In 1940, Bolivian neurosurgeon Augustin Iturrica, speaking at the Anthropological Society in Sucre (Bolivia), made a sensational statement: according to him, he witnessed that a person can retain all signs of consciousness and sound mind, being deprived of an organ them directly and answers. Namely, the brain.
Iturrica, together with his colleague Dr. Ortiz, studied the medical history of a 14-year-old boy who complained of a headache for a long time. The doctors did not find any deviations either in the analyzes or in the patient's behavior, so the source of the headaches was never identified until the boy died. After his death, the surgeons opened the skull of the deceased and were numb from what they saw: the cerebral mass was completely separated from the inner cavity of the cranium! That is, the boy's brain had nothing to do with his nervous system and lived on its own. The question is, what then did the deceased think if his brain, figuratively speaking, was on indefinite leave.
Another well-known scientist, German Professor Hoofland, talks about an unusual case from his practice. Once he performed a posthumous dissection of the cranium of a patient who suffered paralysis shortly before his death. Until the very last minute, this patient retained all mental and physical abilities. The autopsy result confused the professor, because instead of a brain in the deceased's skull … about 300 grams of water was found!
A similar story happened in 1976 in the Netherlands. Pathologists, having opened the skull of 55-year-old Dutchman Jan Gerling, found only a small amount of a whitish liquid instead of a brain. When the relatives of the deceased were informed about this, they were outraged and even went to court, considering the doctors' joke not only stupid, but also insulting, since Jan Gerling was one of the best watchmakers in the country! The doctors, in order to avoid a lawsuit, had to show their relatives evidence of their innocence, after which they calmed down. However, this story got into the press and became the main topic of discussion for almost a month.
The strange story of the denture
The hypothesis that consciousness can exist independently of the brain was confirmed by Dutch physiologists. In December 2001, Dr. Pim Van Lommel and two other colleagues conducted a large-scale study of near-death survivors. In the article Near-Death Experience of Survivors of Cardiac Arrest, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, Wam Lommel recounts an incredible case documented by one of his colleagues.
The patient, who was in a coma, was taken to the intensive care unit of the clinic. The revitalization activities were unsuccessful. The brain died, the encephalogram was a straight line. We decided to use intubation (insertion of a tube into the larynx and trachea for artificial ventilation and restoration of airway patency. - A. K.). The victim had a denture in his mouth. The doctor took it out and put it on the table. An hour and a half later, the patient's heart began to beat and his blood pressure returned to normal. And a week later, when the same employee was delivering medicines to the sick, the man who returned from the other world told her: You know where my prosthesis is! You took my teeth out and stuck them in a drawer of a table on wheels!
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During a thorough questioning, it turned out that the victim was watching himself from above, lying on the bed. He described in detail the ward and the actions of the doctors at the time of his death. The man was very afraid that the doctors would stop reviving, and with all his might he wanted to make it clear to them that he was alive …
In order to avoid reproaches for the lack of purity of their research, scientists have carefully studied all the factors that can influence the stories of the victims. All cases of so-called false memories (situations when a person, having heard stories of posthumous visions from others, suddenly recalls something that he himself had never experienced), religious fanaticism and other similar cases were taken out of the framework of reporting. Summarizing the experience of 509 cases of clinical death, the scientists came to the following conclusions:
1. All the subjects were mentally healthy. These were men and women from 26 to 92 years old, having different levels of education, believing and not believing in God. Some have heard of the near-death experience before, others have not.
2. All posthumous visions in humans occurred during the period of suspension of the brain.
3. Posthumous visions cannot be explained by oxygen deficiency in the cells of the central nervous system.
4. The depth of the near-death experience is greatly influenced by the sex and age of the person. Women tend to feel more intense than men.
5. The posthumous visions of the blind from birth do not differ from the impressions of the sighted.
At the end of the article, the study leader, Dr. Pim Van Lommel, makes completely sensational statements. He says that consciousness exists even after the brain has ceased to function, and that the brain is not thinking matter at all, but an organ, like any other, performing strictly defined functions. It may very well be, - the scientist concludes his article, - thinking matter does not even exist in principle.
