Consciential Infinite Lifespan

The Odd Couple: Monist Life Extension and Dualist Immortality

 

Nelson Abreu and Pedro Machin

 

“Little by little, the physical consciousness liberates oneself from the tyranny of machines, including the human body-machine, through the lucid projection and eventually through the deactivation of the third body.”

Waldo Vieira, MD

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Mankind often embarks in daring journeys primarily driven by emotions, passions, and feelings.  What was going on in the hearts of the European seamen and planners of 15th century expeditions as they ventured into uncharted oceans was much more relevant than their intellectual motivations.  The same goes for the Soviet and North American space programs; now that the alarming fears of the Cold War have subsided, financial support for space exploration has dwindled.  Fear and the continually frustrating pursuit of happiness drive all of mankind’s endeavors. If only through physical existence can this thirst be quenched, then the quest for immortality is imperative. However, if we discovered we survive death and have an infinite consciential lifespan then we would lose fear of biological death.  Consequently, our priorities would morph and the quest for biological immortality would become less relevant. From this perspective, life extension research remains an important venture, but life quality extension and purpose should take center stage.

In engineering, we learn to dig deeper for the root problem, even when a client presents us with their perceived solution.  A hotel is considering building a second elevator at the request of customers.  Just before the convulsion-inducing budget is approved, an employee suggests installing mirrors in front of each elevator entrance.  The mirrors keep the customers busy, shortening their perceived waiting time and saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why then are we intent on pursuing interminable biological lifetimes? Judging from the enormous unhappiness, depression and suicide levels throughout the world, particularly in economically developed societies, people do not seem terribly excited about their lives.  It seems that what is primarily lacking, despite all our industrial-technological progress, is life quality and purpose rather than life span.  But why do we bother to live anyways? After all, under the materialistic worldview, life started accidentally for no reason.

 

DISCUSSION

 

This grand project is, at the core, fueled by our fear of death and hope for eventual meaning and fulfillment. Some see it as a natural extension of the ancient human desire to immortalize one’s identify through some fashion of fame or infamy. Consciousness researcher Rodrigo Medeiros attributes the confident pursuit of immortality to the triumph of conventional science in explaining certain aspects of nature under the materialist paradigm that is resulting in revolutionary technologies.  Emboldened by the telescoping acceleration of its tremendous successes and overlooking its tragic failures. For instance, observe the percentage of scientists engaged in research and development that contributes to the intentional killing of humans (anti-ethics). Most academics “believe the physical-physiological perspective can solve all the problems of mankind, including eternal survival of the self.”

According to New York psychologist Jane Lloyd, lifespan extension, from the standpoint of our contemporary average life expectancy could operate as a sort of existential moratorium that can either act as a “second-chance” to finish one’s life work or as a “bonus round” to take on a new project beyond the original expectations. Medeiros also encourages life extension and health improvement and recovery research, because “we would be able to enjoy a longer phase of consciential maturity, or the condition many people achieve characterized by the ability to ponder choices, consequences, and more complex scenarios with greater experience, clarity of thought, and serenity so as to maximize productivity.”

However, he considers biological eternal lifespan practically irrelevant. This radical contrast arises from a consciousness-centered paradigm. The consciential paradigm adopted by Medeiros and his colleagues of the International Academy of Consciousness (IAC) is essentially a dualist perspective. That is, it admits consciousness as a distinct extraphysical element of the cosmos; yet it works with energy (and matter) to interact with other consciousnesses and the environments they create.  How are we to take this paradigm seriously?! The same way intelligent, entirely rational and sane individuals lose their fear of death through near-death and out-of-body experiences.  Temporarily setting aside our mesological biases, we will explore the case for the theta phenomenon – or the hypothesis of the survival of the consciousness beyond biological death.

Accounts of these experiences have been recorded by persons from all walks of life for thousands of years. What the new methods and techniques seek to do is to put the phenomenon under the voluntary control of the individual, thus empowering the person to remain lucid during the experience, to reach various chosen extraphysical objectives, and to remember the experience afterwards (allowing for posterior confirmations).  According to IAC president Wagner Alegretti, projections accelerate our growth and expand our self-awareness through interactions with non-physical persons and environments.  We can better understand our life purpose and the process of individual and collective evolution. “The mastering of one's projectability allows the individual to use, over many physical lives, that one-third of his or her life wasted in sleep toward learning and helping others. Continuous consciousness is an essential milestone on the way to exiting the rebirth process.”

The out-of-body experience is a phenomenon known since ancient times. Early references to the OBE are found in Ancient Egypt where priests considered the existence of a subtle body (Ka), as well as in Ancient Greece, where it was mentioned in the writings of Plato, and the studies of the historian Herodotus. During the Middle Ages, as a result of the repression and fear imposed by religious ideologies of the time, the out-of-body experience was studied and practiced within secret societies and schools. In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg made early attempts to systematize the study of the out-of-body experience and in the 19th century, the French philosopher Honoré de Balzac predicted the creation a new science that would study this phenomenon in Louis Lambert.

