The awareness of his death gave rise to the idea of the immortality of the soul among the ancient people. It is not surprising that today many scientists are trying to study these ideas using scientific methods and give an answer to three main questions: does the soul exist, is it immortal, is there another light.
Science seeks the soul
Many scientists at different times have tried scientific methods to discover the existence of the soul and the afterlife.
The very possibility of existence of the "Subtle World" (That Light) was substantiated by A. P. Dubrov, V. N. Pushkin, G. I. Shipov, A. E. Akimov, V. N. Volchenko, Yu. A. Baurov, L. V. Leskov and others. For example, in the article "Inevitability, Reality and Comprehensibility of the Subtle World" (1996) Vladimir Nikitovich Volchenko, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Moscow State Technical University named after Bauman, tries to give a scientific and philosophical substantiation of the existence of the "Subtle World" on the basis, as he writes, "of the spiritual tradition and various phenomena of information and energy exchange at the levels of man, Earth and Space." Human consciousness is interpreted by him as "an energy-informational structure and in its highest aspects a natural part of the Cosmos." The "possible models of information fields" (torsion, byon, psychonic, semantic, relic neutrinos, axion, longitudinal electromagnetic fields, etc.) are considered.
In our opinion, such studies are erroneous in their starting point - in the absence of a philosophical definition of That Light. Reliance on religious ideas about the Other World as a "haven for the souls of the dead" - leads to an amazing practical continuation of research: to sending a scientific expedition to the Other World (a kind of "necronauts" of NASA). Whether such an expedition will return is a rhetorical question. And the rejection of such religious ideas turns the "Subtle World" into a banal alien, an expedition to which is similar to an expedition to the moon. Below I will try to give an alternative to these two approaches.
Many scientists tried to find the existence of the soul, among whom A. G. Gurvich, V. M. Inyushin, V. G. Adamenko, N. I. Kobozev, V. P. Kaznacheev, L. P. Mikhailova, K. G. Korotkov, etc. They understand the soul as "the energy-informational (field, electromagnetic) essence of a person (consciousness)."
Back in the 1970s, A. G. Gurvich wrote that all information about the structure of a potential organism is contained in the "total embryonic photon field emitted by each chromosome of the embryo." Such an integral field creates a "wave biofield framework, a plan according to which the construction or self-organization of cells in the organism proceeds." The author proposed the scientific concept of the “biofield of living things” and talked about the manifestations of mitogenetic radiation in experiments with the killing of shrimps, when sensitive photographic paper was illuminated as a result of radiation generated by dying shrimps when they were scalded with boiling water.
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A continuation was the work of Dr. Burr (Yale University, USA, 1980). The device he created recorded weak electrical voltages near a living object. Dr. Burr hypothesized that this field is "a matrix, an initial drawing that forms the structure of the body." “The molecules and cells of the human body,” he wrote, “are constantly being rearranged, destroyed and replenished with fresh material coming from food. But thanks to the control of the field, new molecules and cells reproduce according to the same patterns as the old ones … When we meet a friend who has not been seen for six months, not a single molecule remains on his face that was at the time when you saw his last time. However, thanks to the control of the field, new molecules are arranged according to the old, familiar patterns, and we recognize his face."
What is the basis of this MATRIX? After the discovery of the method of gas-discharge imaging in high-frequency high-voltage electric fields (the Kirlian method) since the 1950s, many began to believe that this basis is the "biofield".
"The electromagnetic nature of the subtle bodies of living beings" was proved in 1968 by the Soviet scientist A. S. Presman. Scientist from St. Petersburg K. G. Korotkov continued Kirlian's experiments, measuring the "biofield" of corpses.
Recently, however, scientists are more and more inclined to believe that the MATRIX, determined by Dr. Burrom, has nothing to do with this "aura" and that before that it was not looked for at all there.
At the same time, an American physician from Massachusetts, McDougall, conducted a "soul search": he weighed dying people on a scale with a sensitivity of plus or minus 3 grams.
It was found that “against the background of a gradual decrease in the weight of the dying person (about 20 grams per hour) at the very moment of death, there is a rapid spasmodic loss of weight by 15-30 grams,” sometimes even 70 grams. McDougall's experiments were repeated on mice by D. T. H. M. R. Miroshnikov. The mouse was placed on an analytical balance in a glass sealed vessel and died of suffocation, the balance recorded "an abrupt weight loss of about one thousandth of its initial mass." It was found that "immediately after this, the weight of the corpse begins to increase, and approximately 1.5-2 hours after the moment of death, it reaches its original value, and soon even exceeds the original body weight by one ten-thousandth of it."