The brain is unable to think
The British researchers Peter Fenwick from the London Institute of Psychiatry and Sam Parnia from Southampton Central Hospital came to similar conclusions. Scientists examined patients who returned to life after the so-called clinical death.
As you know, after cardiac arrest, due to the cessation of blood circulation and, accordingly, the supply of oxygen and nutrients, a person's brain turns off. And since the brain is disconnected, then consciousness should also disappear with it. However, this does not happen. Why?
Perhaps some part of the brain continues to work, despite the fact that the sensitive equipment records complete calm. But at the moment of clinical death, many people feel like they fly out of their body and hover over it. Hanging about half a meter above their bodies, they clearly see and hear what the doctors who are nearby are doing and saying. How can this be explained?
Suppose this can be explained by the inconsistency of the work of the nerve centers that control visual and tactile sensations, as well as the sense of balance. Or, to put it more clearly, - hallucinations of the brain, experiencing an acute oxygen deficiency and therefore giving out such tricks. But, here's the bad luck: as British scientists testify, some of those who survived clinical death, after regaining consciousness, exactly retell the content of the conversations that the medical staff had during the resuscitation process. Moreover, some of them gave a detailed and accurate description of the events that took place in this time period in the neighboring rooms, where the fantasy and hallucinations of the brain just cannot get there! Or maybe these irresponsible mismatched nerve centers responsible for visual and tactile sensations,temporarily left without a central office, decided to take a walk through the hospital corridors and wards?
Dr. Sam Parnia, explaining the reason why patients who have experienced clinical death could know, hear and see what was happening at the other end of the hospital, says: The brain, like any other organ of the human body, is made up of cells and is unable to think. However, it can function as a thought-detecting device. During clinical death, consciousness acting independently of the brain uses it as a screen. Like a television receiver, which first receives the waves entering it, and then converts them into sound and image. Peter Fenwick, his colleague, makes an even bolder conclusion: Consciousness may well continue to exist after the physical death of the body.
Pay attention to two important conclusions - the brain is not capable of thinking and consciousness can live even after the death of the body. If any philosopher or poet said this, then, as they say, what can you take from him - a person is far from the world of exact sciences and formulations! But these words were spoken by two highly respected scientists in Europe. And their voices are not the only ones.
John Eccles, the leading modern neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize winner in medicine, also believes that the psyche is not a function of the brain. Together with his colleague, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who has performed over 10,000 brain surgeries, Eccles wrote the book The Mystery of Man. In it, the authors explicitly state that they have no doubts that a person is controlled by SOMETHING outside his body. Professor Eccles writes: I can experimentally confirm that the workings of consciousness cannot be explained by the functioning of the brain. Consciousness exists independently of it from the outside. In his opinion, consciousness cannot be the subject of scientific research … The emergence of consciousness, as well as the emergence of life, is the highest religious secret.
Another author of the book, Wilder Penfield, shares Eccles' opinion. And he adds to what has been said that as a result of many years of studying the activity of the brain, he came to the conviction that the energy of the mind is different from the energy of brain neural impulses.
Two more Nobel Prize winners, neurophysiology laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel have repeatedly stated in their speeches and scientific works that in order to assert the connection between the brain and Consciousness, one must understand that it reads and decodes information that comes from the senses. However, as scientists emphasize, this cannot be done.
I have operated on the brain a lot and, opening the cranium, never saw the mind there. And conscience too …?
And what do our scientists, Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky, a psychologist and philosopher, professor of St. Petersburg University say, in his work "Psychology without any metaphysics" (1914) wrote that the role of the psyche in the system of material processes of regulation of behavior is absolutely elusive and there is no a conceivable bridge between the activity of the brain and the area of mental or mental phenomena, including Consciousness.