In the last decades of the 20th century, researchers such as Karlis Osis, Janet Lee Mitchell, and Robert Morris, to name a few, published the results of their scientific investigations of psychic experiences and out-of-body phenomena. From this point on, the out-of-body experience became the subject of more rigorous scientific investigation. Anthropologists have recently identified that 95% of cultures worldwide believe in some sort of extracorporeal experience (Alcock & Otis, 1980). There are over 200 different names from different cultures, languages, historic personalities, and eras for the out-of-body experience, the non-physical body, and bioenergies. The out-of-body experience is currently considered to be a universal phenomenon, present in all civilizations and described in many philosophical, religious, and literary writings throughout human history.

Those who have frequent OBE’s list these potential benefits:

 

- Elimination of the fear of death;

- Knowledge and preview of life after death or before birth;
- Increase in psychic abilities;

- Facilitation of recall of past lives or the period between lives;

- Recall of planning and preparation for current life;
- Greater understanding of the purpose of life;

- Enhanced meditation and consciousness expansion due to reduced physical restriction;
- Ability to communicate with diseased loved ones and spiritual guides;

- Greater sense of humanity and desire and ability to help others;
- Valuing life more;

- Leading a more purposeful, mature, ethical and humanitarian or assistantial life;

- Fostering a gradual social renovation away from divisiveness and materialism;

- Better preparation for inevitable physical death (less traumatic transition);

- Finding missing persons, surveying distant physical locations (tourism, science, looking for a new house);

- Relief from restrictive physical conditions (prison, physical disability);

- New methods of prevention, diagnosis, and remission of physical ailments, including psychic surgery;

- Acquisition of original ideas and study of more advanced extraphysical technologies and culture.

These benefits would improve the quality of life, and the last two applications could even contribute to extension of lifespan. But someone who has experienced several, lucid (conscious) out-of-body experiences, especially those that are will-induced and without psycholepsy (a break in awareness in the transition from waking physical state to the lucid projected or out-of-body state) would be unlikely to pursue biological eternity, because they realize they can exist beyond the physical body.  “Eternal lifespan loses its relevance,” Medeiros nonchalantly asserts, “because we overcome the misconception that once the biological body dies we cease to exist.”  According to Projectiology, the proposed science of human manifestation beyond the physical body, we are already immortal beyond our ephemeral physical body.

There is something to be said for an unknown, but inevitable desoma or deactivation of the soma (human body) as a motivator. Lloyd notes this condition creates a healthy pressure or stress that encourages us to take advantage of the opportunities of physical life.  A person knows that they have a certain amount of time to take advantage of their opportunities to accomplish their objectives and then it is going to stop, with or without possible extensions.  An indefinitely long intraphysical existence could lead the individual, in many cases, to become accommodated and squander opportunities not guaranteed to resurface anytime soon. With an infinite physical lifespan, the importance of the present compared to the endless future tends to zero as articulated by Best’s evocation of the law of marginal returns.

            Lloyd points to benefits of undergoing physical death: depending on what you accomplish this lifetime, you can program and prepare for your next physical lifetime from a higher perspective and much less restricted acuity because you are free from the dense, physical body.  The “heavy veil” effect of dense matter on your lucidity is clearly perceived during loaded projections (with the non-physical body carrying a lot of vital energies). Projectors report bradykinesis (difficult, uncharacteristically sluggish movement as if attempting to move through molasses), inhibited visual perception, and difficulty in maintaining a heightened level of lucidity in the vicinity of the body.

Medeiros points to other advantages of going through desoma and eventually resoma (reconnection to a physical body; rebirth; reincarnation). We can experience different types of genetics and environmental or mesological conditions.  For instance, we could experience life in different extraterrestrial bodies and civilizations reported in non-physical travel and some retrocognition or past-life recall accounts. Alternatively, we can see the world from the less feminist and the less chauvinist perspectives and understand that each side has its strengths and limitations: one is not necessarily superior to the other and we should celebrate their differences.  We can comprehend both sides not simply theoretically, but experientially – there is no replacement to direct, first hand experience. 

Relationships between consciousnesses can end up in a very unfriendly manner, to the point each party considers the situation irreconcilable after many years of troubled relations.  A new life with limited recall of past experiences, allows for the development of positive experiences that time around, perhaps through closely associated family roles.  Later on, these more positive experiences can be jointly evaluated mitigating the negative effects of the original dispute.

There is also certain logic to the cyclical nature of alternating biological lives and non-physical period between lives.  In the physical dimension, people of all strata of spiritual maturity and awareness (or levels of enlightenment), social groups and cultures mix in a way that does not happen so easily in more rarified dimensions.  We forego much of our extraphysical acuity and memory so that we can take advantage of these interactions, which provide rich experiences that accelerate our personal and collective evolution or integral development. 

