Michael Prescott's Blog

Overthinking it

When it comes the question of life after death, sometimes I think it's possible to lose sight of the forest for the trees. It's all too easy to get caught up in the minutiae of particular cases or to become involved in endless speculation about theoretical models. It may be worthwhile to step back and try to look at the broader picture.

The broader picture is that there is an extraordinary amount of evidence for the survival of personality after physical death. Most casual skeptics are barely acquainted with this evidence, as you can easily determine by going to their online forums and reading their (often comical) shoot-from-the-hip attempts at debunking. The more sophisticated skeptics are aware of the broad range of evidence and must engage in the tedious process of casting doubt on one case after another, often resorting to desperate hypotheses that are seemingly more far-fetched than the paranormal phenomena they’re intended to supplant.

If we take an overview of the totality of the evidence, the picture that emerges is astonishingly simple and clear. It's a picture of the human body as the vessel for an independent spirit; the death of the body entails the liberation of the spirit, which then migrates to an appropriate spiritual plane based on its particular level of consciousness. Exactly what happens after that is unknown, apparently even to the spirits themselves, but there's no reason to think the adventure concludes at that point. As for what it's all about, the best inference is that it's about learning and love – the two aspects of life that people who report a near-death experience are most likely to emphasize. The more we learn and the more we love, the more evolved we become, and the better our prospects in the spirit world.

Volumes of case studies have been collected over the 150 years that support this general outlook. A whole religion, Spiritualism, was founded on this evidence and was, for a time, wildly successful. The basic philosophy enshrined in the research is generally consistent with the most elevated teachings of traditional religions and with most people's best moral impulses. And since this outlook does not imply sectarian doctrinalism, nor threaten people with everlasting hellfire, nor teach them to feel guilty for the “sin” of being born, nor encourage them to commit acts of mayhem for the sake of a reward in paradise, it would seem that its general acceptance could only make the world a better place.

From just about any standpoint, then, there is no reason not to believe that this is the way things are. The facts support it, our own deepest yearnings are in sync with it, and the probable consequences for humankind if this viewpoint were widely adopted are overwhelmingly positive – certainly far more positive than the results of unbridled philosophical materialism, which treats people as disposable objects and has taken to questioning the very existence of the mind and self.

If this is so, then why do we make things so complicated? Why do we take a simple truth and try to make it into an elaborate theory? I'm not trying to be critical; I've certainly done this myself. I think it's a natural impulse. But why?

For me, the answer comes down to this: In the modern world, a world steeped in technology and the fruits of the physical sciences, it's exceedingly difficult to believe in “spirits.” Something about the idea just seems too simple, almost childish. There's a natural tendency to want to dress it up in more scientific terms – to talk about discarnate personalities and fifth-dimensional geometry, or a matrix of information, or quantum theories of consciousness.

I'm not saying there's no value in these ideas. But ultimately they’re just ways of repackaging the simple, basic truths obtained by psychical researchers. If people in the modern Western world don't go in for spirits, maybe they will go in for higher-dimensional manifestations of quantum consciousness. It sounds a little more sophisticated, a little more 21st-century. But it amounts to the same thing.

Maybe people like Michael Tymn have it right. Instead of running away from the apparent naïveté of spiritualist teachings, Tymn embraces those teachings, taking them at face value. This gives his books and blog posts a straightforwardness and clarity that are lacking from more abstruse treatments. It also shows a certain kind of doughty courage, a willingness to buck the prevailing trend of materialism and technocracy, to say that maybe the modern world isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be, that maybe our sophistication is merely cynicism, and maybe we’ve lost as much as we’ve gained.

Jesus might have been on to something when he said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Great truths are often simple. The essential truth about life after death may be simple enough for a child to understand.

Of mice and men

My last two posts covered the discovery of an electrical surge in the brains of lab rats subjected to cardiac arrest or asphyxiation. The study has been touted as a possible explanation for near-death experiences.

Arguments about the study quickly become technical, as people debate whether the spikes in certain brainwave frequencies (in the context of greatly reduced overall brain activity) could account for the elaborate structure and intense imagery of a full-blown NDE. I'm certainly not competent to weigh in on this question. The argument made by the study's authors is found here; an opposing argument made by an NDE researcher is here.

