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”.

 

The God of Probability: The Shroud and Divine Providence

Providence and the Shroud

The fact that the Shroud has survived for more than nearly two millennia is virtually inexplicable. In the course of those millennia on many occasions it survived dire circumstances, narrowly escaping destruction.

The empty Shroud was first noted in the tomb by Peter and from that moment on we have conflicting reports of its location. The Shroud had to be kept a secret initially because as a relic of the crucified Christ it would be a prime object for seizure by both Roman and Jewish authorities. Later, iconoclastic movements would have made short work of it. It appears to have been hidden in the city of Edessa for some time. Eventually, Edessa came under control of a Muslim ruler.

In 944, it was wrested from Muslim control by a Byzantine Army and brought to Constantinople. An eye witness account recorded its weekly exposition in Constantinople and its disappearance when French knights looted Constantinople of its treasures in 1204 CE.

Its disappearance from Constantinople was fortuitous because Constantinople would eventually fall to the Muslims. By that time the enmity between Christians and Muslims had become so severe that Sultan Bayazid I boasted that he would conquer Rome and feed his horses oats on the altar of St. Peters.

The Shroud was openly displayed in Lirey, a small French provincial town, in 1355 by the Geoffrey de Charny a French knight who claimed ownership of the Shroud. Neither he nor his descendants ever satisfactorily explained how he came into possession of the Shroud. In 1453, it was transferred by de Charny's granddaughter to Duke Louis I of the House of Savoy. Eventually, it found a permanent home in Turin under the protection of the Savoy's. While the Shroud was safely ensconced in Turin two events that swept through much of Europe were leading to the destruction of many Catholic relics. One was the Protestant Reformation. John Calvin was particularly disturbed by the Catholic veneration of the Shroud. He never got his hands on it.

The second event was the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. When it was operating at full throttle, many Catholic relics and icons were fed to revolutionary bonfires.

Another narrow escape for the Shroud occurred in World War II. The Vatican was fearful for the fate of the Shroud and sought to hide it for the duration of the war. It was brought from Turin to Rome and initially it was proposed that it be hidden in the Monastery at Monte Casino. However, it was finally decided to choose a less conspicuous place, the smaller Benedictine Abbey of Montevergine, in the province of Avellino, northeast of Naples. Had the Shroud been secreted at Monte Casino it would most likely have been destroyed by the massive Allied bombing of Monte Casino in 1944.

In 1532 at Chambray, October 1972 in Turin, and a second time in Turin on April 11, 1997, the Shroud was threatened with destruction by fire and yet survived. Evidence of arson was found in an investigation of the 1997 incident.

The late John Heller who along with Alan Adler was responsible for the analysis of the blood stains on the Shroud noted that throughout the STURP testing of the Shroud: "The role of 'coincidence' was awesome." (Heller, Dr. John H., p. 221 Report on the Shroud of Turin Houghton Mifflin, 1983)

Divine Providence

But was the survival of the Shroud merely luck and were "coincidences" just happenstance ‑ or were they evidence of the intervention of Divine Providence?

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, providence may be defined as the practical reason, adapting means to an end. As applied to God, Divine Providence is God Himself considered in that act by which in His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized. (Providence, Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm accessed July 23, 2015)

The hypothesis this I advance is that the accumulation of circumstances and events concerning the Shroud and its escapes from destruction may be attributable to divine intervention.

Teilhard placed Divine Providence at the center of creation:

"In the centre, so glaring as to be disconcerting, is the uncompromising affirmation of a personal God: God as providence, directing the universe with loving, watchful care; and God the revealer, communicating himself to man on the level of and through the ways of intelligence." (de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard (2011-06-21). The Phenomenon Of Man (Kindle Locations 5383-5387). Evergreen Books. Kindle Edition.  Paperback Edition, pp 292-293 First Harper Colophon Edition 1975 (Reprinted in Perennial 2002)

However, when it came to a specific intervention Divine Providence (such as we hypothesize for the survival of the Shroud) Teilhard is circumspect:

"Yet, whatever inner evidence we may have on this matter (and such evidence is perhaps much more certain than any reasoning), we cannot but recognize that the objectivity of such special or general interventions by Providence into our lives falls into the category of personal intuition rather than into that of the demonstrable." (Emphasis added)