Nikolai Ivanovich Kobozev (1903-1974), a prominent Soviet chemist and professor at Moscow State University, in his monograph Vremya says things that are completely seditious for his militant atheistic time. For example, such: neither cells, nor molecules, nor even atoms can be responsible for the processes of thinking and memory; the human mind cannot be the result of an evolutionary transformation of the functions of information into the function of thinking. This last ability must be given to us, and not acquired in the course of development; the act of death is the separation of a temporary tangle of personality from the flow of current time. This tangle is potentially immortal….
Another authoritative and respected name is Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky (1877-1961), an outstanding surgeon, doctor of medical sciences, spiritual writer and archbishop. In 1921, in Tashkent, where Voino-Yasenetsky worked as a surgeon, while being a clergyman, the local Cheka organized a case for doctors. One of the surgeon's colleagues, Professor S. A. Masumov, recalls the following about the trial:
Then at the head of the Tashkent Cheka was the Latvian J. H. Peters, who decided to make the trial indicative. The magnificently conceived and orchestrated performance went down the drain when the presiding officer summoned Professor Voino-Yasenetsky as an expert:
- Tell me, priest and professor Yasenetsky-Voino, how do you pray at night and slaughter people during the day?
In fact, the holy Confessor-Patriarch Tikhon, having learned that Professor Voino-Yasenetsky had taken the priesthood, blessed him to continue to engage in surgery. Father Valentine did not explain anything to Peters, but replied:
- I cut people to save them, but in the name of what do you, citizen public prosecutor, cut people?
The audience greeted a successful response with laughter and applause. All sympathy was now on the side of the priest-surgeon. Both workers and doctors applauded him. The next question, according to Peters's calculations, was supposed to change the mood of the working audience:
- How do you believe in God, priest and professor Yasenetsky-Voino? Have you seen him, your God?
- I really did not see God, citizen public prosecutor. But I have operated on the brain a lot and, opening the cranium, never saw the mind there either. And I didn't find conscience there either.
The chairman's bell sank into the laughter of the whole hall that did not stop for a long time. The doctors' case failed miserably.
Valentin Feliksovich knew what he was talking about. Several tens of thousands of operations performed by him, including those on the brain, convinced him that the brain is not a receptacle for a person's mind and conscience. For the first time such a thought came to him in his youth, when he … looked at ants.
It is known that ants do not have a brain, but no one will say that they are devoid of intelligence. Ants solve complex engineering and social problems - to build housing, build a multi-level social hierarchy, raise young ants, preserve food, protect their territory, and so on. In the wars of ants that do not have a brain, intentionality is clearly revealed, and therefore rationality, which is no different from human, notes Voino-Yasenetsky. Really, in order to be aware of yourself and behave rationally, the brain is not required at all?
Later, having already behind him many years of experience as a surgeon, Valentin Feliksovich repeatedly observed confirmation of his guesses. In one of the books, he tells about one of these cases: I opened a huge abscess (about 50 cm³ of pus) in a young wounded man, which undoubtedly destroyed the entire left frontal lobe, and I did not observe any mental defects after this operation. I can say the same about another patient who was operated on for a huge cyst of the meninges. With a wide opening of the skull, I was surprised to see that almost the entire right half of it was empty, and the entire left hemisphere of the brain was compressed, almost to the point of impossibility to distinguish it.
In his last, autobiographical book "I loved suffering …" (1957), which Valentin Feliksovich did not write, but dictated (in 1955 he became completely blind), it is no longer the assumptions of the young researcher, but the convictions of an experienced and wise scientist-practitioner sound: 1. The brain is not an organ of thought and feeling; and 2. Spirit extends beyond the brain, determining its activity, and our entire being, when the brain works as a transmitter, receiving signals and transmitting them to the organs of the body.
"There is something in the body that can separate from it and even outlive the person himself."
And now let's turn to the opinion of a person directly involved in the study of the brain - a neurophysiologist, academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, director of the Scientific Research Institute of the Brain (RAMS of the Russian Federation), Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva:
“I first heard the hypothesis that the human brain only perceives thoughts from somewhere outside from the lips of the Nobel laureate, Professor John Eccles. Of course, then it seemed absurd to me. But then research carried out in our St. Petersburg Research Institute of the Brain confirmed that we cannot explain the mechanics of the creative process. The brain can only generate the simplest thoughts, such as how to turn the pages of a book you are reading or stir up sugar in a glass. And the creative process is a manifestation of a completely new quality. As a believer, I admit the participation of the Almighty in controlling the thought process."