On the other hand, it is eventually more productive to return to the extraphysical dimension and prepare for a fresh start in a new body. Voluntary, non-pathological desoma through will alone, executed after one’s life task is complete, is described in ancient traditions (and more recently in 700 Experiments of Conscientiology by Dr. Vieira) as an appropriate actions by more spiritually-evolved or enlightened individuals.  For some time, we can “enjoy a period of existence without the physical body – our favorite pet – that cannot survive without sleeping, breathing, eating, and drinking.”  Free from sex and survival needs, the consciousness can experience advanced forms of manifestation, learning, travel or locomotion, thinking, communication, and cognition that cannot be mapped to the more coarse physical senses and body.  Accounts of such experiences are mentioned in Projections of the Consciousness – a dairy of out-of-body experiences by Dr. Waldo Vieira or other such classics by Robert Monroe or Muldoon and Carrington.  A recent thematic issue of the Journal of Conscientiology (N. 26) explores the Intermissive Period and Intermissive Courses (period between lives and preparation for next physical existence).

Many people who undergo a near-death experience are reluctant to return to temporary physical life (not to mention eternal biological life) because they feel pleasantly liberated and serene away from physical density and responsibility. However, both Medeiros and Lloyd remarked that this reaction demonstrates a certain lack of maturity, as neither condition is better; we should simply take full advantage of each.

Considering how many people are unhappy with their life, the priority becomes revealing the purpose of life.  Yet, what can we possibly do that has not already been done in this millennial search?  Most of our attempts, chiefly our contemporary search has been limited to the physicalist perspective.  The out-of-body experience and other psi phenomena can reveal extraphysical variables or a multidimensional and multiexistential (many lives) perspective.  Increased self-awareness and continual personal and collective improvement – the development of the full spectrum of human potential and intelligences – and the consequent reduction of suffering from immature choices and behaviors emerges as principal aim of life.

Through self-analysis and transcending experiences we can obtain hints of our existential program, or set of goals or priorities selected for a physical life. This includes the study our personal strong and weak traits; our ability to interact with others; our level of ethics in a broader or cosmic sense not limited to human society; our degree of universalism (the opposite of provincialism, parochialism, and bigotry); the quality and degree of connections and relationships with other individuals and groups; recall of past lives in and out of the body; first-hand extraphysical experiences; studying synchronicities, intuition, and inspiration with discernment.

Ultimately, our integral maturity will allow us to exit the rebirth cycle, permanently freeing ourselves from the limitations of the physical and extraphysical-emotional body.  The third death or nirvana ushers a new era in our evolution as a free consciousness; free from the restrictions of space, time, and form in Plato’s dimension of ideas and discernment in a condition of ineffable unity with the rest of the Cosmos. Plato, like a limited number of people throughout history, probably had a glimpse of this condition through the experience of enlightenment, satori, samadhi, or cosmic consciousness.

 

MOTIVATION

 

“Psychic research presents a challenge that science can no longer avoid…. It can be an important element in the long-sought formula for enriching human awareness, reconstructing society, and generally aiding nature in the great work of evolution.”

- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo XIV astronaut, Institute of Noetic Sciences founder

 

                Undoubtably, there is widespread popular, scientific and medical interest concerning the near-death experience (NDE) and the out-of-body experience (OBE) invigorated by an international and very prevalent body of anecdotal accounts, recent pioneering research, and vastly significant epistemological implications.  The demand for rigorous, scientific methods for investigating claims of accurate remote observations through anomalous sensory means is unambiguous. 

            If likelihood is significant that phenomena often-described as will-induced out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, or telepathy are real and objective, it would justify serious research into the physics behind them  – quantum mechanical, field, or otherwise.   Nevertheless, research should first test whether or not there is any sensory technique that allows one to observe a remote physical location beyond the reach of any well-established method of observation.  We can also assess the measure of consensus in the body of personal accounts, which should include direct, lucid experiences of the scientists.  How adequately can the experience be truly understood and known without these first-hand explorations?

            One of the first questions that emerge before an undertaking is “Why bother with it?” What are the potential benefits of studying the out-of-body experience?  These could be classified into at least these 3 categories:

  1. Universality & number of reports

 

  1. Personal & social implications

 

  1. Multidisciplinary scientific and practical implications

 

Universality.  The out-of-body experience has been reported and documented by the most diverse cultures throughout the times.  We can begin by observing the myriads of terminologies available for the act of projecting (astralwanderung, Germany), for the “second body” described as a more subtle double of the physical body used during a projection (kha, Egypt), and the silver cord (sutratma, India), which connects the two.  There are also numerous names for an energy system (of which the silver cord would be part of) that include terms like chi or bioenergies as well as chakras.  These hundreds of terminologies were created by cultures ranging from Eskimos to Peruvians, from ancient Greece, Egypt, Africa, and China to modern Europe and Brazil. 

