M.M. So today you defend NDEs as real experiences, more real than the
reality in which we live. Can you affirm that consciousness exists?
E.A.
Consciousness might
be defined as awareness of things outside
oneself. So while philosophers have been
debating more precise
definitions for millennia, and the finer points
are quite complicated,
the core of the thing is
easy; if you’re reading
this, if you’re aware of
this newspaper, you’re
conscious.
The tougher question,
and one that I have
learned a lot about
since my experience, is
whether consciousness
is essentially mechanical—that is, arising solely from physical processes in the brain—or
holistic, in that it transcends the brain. As
a neurosurgeon, I was
used to a one-to-one
correlation between the
physical brain and how
the mind appeared to
work. For example, if
I had a patient with a
tumor that affected a
part of the brain associated with language,
he would have trouble communicating. But
I’ve since learned that
it’s a lot more complicated than that.
M.M. Do you affirm it from the personal point of view or from a scientific
point of view?
Е.A.
While the science
has been emerging
throughout the last
few decades, I refused
to seriously consider
it until my own personal experience. Since
then, I have learned a
lot, and based on my
experience, a wealth
of anecdotal evidence,
and emerging research
in medicine and
physics, I have come
39
to accept the hypothesis that consciousness
exists beyond the physical brain.