed to take some time to collect my thoughts.

As you say for me the question is no longer Survival but what aspect of the person survives. When one considers the possibility of being flooded with past-life memories upon death it is indeed difficult to see how such an entity would be the person we are in this life.

However, there is some comfort in knowing children have claimed contact with dead loved ones and that loved ones have reincarnated back into this world to be close to family. 

Another thing to consider is that we can look back on memories of youth and see them from a new perspective, giving hope that each life is not just a drop in an endlessly growing bucket of experiences but a growth of the whole that takes in the perspective of our current life.

Beyond that we may not maintain all our memories of childhood but we still do carry those formative years inside of us. And so while this life may only be a piece of our immortal existence, it still matters and still carries meaningful weight in what Eric Weiss calls the "Long Trajectory" of existence.

I decided that I would like to present this post of mine on the only other good paranormal/spiritual forum or blog I know of, Michael Tymn's (at  http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/en...everything  ). This blog is associated with White Crow Books. I was interested in getting some other diverse reactions and perspectives to my thoughts on this subject.  It elicited quite a discussion on that blog. There have been several very interesting responses there that I thought it might be good to share in part here in our forum.

The response from Michael Tymn:

...thanks for your comment.  It is all very abstract and you may very well be right, but I’ll go with all of the research suggesting that we awaken with the personality we depart with and cite the volumes of psychical research carried out by esteemed scientists and scholars, such as Lodge, Myers, Hyslop, Hodgson, Barrett, Wallace, and others in which individuals, such as George Pellew, communicated from the other side with much the same personality they departed with. They no doubt continued to evolve from that point and are no longer the same personality, just as we are not the same personality at 80 as we were at 20.

Perhaps we are on the same page but differ in the verbiage.  As I’ve often said, it seems to be beyond human comprehension and vocabulary.

I think, as I mentioned in my post, that there is an explanation within my conceptual model for such apparent communications with the human personalities of long deceased soul/spirits (which have supposedly transformed and expanded into something unrecognizable as a human personality), that this expanded soul being deliberately takes on the guise of the particular past human personality (now just a small part of itself consisting mainly of memories) that the human mediums are trying to communicate with, out of perhaps compassion  and desire to console and alieve grief and sorrow. 

Or another explanation could be that the process of the vast expansion of the self into the greater soul being, incorporating in its somewhat humanly alien "personality" very many past life human personalities, takes an extended amount of Earth time. 

Another commenter gave the most interesting and correspondingly lengthy response:

I was rather astonished by your comment of September 26th.  The concepts which you addressed in that comment are concepts that I am currently researching and writing about.  And then I see today, a comment from Don Porteous about the same ideas.  I think that there must be some kind of spiritual evolution occurring in the world today as organized religion wanes, concerning these ideas of survival of consciousness versus survival of personalities. It may be a kind of morphic resonance, as proposed by Rupert Sheldrake, where a behavior or idea seems to spread among a species population “through a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration”  That seems to be happening now among individuals in various parts or the world concerning exactly what it is that survives death.  Is it personality?  Or, is it one’s consciousness or soul.
Discussion of possible answers would require too much space for this blog but I have to respond to you comment in a meaningful way.  I would like to mention some of the other people who have proposed the same ideas you wrote in your comment.

Dr. Oliver Lazar in his book, “Beyond Matter “(2023) proposed that “[W]hen I die one day as Oliver the soul aspects that made me up will merge again with my main soul.  There I am stored eternally as Oliver and will never incarnate again in this constellation. …  In a new incarnation new parts of my main soul would again be combined and a new individual would be formed.  This new individual soul would then also carry the experiences and memories of me (Oliver).”

“[W]hen we return to our main soul, we will become aware that as human beings we have actually only slipped into a role.  We will perceive ourselves as a whole main soul, but we can slip back into the respective roles of our lives at any time. (Lazar pp 33-34)
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Eric M. Weiss in his book “The Long Trajectory: Metaphysics of Reincarnation and Life After Death” (2012) wrote: “the personality that survives bodily death is itself mortal, and dies before any reincarnation takes place.” Weiss goes on to define a soul (Soul Consciousness) as “some entity other than personality that somehow holds memories of past lives and is, rather than the personality itself, the entity that reincarnates.”

Dr. James Matlock’s in his book “Signs of Reincarnation” (2019) disagrees with Weiss and writes: “I do not accept that there is amnesia for past lives at the subliminal level of mind, only at the supraliminal.”