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2002-11-18). Christianity and Evolution (Harvest Book, Hb 276) (Kindle Locations 2140-2144). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Providence and Probability

Science never stands still. Teilhard passed away in 1955. In the past 60 years science has expanded its reach into areas that in the past were beyond investigation by the scientific method. One of those the nature of consciousness in general, and among other things the nature of intuition which has been defined as "sub-conscious reasoning." The computer is a good vehicle for explaining the difference between consciousness reasoning and sub-conscious reasoning. Conscious reasoning is akin to information on a physical hard drive that must be called-up from the hard dive by the processor. Subconscious reasoning is like random access memory which can process information at blinding speed because there is no physical interaction necessary.

Intuition is a process which is pure thought and there is no need to access the conscious brain. Information is considered and utilized at blinding speed and appears to be instantaneous. Two recent works that discuss this phenomenon are Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking  by Malcolm Gladwell and Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious   by Gerd Gigerenzer

There is one item that all of us factor into our intuition: the law of probability. That doesn't mean we are always right because our sense of the probabilities may be askew. Yet, it is possible to analyze the probabilities of a particular situation and arrive at a mathematical solution. Our subconscious does that intuitively.

In 2009 there was an election in Iran. The "gut feeling" or intuition was that it was rigged. That intuition was confirmed by a study of the election returns. The hypothesis was that absent human intervention (i.e. fraud), the last digit of each report would be a random number evenly dispersed from 0 to 9. The last digits of the election results reported from each district were not evenly dispersed. The application of the law of probability supported the intuition of fraud.

See The God of Probabilities: How voting fraud in Iran demonstrates the existence of God.

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-of-probabilities-how-voting-fraud.html

What the digits revealed is human intervention in the recording of the results that skewed them.

Given all the crisis visited on the Shroud, what are the odds that it would have survived? Our intuition is that Providence intervened to insure its survival to modern times  ‑ when science had developed to a stage that could unlock its revelation.

That is of course only a hypothesis – for now.

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The Pope, the Apocalypse and the Shroud

On Thursday, June 18, 2015, Pope Francis released to the world his groundbreaking encyclical on climate change Laudato Si. On Sunday, June 21, he prayed before the Shroud of Turin and then standing-up moved forward and tenderly touched the rim of the Shroud's display frame. Both the release of Laudato Si on  June 18 and his travel to Turin had been publicized months in advance. Could they have been related?

"Groundbreaking" understates the importance of Laudato Si. There have been five mass extinctions of species in the history of earth. One of them, the Permian, nearly extinguished all life.

Concerns about climate change have been building for decades. In the first five months of 2014, an avalanche of reports was issued which again highlighted the problems and the dire consequences of inaction. It may already be too late. The reports supported the conclusion of Elizabeth Kolbert and Richard Leakey that the sixth mass extinction was underway and while its furthest extent could not yet be limned, one species in peril is  humanity.

The Pontifical Academy of Science and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PAS/PASS) sponsored a workshop on “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature” in Rome from May 4-May 6, 2014. Among the 57 participants was Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen. [i]

Crutzen is a Dutch Chemist who shared the Nobel Prize for his discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds.[ii] Crutzen also named the current geological era, the “Anthropocene,” a not necessarily honorable honorific for humanity. Until approximately 200 years ago, humanity was believed to have little impact on the geologic eras but that changed:[iii]

“The Anthropocene could be said to have started in the late eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane.”[iv]

It its May 6, 2014 final conference statement, the scientists noted among other things:

“Human action which is not respectful of nature becomes a boomerang for human beings that creates inequality and extends what Pope Francis has termed "the globalization of indifference" and the "economy of exclusion" (Evangelii Gaudium), which themselves endanger solidarity with present and future generations.”[v]

After the conference, it was rumored that Francis intended to write an encyclical about climate change and its moral and ethical impact on humanity.[vi] Environmentalists, scientists, public officials, and academics from a variety of institutions awaited its publication.

The Yale Forestry and Divinity schools sponsored a panel discussion on the impact of the anticipated encyclical. It may be viewed on the web.[vii] The participants included not just Christians but a woman who works on environmental issues with Buddhist monks in Nepal. All were enthusiastically awaiting not just the encyclical but also the pope's follow-up addresses to the US Congress and the United Nations. The Pope's ultimate goal was clearly to influence the UN Conference on climate change scheduled for Paris in December. That conference may be humanity's last clear chance to avoid total climate disaster.

