Looking for the Light: Consciousness, Near Death Experiences and the Mystical Shroud of Turin

In my research the past month, I have dealt three phenomena which I believe are related: consciousness, Near Death Experiences (NDE) and the Shroud of Turin. Among other things I discovered a Renaissance painting of astonishing relevance.

A. Consciousness

There is a heated scientific dispute as to the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the brain. The philosophical battlefield for this dispute is the application of materialistic reductionism. The reductionists hold that all worthwhile scientific inquiry must be aimed at reducing any phenomena to its physical components at the simplest level. Thus to the reductionist consciousness is merely the sum total of physical processes of the brain. On the other hand there is a large body of thought by some scientists that perceive consciousness not only existing apart from the processes of the brain but being the basic fabric of not just human existence but all existence.

Quantum Mechanics (QM) poses unique problems for the reductionists. QM deals with existence at its most elementary levels and grapples with the problems posed by the apparent role of conscious observation in determining our existence.

Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff have written:
“Consciousness implies awareness: subjective experience of internal and external phenomenal worlds. Consciousness is central also to understanding, meaning and volitional choice with the experience of free will. Our views of reality, of the universe, of ourselves depend on consciousness. Consciousness defines our existence.” (Emphasis added)

B. NEAR DEATH AND OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES

There are two phenomena which have been studied that specifically relate to the issue of whether the consciousness is merely a process of the physical brain or can exist independent of the brain. One phenomenon is Out of Body Experiences (OBE). The other is Near Death Experiences (NDE). OBE have occurred during surgical procedures when the patient suffers a crisis and seems to have died by reason of a cardiac arrest and apparent cessation of brain function.

The classic example of an OBE is a sensation of the patient that she or he is observing the doctors from a position above the operating table. The patient sees and hears things that due to her unconscious state she could not hear or see.

The NDE goes several  steps further. The individual is projected into a different stage of existence and although the experiences may very depending upon cultural or religious backgrounds there are repetitive observations that occur across a broad cross-section of the NDE experiences.

For this brief outline of where I am heading I will concentrate on two of them which are widely reported among the hundreds (if not thousands) of individuals who have had NDE  experiences. The first is progressing through a tunnel and the second is the seeing of a bright light at the end of the tunnel. If you were to Google as I have the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel" on May 20, 2016 the program would report 77 million hits. If you were to modify the search request to "light at the end of the tunnel death" you would receive merely 24 million hits.

I believe that is one example of the pervasive nature of the tunnel – light observation of the NDE. I am not writing that there are 77 million tunnel and light experiences only that the 24 million hits indicate extraordinary interest in the phenomena.

There is in the matter I have reviewed one illustration of the light at the end of the tunnel in death:


It is from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch: Ascent into the Empyrean, circa 1500. It has been identified by one recent NDEer has an accurate representation of what he saw in his NDE experience. 

It's difficult to draw a definitive conclusion about the inspiration for Bosch's painting. Did he have an NDE? Was he told about an NDE by a third party. How could hundreds if not thousands of individuals relate an NDE that contains the Bosch vision? I believe that most people today, if they are familiar with Bosch's work at all, are familiar with his visions of Hell rather than his vision of the light at the end of the tunnel. There can be no doubt if you are familiar with NDE studies that Bosch's vision was inspired by an NDE or NDEs.

Those who have related  the tunnel – light phenomena as a part of an NDE go on to recite that the light was a warm welcoming presence but before they become immersed in the light they are drawn back to reality. Christians have identified the light as God or Jesus. 

Throughout Scripture Jesus is identified with light. How apropos is that to the NDE experience and beyond that to the mysterious image of the crucified Christ on the Shroud of Turin. Is the Bosch vision part of Carl Jung's "collective unconscious" or Teilhard de Chardin's "Noosphere?

C. The Shroud of Turin

There have been significant hypotheses that the Shroud image may have been created by collimated light which resembles but obviously is not a laser beam. May we not say at least metaphorically that through the scientific study of the Shroud, He is coming again. That is my query from the Introduction of my book: The Coming of the Quantum Christ.

In this Apocalyptical time, when the extinction of humanity now appears to be a real possibility as soon as 2101, do we not need Him more than ever? 


SOME RESOURCES:

The authenticity of the Shroud
A grave Injustice: An investigation into "The First Selfie"
http://www.shroud-enigma.com/

Consciousness
Roger Penrose, PhD, OM, FRS1, and Stuart Hameroff, MD, “Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory,” Cosmology of Consciousness: Quantum Physics & Neuroscience of Mind (Kindle Locations 681-683). Cosmology Science Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Global Consciousness project
http://www.noetic.org/research/projects/mindatlarge

The Tunnel Experience
"I also came across a very interesting work by Hieronymus Bosch, the famous 15th-century Dutch painter. In a painting entitled Ascent into the Empyrean, he had depicted what looked like a typical NDE: a passage down a tunnel toward a bright light, with people being taken there by angels ….I wondered whether Bosch had experienced an NDE himself or whether someone else had described one to him."
Parnia, Sam. What Happens When We Die?: A Groundbreaking Study into the Nature of Life and Death (p. 9). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

van Lommel, Pim. Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (p. 27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Dave Hines
Dave Hines who is producing a video of Shroud of Turin  as witness to the Resurrection has created an adaptation of the tunnel-light phenomenon as an introduction to the video. Interesting work in progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d2e62RCPFo
Can you identify the theme music? Think Peter O'Toole.