Another possible weakness of the hypothesis is perhaps more easily tested. In the study, the rats' brains were monitored (using intracranial electrodes) throughout the waking state, anesthesia, and cardiac arrest (or asphyxiation). No surge was recorded during anesthesia. This has led some to argue that the surge cannot be responsible for an NDE, since NDEs do sometimes occur under anesthesia.

In thinking about this, I wondered if we might be mixing apples and oranges. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of NDEs (though there can be considerable overlap). The first kind are what might be called veridical or autoscopic NDEs, and are basically out-of-body experiences in which the person hovers over his physical body and observes what's happening around him. The second kind are transcendent NDEs, in which the person experiences a trip toward (or into) a bright light, reunion with deceased loved ones, a life review, and a decision (made by himself or others) to return to earthly life. Not all of these components are found in the typical transcendent NDE, but normally at least one of them is.

It seems clear that the veridical NDEs (or OBEs) cannot be associated with the electrical surge. Not only do such NDEs and OBEs occur under anesthesia, when there is no surge, but they also occur in other situations where the brain is not in any distress. It is even possible to learn to bring on such OBEs at will.

That leaves the transcendent experience. Could this be tied to the surge? Could the "hyperarousal" of the brain at certain frequencies be enough to produce a vivid, extended hallucination of going into the light, meeting the dead, judging one's life, and returning?

The fairest way to address this question is to see if transcendent experiences have been documented under conditions where the surge would not be a factor – such as anesthesia. After all, we already know from the rat study that anesthetized rats do not exhibit an electrical surge. So, do anesthetized patients report transcendent NDEs, or only autoscopic NDEs/OBEs?

In search of an answer, I looked at three books from my shelf – admittedly only a small fraction of the vast NDE literature.

In Intimations of Immortality, Robert Crookall recounts several cases of anesthetized patients who had what we would now call autoscopic NDEs (though the term "near-death experience" had not been coined when Crookall was writing). None of them recounted a transcendent NDE.

In Crookall's More Astral Projections, in the section titled "Enforced Out-of-the-Body Experiences," Crookall includes more cases of NDEs under anesthesia. Nearly all are autoscopic. In one case, a patient reported, "I found myself proceeding along a straight black tube with hardly room to move," but there was no mention of a bright light or heavenly realm. Another patient found himself  "in a dark, windy, cold tunnel [and] could see distant lights," but again the experience went no further.

One transcendent case involved the patient's visit to a brightly glowing room, where he was surrounded by smiling people, including his deceased wife. But this patient's heart stopped on the operating table, so the transcendent NDE could have been associated with cardiac arrest, not anesthesia.

Crookall does, however, list one transcendent NDE under anesthesia that apparently did not involve cardiac arrest. A Mr. Roberts encountered "a phalanx of stalwart figures" who escorted his astral body back into his physical body. These figures told him, "Time's up – go back now." Unfortunately no details of the surgery (or any complications) are reported.

Finally, I looked at Michael B. Sabom’s Recollections of Death. Sabom includes the case of a patient who had an autoscopic NDE/OBE while under anesthesia, and who previously had another autoscopic NDE during cardiac arrest. Neither experience was of the transcendent type, but the patient still reported a clear contrast between the two:

But this [anesthesia NDE] is distinctly different from the time I had a cardiac arrest … In the first experience [cardiac arrest] I died … That's a different feeling. This is more earthly, just like I had two feet planted on the ground … I don't think I died like I did before.

Sabom also includes a section titled "The Transcendental Surgical Experience," which covers nine patients. One of them had a full-blown transcendent NDE, in which he visited a beautiful world and met a spiritual figure (interpreted as Christ) before being told to return. But this man "had required resuscitation from a cardiac arrest at the end of his surgery." So again, the transcendent NDE could be linked to heart failure. Similarly, another patient who had a transcendent NDE during surgery (in this case, an encounter with a bright light) was told by his doctor, "We lost all life signs while you were on the operating table."

