Reincarnation as a Biological Adaptation to Natural
Selection
by
Anthony Tyler
Collaborative
behavioral neuroscientists, Professor Todd Murphy and Dr. Michael Persinger, have steadily built
up an empirical, correlative assessment of ancient metaphysics through the field of
speculative research called, “neurotheology” since the 1990s.
A
bit of a slang term, “neurotheology” is acknowledged by its researchers as a
philosophy applied to scientific principle; meaning that this philosophy is a
transposition of a variety of ancient metaphysics onto the blueprint of the
modern scientific method and the latest updates in fields like neurology,
behavioral psychology, anthropology, physics, and even comparative religion.
Unfortunately, instead of being invited into the scientific community as a
much-needed reassessment of ancient philosophy within the postmodern paradigm,
Murphy and Persinger have of course met a great deal of persecution.
However, the thorough methodology of their research, their versatile repertoire
of data sets, and their novel application of the scientific method into the
realm of philosophy and theology, has given them continuous support within the
alternative research community.
Publishing
his preliminary studies into a scientific journal in 1999, Todd Murphy in association
with research and development from Dr. Michael Persinger of neurocognitive
electro-stimulation technology, developed his scientific postulation that if
reincarnation could be theoretically supposed as an axiom of life, then it
would be because it was a biological adaptation to natural selection. Unfortunately, the mere
cross-analysis of the two concepts in the title made many people dismiss it,
but upon looking at this cross-analysis it not only becomes a smooth
transposition, but a plausible one as well.
Since
his initial development of the subject, Murphy had published a book in 2013
entitled, Sacred Pathways: The Brain’s Role in Religious and Mystic
Experiences, that
even included a foreword by the Dalai Lama himself. To quote the book’s
official description,
“Professor
Murphy proposes that rebirth is an evolutionary adaptation that contributed to
the survival of our species, and that the self is a hallucination, that God is
a manifestation of our own sense of self, and how enlightenment appears after an avalanche of
neural activity, making changes in very specific areas of your brain. He also
believes that spirituality is a very positive force in the world, and in the
lives of individual people. Spirituality, he argues, is an adaptive force
that’s crucial to our survival as a species, and so is an integral part of our
nature.
An
atheist who openly encourages prayer, the author goes well past the debates
between skeptics and believers to see how religion helps us, without regard for
the truth or falsehood of anyone’s private beliefs.”
The
original paper, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Near-Death
Studies, boasted the enticing title, “The Structure And Function Of
Near-Death Experiences: An Algorithmic Reincarnation Hypothesis based on
Natural Selection.” Before moving forward, it’s important to note that Darwin was just another scientist proposing
ideas based on his own observations, and in the present scientific community,
his ideas are a bit too emboldened and are lacking in continuous and updated
reassessment; however, the basic postulations of natural selection have been
fundamentally proven in the sense of genetic adaptations to environment in
order to further survival.
Now
that the groundwork has been laid, some theory can be assessed. The specific
fields being cross analyzed are Near-Death Experiences (NDE’s), in association
with Out-of-Body Experiences (OBE’s), through altered states of consciousness represented
by changes in electrical fields emitted by different aspects of the
brain–specifically the temporal lobe. One of the four sections of the cerebral
cortex, the temporal lobe, is responsible for “processing sensory input into
derived meanings for the appropriate retention of visual memories, language
comprehension, and emotion association.” Very much so, this can be considered
the integral piece of the brain that allows humans to interact on a social
level that involves analogical thought process (reading, writing, speaking,
drawing, playing video games, music, even math) and especially dreaming. To
quote Murphy’s study,
“It
has been theorized (Persinger, 1987) that when our species first evolved its
unique cognitive abilities, two parts of our brains enlarged more than other
portions. The frontal lobes (generally specialized for extrapolating out into
the future) and our temporal lobes (generally specialized for remembering the
past). When this happened, people learned a new skill; The ability to remember
death, and to realize that the same thing would happen to them in the future.
