Neurobiological Evidence for the Existence of God
Madhavendra Puri das
May 2005

Our article Evidence for the Existence of the Soul argued convincingly that each one of us is inherently different from the physical body and able to function independently of it (in other words, each one of us is transcorporal). I will briefly restate the argument here since it is the basis upon which a powerful argument for the existence of God rests.

First, note that psychological states are influenced by the chemical state of the brain. Drinking alcohol or taking certain drugs profoundly influences our psychological experiences. When certain parts of the brain are damaged, certain abilities are impaired or lost. Many people take this to mean that human beings are nothing more than their physical bodies and that the mind is nothing more than a name for complex electrochemical events in the brain: the physical brain and body are everything, and mind and consciousness are totally dependent on them.

But there is another hypothesis consistent with the facts: the hypothesis of a non-physical conscious self that monitors the brain and translates a particular pattern of electrochemical events in the brain into a particular psychological experience. For example, when you look at a man wearing a red shirt, a specific pattern of electrochemical events is established in your brain, and the conscious self recognizes this pattern and translates it into the experience of seeing a man wearing a red shirt. Because we are strongly addicted to enjoying our physical bodies (for example, try renouncing sex or your favorite foods), we have forgotten that we are inherently different from these bodies. This strong attachment to and identification with our bodies obliges us to accept the impairments and limitations arising from damage to our bodies, although we ourselves are never actually impaired or damaged. This identification generally persists until the body is completely unusable for sense gratification, at which time we abandon it and obtain another.

Reincarnation is supported by extensive empirical evidence published by scientists at major universities, as presented in our article Evidence for Reincarnation. This empirical evidence is very impressive due to the large database and careful documentation. Moreover, the article also eliminates alternative explanations, beginning with normal means of communication (including fraud), which is ruled out by the knowledge the subjects have of obscure, detailed and verified events in the lives of the identified previous personalities, who are generally ordinary people, which means that their lives were never publicized in any way. Next, ESP is ruled out. Then possession and intermittent influence by the discarnate previous personalities are ruled out, leaving reincarnation as the only viable explanation for the data. I recommend reading Evidence for Reincarnation, which provides the strongest case I have ever seen that each one of us is inherently different from the physical body and able to function independently of it.

Some scientists, who are unfortunately very vocal, dogmatically refuse to examine this evidence, and so they are unaware of how impressive the evidence for transcorporality actually is. But all scientists accept the findings of modern neurobiology as reported in thousands of papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and backed by hundreds of professors of neurobiology at the finest universities in the world. It is therefore very important to consider an argument for transcorporality based on this neurobiological evidence. The neurobiology of vision has been extensively studied during the last forty years at major universities around the world. There are a number of websites on this, for example the University of Utah website http://webvision.med.utah.edu/VisualCortex.html (See especially the scientific papers listed in the bibliography).

When light enters the eye, it is focused on the retina, which consists of highly-specialized cells at the rear of the eye. The retina transforms this light into complex electrochemical events, which are sent to the brain via the optic nerve. Hundreds of millions of neurons in various parts of the brain are involved in vision. A common form of electrochemical event, known as an action potential, is a triangular-shaped voltage wave that propagates along the output conduit (generally known as the axon) of a neuron. This voltage wave is created and sustained by a carefully-orchestrated flow of potassium and sodium ions through the cell walls of neurons and their axons. The orchestrated flow is mediated by highly-specialized molecules known as voltage-controlled protein gates, which are situated in the cell walls of neurons and their axons. For nice references on this, including animations, please see:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/matthews/channel.html

http://intro.bio.umb.edu/111-112/112s99Lect/neuro_anims/a_p_anim1/WW1.htm

http://bcs.whfreeman.com/thelifewire/content/chp44/4402002.html

http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/neurotut.html

http://www.tvdsb.on.ca/westmin/science/sbioac/homeo/action.htm


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