According to researcher Alexei Svetlov, “the experiments of McDougall and Miroshnikov alone do not yet prove the existence of a“soul”. We can talk about the fact that at the time of death, a powerful energy process occurs in the body of the dying person, which affects the change in body weight. We fully agree with this.
Let us add that the “soul” in these studies by no means must, according to religious tradition, be consciousness, therefore these experiments do not prove the immortality of consciousness. Many foreign scientists were engaged in the search for "evidence of the continued existence of consciousness after the death of the body": Moody, Kubler-Ross, Sabom, Stevenson, Benergy, etc. We are talking about the visions of some patients in a state of clinical death. These visions are most likely triggered by mental processes and do not reflect anything real. For example, patients saw deceased relatives the way they remembered them during the last meeting many years before their death: that is, they saw their image imprinted in their memory.
Of interest are the evidence of "out-of-body experience", when the patient observes his body and the doctors around him from the side. And although Moody and others were quick to find this "proof of life after death," in fact, there was no biological death in these cases, and the phenomenon of "soul leaving the body" also does not prove that it is immortal.
Missing evidence
It is surprising not only the depressing futility of the search for the existence of the soul and its immortality, but also the fact that for thousands of years of our history people have not been able to find this structure (to use it for their vital purposes). Although the soul had to manifest itself both directly and indirectly - in thousands of situations.
If the soul were some kind of “energetic” or “field” object (“biofield”), as supporters of the “Kirlian phenomenon” and the existence of a “biofield” imagine it, then in this case people with amputated limbs would be visible (visually or with using devices) their "field ghosts". People with amputated limbs are a godsend for the study of the soul, since in place of the lost leg or hand there should be her “field soul”, “ghost”. Alas, comprehensive and long-term studies of scientists from different countries have not found anything like this. In addition to phantom pains (for example, a patient has a sore index finger of an amputated hand), but if this can serve as an argument for some concept, it is by no means for a "field theory", but for another - about which at the end of the article.
By the way, according to the "field" hypothesis, our hair with nails should also have a "field ghost" - after all, they are as much a part of our body as the rest of the flesh. However, we cut our hair without worrying about the fact that this is horrible! - “we cut off a part of the biofield”.
As for the general idea of the soul as a kind of "field", it should be noted that it is the body that creates the electric field - and not vice versa. If it were the other way around, then the soul as a “field” would not need a body at all.
In addition, the “field” is not only incapable of existing without a body, but also cannot get to That Light, since it is completely material.
There is a contradiction in the very definition of the soul and in the properties attributed to it: the soul is, as it were, material (for it is retained in the body) - and at the same time non-material (since after the death of the body it “flies away” to That Light). Each of us saw the essence of this contradiction in the film "Ghost" (not realizing, alas, the meaning of the scene) - when the main character, after becoming a "wandering soul" after death, tries to touch objects, but falls through them. Do you remember this episode? But at the same time, this "ghost" easily walks around the house, climbs the stairs to the second floor … It turns out absurd: his hands fall through objects - and his legs do not fall through the floor and stairs.
The "ghost" tries to punch the enemy, but the fist goes through the opponent's head. So the hero of the film would like to prompt: hit with a boot - after all, it does not fall into the floor - it will not fall into the body of an enemy. But also about the boot - it seems strange: here is the ghost of the hero of the film, and here is the ghost of his boot. Do shoes also possess soul and afterlife, like people? It's wonderful - after all, a "ghost" can take off his ghostly shoes and leave them somewhere - where these ghostly shoes will live their afterlife …
And the hero, who has become a "ghost", has a ghostly jacket, ghostly underpants and a T-shirt (the real "BODIES" of these objects lie in the morgue, worn on the deceased body of the hero of the picture). Why not for the kit and the ghost car? In the ancient world, the dead were placed in the grave swords, beads, food - they say, they will come in handy in the Other World. Today Hollywood endows the deceased with the ghosts of boots and panties. And it's not that a ghost cannot walk naked in a family film, but the point is in principle: since the clothes and shoes of the deceased can accompany his ghost after death, why can't the ghosts of all his other personal property accompany him anyway?
Another strange thing is that if the soul is immaterial, then gravity does not act on it either. And in this case, the soul, having separated from the body, must instantly be carried away millions of kilometers: after all, the Earth rotates in its orbit, and the entire solar system around the center of the galaxy, the galaxy in its cluster of galaxies. It turns out that the soul, leaving the body, should immediately be in deep space, outside the solar system. However, since the soul is immaterial, it does not possess the categories of space and time - and in general it cannot be either in our space or in our time.