Let us examine a small portion of examples of just one of these terms.

 

Immanent Energy:

Mahashakti

Mana (Polynesia, Hawaiian Kahunas)

Acasa, prakriti, mulaprakriti (Hindu)

Andrimanitra (Malaysia, Philippines)

Baraka (Sufi)

Atna (Maori, New Zeland)

Ayki (Elgonyi, Africa)

Ani (Ponape, Pacific)

Glama (Persia)

Huaca (Peru)

Ki (China, Japanese Acupuncture)

Labuni (New Guinea)

Megbe (Ituri pygmies)

Mulungu (Yaos, Central Africa)

Mungo (Sudan)

Oki, orenda (Iroquois Indians)

Sila (Eskimos)

Yesod (Kaballah)

Sa (Egypt)

Ruach (Hebrews)

 

Negative Entropy (Erwin Schrodinger)

Nous (Plato)

Vis medicatrix naturae (Hippocrates)

Synchronicity (Carl Gustav Jung)

Arqueo, munis (Paracelsus)

Bio-flux (Paul Joire)

Anima mundi (Avicenna: 980-1037)

Biolicete (Vladimir Pravdine)

Élan vital (Henri Louis Bergson: 1850-1935)

Bioplasmic energy (Russian scientists)

Noetic energy (Charles Muses)

Psychotronic energy (Robert Pavlitta)

Facultas formatrix (Galeno: 130-200)

Magnetic fluid (Franz Anton Mesmer)

Force of Life (Luigi Galvani: 1739-1798)

Even if some terms are not exact synonyms, it is evident that “humanity is anxious to recognize, understand, and control this energy that permeates the Cosmos, apparently omnipresent, with multiple varieties, and verified since 30 centuries before the actual era of the Gregorian calendar (Waldo Vieira).”

The astral projection is related to philosophical schools like:

Anthroposophy

Kabbalah

Castanedan

Esoteric

Spiritism

Hagiological

Hinduism

Jungian

Rosacrucian

Swedenborg

Theosophy

Umbandism

Voodoo

Xamanism

Zen-Buddhism

It is also worth noting that the International Bibliography of Projectiology contains over 1900 works, whose originals derive from 28 countries, in 18 languages:

German (Allgeier)

Arabic (Ebeid)

Chinese (Wang)

Danish (Nielsson)

Spanish (Anglada)

Esperanto (Kardec)

French (bret)

Greek (Plutarch)

Hebrew (Almeida)

Dutch (Poortman)

English (Brennan)

Italian (Bozzano)

Japanese (Meishu-Sama)

Latin (Swedenborg)

Portuguese (Antunes)

Russian (Pushkin)

Sanskrit (Woods)

Swedish (Jacobson)

 

Professor Ernesto Bozzano catalogued 254 sources in 50 years, Dr. Robert Crookall 838 in 30 years, and the tome “700 Experiments of Conscientiology” lists 5,116 bibliographical sources, from 37 countries, and 20 languages.

The universality of the phenomenon can be verified by studying the authors and researchers that have shared their experiences.  Here are a few of them from 9 different countries:

West Germany: Herbert H. G. Engel; Alfred Lischka.

Brazil: Waldo Vieira; Yvonne do Amaral Pereira; Hamilton Prada.

Dennmark: Johannes E. Hohlenberg.

Spain: Vicente Beltran Anglada.

USA: Richard Greene; Robert Monroe; Muldoon; Henry Olcott; Tanous; Swann; Mittl; Harary.

France: Yram; Anne Osmont; Francis Lefebure; Honore de Balzac.

England: “Oliver Fox” (Callaway); William Gerhardie; Vincent Turvey; Joseph Whiteman;

Ireland: Eileen Garrett

Sweden: Emanuel Swedenborg

Frequency.  Numerous statistical surveys done in the past century, in at least 7 countries (USA, UK, South Africa, Iceland, Italy, Australia, and Brazil) in 4 continents reveal that – at the very least – 1% of humanity (over 60 million individuals) have had some type of lucid projection of the consciousness at least once in their lifetime. Here are some examples:

Paola Giovetti, Italy    110 of 300                  

Susan Blackmore        12% of 321     1981    mail

                                    13% of 217     1981    students

                                    14% of 155     1981    students

U New England, AUS            16% of 177     1980    students

U of Virginia, USA    25% of 268     1979    students

Surrey U, UK              11% of 132     1978    students

Iceland                                    8% of 902       1977

John Palmer                 14% of 341     1974    adults; Charlottesville, VA; among them:

                                    25% of 266                 students

Frances Mary Banks   45% of 800                 English church-goers

Robert Allan Monroe  approx. 1/3                  public conference in New York

Charles Tart                 44% of 150     1971    marijuana users with psychedelic experience