I realize not much can be concluded from three books. But it would be interesting to know if transcendent (as opposed to autoscopic) NDEs are largely absent from anesthesia cases. If so, it might suggest that the autoscopic NDE/OBE is a manifestation of latent psi powers (perhaps activated by the shutdown of ordinary consciousness) while the transcendent NDE is linked to the end-of-life electrical surge recorded in rats and in some human subjects.

What's needed is more info. If someone can point me to a case(s) of a transcendental NDE occurring during anesthesia, in the absence of a life-threatening surgical complication, I'd be much obliged. Please note that I'm mainly concerned with well-documented, independently investigated cases; self-reported cases on sites like NDERF, while interesting, are inevitably more open to doubt.

Oh, rats! part deux

In my last post I linked to a study of electrical activity in the brains of lab rats undergoing cardiac arrest. The study's authors suggest that this end-of-life electrical surge may help to explain near-death experiences.

I've since had a chance to read the study and some critical arguments and counterarguments more carefully. I find this whole area of research very interesting, and it does seem to me that this study offers the first possibility of a naturalistic explanation for some aspects (though not all aspects) of NDEs.

It's worth noting that related work has been carried out by a a different group of researchers, who have recorded electrical activity in human patients at the point of death. Although the methodology is different, making direct comparisons problematic, this research reportedly has found that "about half of patients who succumb in the intensive care unit display an ELES [end-of-life electrical surge], and the waveform is at a higher frequency than that observed in animals." So there appears to be at least preliminary support for the idea that this phenomenon is not limited to rodents, but extends to human beings.

In a published letter questioning the relevance of the study to NDEs, Bruce Greyson, Edward F. Kelly, and W.J. Ross Dunseath make several points. First, they say that no one knows the rat's state of subjective experience at the point of death. This is true, but in my opinion, irrelevant. The argument is not that rats are having NDEs, but that the electrical surge in the mammalian brain, when combined with the subjective, self-aware consciousness apparently unique to humans, can result in an NDE.

Next, Greyson and his colleagues argue* that

the activity observed following cardiac arrest represents a tiny fraction of the total neuroelectric power present just before arrest ... and thus it is misleading to describe these rat brains as being “hyperaroused.” All that can be concluded is that activity of unknown functional significance occurred at a few places in the EEG frequency spectrum in the context of near-total obliteration of activity accompanying the waking state.

This point, however, is effectively countered by the study's authors in a published reply. The authors - Jimo Borjigin, Michael M. Wang, and George A. Mashour - write:

Greyson et al. state that it is misleading to describe the rat brain as hyperaroused because the EEG power at near death was only a small fraction of that of the waking state in our study. However, they neglect to note that we showed that the power of EEG signals associated with consciousness increased in every rat we tested ... Our entire study is devoted to demonstrating the presence of electrical fingerprints of consciousness in the near-death brain. We report increased power and global synchrony in the gamma bandwidth, two neurophysiologic features associated with conscious processing. Moreover, this gamma band exhibits an eightfold increase in top-down information processing (thought to be a key element of consciousness) and fivefold increase in bottom-up information flow (thought to represent sensory information processing) at near death. In addition, we found tight coupling of gamma bands with both theta and alpha bands, yet another indicator of conscious information processing in the postarrest brain. 

This is my own reading of the study, as well - though admittedly I'm far from being a neuroscientist! Still, it seems clear from their research paper that Borjigin et al. were specifically investigating the presumed mechanisms of conscious awareness:

Neuronal oscillations in the gamma range (>25 Hz) have been associated with waking consciousness, altered states of consciousness during meditation, and rapid eye movement sleep. Conscious perception is associated not only with an increase in gamma power, but also with long-range synchronization of gamma (30–80 Hz) oscillations. Furthermore, current perspectives on the neural correlates of consciousness suggest that cortical and thalamocortical effective connectivity is critical for conscious processing ... In addition to gamma waves, theta rhythms also play an important role in information processing in the brain. Theta oscillations are important for synaptic plasticity, information coding, and working memory. Studies have shown that the theta band increases in power during both verbal and spatial memory tasks in the mammalian cortex and is a feature of cognitive control across species. Increased theta power has also been detected in human subjects during meditation. Recent studies suggest that cross-frequency coupling between theta and gamma rhythms may play a functional role in long-range neuronal communication, perception, and memory tasks. These findings prompted us to examine electrical oscillations of the brain by focusing on EEG power, global EEG coherence, directional brain connectivity, and cross-frequency coupling of gamma and theta waves during waking, anesthesia, and following cardiac arrest.

