What is consciousness?

The Greek philosophers sought it in the blood and the breath, whilst today, thanks to neuroscience, we have a better idea of where it might reside. Nevertheless, this question is still greatly debated.

As new discoveries are made, the boundaries of knowledge have expanded, and new frontiers, which until a few decades ago seemed to be in the realm of science fiction, have come within our reach. Aside from our attempts to understand the origin of consciousness, we must also ask ourselves whether it is something that is physical and identifiable, fixed inside our bodies along certain neuronal pathways, or whether it might be something more volatile, capable of moving through space-time. In the latter case, how might we define an individual? Might we also exist without our physical body without, however, conserving its memory?

Though John Foster had always been sceptical about “out-of-body” and “near-death” experiences, he did acknowledge that they were probably real to those people who lived through them. However, he refused to accept any spiritual connotations that were attributed to such phenomena. After all, these episodes had always occurred in altered psychic states, hence they were nothing more than the delusions of deranged minds.

His accident, of course, changed everything.

Whilst driving to the laboratory, as he did every morning, on the other side of the road a truck carrying tree trunks was approaching him in the opposite direction. Remembering little of the incident itself, he did retain a few confused images. The logs crashing into the road and invading his lane. The impact. His seatbelt gripping him in a vice. The car rolling over.

When he came to in the hospital, they informed him that he had undergone surgery for several hours. He then recalled watching the operation as if he had been hovering above the surgeon's head, whilst he was under a strange feeling of numb torpor, he could see the doctor pulling shards of glass and metal from his body and suturing his wounds.

He recalled walking through a dark tunnel, pursuing a light. The place where he found himself left him wide-eyed. Everything was sharp and distinct. Colours were more intense than he had ever seen before. Crystalline tones danced through the air. John had looked about with his mouth agape. His own form surprised him. It was a perfect reproduction of his own body but somehow more subtle and less dense, as if it was composed of some kind of energy. He rubbed at his body with his hands without being able to comprehend his present state. Whilst he was trying to come to terms with his reality, some beings cloaked in white light, who seemed to be angels, appeared before him infusing in him such a feeling of peace that he calmed down instantly. He was so eager to make contact that he stretched out his arm to try to touch them. Nevertheless, his body called him back to itself before he was able to touch the being.

“No… Not yet!” he implored.

He found out that he had been declared clinically dead for almost three minutes during the surgery.

From that moment on, he was possessed by a feverish yearning to repeat that experience. He also became interested in the study of consciousness. Reading up on near-death experiences, John discovered that what he had gone through had been described in a very similar manner by most people who had lived through the same circumstance. Although, the interpretation of what the others had seen changed depending on their cultural environment. Nonetheless, an encounter with some sort of supernatural entity seemed to be a constant, as did the sense of peace.

In his research of the scientific literature on the subject, he came across some studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, which showed that the visual perspective, in conjunction with the body’s related multisensory information, was fundamental for the consciousness to be correctly located within the physical body.

Was it therefore possible that during extracorporeal experiences the consciousness would actually separate itself from the body?

Was it possible to transcend the material world?

Every day John went to the laboratory and immersed himself in a sensory deprivation tank. Closing the lid, he would float, submerged in the saline solution, which allowed him to remain suspended effortlessly in total darkness. The fewer the stimuli offered to the body the easier it would be to separate it from his consciousness. It was necessary to have the body fall into a deep sleep whilst the mind remained alert. At a certain point he could feel his extremities tingling and he had the sensation that he was rising up and leaving the boundaries of his body and then that he was floating a couple of meters above it. At that point he found it possible to disconnect his consciousness from his physical body in a defined and aware manner.

John had to train for a long time before he was able to separate his consciousness from his body at will. However, with time he became an expert. He began to be capable of accessing those energetically less dense planes of matter where it was thought spirits resided and of moving through space as one of them, passing through walls as easily as he did through the air. One day followed the next, John entered and exited the sensory deprivation tank, going through the process of inducing an extracorporeal experience again and again as he had by then become accustomed to doing. As the weeks and the months passed, John never gave up.

At a certain point what he had been seeking happened. A long dark tunnel leading to a dazzling light materialized before his eyes.

He went through it.

The place where he found himself was illuminated by a light that was soft but at the same time brilliant. Colours seemed to be more vivid than in the reality he was accustomed to and crystalline sounds were propagated as if muted. Everything seemed so real that he became disconcerted. All of it was precisely like after his accident.

Though not a copy of it, the domain seemed to correspond to a more ethereal version of the real world. Using a mental command, he took flight towards a tree and caressed its trunk. Unlike when he was dreaming, and by testing the laws of physics he was able to know if he was dreaming, John knew he was not dreaming now, yet the laws of physics were not being obeyed.

Then he realized that though the laws were being obeyed, they simply were not the same laws!

That awareness struck him like a train.

He had gone from a system governed by classical physics to a quantum system: one where the laws of physics were the laws of quantum mechanics.

Like a river in flood, he remembered the words of the physicist Roger Penrose, who said that consciousness is born out of quantum reactions that contribute to the formation of brain waves.

Can you really imagine a quantum consciousness? Independent and able to survive the death of one’s body to continue to exist in different forms in the multiverse?

As he thought of these things, he saw some beings of light approaching him. He was not surprised that the majority of cultures had foreseen the existence of spiritual beings cloaked in light that provided a sense of peace. He had just now seen them and already he felt in harmony. One of these brought its hand forward in a harmonious gesture as particles of soil rose up from the ground quickening and dancing around the being’s fingers until a flower was given life.

Were they able to manipulate the subtle matter of that world at will?

He extended his own hand as he had long wished to make contact. When his hand was so close that it brushed against the being, he heard the same crackling sound made by lightning and then a thunderclap, caused by the emission of a strong electrical discharge passing through it. John screamed as the pain catapulted him beyond the tunnel and sent him back into his own body.

He awoke in the tank, trembling. Though he tried to sit up, he was too weak. He was barely able to knock on the tank wall. When his colleagues opened the lid and the light from the laboratory hit his eyes, he saw that his left arm had been severely scorched.

His dismay from being attacked soon gave way to another question. If at that time it was pure consciousness, why was it that his body was injured by the touch? Was it possible that this phenomenon was linked to quantum entanglement? Was this an instance of two closely interconnected bodies, in this case his physical body and his consciousness, which although separated in space-time both suffered the effects of what was happening to the other, instantly, perhaps because they were connected by an Einstein-Rosen bridge (commonly called a wormhole) or through a fifth dimension?

Maybe his mind was rushing ahead too quickly.

What he was certain of was that he had discovered a new place, a place where humans could only gain access in the form of pure consciousness. He had found a way to transcend this world by moving into a completely different plane of existence.

​The astral plane.