Celia Green                 19% of 115     1967    Southampton University, UK

                                    34% of 380     1967    Oxford University, UK

Hornell Hart                27% of 115     1952    Duke University (NC) sociology students

Two ongoing online surveys can be studied at:

http://www.out-of-body.com William Buhlman

http://www.iac.org/obesurvey International Academy of Consciousness

Applications. Perhaps the most compelling motivation for these studies is the multidisplinary plethora of possibilities from practical applications of resulting methods and theories, including:

The role of consciousness in the establishment and perception of physical reality

The nature, attributes, faculties of consciousness in a more integral manner

The demystification of psi phenomena, near-death experience, out-of-body experience

More than a glimpse of life-after death

Reduction of bellicose parochialism towards fraternal universalism  

Better understanding and partial or full circumvention of some mental and physical disabilities

Improving performance: academic, athletic, intellectual, creative (original ideas) and emotional

National security, law enforcement, judiciary issues

Shedding light on ethics, bioethics, environmental policy

Location of natural resources, missing persons

Prospecting of archeological, oceanographic, astronomical locations

More integral medical and psychological practice

Retrocognition applications for history scholars

 

RESEARCH

 

From the extensive body of research on remote perception, we can highlight these cases:

 

ITALY

The fifty-two documented cases of physical bilocation (materialization of the astral body away from the physical body) with several eyewitnesses of Natuzza Evolo (1924 - ) from Paravati, Calabria, Italy investigated by Dr. Valerio Marinelli, an engineer at the University of Calabria.  In eighteen cases, evolo was clearly seen by the witness far away from her physical body.  In six cases, her voice was heard and in thirteen cases she was able to either speak to the witness, operating a table clock, knocking very loudly on the door, moving a floor vase, or pulling the hair of witness.  In nine cases, stains were left at the apparition site with her fingerprint using her blood.  Cases of unmistakable anomalies like those involving Evolo, Mirabelli from Brazil, and many others are unfortunately rare.

 

HOLLAND

 

On December 15, 2001, the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet, published a study of  more than a decade on Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) observed in 10 different Dutch hospitals. In one of very few NDE studies to be conducted prospectively, meaning that a large group of patients whose heart and/or breathing function ceased were resuscitated during a fixed period of time, 18% of the 334 patients reported NDE’s.  From these 62 patients, 41 (12%) described a ‘core experience.’ The majority of these patients felt this was one of the most positively marking experiences of their life, re-prioritizing their activities to live more purposefully, reducing their fear of death, or even improving their personality and behavior towards others and themselves.

Dr. Pim van Lommel’s experiment

brings into question hypoxia or anoxia as a main cause of the NDE. It is estimated that one in every thousand patients checked-in to the hospital has a NDE. Drop in weight (few tens of grams) at physical death, a well-documented fact, is probably correlated to a final projection.

 

BRITAIN

 

A Southampton General Hospital study (J. of Resuscitation) finds that 11% of NDE’s include memory recall of unconscious period,  and that 6% of resuscitation after cardiac arrest resulted in NDE’s.

 

SWITZERLAND

 

In a 2002 BBC Radio debate, Dr. Olaf Blanke revealed that the epileptic patient - who unexpectedly reported out-of-body perceptions when her right-angular gyrus was stimulated - actually made visual observations of the operating room that the conventional scientific paradigm cannot explain. Even though he understandably excluded these details from the article published in the journal Nature, the Bern neuroscientist did not dismiss the possibility of the objective out-of-body experience, stating many more studies should be carried out.

 

USA

 

Neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler, Barrow Neurological Institute of Phoenix; Cardiologist Mike Sabom study the case of Pam Reynolds. During brain surgery, in standstill (Heart stopped, brain function ceased, eyes & ears shut) Reyonds “popped out” of body and observed what looked like groin operation.  She thought this was very strange, because she did not know they needed to install catheters for the heart-lung machine.  In any case, one cannot hallucinate without brain function: there was no blood flood or vital signs. The physicians conclude that consciousness can exist in the absence of a functioning brain, but reluctant to admit non-physical reality, hypothesize the seat of consciousness is in the cells of the body.

 

Barbara Rommer, internist from Ft. Lauderdale conducts over 600 interviews of patients that had an NDE and concludes they are largely life-altering. She collects accounts such as “I could see in color, hear, feel emotions like fear, like relief. So, what was that blue thing lying on the table? It scares me to look at it. But it’s not really me, it’s just my body.” Dr. Kenneth Ring’s Mindsight

 chronicles the NDE’s and OBE’s of the congenitally blind that make successful visual observations during these experiences. Dr.

 

Dean Radin, in The Conscious Universe, conducts a robust meta-analysis of psi research that demonstrates high statistical significance.