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This is not a promo for my book "The Coming of the Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:  but if anyone is interested: http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

David Hines Video: Let there be Light

David Hines has edited his Shroud video to deal with the relationship of light to the Resurrection. He has added a dramatization of the Resurrection as a light event.  A trailer for the video is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T635dyZavY

The trailer contains a link to the full video. There is extensive biblical references in the video in chief which you may or may not agree with in whole or in part. His approach is somewhat fundamentalist in terms of those references.

At minute 18:58 he discusses the presence of photons in DNA and the fact those photons are essentially ultraviolet. He notes that the one experiment which actually altered linen in the same manner as the shroud image Shroud image was with an ultraviolet laser.

He concludes with a reference to a prayer that ends the video which is the Prayer of St. Francis although he doesn't identify it as such. The third line is "where there is darkness let me bring light." His video is an admirable bringing of light to the darkness of the tomb.

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This is not a promo for my book "The Coming of the Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:  but if anyone is interested:http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Is the Shroud Image created by a laser? Why not.

The following is a reply to an E-Mail by Dave Hines who has been very helpful to me and whose citation to photons and the Shroud caused me to investigate and begin to develop the working hypothesis cited in this response.

Dave Hines,

Do not fall into a trap of discussing laser beams. They didn't have lasers then in 33CE, obviously, and so the properties per se of a laser beam and how many lasers beams it would have been taken is totally irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that as Adler noted, the process which caused the image reaction was collimated, that is traveling in straight lines without diffusion.

Here is my very rough working hypothesis which means I haven't progressed far enough to call it a final or even contingent hypothesis.

The Resurrection caused the image but what then is the Resurrection? Christ's body in an initial dead state was revived by its transport into another form of existence which in other venues has been identified as either phase space or perhaps more accurately non-local space of another existence. That existence has been identified as six dimensions, not the sixth dimension of our existence.

In non-local space there no space, nor is there time. It is totally inaccessible by us or science with, it seems, one exception: Near Death Experiences (NDE).

It is in the SCIENTIFICALLY investigated NDE that we get a glimpse of non-local space. There is much in common in the NDE experiences of many. I might submit that it is what theologians called eternity. They are not all identical because the individuals are not identical. But what is common is a large number where there is a welcoming light that many identify as God, or Jesus or in the some NDEs who are Buddhists as Buddha.

Note that these experiences occur over duration of a few minutes not hours.

If my rough hypothesis has any relationship to reality, and the Resurrection was a transformation of Christ to a new existence, than the process of image formation involves its infusion with light and its "travel" to non-local space which would have been to our eyes, travel in all directions.

I once had an experience of attending as a Civil Air Patrol Cadet a two week summer encampment where I met a fellow cadet from Albany, I believe his name was Mel Friedman but that was about sixty years ago, He had won a science contest constructing tesseracts, a three dimension representation of a four dimensional cube. He offered to make one and we made one out of soda straws.

It was essentially two cubes connected at all corners soda straws at an approximate 45 degree angle. It reminded me of a stroboscopic picture I once saw in Life Magazine of a baseball player swinging a bat. It represented the cube traveling through time is the best way I can describe it.

Friedman told me it wasn't an accurate tesseract but an accurate one would have been too complex to build with soda straws. It would have been a small cube inside a large cube joined at the corners. It was traveling in all directions. 

 If the Resurrection was in fact the cause of the image; and if the image was in fact involved by collimated light to non-local space, than the issue of laser beams or pixels is irrelevant. The pixels are the width of outer layer (or contamination layer) of the individual threads. Hugh's objection and an explanation of how many lasers it would take is irrelevant.

Please note that the eyes are closed in the image. He is not alive. What we are seeing is truly an event horizon. The last instant when His dead body existed in this space-time continuum.

When I say instant, I am meaning nano-second, or maybe even a smaller division of our time if such exists.

In the analysis of the NDEs, what comes into play in reaching a conclusion as their meaning is the law of probabilities. That's not a problem. Quantum Mechanics is a study of the probabilities in our space-time continuum. See http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-of-probabilities-how-voting-fraud.html

If one thousand people with no interplay or interchange describe essentially the same thing, what is the probability they are each falsifying their recollection? It's nada.
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NOTES: 

For an explanation of why the carbon dating of the Shroud was a fiasco and must be discarderd see the 27 minute video at: http://www.shroud-enigma.com/

This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if anyone is interested: http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Dave's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSotRPtPArI

The Princeton Global Consciousness Project referenced in my posting on the God of Probabilties has been discontinued at Princeton, the project continues to flourish under the direction of the Noetics Institute in California.   

 http://www.noetic.org/research/projects/global-consciousness-project

 Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Noetics Institute, has a video where he provides what appears to be pretty good evidence for the reality of a “Global Consciousness”.