Dr. Jim Tucker reported an inconclusive study of a little girl named “Olivia” who reported that she had lived another life before she was born as Olivia. “Olivia’s mother was asking her why she didn’t believe in God in her current life when she did in her past life, Olivia said that it was because “she was a different person now.”  Her mother asked her if she thought that she might have the same personality as she had in a past life?  Olivia said no, that “the personality was gone but the person was still there. Her mom asked if she meant that a ‘person’ and ‘personality ‘are two different things, and Olivia said yes.” (Tucker 2021 p.147) .
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And finally, this is (my view):  “At one time every human experienced or will experience their Soul Consciousness in a physical form that changed from an infant into a small toddler, that changed into a small child, that changed into a preteen, then a teenager, then a young adult, then as a mature adult, then an old adult, then eventually as an elderly person barely able to contain the Soul Consciousness in a physical form any longer.  The physical form does not remain the same throughout that lifetime; it changes along with the personality over the years as one would change clothing, but the Soul Consciousness does not change.  A point is reached when the personality or subliminal self will have completed its purpose in life or the physical form no longer supports the Soul Consciousness and it is time for the subliminal self to bow to its applause, hang up its costume, go to the cast party and be remembered by the Soul Consciousness as another experience, another role it played in physical form.  The Soul Consciousness waits for another audition for another role or personality to play in the grand theater of life. During one’s lifetime, the form changed many times; it was not the same, but the Soul Consciousness was the same, except that through experiencing a challenging changing physical life as another personality, or as Frederic Myer’s subliminal mind, it was able to learn, to grow and to evolve into an enhanced version of itself, the Soul Consciousness, with greater understanding on its way back to the Source  from whence it came. On the way back, another lifetime may be required and experienced with a new costume and makeup and new lines to learn and a new personality.

Nice and simple, ehh not. So digesting psilocybin (which is just a mindless molecule) alternates the mental processing in the alternate reality, Does psilocybin teleport in there to do it’s work you think?

Well surely you already know my reply. Psilocybin modifies the link that clearly must exist between the two sides of the human psyche.

On the physical side there is no consciousness - basically because David Chalmers' Hard Problem argument precludes it. On that side, the psilocybin molecule interacts with something in the brain and modifies how it behaves - probably reducing its ability to filter reality somehow. On the other, spiritual side other interface, the mind reacts to the images it receives.

Only the spiritual side of the duality of consciousness can actually perceive the psilocybin experience - and it does.

IMHO we are all dualistic beings while embodied, but that when the physical part dies, the spiritual/mental part of the dualist whole breaks free.

This model makes enormous sense to me. It explains how consciousness is possible, it explains reincarnation, it explains NDE's, deathbed phenomena etc.

The standard scientific response seems to amount to trying to nitpick the experimental evidence (often by simply ignoring the most interesting  phenomena), and hoping that something will turn up!

Dualism is not fatally flawed by the need for a link between the mental and the physical, one possibility is the mechanism proposed by Henry Stapp is certainly one possibility.

David

Well surely you already know my reply.

Yes, I fully knew what your reply was going to be. My line of reasoning was not aimed at debunking dualism but rather to argue against the suggestion that the forum should only concern itself with dualism and personal accounts. I personally find dualism the most implausible among the philosophies of mind, as it presupposes both a completely different reality (the spiritual world) and a magical duplex communication channel that, without being physical, still interacts by mechanical laws. By Occam's razor, this is not the simplest explanation of anything, even though it is, of course, the most desirable. Regarding self-reported evidence, I have already made my position clear.

However, there have historically been many other interesting philosophies discussed in the forum, like idealism and monism, and important content (for me) is regularly being posted. So basically, I think it would be a shame to reduce Psience Quest to the 'dualism forum,' even though I realize most here adhere to that specific philosophy of mind.

most here adhere to that specific philosophy of mind.

Not sure about this. There really aren't that many of us but it seems to me it might be Idealism or Neutral Monism that is the top choice.

I also suspect many of us aren't wedded strongly to any metaphysical position, save perhaps that standard conceptions of Materialism are false.

Yes, I fully knew what your reply was going to be. My line of reasoning was not aimed at debunking dualism but rather to argue against the suggestion that the forum should only concern itself with dualism and personal accounts. I personally find dualism the most implausible among the philosophies of mind, as it presupposes both a completely different reality (the spiritual world) and a magical duplex communication channel that, without being physical, still interacts by mechanical laws. By Occam's razor, this is not the simplest explanation of anything, even though it is, of course, the most desirable. Regarding self-reported evidence, I have already made my position clear.

However, there have historically been many other interesting philosophies discussed in the forum, like idealism and monism, and important content (for me) is regularly being posted. So basically, I think it would be a shame to reduce Psience Quest to the 'dualism forum,' even though I realize most here adhere to that specific philosophy of mind.

Yes there are all sorts of 'interesting alternative philosophies, but do you realise how those other philosophies go contrary to Occam's Razor? They are also too vague to reason with - at least at this time. Idealism - the idea that all reality is created by various sorts of consciousness - is untestable as I see it because it excludes nothing.

David

Yes there are all sorts of 'interesting alternative philosophies, but do you realise how those other philosophies go contrary to Occam's Razor? They are also too vague to reason with - at least at this time. Idealism - the idea that all reality is created by various sorts of consciousness - is untestable as I see it because it excludes nothing.