 

 

One of the first researchers to perform laboratorial experiments on the OBE was psychologist Dr. Charles Theodore Tart (1937 - ). In 1966, he invited a young projector to participate in a series of experiments in the sleep laboratory of the University of California - Davis. The historical projectiological experiments took four nights in which the projector - "Miss Z" - was to lay down and try to exit the physical body, while connected to a series of devices that measured her physiological conditions. The objective of the experiments was the identification of a quasi-randomly generated five-digit number, approximately 1.5 meters above her head (impossible to be physically observed).

From Monday to Wednesday, the projector reported having seen the clock while floating out of body. At the times informed by her, the devices demonstrated unusual brain-wave patterns. An absence of rapid-eye movements (REM) was also observed. On Wednesday night, Miss Z identified the target number: 25132. The brain-wave pattern during conscious projection was different from the patterns during waking state, sleep and other altered states of consciousness (an expression proposed by Tart himself).

Between 1965 and 1966, the same pioneer researcher studied Robert Allan Monroe in 8 occasions in the Electroencephalographical Laboratory of the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia.  Equipment like EEG, ECG, and EOG was employed, much to the discomfort of the projector.  Monroe was asked to read a five-digit, quasi-random number on a shelf placed two meters above the floor. 

During the first seven nights, he was not successful. On the eight night, he had two brief lateral projections.  On the first one, he witnessed some strangers talking at an unknown place at a distance, which could not be confirmed.  However, on the second occasion, Monroe correctly described, outside the room, the woman technician and a man, later identified as her husband.

The ocular movements were slower than in regular sleep. The Stage I brain wave pattern, typical of natural sleep with dreams, was observed almost immediately after Monroe laid down – an extremely rare event, as this stage normally occurs after 80 to 90 minutes of sleep without dreams.  The heart rate was between 65 and 75 beats per minute.

A study by Janet Lee Mitchell (American Society for Psychical Research, ASPR) and Karlis Osis on the traveling clairvoyance of surrealist painter and writer Ingo Swann resulted in 8 of 8 correct target observations with 1 in 40,000 probability for a chance occurrence.  When Swann reported his vision was outside of his body, there was loss of electrical activity and faster brain wave impulses in the visual areas in the occipital lobes. During this state, there was greater drop in alpha activity in the right hemisphere than in the left, while other organic functions remained normal.

Osis also carried out a “fly-in” experiment with around 100 projectors who had as a target a small office in the fourth floor of ASPR, where they were to inspect four target objects (unknown to them, to be observed in a certain time frame and angle of observation).  Only 15% of them reached the New York office.  Osis did not think the results of this experiment were significant, because event the best projectors often described objects in terms of their form and colors and not as material things with their exact names.  This experiment demonstrates the hypothesis that the process of information acquisition or cognition during projection of the consciousness is different from what would be expected from physical experience and even from common extrasensory perception.

There were, however, interesting observations:

Some, like a projector from Toronto who observed a veridical fire in a nearby block, got sidetracked by other things along the way.  Others saw the objects with distortions, or reported circular or global vision (seeing in all directions simultaneously).  A barrier placed on the table to separate the different targets was seen as transparent by many of them.

Alexander Tanous related that his awareness traveled several times from Portland (Maine) to the target locale during the experiment.  Not only did he successfully observe the objects and shape of the table, but also noted a tea cup, which indeed was unintentionally left there by another researcher.  Elwood Babbitt also described the target correctly in his third fly-in from Massachusetts. He correctly drew the shape and location of a broad, small plant, a painting, and a small sculpture of a smiling girl.  Teddy Marmoreo of Toronto projected to the site at night before the experiment and saw Osis sleeping at ASPR – an account which was confirmed.

In 1977, Robert Lyle Morris and Stuart Harary of Duke University.  From the University of California – Santa Barbara, Harary (his body connected to various physiological devices) was to visit Spirit, his two-month old cat, whose movements in a cage were detected by sensors at Duke.  Sharp behavior difference was observed when the projector was projected near the cat, which became passive, calm, without meowing as if it was seeing or feeling Harary’s presence.  When he wasn’t projected, Spirit was continuously trying to exit the cage it was in and meowed 37 times.  The results were considered p=.01.  Simple telepathy was excluded through a false projection, where Harary simply imagined the occurrence. In posterior studies where the animal did not have affinity not Harary, there results were insignicant.

In 1979, Karlis Osis and Donna McCormick verified that a projector correctly identified a random optical target, in a locked room replete of sensors, 114 of 197 (57.87%) trials in 20 sessions.  During these 114 “hits,” kinetic effects were observed demonstrating the presence of something subtle but nonetheless physical.