Another analogy with the soul is HG Wells's Invisible Man. He must be absolutely blind, since light passes through him without being fixed in the eye. In the same way, an immaterial soul must also be blind, since it is not capable of reflecting photons of light by the retina of the eye (which it does not have) because of its immaterial ™.
Only the recognition of the soul as something material can eliminate these "difficulties". But in this case, the soul turns out to be a completely physical structure that can be operated on and transplanted, like any organ. Scientists have not found such a structure - it does not exist in our country. And thank God, because mad scientists would definitely try to transplant the soul of a hare into a wolf, and the soul of a wolf into a hare. Such experiments themselves seem monstrous …
Many researchers of the topic considered the soul not as a “field”, but specifically as CONSCIOUSNESS, since they did not talk about the immortality of our “field”, but about the immortality of consciousness.
But this approach was not productive either. The fact is that consciousness is unable to exist without its carrier (which theoretically can be not only the brain, but also a computer or even some kind of field structure). And the question, in this case, all the same rests on something material, which should be the carrier of consciousness after the death of the brain. The assumption that after death the consciousness becomes "a part of a single information field of the Universe" does not help either, since consciousness needs a carrier - without it it will be paralyzed, deprived of freedom of movement and information from the senses. Such a state cannot be called EXISTENCE.
Finally, the very meaning of immortality of consciousness is not clear - why does consciousness need it without a carrier? There is no expediency in this, especially since without a carrier, consciousness is generally impossible. It is difficult to imagine that 75 billion people live on the new carriers of consciousness in the Other World (about how many of us have died, according to demographers' estimates, during the existence of homo sapiens). And half of the dead are babies, so that Light is filled with the consciousnesses of children who do not understand anything. What for?
Even more absurd is the idea that not all the dead live in the Other World, but only the consciousnesses of the “chosen by Gods”. Why the chosen ones? For what purpose do they need these artificial intelligences? To use them as slaves? Or as a soldier?
But the main thing is that with such a transfer of consciousness to a new carrier (albeit for the service of the Gods), OUR CONSCIOUSNESS DOES NOT TRANSFER. AND ONLY COPYED. There, on the Next World, only copies of our consciousness will live, and not ourselves, since with the death of our body our consciousness also dies, and on the new carrier on the Next World there will be only a copy of it.
The continuity of the continuation of the life of our consciousness after death is possible only if its carrier remains in the form of a soul. But since such a bearer, by definition, must be material, it turns out that the Light itself is also just so material and is alien, not material divine. And since the soul flies there, our companions and expeditions can fly there. And on TV in “Novosti” they will broadcast: “Yesterday another crew of Chinese necronauts returned from the Other World” …
If the immortality of consciousness was necessary for Nature and Evolution, then our biology itself would somehow solve this problem. That is, the process of reproduction itself would be different (after all, some creatures are practically immortal, multiplying by division). However, the death of an organism is an essential element for the survival of the species as a whole. The death of consciousness is also important for the life of civilization, since outdated views and behavior models, outdated ideologies and worldviews are leaving the arena. To get to the Other World is a tragedy for a person, since he will find himself among obscurantists and retrogrades, from which sand is poured. Basically, it's like getting into a madhouse with savages.
One famous actor said that when he gets to the Other World, he will go fishing there all day. But if there is fishing and fish, then there must be flies (after all, there must be something fish). And if this fisherman fry and eat this fish, he will go to the toilet. That Light, thus, becomes an ORDINARY Light, like our earthly one, with flies and toilets.
However, it is naive to imagine life in the Other World as a "continuation of retirement": they say, fishing, playing in the cities, golf, preference, parties - or chants to the glory of God. Who will work? If people are going to rest THERE, then why do the Gods need to create That Light?
Some alternative to That Light is the theory of reincarnation: they say, after death, the soul does not fly away to That Light, but settles into a new body. Such a concept eliminates many inconsistencies and absurdities, however, it loses the MAIN thing: the immortality of consciousness - after all, during reincarnation, only the soul turns out to be immortal (in the understanding of some moral essence of consciousness), and not consciousness itself.
The mechanisms of such reincarnation are also unclear: suppose an old man dies in a Chinese family - will his consciousness turn out to be infused into the body of his grandson? Or will he move into the body of some child in Havana or Minsk? Does this resettlement happen instantly? And the most interesting thing: this Chinese old man has 30 grandchildren, he, let's say, moves into one of them. And who will move into the other 29 people? With a huge birth rate, most children turn out to be "not filled" with the reincarnated souls of old people. And this undermines the principle itself: if most people do not have a reincarnated soul in themselves, then why does Nature need this reincarnation at all?