So they were indeed focusing on aspects of neurological activity that are currently believed to play key roles in consciousness. What did they find?

In all nine of the test animals, the initial phase of cardiac arrest "exhibited elevated gamma oscillations near 130 Hz in all six EEG channels." This lasted for about 4 seconds on average. The next pahse "exhibited theta oscillations mixed with high-frequency gamma oscillations across all channels." This lasted for about 6 seconds on average. After a 1.7 second "delta blip," the third major stage commenced, lasting about 20 seconds and "dominated by EEG signals in the low-gamma frequency range (30-50 Hz) that were highly synchronous and appeared to be coupled to theta oscillations across all EEG channels." After that, brain activity faded out.

Summing up, the authors write:

High-gamma waves near 130 Hz increased in power, whereas other frequency bands did not change during [the first phase of cardiac arrest] ... During [the second phase,] lower-frequency bands showed marked reduction in power, except for a narrow band of theta that persisted for the entire [second phase] ... The [third phase] was distinguished by a clear increase in absolute power of low gamma and associated with persistent theta bands ... Compared with waking and anesthetized states, the [third phase] was associated with dramatically reduced EEG power at all frequencies except the low-gamma ... bands, which exhibited a significant increase.

Moreover, "in addition to the increase of gamma power, a large increase of mean coherence for gamma oscillations was detected at near-death ... The global coherence of low-gamma waves at near-death exhibited a more than twofold increase during [the third phase] relative to waking and anesthetized states ... Theta oscillations [during the third phase] also exhibited increased mean coherence compared with anesthesia and waking states ... Our results clearly indicate that mammalian brain activities become transiently and highly synchronized at near-death."

And then there's the issue of "feedback connectivity, reflecting causal information transfer." Remarkably, "the levels of connectivity for all rats at near-death were nearly as high as waking for all frequency bands (except the delta bands) and significantly higher than anesthesia ... Low-gamma waves exhibited the highest directed connectivity levels at near-death: fivefold higher in the feedforward and eightfold higher in the feedback direction compared with the waking state ... Thus, cardiac arrest induces a level of cortical directed connectivity in the near-death brain that far exceeds that observed during the waking state."

Again, I'm no neuroscientist, but it certainly sounds to me as if the study demonstrates that the near-death rats were indeed "hyperaroused" in precisely those regions and activities of the brain that are believed to be critical to consciousness.

As their third point, Greyson and his colleagues observe that monitoring of human patients during cardiac arrest has shown "a slowing and attenuation of EEG activity," not a surge. In rebuttal, Borjigin and his colleagues point out that human monitoring is done with scalp electrodes , while the rat study was done with intracranial electrodes. And as mentioned above, roughly half the human patients in a different clinical study reportedly have demonstrated an electrical surge at the point of death.

After these three objections, which strike me as rather weak, Greyson and his colleagues move to stronger ground, observing that many NDEs involve veridical observations of events that occurred well after the first 30 seconds of cardiac arrest (the only time period when an electrical surge could be detected); and that "about a quarter" of NDEs occur under general anesthesia, while the rat study indicated that brain activity under anesthesia bears little resemblance to the cardiac arrest activity.

The study's authors don't specifically respond to these points, other than to say that "other conditions that produce NDEs should be explored in future studies."

Although Borjigin et al. clearly feel they've made a breakthrough in explaining NDEs, I think the phenomenon will remain challenging as long as the veridical observations cannot be satisfactorily addressed, and as long as the brain surge that apparently occurs at death cannot be detected in patients under anesthesia (who also have NDEs). Still, the study does greatly complicate the now-standard argument that NDEs must be of extracerebral origin because the near-death brain is too medically compromised to generate structured thought. It now has to be admitted that the dying brain can briefly function at a surprisingly high level - a higher level, in some respects, than that associated with waking life.

