Continuing Consciousness...
&The Story of Life©
The Story of Life is a labor of love in dedication to my very own heart, Brandi Nichelle Hoffman.
BOOK FORMAT & PRESENTATION
This will be a coffee table style book 11"X17" that will be lavishly graced with illustrations and supporting arguments from some of the most respected intellects in their respective fields (See contributors below).
The writing will be a hybrid of regular text and the sequential narrative typical of a graphic novel. You are taken from the origins of the universe and consciousness and it's primal role in what we refer to as "matter."
We then work our way up to man and his biological mechanisms which presently do not account for self-awareness and the subjective experience. DeCaire thoroughly rejects meachanism as a replacement for agency.
THE STORY OF LIFE IN A NUTSHELL
Quantum experiments replicated for more than 80 years affirms that mind is not sepate from matter. Our brains are enclosed in solid bone and it is a certainty that light never reaches it; brains are engulfed in shadow. And yet we perceive both light and shadow and the associated emotional responses to each. As stated by the character Morpheus in the motion picture, The Matrix: "What is real is only electrical signals being interpreted by our brains." So what than is really "out there?" As observers caught up in the "phenomenon," will we ever really know the "noumenon?"
Many near death accounts give us a glimpse into this mystery where consciousness expands and for a brief moment sees space and time for what they really are: navigational tools for a limited and localized brain trapped within the constraints of linear time.
Are we souls inhabiting a body or merely an epiphenomenon of an unlikely arrangement of "dead matter?" What scientific support is there for consciousness being primal to reality and what are the implications for an afterlife? Is there a "god?" If so, is this a deistic god or a God that is personal or something in-between? Perhaps God's providence is reserved for the hereafter rather than the here-and-now hence resolving the problem of evil? Are we "god," or is this god what Max Planck describes as the "Mind that is the matrix of all matter?"
DeCaire takes you through a journey that describes his own transcendental accounts that have laid the foundation of conviction which make this book possible. He thoroughly rejects the psychiatric explanations of these supposed "brain" phenomena by reason of third-party validations.
The Story of Life will also take you through personal testimponies of transendental experiences that have mustered much media attention due to their transformative power.
If you have lost someone very close to you, it doesn't matter if you are a Christian or of any other particular faith; The Story of Life gives us GOOD reasons to believe that our loved ones who have passed on are still a part of our lives. The Story of Life gives us more than a convoluted rosy philosophy and the platitudes usually following loss in an effort to bring comfort to the grieving. There is solid scientific, experiential, and circumstantial evidence to more than suggest that there is, indeed, a Continuation of Consciousness & the ongoing Story of Life.
“He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion” (Einstein on the death of his friend, Michele Besso).
-Albert Einstein
Anecdotal Evidence
Q&A Session with M.J.
Spiritual Insights of Mary Jo Rapini
Little Bear's Daydream
My written devotion to Brandi Hoffman immediately above is translated into Chinese below:
我第一次与布兰蒂·霍夫曼（Brandi Hoffman）的相遇是在2003 年，在我的夏季天文学课上。这是故事的开始。即便是在当时，当她穿着一身老式风格的半旧衣服，顶着一顶大太阳帽走进教室的那一刻，我就知道，她是特殊的。她身上散发出了一些独一无二的，超凡脱俗的东西。甚至她的脸都是那样的红润、光泽，就如同上帝亲自碰触了她一样。仅仅只是看着她，我就知道，她看待的这个世界是不同的，她的宁静、端庄、甚至她那敏感的性格都折射出不同的光辉，就如同被煤块所包围的钻石一样。她曾寻找过这个世界的意义，即便在很多时候看来这么做是毫无意义的。她是永远想要融于自然的自然之子，她觉得自己与森林或者落日之景之间并没有任何隔阂。她是真理的探索者，她是天然的、一个完全亲和于上帝本质的思考者，从不缺少深刻的见解。生活在田园中心密歇根州的她，通过她自己的视点和独特的洞察力，定义上帝是一个“世界意识”。她对上帝的思索要远远超越于我。在我小小的思维中，我给了上帝一幅面孔，但是布兰蒂则认为上帝是没有面孔的。我相信上帝是完美的，而布兰蒂则相信上帝是不断进化的。我把上帝视为一个拥有非凡意识的独立存在，而布兰蒂则认为上帝是由各种各样的意图一起构成的。我认识的上帝是一个极度拟人化的存在，而布兰蒂的上帝则可用马克斯·普朗克（Max Planck，量子力学创始人，编者注）的一句话来形容，“所有物质的基体”（The Matrix of All Matter）。我努力的去了解她，但我得到的只是她那高贵的心灵和如星空般深邃思维的一瞥。而后在经历了只能由天使来描述的近7 年时间，充满关切的友谊之后，她让我明白了如何才能让一个人爱他人胜过爱他自己。我永远感激她，是她帮我完成了这生命旅程上重要的一课：爱与被爱。我爱布兰蒂，无人能出其右。就像在弗兰克·泽菲雷利的电影《简爱》（1996）中罗切斯特先生所说的那样“简，你真是一个奇怪而神秘的存在……”（Jane, you’re a strange and unearthlything...），布兰蒂即是如此。在如今这个遍布竞争、贪婪和浮躁的世界中，“奇怪”无疑是一个褒义词。自年仅23 岁的布兰蒂于2009 年12 月12 日不幸去世以来，我更加努力的去了解上帝。而动力则来自于，也只可能来自于这巨大的遗失所带来的冲击，我把此文献于布兰蒂·尼奇尔·霍夫曼（Brandi Nichelle Hoffman），我的心上人。学的越多，我越能用她的视野来看待这个世界，你知道的“小熊”，不知怎么，你就是知道。“如果天谴是正义的报酬，你还会选择正义吗？”布兰蒂·尼奇尔·霍夫曼
Contributors
Most contributors seen her have given me their express permission to quote and publish more than the legal 400 words allowed without that permission.
