Professor Gerald Schroeder

Quantum Physics: Mind Beyond Brain; Life Beyond Death

Among the basic drives that we humans have, two are dominant: the desire to live and the will to be master of our minds. In one sentence biblical theology catches both: “I place life and death before you … therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The irony is that scientifically neither of these fundamental desires lies within our grasp. Death inevitably catches life, and though we may feel that we control our will, legions of neurologists will testify that the same laws of nature that control the material world outside of our brain, control the neurological processes within our brain, and for the deterministic classical physics of Isaac Newton, that is true. If we are going to retain life and personal will we must discover a way to evade the limitations of nature. The world of the quanta does exactly that.

The quantum revolution has turned our understanding of the world on its head. Most significantly, it has discovered dimensions that exist beyond the physical, metaphysical dimensions that interact with the physical world we observe. Hi-tech industry, your iPhone, prove this daily. Physical metaphysical duality is fundamental to existence.

Three and a half centuries ago Rene Descartes described our conscious processes as the product of a mind brain duality. In Descartes’ time other than in theology there was no physical proof for the metaphysical and certainly no proof for his speculation of a mind brain duality. Today we know that duality is fundamental to the very substrate of all existence. And most amazingly, the same neurologists who insist that mind is totally the perception and projection of the physical brain, have discovered the neurological part of the brain that is in contact with the duality of the metaphysical mind. In that duality reside our life beyond death and our minds beyond our brains.