It's also worth mentioning the phenomenon of terminal lucidity, in which dying patients have a last moment of surprising mental clarity after a long period of dementia or delirium. Could terminal lucidity be the result of an end-of-life electrical surge?

More important, could many aspects of the NDE (though not, presumably, the veridical observations) likewise be part of a narrative constructed by the brain in a last surge of energy? Borjigin and his colleagues write:

NDE represents a biological paradox that challenges our understanding of the brain and has been advocated as evidence for life after death and for a noncorporeal basis of human consciousness, based on the unsupported belief that the brain cannot possibly be the source of highly vivid and lucid conscious experiences during clinical death. By presenting evidence of highly organized brain activity and neurophysiologic features consistent with conscious processing at near-death, we now provide a scientific framework to begin to explain the highly lucid and realer-than-real mental experience reported by near-death survivors.

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*In all quotations, footnotes have been omitted.

Oh, rats!

Someone emailed me to ask about a study in which the brains of dying rats showed a burst of activity. The question was: What implications, if any, does this have for NDEs?

I gave a general answer, but also forwarded the email to Chris Carter, because my email correspondent had asked me to. Chris replied to me with a copy of a letter by Bruce Greyson, Edward F. Kelly, and W.J. Ross Dunseath, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same journal that published the original study.

Doing a little Web browsing, I also found a reply to the Greyson et al.'s letter from the researchers responsible for the study.

Rather than excerpting choice bits from the two letters, both of which are quite short, I've just linked to them (above) for those who are interested.

The full text of the (highly technical) original study is also online.

As a bonus, here's a link to a HuffPo piece about possible scientific support for life after death. It's an excerpt from The Secret Physics of Coincidence, by Rolf Froboese.

Persistence of visions

Here's a thought experiment.

Suppose that, millennia ago, a handful of people had genuine mystical insights as a result of near-death experiences, deathbed visions, or states of extreme physical or emotional distress. As word of these experiences spread, other people tried various ways to induce such experiences at will. Finding that certain plant products could bring about altered states of consciousness, they concluded that these altered states were the equivalent of the "real" experiences they were seeking.

But ... they were wrong. The real visions, which were (and are) exceedingly rare, just can't be reproduced on demand. And over the centuries, the drug-induced visions became indiscriminately mixed up with the much rarer genuine visions, creating confusion and leading spiritual seekers astray, just as outcrops of fool's gold can mislead prospectors.

If this is the case, how could we possibly distinguish between real visions and counterfeit visions - between gold and fool's gold? We might start by noting that NDEs and deathbed visions seldom seem rooted in paranoia and fear, while drug-induced visions frequently do. To my knowledge, NDErs never encounter grotesque humanoid alien insects, but a remarkable number of  DMT users have seen such beasties. I don't think NDEs or deathbed visions involve the kinds of visual phenomena that LSD users routinely report (e.g., swirls of color, "breathing" walls, synesthesia). And so forth.

So if we're going to assume that NDEs and deathbed visions are probably genuine spiritual experiences (in part because of their sometimes compelling veridical components, and in part becayse they dovetail with channeled material from apparently reputable sources), then it seems at least arguable that, for the most part, LSD trips, DMT experiments, and other such practices are counterfeit spiritual experiences.

This way of looking at things is not necessarily correct, but it could fit the facts.

A rebuttal would be that some NDEs and deathbed visions are scary, just like bad drug trips. This is true, but only in a minuscule proportion of reports. When Nancy Evans Bush wrote a book about unpleasant NDEs, she could only find a handful of cases, and even some of those don't sound particularly hellish (e.g., simply floating in a void). Maurice Rawlings, the one investigator who insists on a high proportion of truly hellish NDEs, seems to have pushed this position to advance his evangelical Christian beliefs. Other researchers have not been able to reproduce his results, and there are accusations that Rawlings distorted his data.

In short, while undoubtedly there are some scary or negative NDEs (as well as deathbed visions - e.g., the dying vision of the Emperor Augustus, if it has been reported accurately), the vast majority of cases appear to be positive. The same is emphatically not true of drug trips, which are often frightening, upsetting, even panic-inducing, and may promote feelings of paranoia and despair. It took years of effort for Nancy Evans Bush to find even a few well-documented hellish NDEs. It's not at all difficult to find examples of bad drug trips. As Rosie O'Donnell would say, "Google it."

