Night train photograph © *blackRose*. All rights reserved. |
The Illusion of Death is a rational examination of what might happen to us after we die, guided solely by science, reason, and logic.
How human awareness and consciousness come about is one of the greatest human mysteries. It is commonly assumed that each person has his or her own personal consciousness in much the same way that individuals have their own fingerprints. You are you, and you stay that way throughout your life.
With the failure of science to locate a “seat of consciousness” within the human brain, it is now generally believed that human consciousness is a product of the interaction of the various parts of the brain as it goes about its many functions. Memory, sensation, perception, language, and emotion all work together to generate a strong sense of self in much the same manner as the color white is created when beams of red, green, and blue light are added together. While the “color” white does not exist by itself, it is generated by an interaction of those primary colors. So it seems logical to deduce that some combination of something (brain structure or patterns) causes you to be you and not someone else. Each consciousness has its own unique combination of “something” that gives rise to it and it alone, and not to a different consciousness.
The particular combination that yielded your consciousness has occurred once; after all you are alive, aware, and reading this web page. What, then, is there to prevent the same combination from occurring once again after you die, causing you to be conscious and alive anew? This is the central question that Dr. John Dworetzky discusses in The Illusion of Death. |
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