Mysteries of Consciousness: In Defense of the Mysteries

By David D. Weisher

Man is by nature a philosophical being. Wars are fought over philosophical differences of social-economics, religion, geopolitics and racial arrogance.

Arguably, the greatest philosophical quest of mankind has been the overwhelming desire to know Self; to understand the nature of being. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Are we just a roll of the dice in the universe or is there orchestration in our existence? Socrates, Plato, Phathagoras, Nietzsche all had philosophies of human consciousness and the nature of being. This book brings a message from the beyond to help answere these questions.

I think, therefore I am does not answer the question. What is the I am? Are you the sum aggregate of an epiphenomenon of random firing neurons that simply no longer exist after the complex system dies or are you a spirit that temporarily resides in this brain machine that is liberated upon the death of this complex neurological system? These two philosophies are not only basic, they are opposite and opposing. Both can not be true. Either Life is a kaos between two nothings or it is a complex and dynamic co-existence between the physical and spiritual worlds. This book examines this question like no other because of the unique background of the author. Not only is he a Neurologist, giving him a position of some authority on this subject, but he is also an engineer, which contribute a degree of logic to the equation. His past profession as a mixed gas deep sea diver gives a bold practical presentation to the subject of near death experience.

At one time during the authors youth, he was firmly convinced that human consciousness was machine in nature only and ceased to exist with death of the brain-machine. He no longer holds this view because of his personal experiences as a neruologist and has thus been willing to be open minded. This book is the result of (and an explanation for) this change of view. It present the argument for Dualism (Co-existence of spirit and brain) in personal, scientific and intellectual terms.

This book challenges the reader; to open his or her eyes, think outside the narrow western religious box, and perhaps move a little closer to God.

Chapter one tells the authors personal story and how his experience of simply listening to patients helped him think outside the box.

Chapter two presents the argument for dualistic philosophy on purely scientific and neurological terms.

Chapter three reviews selected cases in current literature and examines them from a neurological perspective.

Chapter four reviews selected cases in current literature supporting reincarnation.

Chapter five helps integrate this knowledge with western Judeo-Christian philosophy and helps us understand the origins of the western view.

The Book is meant to be small so that it will be read. As an engineer, the author is inclined to straight talk as opposed to bull verbiage. I think you will find this little yellow book fascinating, provocative and thought provoking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 2, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462839964

David D. Weisher

ABOUT THE AUTHOR After a brief career in mixed gas deep sea diving (for the oil companies) and aerospace computer engineering, Dr. Weisher left it all behind and went to medical school and then completed a Neurology residency from Georgetown University in 1988. He also completed a fellowship in Electrical neuro-diagnostics and sleep science. He kept very busy running a Neurology practice in the Washington DC area, teaching residents and post graduate students Neurology, and on staff of six hospitals. He now has left the big city life behind and currently lives in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, where he practices Neurology and Hyperbaric Diving Medicine at the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital in St. Thomas. When he has time, he enjoys sailing and scuba diving. The root word for Doctor comes from Latin - Doceo- meaning to teach. Dr. Weisher will freely admit that his real education began when he started listening to patients which sparked a revolution in his philosophy. His firm belief was that there was no soul, apart from the brain and the Near-death phenomenon was merely an hallucination. However his near-death patients caused him to change his mind. This small book is a testimony of that change. It begins with his childhood challenge with dyslexia and his personal and professional experience with the near death phenomenon. He then explains current scientific thought on this subject. He reviews selected case histories of near-death and discusses transmigration. He then reveals how an understanding of the near death experience both scientifically and intellectually will revolutionize our spiritual awareness. The author believes that this will some day bring man closer to man and hence closer to God. The true goal of religion should bring men together in peace, not separate us, fostering distrust, paranoia and fanning the flames of war.

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Copyright © 2005 by David D. Weisher MD.