Here are five bad LSD trips ... a mushroom trip with lasting ill effects ... a peyote trip with devastating consequences ... a scary DMT trip ... another really bad DMT trip ... and don't forget about the DMT "insectoids"! I found all those references, and dozens more, in a few minutes of Googling for the term "bad trip" + the names of particular substances. I could easily link to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases. Meanwhile, it's doubtful there are more than a dozen or so well-documented hellish NDEs, if even that many.

The fact that drug trips can go bad does not, in itself, prove that they're a false path to spiritual insight. But the fact that such a large percentage of drug trips go badly, while only a trivial percentage of NDEs and deathbed visions are scary or nightmarish, suggests to me that there is a fundamental, qualitative difference between the two kinds of experiences. And if they are qualitatively different, it's certainly arguable that one set of experiences is largely genuine, and the other set largely is not.

It's always tempting to think there is some shortcut to spiritual enlightenment, and for millennia, many sincere seekers have used psychedelic substances as such a shortcut. But maybe, just maybe, there is no shortcut. Maybe there are no cheats, no loopholes. Maybe we just have to practice patience and accept a degree of uncertainty and doubt.

And, who knows? Patience and the willing acceptance of uncertainty just might be the very spiritual qualities we seek. 

Ether or ...?

Roger Knights points me to an article at a site called io9.com summarizing studies of memory retention after anesthesia. The studies show that, in general, people under sedation retain only the simplest memories of stimuli to which they were exposed while unconscious.

As readers of this blog know, some skeptics (notably anesthesiologist G. M. Woerlee) have argued that veridical observations in near-death experiences can sometimes be explained by anesthesia awareness – a condition in which a patient is partly awake on the operating table.

If complex memories cannot be retained by anesthetized persons, then this explanation would fail.

The article states:

One experiment involved an odd assortment of tests. Sometimes people were instructed to touch either their ear or their nose while under anesthesia. During a post-operative interview, they touched the suggested body part longer than the part that wasn't suggested, but only by a matter of seconds. Patients were also played tapes of words, all of which had the same first three letters. Later they were shown those letters, and asked to think of words starting with them. They generally picked more words from the list played during the operation than unlisted words. Finally, patients were played a list of nonsense words, either frequently or infrequently, during the operation. Afterwords, they were asked to guess the comparative frequency of the nonsense words. They recognized the words played more frequently than the ones played less frequently, but the frequently-played words were only recognized 62% of the time.

Anything more complicated than single words seems right out of the question. In a study of a group of patients, half of whom were played "The Three Little Pigs" during an operation and half of whom were played "The Wizard of Oz" during an operation, only 49% of the group guessed right.

Overall, it seems that softer tests of "learning" during anesthesia can get mildly positive results. On the other hand, "controlled studies using explicit memory tests" get "uniformly negative results."

Clearly, this degree of memory retention would not explain the detailed veridical observations reported by some NDErs. However, before we jump to conclusions, we need to keep in mind that the memory studies involved patients who had undergone ordinary anesthesia experiences. In other words, these subjects did not claim to have experienced anesthesia awareness. This is not surprising, since other studies have shown that anesthesia awareness is extremely rare, occurring in only 0.13% of procedures.

It's possible that the very small minority of patients who experience some degree of alertness under anesthesia do retain more complex memories than the average patient. I don't know if there is any way of testing this, since anesthesia awareness is so seldom encountered. For now, I guess, the jury is still out.

The science of shrooms

A new study on psychedelic mushrooms claims that their ingestion activates certain parts of the brain and suppresses other parts, creating a state of consciousness akin to a "waking dream." The effect is said to persist for months.

A mind-altering compound found in some 200 species of mushroom is already being explored as a potential treatment for depression and anxiety. People who consume these mushrooms, after “trips” that can be a bit scary and unpleasant, report feeling more optimistic, less self-centered, and even happier for months after the fact ...