Professor Dean Radin, PhD,
Senior Scientist of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds.
See Dean here featured on the motion picture,
"What the Bleep do We Know": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es94cpyBgNM
Dean makes the case for PSI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew
Dr. Stuart Hameroff, M.D.,
anethesiologist and consciousness researcher at University of Arizona's University Medical Center.
See Dr. Stuart Hameroff on the televised Through the Wormhole, narrated by Morgan Freeman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6VGIYm2L-A&NR=1
Stuart makes the case for consciousness being a quantum epiphenomenon derivative from microtubules within the brain which access what is referred to as "space-time geometry" or "non-local mind." His "Orch-OR" theory is based on the theories of the renowned, Wolf Prize winning physicist, Sir Roger Penrose: http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZAVQjMf2fEQ
Dr. Bruce Greyson, M.D.,
Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia and near death researcher and inventor of the "Greyson Scale."
Bruce addresses the United Nations on this phenomenon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kUyFeSizr0
Metod Saniga, PhD,
European Astrophysicist of the Astronomical Institute, Slovak Acedemy of Science.
Metod uses near death experiences to clarify the nature of time:
http://www.ta3.sk/~msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdf
Vlatko Vedral, PhD,
Professor of Quantum Information Theory at Oxford and Singapore and author of Decoding Reality: The Universe and Quantum Information.Vlatko was recently featured in Scientific American's June 2011 issue and has demonstrated that quantum level weirdness works itself up into our larger macro-world and into higher temperatures. This may give support to Hameroff's theories on quantum level processing inside microtubules in neurons where they reside within the warmer environment exhibited by the human brain.
"Quantum mechanics is not just about teeny particles. It applies to things of all sizes: birds, plants, maybe even people."
Vlatko's article in Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=2864
Dr. Pim Van Lommel M.D.,
(b.1943) worked as a cardiologist at the Rijnstate Hospital, an 800-bed teaching hospital in Arnhem in the Netherlands, from 1977 to 2003. He published several professional papers on cardiology. In 1986, he began studying near-death experiences in patients who survived a cardiac arrest. Dr. Pim Van Lommel is author of Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near Death Experience. See Dr. Van Lommel here: http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/?Pim_van_lommel_eng
Van Lommel is featured in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOeLJCdHojU&feature=related
Peter Russell, M.A., D.C.S., F.S.P.,
studied mathematics and theoretical science and then branched off into experimental psychology due to his growing interest in the mysteries of the mind.
See Peter give a wonderful and humorous lecture on the Primacy of Consciousness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCLK2WwxIQU&feature=related
Mary Jo Rapini, L.P.C.,
Speaker, Psychotherapist, and Author of Is God Pink?
M.J. has shared her near death experience with FOX, Bob Woodward of ABC, Jerry deCaire for "Our Mythic World," and the TODAY Show which can be seen here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34953759/ns/today-today_people/t/doctor-claims-he-has-evidence-afterlife/
M.J was also featured in this hour long 2011 Broadcast by ABC Nightline in a "Beyond Belief" segment hosted by anchor Bob Woodruff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylcjjhvvddE&feature=sh_e_se&list=SL
Here's s preview of the main story which has its own controversial scoop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlQyKzXlb1w&feature=relmfu
Howard Storm,
Author, Art Professor, Theologian
See Howard featured on Unsolved Mysteries giving an account of his "hellish near death experience":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMsHacUJbmg
Dr. John Lennox, MA, PhD, DPhil, DSc
Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is also an adjunct Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum. In addition, he teaches for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Executive Education Centre, Said Business School, Oxford University. He studied at the Royal School Armagh, Northern Ireland and was Exhibitioner and Senior Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University from which he took his MA and PhD. He worked for many years in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff which awarded him a DSc for his research. He also holds a DPhil from Oxford University and an MA in Bioethics from the University of Surrey. He was a Senior Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Wuerzburg and Freiburg in Germany. In addition to over seventy published mathematical papers he is the co-author of two research level texts in algebra in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs series.