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Contents

Me

Chapter One

The Argument: My Story and the Confrontation of Brain vs. Spirit

Chapter Two

The Scientific Argument:

The Traditional Neuroscientific Explanation for Consciousness and NDE

Chapter Three

Current Literature and the NDE:

A Few Selected Cases of Neurological Interest

Chapter Four

Reincarnation: Selected Case

Histories Deemed Most Provocative

Chapter Five

The Purpose: Western Theological Evolution and Consciousness Beliefs

Epilog

Bibliography

(And suggested further readings)

Me

Who is the man

behind these eyes?

Who sheds the tears?

Who laughs and cries?

Is not the brain

the mind?

But who’s what

and what’s mine?

Am I simply neurocircuits

of an electrical scheme?

Or is there a life

deep inside, yet unseen?

Nay, says the skeptic

for you are a machine

and the concept of a soul

is but a dream.

For you are you

and the you is your brain

that laughs, cries,

and feels the pain.

But I say at risk

of being dumb,

what part of the brain

does the question come from?

For when the brain is divided

and all parts identified,

where’s the soul or self

that’s gone when I die?

I am more than this.

More than nerves and flesh.

More than face, eyes, and voice

and all the rest.

For when all is gone

and no flesh to see,

there will be something

and that will be me.

         —David D. Weisher

Chapter One

The Argument: My Story and the Confrontation of Brain vs. Spirit

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

—Socrates, in response to the oracle of Delphi, who called him the wisest of the Greeks, circa 390 BC

There comes a time in one’s life when one must make decisions for oneself and cast aside previously ill-conceived conclusions or inherited beliefs. A time for true objective investigation and evaluation without prejudice or forethought. A time to question authority and take independent action, as well as independent thought. I have experienced such a time, and this is my story and these are some of my discoveries.

I was raised under the influence of my parents and my mother’s sisters. My parents were fundamentalist Christians and espoused a firm belief in the eventual Second Coming of Jesus, resulting in the Resurrection and a good life ever after, provided one was good in this life. My parents, like most Christian fundamentalists, believed that one has only one life in this world, and at death, consciousness expires, resulting in a sort of suspended animation, awaiting the Second Coming and Final Judgment. Such a doctrine inspires the belief that death is a state of nothingness awaiting the Second Coming of Christ when the graves will be opened—some to eternal life while others to eternal damnation. This is often referred to as a one-life-one-judgment philosophy and is typically Western in ideology. At no point in my upbringing was there any influence in the belief of an immortal soul that goes on after death or reincarnates into another body. This philosophy was for the unenlightened and the unintelligent.

My aunts (who claimed to have raised me since they lived in our home for many years), on the other hand, had a very different belief. They saw the concept of God as a figment of the human imagination to be exploited for the common good. They believed in only one life, and that one should make the most of it. This was obtained by having lots of money, lots of fun, and being forever sexually attractive. One aunt would say, when asked her age at sixty, I am sexty, and in sex years, I will be sexty-sex.

While my family was very comfortable economically, my aunts could have been considered very rich. They were always traveling around the world, having fun and spending lots of money. Another aunt (who looked like Marilyn Monroe) used to take pride in the fact that she always wore at least $50,000 worth of jewelry (a lot of money in the late 1950s) and would often brag, even in the presence of us children, of her many sexual exploits. I recall being about five years old when one aunt would wave twenty-dollar bills in my face and, looking me in the eyes, say, Remember this: there is no God, only this (while stuffing my pockets full of money). So regarding my early upbringing, you might say that I was caught between twenty-dollar bills and the Second Coming of Christ, which left no room for any belief in consciousness after death.

During my early educational years, I proved to be a very difficult student. My single major accomplishment was that I was able to graduate year after year with no higher grades than Fs or Ds. I attribute this accomplishment to loving, well-meaning, and affluent parents. Contributions to various school projects can have its dividends, and in my case, I was benevolently ignored. However, after almost a year of psychological testing, I was taken out of eighth grade, labeled mentally retarded, and put in class with funny-looking people, who also acted funny and made funny noises. My parents were told by the psychologist that I was unfit for formal education, and college was out of the question. At their suggestion, I began plans to become a barber (I was good at making change). I thank my parents for the fact that the following year, they moved me to another school. The principal discovered that I was solving all the algebra and geometry problems for the other students, and with his encouragement and insistence, I planned for college and an engineering career. I have no bitter feeling about this for little was known about my learning disorder, dyslexia, in the sixties. Fortunately, education has substantially progressed since then. Anyway, one might say that I’m an official card-carrying member of the mentally challenged—which may explain my somewhat simplistic, if not limited, writing skill.