Or here's a reverse example. According to the Atlas of the History of Belarus, in the war of Russia against Belarus in 1654-1667, more than half of our population died. In 1650 there were 2.9 million people, in 1667 - already only 1.4 million. Then, by 1700, the population increased to 2.2 million, but another third of the inhabitants of Belarus died in the Northern War, and in 1717 it was again only 1.5 million. Finally, only by 1772 the population grew to 2.9 million, which was the pre-war level of 1650. Thus, the Russian aggression of 1654-1667 inflicted damage on the Belarusian nation, which was replenished for 122 years.
Reincarnation requires the bodies of babies, and the principle itself provides for an equal number of deaths and births. The question arises: the pre-war population was reached only after 122 years - so what did the souls of one and a half million Belarusians who died in the war of 1654-1667 do these 122 years? Have you been waiting for ANYWHERE reincarnation for over a century? Where did you wait?
We cannot find an answer to this question …
So what is the soul?
These are, in short, scientific research in this topic. It all started with a religious myth about the immortality of the soul. But - what is most interesting - the Bible writes on this issue all the same DIFFERENT than we used to think.
Firstly, according to the Bible, "That Light" is neither the "Subtle World" invented by physicists, nor the "World of deceased souls, which God and his angels are in charge of" invented by the churchmen. The book "Genesis" clearly and clearly says that "That Light" is REALITY, and our world is VIRTUAL REALITY (VR), created by the Creators (in the first versions of "Genesis" it was written everywhere "Gods"), We were created in a few days (stages) from WORD (i.e. information) and LIGHT (i.e. energy). The very description of our creation is an accurate picture of how today we would create VR ourselves, populating it with artificial intelligence.
Why, then, do we all consider the world of the Creators to be “non-material”, “beyond-real”, “Subtle World”, etc., although logic itself demands to consider God as REAL, and us as unreal? Of course, the reason is in our egocentric understanding of the Universe (they say, everything revolves around us). It is possible to understand ignorant churchmen in their perception of the World of God - as something "ghostly", but it is difficult to understand scientists with their analogous concept of the "Subtle World". After all, Stanislav Lem in his famous "Cosmogony" wrote that there must be Ancient Civilizations, which over billions of years will unrecognizably change the Universe and will breed young civilizations like "nurseries". Such a "nursery" is, of course, a virtual environment connected by some gateways with the reality of the Creators.
Secondly, the Bible has two different components: spirit and soul. Soul: Heb. naphasch, 754 times in the OT (Old Testament), Greek. psyche, 101 times in NT (New Testament); spirit: Heb. ruach, 378 times in OT, Greek. pneita, 379 times in NZ. What it is? From the point of view of VR informatics, these are two structures that ensure the existence of a living intelligent being (artificial intelligence in a virtual biological environment). The Spirit is the Matrix that organizes the virtual biology of the body (metabolism, cellular structure, etc.), and the Soul is the Matrix that organizes the virtual consciousness. The work of these Matrices (mortals!) Is carried out by the Processors of the Creator.
Why during the Evolution on Earth did not other creatures gain consciousness (whales, dolphins, monkeys, ants)? Why can't we teach chimpanzees to speak today (for example, the experiments of a married couple of researchers Gardner on the example of the female chimpanzee Vashu; Premack on the example of the female chimpanzee Sarah)? According to the logic of the Bible, these efforts are in vain, because all living beings have a SPIRIT, but only a person also has a SOUL (psyche), which within the framework of informatics gives space for the development of a full-fledged consciousness.
Our traditional delusions are broken by the amazing life of separated identical twins - they have one soul for two: they are identical in everything, from diseases, moles and ingrown nails on the same finger on the same day - to addictions, names of wives and children. This suggests that the twins are governed by one matrix, and this, in turn, is a weighty proof of our virtuality and its construction on the laws of informatics.
Finally, the example of twins shows that the soul is not consciousness, but only the MATRIX, which is the bearer of consciousness and cannot be immortal just because it is one for two or more consciousnesses of identical twins.
We are not worried about the immortality of the spirit (pneuma), but we are concerned about the immortality of the soul (psyche), since we are concerned specifically and specifically about the immortality of our consciousness (which is why Academician Ginzburg said that “the biblical soul is a synonym for consciousness”). But “pure consciousness” cannot exist without its carrier, and if the soul and spirit die like the MATRIX, then consciousness also dies.