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory Precognitive Remote Perception (PRP) studies in 1987 already contained 334 formal trials obtained by some 40 “percipients”, who generated written descriptions of an unknown geographical target where the “agent” was located before, during, or after the description.  Then, they were to fill out a check sheet of questions for later analytical judging.  The agent typically spent ten to fifteen minutes at the target, beginning at the assigned time and writes down his observations before filling out the same checklist.  Photographs, when possible, were taken of the locale for description comparison.  Locations were either instructed (randomly selected from a large pool created by a third party) or spontaneously selected by the agent at will at the time of the trial (volitional mode). Most of the perceptions were performed precognitively before the target was even selected. 

Results have varied from “photographic precision,” to partial correspondence of environment and/or components, to completely inaccurate.  Major geometrical distortions, differences in emphasis of parts of the scene, progression from accurate to inaccurate description or vice-versa are not uncommon.  Brenda Dunne (who published the first non-classified paper on the topic) and Dr. Robert Jahn therefore created more systematic quantitative assessment procedures.  The one that combined effectiveness with simplicity the best was through a list of thirty statistically weighted, binary descriptor questions.

The PRP studies reveal that physical distance between the agent and percipient (from same city to different continent) had no significant deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio.  There is no statistically significant dependence on whether the description was made hours or even days before or after the experiment.  One might expect volitional trials to be more successful than instructed ones, suspecting sympathetic (predisposition, subconscious, telepathy) target selection.  Even though there was not very significant difference, the instructed trials actually scored better.  Such observations suggest that “the strongest ‘‘signals’’ are generated under the ‘‘noisiest’’ conditions.  However, there is a significant body of anecdotal cases indicating that emotional or physiological affinity between the participants can facilitate the process.  According to the authors, the process seems imprecise and bi-directional, naturally subject to distortions and displacement effects. 

While about 14% of the 334 trials are individually significant by the .05 criterion, over 62% score above the chance mean.  So individual, modest increments of significance compounded to very noticeable results.  Curiously, it was also statistically determined that the success of the overall results is not attributable to exceptional performance by only a few participants. Presently, according to a paper available on its website (Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research) PEAR has accumulated over 650 remote perception trials with an extraordinarily low overall significance level on the order of parts in 10 millions (p = 3 x 10-8, one tailed). 

The researchers suspect that the information signal is encoded in the noise (the more strictly objective the quantification, the less the phenomenon can express itself). This trends “appears to be associated with the participants’ growing attention to, and dependence upon, the progressively more detailed descriptor formats and with the corresponding reduction in the content of the accompanying free-response transcripts.” The more the descriptions became forced-choice tasks, the more restricted the flow of unconscious imagery became. 

The program has passed the severe scrutiny of the researchers themselves, Princeton’s review board, and their tough critics but this does not make the conclusions any easier to face.  PEAR  also has the largest open literature database on the subject.   Other laboratories have used no agent at all. This is similar to the class of experiments discussed below.

 

PORTUGAL & SPAIN

 

As was noted in some of the aforementioned studies, paracognition is often accompanied by deformations of the forms or ambience.  Also, there seem to be different trends in traveling clairvoyance and out-of-body experience perception.  Two studies performed in Portugal, Spain, and the USA by International Academy of Consciousness researchers noted similar phenomena (Journal of Conscientiology Vol. 4, 15 S).  Both utilized photographs or drawings quasi-randomly selected by a computer and displayed on a computer monitor to be identified through traveling clairvoyance or out-of-body experience (“double-blind” protocols were employed to rule out telepathy).

Most importantly, the claim that NDE’s start and end with a dying brain is challenged by these studies that use spontaneous, will-induced OBE’s that can have all the elements of NDE’s without the critical physiological state.  According to projectiology, during an OBE, the consciousness projects from the physical body and traverses space to the target, perceives the target, interprets the information returns, by will or through the automatic retraction of the silver cord which transmits the information through bioenergies from the parabrain of the psychosoma to the physical brain, which did not participate directly and must handle the information with available synapses (which may not be sufficiently developed for this task).  Through each of these steps, there is ample room for distorting, fragmenting, diluting, or even blocking the biomemory of the experience altogether.  Either way, lucid projectors affirm that the events are registered in their holomemory (integral, non-physical memory of the consciousness).

In the case of remote viewing, the body does not enter the vegetative “empty brain” condition.  Though, under slight discoincidence, the consciousness remains in the physical brain (being able to speak, write, and draw for example).  Rather, it projects its sensibility through a portion of the energies that connect the two bodies. In general, projectors give a better account of the general ambience, while remote viewers give more accurate description of details of a target. 

 

PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION

 

Broadly speaking, today’s scientific world is bipolar regarding “expert opinions” on the nature of the out-of-body experience and so-called transcendental experiences.  Neurologists and neuroscientists have triggered such experiences by stimulating different sectors of the brain.  Neurobiologists have detected radical changes in brain activity during transcendental experiences that are largely interpreted as the cause of these experiences.  On the other hand, physicians, parapsychologists and projectiologists have demonstrated anomalous exercise of consciential attributes during near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, precognitive remote viewing, perception and other situations.

