A newspaper in Spain has interviewed, with no materialist bias, neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín about life, death and consciousness beyond the brain.
SCREEN SHOT from lavanguardia.com
La Vanguardia newspaper published an interview on January 19 with Barcelona-born theoretical physicist turned neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín, who recently published a book exploring the mysteries of death and consciousness, “La Ciencia del Último Umbral” (The science of the last threshold).
The headline of the article is a quote from Gómez-Marín and reads “Death is a change of phase in consciousness.” The neuroscientist had a Near-Death Experience in 2021. Now he admits, “Dying is one of the best experiences of life.”
“The mind is more than what the brain does, and life is more than biochemics,” and for us to understand consciousness and what happens with it at ‘the last threshold,’ science needs to embrace this,” Gómez-Marín told reporter Lluís Amiguet, whose questions revealed curiosity and an open mind.
For example, we still don’t understand why NDEs are “more lucid, veridical and transformative” the more damaged or shut down the brain is, Gómez-Marín said.
He spoke about the “scientific stool” that needs stand on “three legs”:
- The first leg deals with measuring the intangible, which is detecting the mind beyond the brain.
- The second attempts to think the impossible, which is to develop new theories of non-local consciousness.
- The third deals with “telling the unconfessable,” despite social taboos and scientific dogmas.
There are more than 350 theories of consciousness today, and more than half of those allow for the possibility of a continuation after death, Gómez-Marín pointed out. If – or when – neuroscience investigates consciousness in earnest, we might find the material substrate that allows the brain to filter consciousness, he believes.
From a physical point of view, he argued, we would be able to integrate the mysteries of the mind with the supposed theories of everything, which now are about “everything except what really is of interest to us: love, flavors, pain, life, death …”
Gómez-Marín heads the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias (Institute of Neurosciences) in Alicante, Spain, and serves as Director Emeritus of the Pari Center in Italy.
Written by Anders Bolling
Edited by Liza Horan