This experience also nurtured a degree of resentment to God. If God made me, then he made me intellectually inferior. Therefore, why should I have to love him? After all, if he made me, then he is the one responsible for the almost-overwhelming burden placed upon me. I fought daily, with every cell of my being, to overcome the intellectual deficit as well as the shame of being labeled mentally retarded. It thus became easier to deny God’s existence and consider myself simply a quirk of nature.

Despite that, part of my education was parochial. As I became older, my traditional spiritual beliefs dwindled. My college training was in electrical engineering. Fearing the boring life of the typical engineer, upon graduation I pursued a life-long dream and began my career as a mixed-gas, deep-sea diver. Life under water proved very hard, very dangerous, and at that particular time, rather foolish. After being given up for dead on six separate deep-diving accidents, I realized that one could be very seriously injured in this line of work (and very seriously dead). Therefore, with the firm belief that death is rather permanent, I reversed careers and took a job with Guarett Air-Research in LA, California.

While at Guarett Air-Research, I helped develop the computers for the F-14 Tomcat and B-1 Bomber. My forte was developing computers involved in supersonic planes with wing-sweep, which explains F-14 and B-1 (being the only modern American planes with wing-sweep). By any definition, I could have been considered a success, but I was still not satisfied. As I became more involved in high-tech computers, I began to contemplate the nature of human consciousness. The reason for this philosophical contemplation is that some of the air-data computers being developed at that time could actually remember the various input parameters, which affected their output results. The purpose of this was to maximize their flight envelope (performance) under varying conditions. Isn’t this a lot like human behavior? I thought. After all, don’t we input data through our sensors of sight, sound, and touch, and doesn’t that affect our behavior? I wondered if it were possible for man’s technology to someday achieve a level that goes beyond behavior and into the realm of consciousness. Could man create a truly thinking machine, not simply mimicking a form of consciousness, but actually an individual with a separate form of consciousness?

I could not stop thinking about this issue and consequently resolved to change careers and study cerebral science. I thought of psychology as well as psychiatry. Psychology I immediately discounted because of my experience with that subject in college. At my first exposure to it, the field was full of Freudian ideology, and so much other bullshit that it was considered a no brainer and an easy A for those wanting to fatten their GPA for postgraduate school. I wanted a real and objective science and thus refused to enter a field of study that sacrificed those ideals. Psychiatry, I thought, might be more scientific, but after reading some of my brother-in-law’s books (he was a psychiatrist), I discounted that field for the same reasons. In the last two decades, both of these fields have substantially improved and are now in the scientific mainstream. Neurology seemed to be the only field that was truly objective and scientific, and with the development of the CAT scan in the late 1970s, I resolved that this was the field for me.

By anyone’s definition, I was what one would call a success when I made this career decision. I had money, respect, and a beautiful home in Palos Verdis California with the Pacific Ocean at my backdoor; yet I wanted to sacrifice all and go to medical school. My mother thought that I had flipped out of my mind. Being affluent and single (thus free to do as I pleased), I still had one major problem: what medical school would accept me? Although my college premed GPA was very good (I believe it was around 3.90), being over twenty-seven years old, I was told no school would accept me, medical school application boxes being full to overflowing at that time. Then I was told of the Autonoma Universidad de Guadalajara Medical School in Mexico and investigated that possibility. I have known some fine medical doctors that graduated from there and felt that it might be for me. However, I had another problem: the entire course of study was in Spanish (exams, lectures, everything), and I had never had a course in any language. I only knew one Spanish word—no (as I had been informed it was the same in English).

After I was accepted, I signed my first tuition check, sold the Jaguar, bought an old Dodge Duster, filled it with all my earthly valuables (mainly books), and headed south of the border (down Mexico). I guess you might say I either had two big ones or was simply stupid, for I soon realized that very