Many conventional scientists interpret the two groups of evidence as mutually exclusive and obviously trust a PET scan more than non-conventional studies of phenomena s/he has not experienced.  Some fundamental issues surface here:

(1)   There is a widespread apriori assumption that the consciousness must arise from physical processes.

(2)   Is it not possible that the neurobiological activity during these experiences can be a concomitant effect of a transcendental experience?  When it is the cause, must the resulting experience be oneiric or hallucinatory? Consider the case of the epileptic patient that, while physically unconscious reported out-of-body sensations and accurate visual perceptions of the operating room caused by Dr. Olaf Blanke’s electromagnetic stimulation of her right angular gyrus.

(3)   Just because anomalous perception is neuropathology-linked in some cases, it does not logically follow that all cases (or even the majority) are caused by brain damage or dysfunction.

(4)   Objective research depends on consensus of many subjective experiences – including interpretation of data – from individual frames or scales of observation. 

(5)   Most conventional paradigm researchers who make a judgment on the nature of out-of-body experience do not experience it regularly enough (if ever) without the use of drugs and with sufficient awareness (continuous consciousness projection).

(6)   The conventional paradigm is wholly inadequate to address essential philosophical and scientific matters that could lie beyond the physical dimension and the brain, except perhaps for their indirect manifestations.  In other words, if the consciousness (or anything for that matter) turns out to be non-physical, science requires an epistemological expansion: “an elephant does not fit into a match box.”

The consciential paradigm, proposed by the Brazilian veteran projector and consciousness researcher Waldo Vieira, MD maintains scientific principles without necessarily limiting its studies to the physical realm.  Physical and physiological measurements can provide, at best, secondary indications or manifestations of what we want to observe (bioenergies, extraphysical reality).  Since we do not currently have technologies that allow us to observe bioenergies and extraphysical reality, to observe it “in all its glory,” live, in vivo, the consciousness must study itself through personal experience. The subject is the researcher, his experience the laboratory.

Rather than depending on the accounts of others (who usually find it hard to translate the exotic sensations, perceptions, and events they witness), the researcher him/herself develops the ability to induce lucid projections to investigate extraphysical realities first hand (para-hand?).  Scientific conclusions (cutting-edge, but always temporary, relative) can be reached through the consensus of experiences of thousands of other projectors, cognition of physical events or information (and even of that which is largely thought to be exclusively subjective: through sympathetic para-assimilations and projective hyperacuity which are reportedly normal in that condition), simultaneous projections where researchers can explore in groups, indirect or direct detection of presence in a room (animal clairvoyance, sensitive technologies in existence or to be developed), among other schemes.

Also, the consciential paradigm is not mere aesthetic; we can derive original hypothesis from its premises. It allows for biological evolution driven by the evolution of the consciousness principle from primitive organisms to the human level (function from form). Although the consciousness continuously sheds the physical body, it maintains its non-physical body encoding the paragenetics that are partially physically expressed at inception, although limited by physical law and physiological limits. Rather than starting from a clean slate, this paradigm adds the constantly evolving innate consciential factor to the nature and nurture equation. The rate of personal development of the consciousness or individuality principle seems to be very slow, though, as to suggest we are all older than Earth. Even the current population explosion could be fueled by an interplanetary transmigration.  However radical, these ideas can be tested through consensus of extraphysical experiences and scientific experiments.

Extraphysical experience can take us one step closer to the source of original ideas and facilitate insight, inspiration, and intuition. Resulting technologies including bioenergy therapies and parapsychic procedures can help extend our life span.  Lucid projections also reduce the required number of sleep hours, possibly due to the increased absorption of pure, immanent extraphysical energies that are brought back to reinvigorate the body.  However, the greatest benefit is realizing that we already have infinite lifespan that alternates between biological and extraphysical life periods as we attain increasingly developed integral maturity. 

It’s worth noting that according to accounts of lucid projectors, the more evolved one becomes the longer the extraphysical period becomes in comparison to the physical period – from about the current average of around one physical lifespan to a few thousand years of intermission. Eventually, biological life is left behind permanently to engage in a more advanced and rarified form of existence of harmonized sentiment, ideas, and discernment beyond form, distance, space, and time in the usual sense.  With this perspective, we can grow old – maybe much older than originally possible – but with a sense of satisfaction (that alone might add quality years to our lives) because we prioritized our personal development in service of humanity. 

With the money and energy saved in surgeries that feed our obsession with youthful appearance and material acquisition to fill the current void of meaning and purpose, there just might be enough to feed everyone and have funds left over for interesting research. But the world does not change overnight, and no amount of experimentation alone will suffice. Now we are left with an important choice: to dismiss ideas that have been taken seriously by Plato, William James, Schroedinger and many other geniuses of humanity or to explore these possibilities by inducing our own, healthy, will-induced, lucid extraphysical experiences.

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

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