Soul : Theory of consciousness.

When we ask people about do they believe in soul. Some may say ‘yes’ while some may answer ‘no’. Many religious people do believe in soul but when we ask ‘what does soul mean?’, they don’t have an exact answer. There is currently no scientific evidence of the soul. There are only some predictions made by scientist which does not prove existence of soul. So, the question arises that does the soul exist, or it’s a religious belief or just an imagination. People may make joke about, but this remains a question where we go after we die.

Here, I will compare consciousness with the soul particle. Firstly, what does conciousness mean? To simplify the word, it’s the awareness of internal or external existence. The consciousness creates the materialistic universe. It is considered that the body generates consciousness. So, when body dies, the conscious part of us also dies. But it’s not true. In fact, conciousness can be present out of space and time. It can be everywhere. Therefore, there is a part of you which is non-material and will live after the death of your physical body.

The Book ‘Biocentrism’, which is about how life and conciousness are the keys to understanding the nature of universe. In this, the writer gives an example that how a turtle carries its shell, the same way we carry time, space and our physical body. Once the shell comes off, our consciousness moves back to the universe. He says that its non other than our conciousness that creates the materialistic universe. The writer also believes that multiple universe can exist simultaneously. So, we may be dead in one universe while may be alive in another. Which means soul of a dead person while traveling through tunnel ends up into the hell or heaven. Or we can say that when we die, we transform into a new universe or dimension.

However, quantum physics proves that the physical world we are surrounded in, the physical body we have and the physical objects in the universe is nothing more than an illusion. The world around us is nothing but a hologram which our brains perceive via a consciousness which we have given before birth. Consciousness before birth, which we call ‘Ensoulment’ that is a moment at which a human gains a soul. As per this, an argument continued for years that whether human embryos have souls from conception, or there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul or consciousness. To answer this, it is believed that the human soul enters the forming body (embryo) at 40 days (male embryo) or 90 days (female embryo). The quickening that is the fetal movement is considered as an indication of presence of soul. Many religious views that ensoulment happens at the time of conception; or when the child take first breath after birth; or at the formation of brain activities or nervous system development (example- heartbeat). This concept closely relates the morality of abortion and morality of contraception.

Rather than religious concept, science believes in visible, concrete things using objective data. But, since the era of quantum physics, invisible things and fleeting events have entered science. A new quantum theory of conciousness called “Orch OR”- orchestrated objective reduction – states that the quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons give rise to conciousness. The ‘Orch OR theory’ asserts that those brain microtubules allows conciousness out from the brain and body, distributed and entangled in space time geometry. Therefore, it can be possible that the quantum information can exist outside the body as a soul.

To end this discussion, I would say about a process described by Dr. Stuart Hameroff who is an American anesthesiologist – “let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large.”