The study examined brain activity in those who’d received injections of psilocybin, which gives “shrooms” their psychedelic punch. Despite a long history of mushroom use in spiritual practice, scientists have only recently begun to examine the brain activity of those using the compound, and this is the first study to attempt to relate the behavioral effects to biological changes.

After injections, the 15 participants were found to have increased brain function in areas associated with emotion and memory. The effect was strikingly similar to a brain in dream sleep ...

Conversely, the subjects of the study had decreased activity in other parts of the brain—areas associated with high level cognition. “These are the most recent parts of our brain, in an evolutionary sense,” [neuropsychopharmacology researcher] Carhart-Harris said. “And we see them getting quieter and less organized.”

This dampening of one area and amplification of another could explain the “mind-broadening” sensation of psychedelic drugs ...

Our firm sense of self—the habits and experiences that we find integral to our personality—is quieted by these trips. Carhart-Harris believes that the drugs may unlock emotion while “basically killing the ego,” allowing users to be less narrow-minded and let go of negative outlooks.

In the comments section, one reader warns that psychedelic mushrooms can have negative effects not mentioned in the article.

The first experience is almost always shocking, even ego-shattering, while subsequent experiences are more mind-expanding... However, I've known people who never got past the trauma of having their egos shattered by magic mushrooms, and it changed them forever, but not in a beneficial way.

Another commenter describes a nightmarish shroom trip that left him emotionally damaged for years.

Bottom line: I definitely would not take this research (which was done under medical supervision) as an invitation to experiment with something as potentially destabilizing as psychedelic substances. But the effects are interesting, and are more or less in line with what we might expect if access to a higher plane of consciousness is normally suppressed by the ego.

Dumpster diving for posts: From atheism to theism

I haven't found a lot to blog on lately, so here's a post from 2005 that I dug out of the trash found in the archives.

Happy July 4th!

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A friend of mine recently asked me how I had come to change from being an atheist to a theist, a conversion he found unusual. This is a big subject but, I think, an interesting one, so I thought I would outline some of my reasons here. Please note that I am in no way saying that the points enumerated below constitute any sort of proof of God. I doubt there is any such proof, in the absolute sense, and even if there is, it would take far more than a few sentences to supply it.

Also, I might note that switching from atheism to theism is probably not that unusual at all. In fact, I would venture to say that many people go through a process of development something like this: As a child, the person believes unquestioningly in God because all the adults around him tell him that he should. Then as he becomes a teenager, he starts to doubt the adults and, in time, decides that God is just another scam like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Later, as an adult, he begins to consider the possibility that his childish conception of God was simply inadequate, and that a more mature conception may have merit. Eventually, for a variety of reasons, he finds himself a "believer" again, but not at all the kind of believer he was in his childhood.

I suspect that this course of development is very common, though I don't know of any studies that would prove it.

I also note that even a philosophically committed atheist can change his mind - as did Anthony Flew, the world's most famous atheistic philosopher, who not long ago announced that he had been persuaded to adopt theism, albeit reluctantly. Flew's reasons match some of my own, as you will see. Incidentally, I found it very courageous of Flew to make this announcement, when it would have been far easier for him to keep silent.

Okay, my reasons, in no particular order, and without much elaboration:

1. The anthropic principle and cosmic coincidences. It is now a commonplace of astrophysics and cosmology that our universe appears to be "fine-tuned" to be orderly and habitable. Either the universe is a product of design (the God hypothesis), or there are trillions upon trillions of universes (the "multiverse" hypothesis), and by chance one of them turned out just right. Either explanation requires a leap of faith, since neither God nor these parallel universes can be directly perceived. I go with God as the simpler and more elegant solution.

2. The origin of life. The old idea that the first living cell came together spontaneously by pure chance is no longer seriously argued, now that scanning electron microscopy has shown us the fantastic complexity of even the "simplest" cell. Some scientists speculate that a "self-organizing principle" was responsible, but no one has found evidence of such a principle, except in oversimplified computer models that bear little relationship to real chemical activity. Further, the origin of life involves the origin of information, since life is based on DNA, and DNA is essentially a means of encoding instructions on how to build and deploy proteins. Information is a qualitatively different thing from mere repetitive order (e.g., a DNA molecule is different in kind from a snowflake), and it is unclear how information could emerge spontaneously out of disorder or mere repetitive order. A Mind that supplied both the information and the structure necessary for the first living cell seems like a better bet than any purely naturalistic scenario.

