The Scientific History of Soul’s Existence
And what well-known scientists and researchers have to say about it.
The Cartesian Doubt
On a rainy night in a city of central France, a guy stroked, his hair, while gazing out from the window, he asked himself
WHO AM I?
Well, we Indians have been asking the same question for ages. What new has this guy come up with? What he did was make scholars of their respective fields like Maths, philosophy, music, astronomy, ethics, science, metaphysics, look naive and callow. His name was Rene Descartes. He is entitled as Father of modern philosophy and is also called Mathematician of First-order. It isn’t possible to list out all of his achievements here, but FYI, the Cartesian coordinate system, through which you have learned the basic Math of X Y Z, co-ordinate system, was developed by Rene Descartes, which hasn’t been replaced by anyone from last 400 years.
That night, while gazing out of the window. A question popped up in his mind. Who AM I? That night, he gave his famous philosophical statement, which is called “Cartesian Doubt’’, if put into simple words, goes like —
You doubt every single thing, including the ones which you can see, hear and even smell.
Actually, our senses are also sometimes misleading us. A straight pencil looks bent inside water, far away objects, confuse us in different ways: ( illusion ). Moreover, when we wake up from a dream, we realize that we’re still dreaming. So how can we be sure that, after waking up, we are still not in a dream, Then he thought whatever be the case? 2+3 will always be 5, even in a dream. Being a mathematician. I will not make a mistake to get that wrong. Will I? Well, we cannot be sure of that too.
Descartes thought, “It is possible that someone else might also be controlling my thoughts.’’ And whenever he adds 2 to 3, he would always make a basic error and make 2 + 3 as 4. If so, we cannot be sure of anything.
Similarly, the existence of anything and everything can be doubted.
Maybe God does not exist?
Maybe YOU too do not exist.
Maybe I do not exist.
Maybe the celestial objects do not exist,
…but there’s one thing, whose existence cannot be doubted upon!
One thing on which even Rene Descartes couldn’t doubt on…
…and that is “THOUGHTS’’.
Descartes realized that every thought, no matter how unreliable it is, is proof that we exist. After this, he gave his famous philosophical statement.
I think, therefore, I am.
This became a milestone for the world that everything can be fiction, but not our thoughts.
Maybe that’s why we are THOUGHTS.
Fast forward to, 17th century when modern material science was at its onset, or we may call it instrumental science. We started making instruments and methods which enable us to see and measure micro as well as humongous objects. One of them was EEG. Electro-encephalo-gram In this method. Electrodes are fixed on the outer part of the brain which detects the inner electric activity. It was after this that we discovered that, while doing any type of activity, different parts of our brain generate some specific electrical waves, primarily known as beta alpha-theta and delta waves. Thus, it was concluded that, because the brain is responsible for everything…
…we are nothing but BRAIN.
Whoa whoa whoa, wait guys!
What about the coma patients? In other words, brain-dead people.
So when researchers performed EEG on these coma patients, they found that there are no waves. But the patient is alive. His heart is pumping his hair and nails are growing. So is the brain actually important?
You would say what kind of a question is that. This weird question has a whole scientific thesis dedicated just to it. Roger Lewin, a British prize-winning scientist author of 20+ books and hundreds of scientific articles. In one of his articles. He talks about the thesis of British neurologist John Lorber.
John Lorber had studied children who literally had no brain and yet were mysteriously completely normal. They used to eat, drink, play, study, and even aced their class. No abnormal behavior was detected. He even had patients who had to get their brain removed because of the life threat it had imposed. The doctor said that all the physical activities carried out by that part of the brain will stop and cease.
But surprisingly, the patient resumed doing everything immediately after the operation. That too without any hindrance!
He guessed that the remaining cortex must be adapting responsibility with time but even that would require a significant amount of time. Whereas in this case, the patient started doing everything right after the Operation. This disproved all the existing brain theories.
Some children have brains smaller than even 5mm. Practically they didn’t have a brain. Still, one such child had an IQ higher than that of a normal child. That’s why Roger Lewin named the article —
Is your brain really necessary?
So after all this, the conclusion comes out that we aren’t just thoughts. And also not the brain. The only option now left is the heart.
A 35-year-old singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds was severely injured in an accident and needed brain surgery. She was so critical that no brain activity was detected in her EEG with zero blood flow. Clinically she was dead. However, during the operation, the doctor kept her in extreme cold conditions and practically reduced her heart rate to near zero. By the grace of God and the doctor’s equanimity she survived.
But what she revealed, later on, astonished everyone.
She said that as soon as she was given anesthesia. She came out of her body and started floating in the air while watching herself getting operated on. In fact, she also described the talks between the doctors and what instruments were used quite accurately. She could see everything that state ( soul ), but with even more clarity than before. She felt more lively in “the state” and that feeling of joy went on elevating with each passing moment. So much that she didn't want to possess a physical body any longer. These are called out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences.
And thousands of such cases have been documented, but mainstream science never considers them worth exploring.
Why, apart from these, there are a lot of mysteries and questions which cannot be answered by science without accepting the existence of the soul?
Like in layman’s terms, the brain takes input from eyes, ears, nose, and skin. But what/who syncs binds and processes it. The second problem is of “the inverted image’’. We all have studied that the cornea of our eyes inverts the image that we see.
Then why do we see everything non-inverted?
Who/What processes that inverted image?
Material scientists, who don’t know about the soul address this phenomenon with a variety of names, like a ghost in the brain psyche, a particle of higher intellect!
And the ones who know, call it — SOUL!
In his scientific career, spread across 90 years, Ian Stevenson has documented around 3000 reincarnation cases. Interestingly, most of the cases are of children of age group between 3–5 years. And only those were included who knew minute details of their past life like who was he/she, who were their parents? Where did they live? What did their lockers consist of? What were their, siblings, bad habits? Everything! One of his favorite cases was from Sri Lanka. Twins, who looked very different and behaved very differently. Once they learned speaking, one said —
“I was killed by being shot at by a policeman.”
In 1971, the family laughed it off but the elder brother didn’t stop. So they decided to check.
He claimed to have lived in a village named Balapitiya and used to go to a city named Ambalangonda for schooling., And while he was being taken there, he told about his family’s property. His aunt, who made him chilies ( local cuisine, ) and the most astonishing thing, was that he claimed to have written his name in a wall corner. While the house was being constructed on wet cement in his past life. And no one in the family knew about this.
More than 3000 such cases of reincarnation have been documented by him alone. After him, his students documented many more such cases. Many more stories aren’t shared as being able to recall past lives, mainly because it is considered a bad omen. It is thought to be inauspicious. This sums up the knowledge gathered by human perception.
What our scriptures say about SOUL will be discussed in the next article. If you have any questions/doubts related to the topic of soul, ask them in the comments, and we will try to answer them in future articles. And in the next article, we will inform about: How the soul enters a body? Where does it live? How does it choose a body? What is its capacity? What can it do? How does it attain “SIDDHI”? How does it work?
… and everything around this.
Until next time, Hare Krishna!
What do you say now? Is there life after death?
Follow the soul’s journey past the universe. Srila Prabhupada, India’s most renowned Vedic authority presents startling evidence of the soul’s incredible journey after death, how the soul travels from body to body, and how we can end the cycle of birth and death by reaching the ultimate abode.
The importance of spiritual life and the step-by-step procedure to realize is it yourself is described very elaborately in the book Srimad Bhagavatam, A detailed study of Bhagavad Gita, the timeless jewel from the Indian Vedic texts. This book gives a complete understanding of this subject.
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