On June 18th, the Vatican published Laudato Si. Yet there is a word missing from Laudato Si, a word which better than any expresses an ancient and persistent fear of humanity that applies to the projected results of the climate change engendered by the sixth mass extinction: Apocalypse. Understandably, Pope Francis shunned the  use of apocalyptic reference. Francis avoids criticism that he is a hysterical alarmist.

However, the unfortunate fact is that we are starting down the path that may lead to an apocalyptic extinction of the humanity. In fact, the early stages of the sixth mass extinction of life exhibits signs that it may be the last. Forces are being unleashed that may make the Earth inhospitable to any conscious life and perhaps any life at all.

On January 17, 2015, the New York Times published an Op-Ed by astrophysicist Adam Frank who believes that mass extinctions of life are a natural result of the evolution of conscious life forms that as they develop abuse the environment as a matter of course. The nearly inevitable result is the extinction of all life. It's a scenario that he hypothesizes has been repeated millions of time on planets throughout the Universe.

Listen! Can you hear the hoof beats? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding. They are just over the horizon.

In  Evangelii Gaudium, Francis excoriated the selfishness of those whose claim faith in blind market forces that they manipulate for their own selfish interests. In Laudato Si, he doesn't completely connect the dots. Nonetheless, the Apocalypse we face is an Apocalypse of Selfishness.

Perhaps it is no accident that Francis' trip to Turin and planned visit to the Shroud followed so closely the publication of Laudato Si. Given the ferocious criticism he received and no doubt anticipated from reactionary forces in the Church and elsewhere, he needed a moment with the Shroud. I can only suspect that as he prayed, he was offering-up of Laudato Si to the God made man to whom he has dedicated his life. If so, I pray that his prayer was answered:

"Well done, good and faithful servant."
	Mathew 25:21

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[i] http://www.casinapioiv.va/content/accademia/en/events/2014/sustainable.html

[ii] Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, New York, 2014)

[iii] Paul Crutzen, Nature 415, 3 January 2002. (cited hereafter as “Crutzen)

[iv] Crutzen, supra.

[v] Statement of the Joint PAS/PASS Workshop on Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature, May 6, 2014 (http://www.pass.va/content/scienzesociali/en/events/2014-18/sustainable/statement.html)

[vi] http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/21/3440075/pope-francis-if-we-destroy-creation-creation-will-destroy-us/

[vii] http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/pope-francis-and-the-environment-why-his-new-climate-encyclical-matters/

The Blind men, the Elephant and the Shroud of Turin

If you are interested in  my book the Coming of the Quantum Christ you will find details at my Living Free blog.
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As I have written, more than once, I find the community skeptical of the Shroud of Turin much like the blind men and the elephant. This morning, exasperated as usual by the "experts," who seek to cram the issue of Shroud authenticity in their area of expertise (like the art historian who claims to have solved the "mystery" of the image) I decided to do a little (very) research. My view is that there are three general disciplines with subgroups that must be addressed and an approach founded on only one or two of them will always come-up short: Religion, History and Science. Perhaps I should admit to a personal bias in that grouping because on graduation from high school, I won the gold medals in all three and although I did not pursue a career in science and religion, they have remained a life long interest. I have kept current.

It was 50 years ago that I had a moment of doubt about my faith in the existence of God when I learned that all of existence at the quantum level was subject to the law of probabilities. I resolved that issue intellectually when I asked myself the question: whose law is the law of probability? Why should cosmic chaos be organized in any way? Eventually, I arrived at a definition of God as the "primordial consciousness" from which our existence sprang. 

Yet, when I say some understanding of Science, History and Religion is essential to study of the Shroud, I must confess to a somewhat impish self-indulgence.

Yet, I can not escape my observation that when I read and participate in discussions and debate about the Shroud, so many are either side of the authenticity side of the argument seem like blind men (and women) arguing about the nature of an elephant. This morning I did a little research on the blind men issue and found on the web via Wikipedia the following couplet which is attributed to Buddha:

"O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim

For preacher and monk the honored name!

For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.

Such folk see only one side of a thing."

Jainism and Buddhism. Udana 68-69:

Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

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