The then-new neuromorphological upgrade software included a program for death
anxiety. The fear of impending doom.”
In
order to understand this “Algorithm of NDE’s,” there must be a few different
angles fleshed for each step of the theory. Setting aside the evolution of the
brain for a moment, it’s important to understand that the definition of an
algorithm is essentially: a process that converts randomness to non-randomness
(in terms of data sets).
Taking
an excerpt from Professor Murphy’s paper:
“There
seem to be certain grammatical rules governing NDEs. Although the research
elucidating them is far from complete, a pattern of rough (we cannot emphasize
this too strongly: rough; approximate) rules of thumb’ appears to be emerging.
Examples include:
(1)
In India, instead of an autoscopic out-of-body experience (OBE), the death
process may begin with seeing’ messengers of death (Pasricha, 1986). When they
call you, you must come. There are also a number of Indian NDEs that begin with
an OBE (Blackmore, 1993). The same rule applies to Thai NDEs (Murphy, in press)
(2)
For those under seven years old, the Life Review is avoided (Serdahely, 1990)
and instead, a visit to heaven or a fairyland is in order.
(3)
In preliterate cultures, delete the Life review, and substitute a spirit world
, where the significant events of one’s life will manifest symbolically, as
features in the spirit world (Kellehear, 1993).
(4)
If an NDEer has been able to anticipate their death, (and presumably has had
the chance reflect extensively on their life), they may skip the life review
(Greyson, 1985).
(5)
If your death has appeared unexpectedly, review your life (Greyson, 1985)
(6)
If one believes strongly in a particular religious tradition, they may
experience the being of light as they have been taught it appears (Osis, 1977,
Pg. 37)). If one is an atheist, they may experience it as a ‘presence’.
(7)
If one has come to believe that ‘all mysteries will be revealed at death’, they
may have a transcendent experience in which the mysteries’ are revealed to
their satisfaction. (cf. Eadie, 1992 & Brinkley, 1994)).
(8)
If an NDEer needs help, guidance, or an escort during their NDE, they will
encounter an Angel (Lundhal, 1992), or a Yamatoot (Murphy, in press). Long
discussions are possible in which their concerns are dealt with.
(9)
If an NDEer needs reassurance that it’s OK to be dead, they can see their
deceased relatives and beloved friends. A joyful reunion with a beloved friend
who have passed on may be just the thing to help them have positive affectual
post mortem states of consciousness. One too young to have known anyone who has
died, but you has lost a pet, can see the pet instead (Serdahely, 1989). If
they have not lost a pet, they might see whatever comforts them; A toy for
example (cf. Morse 1994, Pg. 62).
(10)
If an NDEers life was marked by destructive behavior patterns, the affect of
their life review may widen to include the effects of those behaviors on others
(cf. Brinkley 1994 & Atwater, 1994, Pg.11).
This
list of ‘rules of thumb’ should be taken as being both speculative and
incomplete. Each item on the list could be regarded as an approximation of a
real grammatical ‘axiom’ that influences the algorithmic progress of NDEs.
Because NDE researchers haven’t been looking for them, it is not possible, at
present, to state a real series of rules that will explain the functional
connections between specific NDE episodes and their predisposing factors in all
NDEs. Lundhal (1993) has been able to find a series of NDE rules, but these
deal with likelihoods of NDE episodes, rather than their functional roles. In
any case, it must be emphasized that the rules or axioms that govern NDEs will
not be applicable so much to the experiences as they are to the states of
consciousness that produce them.”
Because
of the final quoted sentence, the research correlates to not only NDEs, but
also to meditative, “shamanic” experiences; psychedelic drug experiences; and most
directly: the cycle of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. Murphy postulates that
the fundamental analogical aspect of dreaming likely made it an instrumental
part in the development of the brain’s temporal lobe, and by proxy played an
equally large role into the spike in sociocultural development at this
evolutionary point in history.