Here lies the explanation of the "strange" promise of Jesus to resurrect everyone, believers in Him, bodily. In the Gospels, Jesus does not say anywhere that a person has an “immortal soul”, that there is “That Light” where it gets after death. All of these are late inventions of theologians who are unable to understand what is written in the Gospels, including fabrications about "judgment, hell and heaven" even before the Judgment promised by Jesus. Which creates nonsense: everyone will be judged by "two courts": the first is for no one, the second - Jesus. Moreover, a second trial is carried out only to correct the mistakes of the first, and Jesus also promised that all Christians will go to heaven (“all who believe in me”).
Bodily resurrection (in anticipation of which Christians invented the storage of the dead in coffins - in churches, in the center of settlements) is explainable just within the framework of informatics: for the resurrection, the programmer will need remains as a "marker" to search the BP database for unique "psyche" and "ppeita "(The first recreates consciousness).
So, we see that the Bible does not postulate or promise any "immortality of consciousness", and Jesus promises only "the resurrection of consciousness" with the BODY resurrection of the elect (for, apparently, the continuation of the experiment in a new next world). Moreover, in this case, we are not talking about the "immortality of consciousness" - it will only be COPIES of our consciousnesses. So why has Science “outdone” the Bible in its search for the immortality of the soul, looking for something that cannot be found even in the Bible? This, I believe, is our huge delusion.
Of course, we will find the MATRIX predicted by Dr. Burr, but it is not immortal, and it is not a SOUL as CONSCIOUSNESS in our understanding. We will make immortality for ourselves, having already created in this century technologies for transferring consciousness to a computer medium. The technology itself is simple: with more and more weighty connection of additional artificial memory blocks to the brain, the focus "I" is gradually blurred between them, and when the brain dies, it remains there. This does not contradict the Bible (where psyche is only the bearer of consciousness, not consciousness itself), or all the laws of informatics. This does not even contradict Christ's promise to resurrect those who believe in Him bodily - because during this resurrection only copies of our minds will be created.
It is not difficult to foresee that in the future our consciousness will not only free itself from the binding connection with the biological shell, acquire immortality and be able to live in the virtual environment we have created. But it will also be able to change the carriers of consciousness - both mechanical and biological, and - which is essential - field ones, which will give us the freedom to move in deep space at the speed of light. These are the true horizons of our immortality …
The truth about death
If the hypothesis about the Matrix and our virtuality is correct, then Death appears completely different from what the Church and traditional narrow-minded materialists portray it. The Church believes that the soul immediately flies away somewhere, and vulgar materialism believes that with the death of the body, "darkness and emptiness, nothingness, instantly sets in."
However, neither the first nor the second is confirmed by popular observations. They all over the world have created traditions of attitude towards the deceased, in which it is recognized that the dead have consciousness for a certain period after death. Which just fits perfectly into the model of virtuality.
In this concept, death is not the death of the body, but the death of the Matrix. For a minimum of several days, the Matrix continues to exist until the VR Processors receive confirmation of the death of the body. All this time the corpse remains endowed with elements of consciousness - it will die only later, with the death of the Matrix. During these few days (or weeks), some anomalies may occur with the personal belongings of the deceased - if their Matrices are "touched" by the Matrix of the deceased, the deceased may appear to relatives in a dream.
The notion that real death occurs only somewhere around the 9th day is clearly pre-Christian. Some theologians deny this, others say that "at this time the soul says goodbye to its loved ones." That does not in any way fit with religious ideas about the Tom Light (for why is this goodbye necessary?), But does fit with the concept of VR and seems close to the truth - these days the Matrix is dying. And the very gap between the death of the body and the death of the Matrix, giving rise to all kinds of anomalies during this period, became, as it seems, the basis for ideas about our afterlife. I will also note that the "concept of 9 days" completely contradicts the conclusions of Dr. Moody and others, which are made on the basis of the experiences of people who have gone through clinical death: there consciousness immediately flies away somewhere.
People's observations say that everything is different. Having died, you will remain in your destroyed body for several more days, quite clearly and clearly realizing your Death. What will fill your consciousness at this time - horror, panic or philosophical reflections on what you have lived through - depends, of course, on a specific person. Apparently all together. With the death of the body, the Matrix, if lucky, acquires the ability to perceive information not through the senses, but through other Matrices. This will create unexpected freedom - you will see everything as if with “different eyes”, you will feel as if in a “different world”. By giving us anomalies.
And then it’s all over. Or is it just beginning?..