When Natalya Petrovna was asked whether she, a recent communist and atheist, on the basis of many years of results of the work of the institute of the brain, can recognize the existence of the soul, she, as befits a real scientist, quite sincerely answered:
“I cannot help but believe what I have heard and seen myself. A scientist has no right to reject facts just because they do not fit into a dogma, a worldview … All my life I have studied the living human brain. And just like everyone else, including people of other specialties, I inevitably faced strange phenomena … Much can be explained now. But not all … I do not want to pretend that this does not exist … The general conclusion of our materials: a certain percentage of people continue to exist in a different form, in the form of something separating from the body, which I would not want to give a different definition than soul. Indeed, there is something in the body that can separate from it and even outlive the person himself.
Here's another authoritative opinion. Academician Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin, the largest physiologist of the 20th century, author of 6 monographs and 250 scientific articles, writes in one of his works: “None of the mental operations that we attribute to the mind have so far been directly connected with any part of the brain … If, in principle, we cannot understand how the mental arises as a result of the activity of the brain, then is it not more logical to think that the psyche is not in its essence a function of the brain, but represents the manifestation of some other - immaterial spiritual forces?
The human brain is a TV, and the soul is a TV station
So, more and more often and louder in the scientific community, words are being heard that surprisingly coincide with the main tenets of Christianity, Buddhism and other mass religions of the world. Science, albeit slowly and carefully, but constantly comes to the conclusion that the brain is not the source of thought and consciousness, but only serves as their relay. The true source of our I, our thoughts and consciousness can only be, - further we will quote the words of Bekhtereva, - “something that can separate from a person and even experience him. Something, if we speak directly and without circumlocution, is not nothing but a human soul."
In the early 80s of the last century, during an international scientific conference with the famous American psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, one day, after another speech by Grof, a Soviet academician approached him. And he began to prove to him that all the wonders of the human psyche that Grof, as well as other American and Western researchers, discover, are hidden in one or another part of the human brain. In a word, there is no need to invent any supernatural reasons and explanations, if all the reasons are in one place - under the skull. At the same time, the academician loudly and meaningfully tapped himself on the forehead with his finger. Professor Grof thought for a moment and then said:
- Tell me, colleague, do you have a TV at home? Imagine that you have it broken and you called a TV technician. The master came, climbed inside the TV, twisted various knobs there, adjusted it. After that, will you really think that all these stations are sitting in this box?
Our academician could not answer anything to the professor. Their further conversation quickly ended there.
The fact that, using Grof's graphic comparison, the human brain is a television, and the soul is a television station that this television broadcasts, was known many thousands of years ago by those who are called initiates. Those to whom the secrets of the highest spiritual (religious or esoteric) knowledge were revealed. Among them are Pythagoras, Aristotle, Seneca, Lincoln … Today, esoteric, once secret for most of us, knowledge has become quite accessible. Especially for those who are interested in them. Let's use one of the sources of such knowledge and try to find out what the Supreme Teachers (wise souls living in the subtle world) think about the work of modern scientists on the study of the human brain. In the book of L. Seklitova and L. Strelnikova "Earthly and Eternal: Answers to Questions" we find the following answer:
Scientists are studying the physical human brain in the old way. It's like trying to understand the operation of a TV and for this to study only lamps, transistors and other material details, without taking into account the effect of electric current, magnetic fields and other subtle, invisible components, without which it is impossible to understand the operation of a TV.
So is the material brain of a person. Of course, for the general development of human concepts, this knowledge has a certain value, a person is able to learn from a rough model, but it will be problematic to use knowledge about the old to the full in application to the new. There will always be something unclear, there will always be a discrepancy between one and the other …
From the book: Frith Chris. Brain and Soul: How Nervous Activity Shapes Our Inner World