Another
correlation is found when looking into Dr. Rick Straussman’s clinical studies
with N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, as well as the excretion of the chemical from the
pineal gland of mammals during sleep cycles, heavily considered to play an
integral role in dreaming. Preliminary studies also point to the brain’s
release of DMT during the onset of the death experience. Murphy proposes
that–whichever was the first catalyst of this chain event, the development of
the brain’s temporal lobe came with the development of dreaming as a biological
adaptation, which in turn produced the surge in sociocultural activity in
ancient man. Supposing that reincarnation is as well a biological adaptation,
it is postulated that it would have received development through the same neurological development that corresponds
to dreaming, and the sequence of events previously described.
Yet, if
reincarnation could actually be a biological adaptation, then there is one
crucial blockade in the synthesis of this idea: how could anyone gain a
biological advantage from dying? It’s a fundamental fallacy when first
approached, but ancient Eastern perspective provides basis
for an empirical scientific hypothesis:
“…NDEs
appeared in our species even though death prevents the breeding opportunities
that select for positive traits. ‘Survival of the fittest’ cannot explain NDEs
in our species, because nobody survives death… …rebirth is [theoretically] an
adaptation which contributed to our survival at some point in the history of
our species. If this is so, then the specific mechanisms by which rebirth
operates must be the same for everyone, because we all share a common
evolutionary ancestry. A simple, first statement about rebirth is that: Information
which enables individuals to adapt is conserved at death, and passed on to
other individuals still undergoing prenatal development elsewhere.“
However,
in order to entirely cover a working empirical explanation of reincarnation,
one simply cannot leave out the two connected ideas of “Karma” during life and
the “Life Review” after death. Now, the definition of karma in the east tends
to vary slightly from ideology to ideology, but a definitive approximation of
the law of karma can be described as such: Individual behaviors in one life
can have an impact on following lives.
“The
theory of natural selection requires that the postulated death and rebirth
process should have increased our chances for survival in some way. If so, then
it seems reasonable to conclude that if behaviors in one life can influence
those of another, that influence must tend to increase the adaptivity of our
behavior,” (Murphy). To further stress the empirical approach to the process
here, Murphy also states, “To say that rebirth is a mechanism to produce
enlightened people is like saying that language is a mechanism for producing
writing, as though language had no purpose before it was invented,” meaning
that something like an enlightenment would be a byproduct and not a biological
function. At least, not directly.
Murphy
scientifically assesses karma in a person’s life as a “repertoire of brain
states” that are either positively or negatively reinforced by the compounding
of life experiences. Darwinism thus plays its role as a social mechanism with
the development of the temporal lobe when it became increasingly valuable to
easily, fluidly, and comfortably communicate with other human beings on a
social level. Of course, this was not always so positively willed, as seen by
the many social conquests of empires throughout history. This can also be
postulated as being genetically maladaptive, however, when looking at it from a
social standpoint instead of a primitive standpoint.
In
any case, karma became a person’s cognitive portfolio of both adaptive and
maladaptive social mechanisms that ultimately either hindered or helped them to
pursue biological reproduction.
“A
piece of computer software is the same whether it’s on a disk or actually being
used in the system. The recorded behaviors are the same whether the records are
in our brains or downloading to a next birth… The life review, we suggest, is
the phenomenological manifestation of a state of consciousness which uses the
effects of states of consciousness experienced in one’s lifetime to create
suggestions for states that enable adaptive behavior during the next life,
reinforcing culture-bound behavior and at the same time preparing to download
them to a future birth.” -Murphy
It
should be stated that being culturally adaptive does not equate to “conforming
to a social status-quo,” but rather is a matter of exploring one’s own inner
social potentials, and thus exploring more cognitive and biological capacities
within an individual and within the their social environment. “The life review
can require an NDEer to re-examine everything they have ever done. Not as they
remember their experiences, but as they actually happened. When they remember
having done something adaptive, and recalling it induces positive affect, the
correlative state is marked for repetition in their next life. If they’ve done
something bad, and it makes them feel bad to remember it, the state is marked
for suppression in their next life.
