Jeffrey Mishlove PhD, The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death

Pushing Boundaries with Dr. Thomas R Verny

My guest today is Jeffrey Mishlove PhD, clinical psychologist, host of the podcast, New Thinking Allowed, and author of an encyclopedic volume of consciousness studies, The Roots of Consciousness. Dr. Mishlove is a scientist known worldwide for his serious research on unexplained phenomena. He was recently awarded the Bigelow Institute Competition Grand Prize for his paper Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.
Jeffrey was studying criminology when at age 27 he had a “dream” about his uncle Harry that changed the direction of his life. He quit criminology and switched into para-psychology at University of California at Berkeley. Since that time, he has worked tirelessly in this field and has become a scientist known worldwide for his serious research on unexplained phenomena.
How do you get living, viable consciousness out of dead particles. It's been a thorn in the side of neuroscientists and philosophers for probably centuries. From a discussion of this subject we move to exploring James William James theory, that the brain is the filter of consciousness instead of its source. We would be overwhelmed if we were aware of everything all at once. So, the brain really serves as a reduction valve of sorts. People who have a dysfunction of the brain, for example, in a near death experience, often report this wider cosmic consciousness or mystical visions.
How does this filter work, physiologically speaking? Not being a neuroscientist, Jeffrey states that the whole universe is mind like, rather than physical. And so, one could say that it's not so much that the mind exists inside the brain, but that the brain exists inside the mind. And that somehow, being humans as we are, and with the sense of separation, you and I are, we live inside different skins. This membrane is not the whole story, it's only valid at one level of our being at another level the membranes open up and we have access to ultimately each other's consciousness. That is the how a medium or spiritualist is able to connect with deceased people, for example.
The consciousness realms described in near-death reports are detailed. As are the reincarnation studies by Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia, Department
of Perceptual Studies, containing a database of over 2,500 individual cases.
Next week my guest will be will be Dr. Martha Atkins, author of Signposts of Dying: What You Need to Know. Dr. Atkins has worked with grieving and bereaved children and families at end-of-life for the past thirty years.
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