David

All philosophies of mind are untestable, which is why they remain in the realm of philosophy. Each has its own problems, but it’s worth noting that both idealism and monism only presuppose one mindful reality. In contrast, dualism posits not only a mindful reality but also a mechanical one, along with a mysterious connection between the two. Given this, I understand why Bernardo Kastrup favors the simpler explanation.

All philosophies of mind are untestable, which is why they remain in the realm of philosophy. Each has its own problems, but it’s worth noting that both idealism and monism only presuppose one mindful reality. In contrast, dualism posits not only a mindful reality but also a mechanical one, along with a mysterious connection between the two. Given this, I understand why Bernardo Kastrup favors the simpler explanation.

Yes, but you left out the fact that much of the paranormal evidence is most directly and simply explainable by interactive Dualism. Truly a conundrum.

All philosophies of mind are untestable, which is why they remain in the realm of philosophy. Each has its own problems, but it’s worth noting that both idealism and monism only presuppose one mindful reality. In contrast, dualism posits not only a mindful reality but also a mechanical one, along with a mysterious connection between the two. Given this, I understand why Bernardo Kastrup favors the simpler explanation.

I admire your pragmatic stance.  I would say that there is a worldview you do not address, Informational Realism.

IR is not testable - physically.  But, is revealed physically when testing condensed matter and in the mental evolution of organisms.  Entanglement is not weird, but is exactly how nature should be - if there is structure to informational objects.  That there is this structuring in nature is proved by how biological information processing can plan with information still in the future. 

Software can contribute to the state of a physical object.  Surely, it is proven that logical instructions can change the state of function of a mechanical device.  It is clear to those who work with electricity that amps, watts and ohms are not measuring what logic gates with binary outcomes are achieving.

I am NOT a dualist as there are three well-studied environments.  A physical environment of forces and materials.  An informational environment with activity that changes meaning, selection, organization and functional goals - the analogue of what forces do with matter.  This informational environment is also subsumed by informational structures such as code, detailed by information theory. 

The behavior of objects in the physical environment needs information science to describe what is really happening.  There is information processing going on big time in living things.

Thirdly - there is an environment of a moral/spiritual nature.  There is is not just doing (physical), experiencing (informational) but there are behaviors that tap into a flow of special information that is important to our inner environment.  An environment linked to moral outcomes and personal actualization.  This 
3rd environment is not hard science.  It is to be lived and judged as wise decision-making (or not).

Example:  you can image a micro-tubule to detail its shape and test its chemistry.   So, physical time/space and constitutional ingredients are measured.  Yet, the interest in micro-tubules is for actioned outcomes of information processing.  Penrose/Hammeroff are testing for the processes ongoing.  Not physical outcomes but mental outcomes.  The IR theory posits that information is being processed in a separate non-physical space. These processes and their outcomes are real and measurable.  This space's logical structures are under scrutiny as to a working model..

I admire your pragmatic stance.  I would say that there is a worldview you do not address, Informational Realism.

IR is not testable - physically.  But, is revealed physically when testing condensed matter and in the mental evolution of organisms.  Entanglement is not weird, but is exactly how nature should be - if there is structure to informational objects.  That there is this structuring in nature is proved by how biological information processing can plan with information still in the future. 

Software can contribute to the state of a physical object.  Surely, it is proven that logical instructions can change the state of function of a mechanical device.  It is clear to those who work with electricity that amps, watts and ohms are not measuring what logic gates with binary outcomes are achieving.

I am NOT a dualist as there are three well-studied environments.  A physical environment of forces and materials.  An informational environment with activity that changes meaning, selection, organization and functional goals - the analogue of what forces do with matter.  This informational environment is also subsumed by informational structures such as code, detailed by information theory. 

The behavior of objects in the physical environment needs information science to describe what is really happening.  There is information processing going on big time in living things.

Thirdly - there is an environment of a moral/spiritual nature.  There is is not just doing (physical), experiencing (informational) but there are behaviors that tap into a flow of special information that is important to our inner environment.  An environment linked to moral outcomes and personal actualization.  This 
3rd environment is not hard science.  It is to be lived and judged as wise decision-making (or not).

Example:  you can image a micro-tubule to detail its shape and test its chemistry.   So, physical time/space and constitutional ingredients are measured.  Yet, the interest in micro-tubules is for actioned outcomes of information processing.  Penrose/Hammeroff are testing for the processes ongoing.  Not physical outcomes but mental outcomes.  The IR theory posits that information is being processed in a separate non-physical space. These processes and their outcomes are real and measurable.  This space's logical structures are under scrutiny as to a working model..

Stephen, I admire your persistence in advocating for this alternative, highly abstract concept of realism. Is it the same as the one explained by a member of the Discovery Institute in this post?
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/07/how-infor...terialism/

I’m a bit puzzled about the idea of 3 environments (realities), however Eccles also theorized about a threefold realism. But I haven’t digged into his thoughts yet.