December 2024
Three recent publications in Swedish media address the science of consciousness and nonphysical phenomena. However, only one of them leaves the door open to non-materialist explanations.
The UAP phenomenon
A documentary on Swedish public service television, SVT, takes on the growing public interest in UAPs and the possibility of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The framing of the program is that there is a ‘battle’ going on between diverging factions with quite dissimilar interpretations of the phenomenon.
The filmmaker, Kalle Ström, is also an ethnologist, and he takes great interest in the behavioral aspect and the inner life of people who adhere to the respective factions.
The only UFO/UAP outfit that is reasonably well-known among the Swedish public is also the most establishment friendly one. It has dominated commentary relating to UAP events for many years in Swedish mainstream media. The group is decidedly reductionist and consistently stresses that almost all UAP observations can be explained by natural factors.
Some perceive this as crass and stiff. In particular those who claim to have had close encounters themselves, or have a more spiritual view in general, find the reductionist approach provocative.
People in this category have started forming competing groups with a wider outlook. They openly connect the UAP phenomenon with lost ancient civilizations, and they organise gatherings for focused meditation and attempts to establish contact with extraterrestrial entities.
Some participants in the spiritually oriented groups were uncomfortable when the film team arrived. “You risk being judged and placed in the tin foil hat category”, said one woman.
It is fascinating to see a clash of worldviews in this context. The Swedish documentary exposes a not so well-documented aspect of polarization in human society.
Near-Death Experience (NDE)
Tabloid Aftonbladet writes about the Near-Death Experience of Amber Cavanagh, a Canadian healer and psychic medium, whose visit to ‘the other side’ prompted her to write a book, “At the Stroke of Eternity”.
Cavanagh was 43 in 2021 when she suffered two strokes and entered what she depicts as the ‘meeting point’ of heaven.
She describes death as ‘the most incredible experience’. She saw herself in her best version and met every human and every pet she has ever encountered in this life. Communication was telepathic. It felt like home. There was no fear, only love, and an indescribable serenity.
Just as many other NDEers have described it, Amber Cavanagh had to make a choice: Stay or go back to physical life. She chose to go back because she had young children.
Aftonbladet gives a fair representation of Cavanagh’s story In the main article. But at the end, it adds a ‘fact box’ which basically dismisses the large body of serious research that has been done on NDEs in recent decades. Parts of the NDE that are best understood as expressions of a nonphysical reality are taken down under the stern subheading, “Possible explanation”:
- A lack of oxygen in the retina can explain the sense of going through a tunnel with a bright light at the end.
- A ‘short circuit’ in the brain can explain the sense of leaving the body.
- The excretion of noradrenaline and dopamine due to lack of oxygen can explain the feeling of love and a connection with the cosmos.
- The brain’s conflation of two states of consciousness can explain meeting dead relatives.
None of the major NDE scientists are mentioned.
The story of Cavanagh’s NDE has been told internationally, with varying angles. The Daily Mail’s piece about it, for example, comes across as truer to her experience. It doesn’t come with materialist caveats.
The ‘consciousness war’
Science magazine Forskning & Framsteg (Research & Progress) describes in a long article the latest turns in the so-called ‘consciousness war’ (the ongoing debate surrounding how, if at all, the brain produces conscious experience). The magazine’s writer Per Snaprud reports from this year’s convention of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, in Tokyo.
Snaprud intercepts a low-key quarrel between two prominent researchers, Hakwan Lau and Liad Mudrik, and interviews a third, Megan Peters. All three were in different ways involved in the triggering of the ‘war’ last fall.
The bombshell event was an open letter, written by, among others, Lau and Megan, in September, in which the Integrated Information Theory, IIT, was called ‘pseudoscience’, a label that amounts to the most damning criticism one can give in academia. There is concern that the heightened tone now risks damaging the entire field of research, not just IIT.
Lau and colleagues are working on an expansion of the open letter for publication in a scientific journal. They have decided to stick to labeling IIT as ‘pseudoscience’, Snaprud writes.
Could it be that theories that are called ‘pseudoscience’ are the ones that are the closest to the nonphysical, spiritual realm?
Christof Koch, one of IIT’s leading proponents, has moved in that direction. He had a spiritually transformative experience a few years ago, and wrote a book about it.
The Forskning & Framsteg article displays the ongoing academic bicker in a snappy manner, but unfortunately it makes no serious attempt to go into the subject itself. Consciousness is described more or less as any other aspect of biological life, like digestion or blood circulation. A sentence like, “There is a great interest in consciousness among ordinary people”, is like saying, “There is a great interest among ordinary people in the fact that they exist”.
The headline of the article is rather dramatic: “Scientists are portrayed as mass murderers”. It alludes to a tweet on X by philosopher David Chalmers, in which he wrote that calling the IIT hypothesis ‘pseudoscience’ is like dropping a nuclear bomb over a regional dispute. That metaphor is perceived as “extremely insensitive” in Japan, according to Lau: “He thus portrays his younger colleagues as mass murderers”.
Snaprud likely has covered consciousness research most among Swedish journalists. In 2018, he published a book that summarized the new findings since consciousness re-emerged as an accepted research field in mainstream science.
From an academic standpoint, the book is useful and well-written, but it is a disappointment for readers who are searching for a long-awaited merging of science and spirituality. Snaprud’s book ends just as he cautiously begins to ask the big questions.
Conclusion: It’s great to see consciousness being covered by the Swedish press, but there’s clearly a materialist bent that could be balanced by interviewing current researchers of consciousness.
Anders Bolling