Remembering
that it’s our cultures that tell us what is good or bad, the possibility arises
that (if our argument up to this point is accepted) life reviews sorts states
according to how likely they are to generate culturally adaptive behavior.
Perhaps the life review is usually concerned with behavior because behaviors
are state-specific. States of consciousness cannot be viewed directly, but the
behaviors that act them out can. Re-experiencing an event will include a
recurrence of the state one was in at the time of the event, including its
emotional content,” (Murphy).
The
part that is much more philosophically speculative, while never forfeiting the
scientific method, is Murphy’s theory that a reincarnating soul (since
brainwaves are Hertz radio waves akin the Earth’s magnetic field) is an
electrical signal; he further theorizes that this electrical signal could be
considered as a “soliton” in modern physics. Taking the basic definition
Wikipedia: “In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a self-reinforcing solitary
wave (a wave packet or pulse) that maintains its shape while it propagates at a
constant velocity.
Solitons
are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium.
(The term “dispersive effects” refers to a property of certain systems where
the speed of the waves varies according to frequency). Solitons are the
solutions of a widespread class of weakly nonlinear dispersive partial
differential equations describing physical systems.” If a “soliton/soul” is
absorbed by the Earth’s magnetic field while retaining its solitary
informational structure, it would be a basic matter of physics (an
electromagnetic attraction) between a wandering soliton and a prenatal fetus or
perhaps even postnatal infant.
In
a final assessment of the variety of data sets analyzed here: Ancient man‘s spike in sociocultural
development directly correlates to the biological adaptation of the human
brain’s cerebral cortex (temporal lobe), and the initiation of analogical
thought with the incorporation of analogical process (dreaming) during physical
recuperation (sleeping). While dreaming by proxy strengthened mankind’s social
contexts and civilization development, it in turn served as a precursor to an
after-death experience. Dreaming allowed for the analogical processing of
karma, which is considered as a repertoire of brain states that have been
positively or negatively reinforced due to social contexts of the individual, which
is contingent on his success or failure in society.
Upon
death, the human being experiences, through their own analogical process, what
is described by experiencers as a Near Death Experience (more so in ancient
societies as shamanic experiences, since modern science has only recently
allowed for the capacity for NDE’s). This Death experience includes the Life
Review, which is akin to a software engine that guides the soul through its
experiences and extrapolates from it what is biological adaptive and
maladaptive, in order to further the success of the soul in its future social
developments. Enlightenment, from a biological standpoint, is a cognitive
metaphysical “byproduct” of this socially adaptive process.
While
this is truly an incredible theory, it still stands as such; but the cohesive
line of information that this cross analysis of “neurotheology” thus far
represents is truly astounding and intriguing, and deserves further
development, consideration, and scientific studying. An afterthought to this
concept challenges the reader to take this information beyond the confines of
their “ego.” It is considered by Professor Murphy,
and all ancient ideologies that believe in reincarnation, that while the
cognitive “soul” does survive death, it survives as a repertoire of karmic
brain states, and that it does not carry any individualized traits that would
be considered as an “ego.” Instead, the individual characteristics of the ego
represent the context of each soul’s life cycle.
The
idea of reincarnation is one of the oldest theological beliefs of all
humankind, but still the question remains: Is it a belief, or a matter or
physics? The hypothesis at hand suggests it is a combination of both.
Sources: https://www.shaktitechnology.com/rebirth.htm, https://www.shaktitechnology.com/index.htm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2uZkPzJrZc
From The Last
American Vagabond @ http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/anthony-tyler/reincarnation-as-a-biological-adaptation-to-natural-selection/
For more information about reincarnation see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/reincarnation
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