(Points 1 and 2 are the ones that apparently persuaded Anthony Flew.)

3. All attempts to ground morality in naturalistic laws or brute physical facts have (in my opinion) failed, leaving us with two choices: either moral values are subjective and arbitrary, or they are objective but grounded in something outside nature. A world of purely arbitrary moral laws is one in which no one could condemn murder or the Holocaust as evil. I find such a condition intolerable, so I opt for ethical non-naturalism (even though I concede that this position, too, is tricky to defend).

4. Materialism, the view that the physical world is all that exists and that mind is, at best, only an epiphenomenon (i.e., trivial side effect) of matter, leads to a debased view of human beings, who are seen as mere animals, machines, robots, or vehicles for genetic reproduction. The dignity of man is incompatible with philosophical materialism.

5. On a personal level, I feel that life simply has no meaning if "this is all there is." You live, work, suffer setbacks and occasional triumphs, then die and cease to exist. All the people who knew you will be dead soon, too, and you will be entirely forgotten. What difference did it make whether you lived or not? What's the point? For me personally, I do not see any way to find meaning in existence if human life is a mere accident and the cosmos has no higher purpose. I realize that other people are apparently able to find meaning on these terms, but I cannot. And I suspect I am not alone, as witness the "lives of quiet desperation" led by so many in our society today, despite the advantages of a very high standard of living, wide political freedom, and unlimited opportunities for leisure and recreation.

6. In studying history, I became aware of the very large contribution to human happiness, well-being, and moral advancement made by religion. Since I have read mostly about Western history, I focused on the effects of Christianity. Yes, I know about the Crusades, the Inquisition, Galileo's house arrest, the witch burnings, etc. - although all of these things have been exaggerated or misrepresented to some degree. But as bad as these events were, they need to be weighed in the balance with Christianity's positive contributions: greatly improved treatment of children, and an end to the practice of infanticide; greater rights for wives and widows, who were often helpless in the pagan world; much better treatment of slaves, and the eventual abolition of slavery worldwide (most abolitionist movements were religiously inspired); the end of the Roman "games" in which people were hacked to pieces in gladiatorial bouts or torn apart by wild beasts for the entertainment of the mob; a view of nature as stable and orderly, running according to natural laws enforced by God, which opened the door to modern science; the idea of an immortal, personal soul, which granted dignity to even the lowliest person; and on and on. (For more, see my essay, "Why I'm Not a Skeptic."

7. Finally, after being an extreme skeptic with regard to paranormal phenomena, I began to study the field and found that much of the evidence was unexpectedly strong. This includes evidence for life after death, such as near-death experiences and the better-documented cases of apparitions, deathbed visions, and mediumship. Of course, this topic is too large to go into here. Suffice it to say that I think there is sufficient empirical evidence to strongly suggest (though not conclusively prove) that our individual consciousness survives death. An afterlife does not necessitate the existence of God, but it certainly implies the existence of a supernatural realm. Various essays of mine on the paranormal can be read at www.michaelprescott.net/essays.htm .

So that's the Cliff's Notes version of my intellectual odyssey (which is, I must add, ongoing). There were other elements, as well. Reading about quantum physics convinced me that the "mystical" view of fundamental reality is probably closer to the truth than the mechanistic view. My observation of atheists indicated that many of them seem angry or at least perpetually disgruntled, while more religious or spiritually inclined people often seem calm and contented. (There are, of course, many exceptions to both rules.) I noticed that the worst mass murderers of the 20th Century were either atheists (Stalin, Mao) or pagan occultists (Hitler and his gang). I began to think that the ego is at the root of many human problems, and religion generally teaches us to overcome the ego and see life from a wider perspective. I could go on, but you get the idea. As my worldview changed, more and more things began to fall into place for me.

Again, I don't claim that this brief summary proves anything. I'm just setting out the broad outline of how my thinking changed. I imagine that many others have gone through a similar process - or will someday, even if they don't know it yet!