Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, October 26, 2013, 18:21 (3835 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The essential feature of NDEs is that it gives us a pointer to an afterlife (in which you say you believe), and that means individual identity and consciousness survive the death of the cells. Species consciousness does not give us our individual identity, and so you are still stuck with the problem of our personal consciousness being produced by and yet surviving the cells. But the panpsychist-type energy theory may solve it.-DAVID: Depends upon whose energy it is. Panpsychist theory refers to a universal psychic energy in the original theories. It is a take off on my universal consciousness God theory.-Quite right. Your theory has a great deal in common with Frank's process theology, which is indeed a form of panpsychism. But I have tried to take it in a different direction, and what all NDEs have in common is the survival of the individual identity. That doesn't depend on whose energy it is. It's true that some patients have a religious experience, just as some people do in earthly life, but these are far too subjective to be verified. The only possible verification is the acquisition of information which can be confirmed back on Earth by independent third parties, as has been the case with some NDEs and transplant memories. That leaves us with no more than the continued existence of individual identities. Species consciousness, if it exists, is precisely that ... a consciousness shared by particular species. So what evidence is there in any of these experiences for a single universal consciousness?