Live From Larry King, it’s the Afterlife Letters!

As usual after appearing on such shows as Larry King Live, I receive lots of letters in response. And, predictably, the majority of letters tend to be critical or even hostile, although occasionally friends and colleagues will respond in a positively quotable way, such as this from a prominent biblical scholar and skeptic: “I salute you for your courageous, astute and elegant defense of reason against the unctuous airheads they lined up against you on Larry King. It was inspiring.” I wanted to reprint this one because “unctuous” so well describes one of the other guests on the show, Deepak Chopra, who I hadn’t noticed until I actually saw a few minutes of the show when it aired made several derogatory facial expressions and eye-rolls while I was speaking. Here are a couple of letters that arrived in my in-box the last couple of days (as usual, I leave spelling and grammar as is), the last two of which I thought were quite interesting and useful to know:

Dear sir

I don”t know you . but i watched you on debate after death on CNN with Dipak Chopara. I request that if you want to know about pure soul.so that you can get latest science of pure soul from Dada bhagvan.org. before you study his book you have to take two hours GYAN AS they show. they will have a programme in USA. SO YOU HAVE TO ATTEN FIRST “GYAN VIDHHI” .THEN YOU CAN UNDERSTAND BOOK OTHERWISE NOT . And all book in Gujarati language . few book  translated in english. but it cannot translate in english because of not proper words in english.

I think, you can get best thing here in your life. you can also bring your freind ,relative and deepak chopra and sanjay gupta too. they don”t know this. this  is latest soul science by Ambalal Patel means DADA BHAGVAN.

DON’T LOSE YOUR CHANCE WHEN THEY WILL COME TO USA. TAKE PART AS A COMMON PEOPLE. NOT AS MAGAZINE

WRITER..

I AM PEST HERE USA PROGRAMME .

7th July 2010  ———–  5:30pm to 9:00pm ———–Gnan Vidhi (Eng & Guj) ———-

CHECK SCHEDULE FROM WEBSITE ;-DADABHAGVAN .ORG

I AM ONLY INFORMER . HAPPY HOLIDAY.(My  PHONE :-416-438-2912 )

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Michael, I once had a total parachute failure at 2000 ft. I was 10 to 15  seconds away from hitting the ground at 200 mph. That made me a lot closer to death than that football ref on Larry King. But guess what, no tunnels, no lights, no sense of bliss, just extreme focus on the rip cord of my reserve chute. My point here is: why do we let the “near deathers” frame the discussion only in terms of cerebral anoxia? Millions and millions have been nearer to death than that particular subgroup (executees, accident near misses, war participants etc.) and they do not report such experiences. It’s not “just semantics” as the host suggests, framing the question is vitally important to finding an answer that makes sense. The reality is that these “death survivors” are no closer to death than some Joe sitting next to a bomb that doesn’t go off, because they DID NOT DIE! Anyway thank you for your persistent efforts on the part of rationality and an extra thank you for remaining civil to some very rude fools.

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The other night I turned the TV on to watch CNN and was pleasantly surprised to see you on Larry King Live. Unfortunately I got to watch only the later part of the interesting show about reincarnation. I have to tell you, I was shocked by what Dinesh was saying about brain death and what happens after brain death. He said, even after brain death consciousness and experience persist. I don’t think he has a good understanding of what brain death is all about. Brain death is confirmed only when EEG shows a flat line (cerebral electrical silence) or no blood flow to the brain on perfusion scans or two independent clinical exams by two separate physicians showing no clinical brain activity, including absence of respirations at PCO2 (Carbon Dioxide concentration in blood) of >60 ( increased Carbon Dioxide is a powerful stimulant of respiratory activity). Under those circumstances brain is pronounced to be dead. Even when brain is dead, heart and respiratory function can still be maintained by ventilator support. That’s why when we pronounce death we have to qualify if it is cardiac or respiratory or brain death. When brain is dead, consciousness, which is an activity of brain, ceases to exist. It does not leave brain and go somewhere else as Dinesh was suggesting. It’s like saying that when heart stops beating, the heartbeat leaves the heart and goes somewhere.

Another example is, saying that muscle contarction leaves the muscle and goes somewhere when the muscle dies. These are all just activities that exist only when their respective organs are alive and working. What was even more shocking to me was that Sanjay, who is a brain surgeon, was just sitting there quietly without correcting Dinesh’s misunderstanding and misrepresentation of facts! Also, I am surprised that Deepak is having hard time understanding what consciousness is all about. All he has to do is to understand the definition of consciousness. (Webster’s Dictionary is a good starting point). It defines consciousness as, awareness of oneself and surroundings. It is collection of thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories, all of which cease to exist when the organ (brain) responsible for those activities dies. Consciousness does not exist independent of nervous system. There is no cosmic consciousness (which he appears to be very fond of) because there is no cosmic brain.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein’s lingusitic philosophy says, most of the philosophical problems exist because people do not understand the limitation of language and think that words have concrete meanings, when, in fact, their meaning depends on the context and the emotion with which they are used. When the words, for example consciousness, are used and interpreted properly, many philosophical questions will be solved. Deepak was also aking who is “you” that is talking. That reminds me of Cartesian Dualism, which does not exist. Rene’ Descartes, a very intelligent man, did not have the advantage that people in 21st century have, i.e., accumulated knowledge and understanding of brain and mind  from years of study and research of brain’s structure and function. There is no single “you” or “I” that exists. Those words represent, unfortunately incompletely (due to limitation of language), different aspects of self or other person at different times, again, depending on the context.