Semi Plenary 5, Sunday, October 24, 2010
SP 5. Nonlocal Consciousness
Nonlocal Consciousness–A concept based on scientific studies on Near-Death Experience. Pirn Van Lommel, MD (Cardiologist/Author)
'To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.' -William James According to our current medical concepts, it is not possible to experience consciousness during a cardiac arrest, when circulation and breathing have ceased. But during the period of unconsciousness due to a life-threatening crisis like cardiac arrest patients may report the paradoxical occurrence of enhanced consciousness experienced in a dimension without our conventional concept of time and space, with cognitive functions, with emotions, with self-identity, with memories from early childhood and sometimes with (non-sensory) perception out and above their lifeless body. Recently several theories have been proposed to explain an NDE. The challenge to find a common explanation for the cause and content of an NDE is complicated by the fact that an NDE can be experienced during various circumstances, such as during severe injury of the brain as in cardiac arrest to continuum when the brain seems to function normally. Since the publication of several prospective studies on NDE in survivors of cardiac arrest, with strikingly similar results and conclusions, the phenomenon of the NDE can no longer be scientifically ignored. It is an authentic experience which cannot be simply reduced to imagination, fear of death, hallucination, psychosis, the use of drugs, or oxygen deficiency, and people appear to be permanently changed by an NDE during a cardiac arrest of only some minutes duration. According to these studies, the current materialistic view of the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers and psychologists is too restricted for a proper understanding of this phenomenon. There are good reasons to assume that our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced consciousness can sometimes be experienced separately from the body. I have come to the conclusion that most likely the brain must have a facilitating and not a producing function to experience consciousness.
Does nondual awareness extend through time? Dean Rodin (IONS)
At last year's SAND conference, we conducted an experiment with several participants experienced with nondual awareness. We investigated whether the subjective impression of timelessness, which is occasionally reported by nondual practitioners, is an interesting brain-generated illusion, or whether their sense of the present moment objectively extends into what is normally regarded as the future. We recorded 32 channels of EEG before, during and after sequences of randomly generated audio and light stimuli, and determined how the brain behaved one second before the stimuli. We also ran non-meditators in the same experiment to provide a comparison. I will present the results of this study, and will describe a new experiment that I will be conducting at the 2010 conference.
Nondual Awareness Practices: Theory and Research, Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D. (Director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences)
Studies of nondual awareness practitioners are few and far berween, but evidence indicates that repeated experiences of nondual awareness shift peoples worldviews and ways of being in unique and profound ways. In this talk, data from a longitudinal study of people engaged in nondual awareness teachings and a laboratory study will be shared, as will an emerging model of how nondual awareness practices might affect people's lives.
White Robed Monks of St. Benedict