| ZEN PHYSICS (what is this?) The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation David Darling 
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Truth sits on the lips of dying men.– Matthew Arnold
It may happen in five minutes or in fifty years, but at some point you will die. There is no escaping it. And then what? Will it be the end? Is death a void, a nothingness that goes on forever? Or is it merely a phase transition – the start of a new kind of existence, beyond our old bodies and brains? This is the ultimate question a human being can ask: the question of his or her own destiny. Yet to most people it must seem frustratingly unyielding, an impenetrable problem to which only death itself will bring a solution. Try as we might, we seem never to come any nearer to understanding what our final fate will be. So we look around in every direction for guidance, but what we are asked to believe depends on whom we listen to. When we are young, we quiz our parents, teachers, and friends about what happens when we die, but for the most part we are treated to platitudes, folk tales, or embarrassed hesitations. Later, perhaps less bright-eyed and more pragmatic, we may simply give up asking, having reached the unsatisfying conclusion that no one from the pope on down really has a better insight into the problem of death than we do. The priest, the physicist, the mystic, the brain physiologist, the fellow standing next to us in the bar – all may have something worthwhile to say, providing they are willing to break one of society's greatest taboos and talk freely about death. But their opinions are discouragingly diverse.
Still we cannot help wondering: Do we have a soul? Or are we nothing more than biological machines whose consciousness ends forever at the instant our organic works break down? If it turns out that there is nothing supernatural in the world – no spirits, no heaven, no God in the customary sense – does this also rule out the possibility of survival beyond the grave?
There are many profound, unresolved mysteries in the universe, but none that touches us so deeply and intimately as the mystery of death. It can be unnerving to realize that every breath we take may be our last, that we stand each moment on the brink of ... what? Everlasting life? Or eternal nonexistence?
The past two decades or so have seen a dramatic upsurge of popular interest in the possibility of an afterlife, similar to that around the turn of the nineteenth century when spiritualism created such a stir and was eagerly espoused by many as offering a possible portal on the world to come. Today's excitement stems mainly from numerous well-publicized stories of near-death experiences (NDEs). However, research into the phenomenon of NDEs, fascinating as it is, represents only one of many current lines of inquiry which can be used to deepen our understanding of what happens when we die. As I hope to show, enough is already known to begin a preliminary mapping of the terra incognita that lies on the other side of death – a mapping based not on faith or traveler's tales of worlds beyond (however valid these may be), but on direct logical and scientific inference.
Science has an outstanding track record. We have been able to apply it successfully to probing the origin of the universe, the composition of stars, the structure of atoms, the evolution of life, and a great range of other problems that might at one time have seemed well outside our scope. So there is no reason to suppose in advance that the problem of death should be scientifically intractable. On the contrary, we can start out with every hope of reasoning our way to a deep understanding of the process, meaning, and consequences of death.
At the same time, in tackling an issue like this, we need to recognize that it has both important objective and subjective elements. And, in fact, it is questions such as "What does death feel like?" and "What will death mean for me?" that interest us most on a personal level. The future of each of us as individuals and the threat that death poses to our identity, our very being, is what fascinates us above all else. Therefore, it would be missing the point to approach death in a too rigidly objective or reductionist frame of mind. We need the analytical tools of the physicist, yes. Rationality has to prevail if we are to make any progress at all. But it must be rationality tempered by a tolerant, human-centered outlook that allows into its inquiry not merely quantitative data but also the sincerely reported feelings and experiences of people who have encountered situations that are relevant in the context of death. Such an approach is more characteristic of Eastern modes of thought. Hence, Zen Physics: Zen for the subjective, Physics for the objective. But there is another, deeper reason for this choice of name, which, it will emerge, relates to the underlying nature of self and consciousness. We need, I believe, a whole-brain approach during life to appreciate what losing our brain at the point of death implies.
When I first began thinking seriously about the problem of death, some fifteen years ago, I held no firm beliefs about such things as the soul or the afterlife. If pressed, I would have said it was most likely that death was simply the end of us. But I have been surprised and profoundly influenced by what I have found.
Two main conclusions will be presented, both of which are remarkable and both of which, were it not for the force of evidence supporting them, might seem entirely beyond belief. The first is that a form of reincarnation is logically inescapable. There must be life after death. And there must, moreover, be a continuity of consciousness, so that no sooner have you died in this life than you begin again in some other. The second and even more significant conclusion is that far from giving rise to consciousness, the brain actually restricts it. Mind, it will become clear, is a fundamental and all-pervasive property of the universe.
Too often, science is seen as a potential destroyer of man's last hope of survival in a greater world. But this need not be so. Science after all simply means "knowledge." And you may find, as I have, that something akin to a spiritual – or at least a deep psychological – transformation can be achieved through logic and thought alone. Science, no less than mysticism and religion, offers a genuinely hopeful path to the future.
Related books by David Darling (click on a cover to begin reading):