John, as an apologist, has debated the popular "New atheists" Christopher Hitchens ("God is Not Great"), Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), skeptic Michael Shermer, Oxford Chemist Peter Atkins, and others. His more publications include, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway?, and God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
See John comment on Stephen Hawkings assertion that so long as there is gravity we need not evoke a "god.": http://johnlennox.org/index.php/en/resource/stephen_hawking_and_god/
John argues the case for complexity here and it is my favorite, "Is Faith Delusional?": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5CqOovdzHA
Dr. William Lane Craig, MA, PhD, D.Theol.,
Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994. He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.
Dr. Craig debates Oxford Chemist Peter Atkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Y6ev152BA&feature=related
Dr. Robert Lanza, M.D.,
is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has hundreds of publications and inventions, and over two dozen scientific books: among them, “Principles of Tissue Engineering,” which is recognized as the definitive reference in the field. Others include One World: The Health & Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (Foreword by former President and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter), and the “Handbook of Stem Cells” and “Essentials of Stem Cell Biology,” which are considered the definitive references in stem cell research.
His mentors described him as a “genius,” a “renegade thinker,” even likening him to Einstein.” – U.S.News & World Report, cover story
Dr. Lanza received his BA and MD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. He was also a Fulbright Scholar, and was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo for the purpose of generating pluripotent stem cells. Dr. Lanza’s work has been crucial to our understanding nuclear transfer and stem cell biology. In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species (a Gaur), and in 2003, he cloned an endangered wild ox (a Banteng) from the frozen skin cells of an animal that had died at the San Diego Zoo nearly a quarter-of-a-century earlier.
Lanza and his colleagues were also the first to demonstrate that nuclear transplantation could be used to reverse the aging process and to generate immune-compatible tissues, including the first organ tissue-engineered from cloned cells. One of his greatest early achievements came from his demonstration that techniques used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis could be used to generate human embryonic stem (hES) cells without embryonic destruction. He and colleagues have also succeeded in differentiating human pluripotent stem cells into retinal (RPE) cells, and has shown that they provide long-term benefit in animal models of vision loss. Using this technology some forms of blindness may be curable. Lanza’s company is seeking FDA approval to begin clinical trials using them to treat degenerative eye diseases.
Lanza has been a major player in the scientific revolution that has led to the documentation that nuclear transfer/transcription factors can restore developmental potential in a differentiated cell. One of his recent successes was showing that it is feasible to generate functional oxygen-carrying red blood cells from human pluripotent stem cells. The blood cells were comparable to normal transfusable blood and could serve as a potentially inexhaustible source of “universal” blood. His team also discovered how to generate functional hemangioblasts – a population of “ambulance” cells – from hES cells. In animals, these cells quickly repaired vascular damage, cutting the death rate after a heart attack in half and restoring the blood flow to ischemic limbs that might otherwise have to be amputated.
Recently, Lanza and a team lead by Kwang-Soo Kim at Harvard University reported a safe method for generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Human iPS cells were created from skin cells by direct delivery of proteins, thus eliminating the harmful risks associated with genetic manipulation. This new method provides a potentially safe and non-controversial source of patient-specific stem cells for translation into the clinic. The Editors of the prestigious journal Nature selected Lanza and Kim’s paper on protein reprogramming as one of five “Research Highlights” of 2009. Discover magazine stated, “Lanza’s single-minded quest to usher in this new age has paid dividends in scientific insights and groundbreaking discoveries.”
Dr. Lanza has been called the “Bill Gates of Science.” Dr. Lanza has received numerous awards, including an NIH Director’s Award (2010) for “Translating Basic Science Discoveries into New and Better Treatments”; the 2010 “Movers and Shakers” Who Will Shape Biotech Over the Next 20 Years (BioWorld, along with Craig Venter and President Barack Obama); the 2007 100 Most Inspiring People in the Life-Sciences Industry (PharmaVOICE, “For his discoveries ‘behind the medicines making a significant impact on the pipelines of today and of the future’”; the 2007 Outstanding Contribution in Contemporary Biology Award (Brown University, “For his groundbreaking research and contributions in stem cell science and biology”; the 2006 All-Star Award for Biotechnology (MA High Tech, for “pushing stem cells’ future”); and the 2005 Rave Award for Medicine (Wired magazine, “For eye-opening work on embryonic stem cells”).
Lanza is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in American Education, and Who’s Who in Technology, among others. Dr. Lanza has served in numerous national and international leadership capacities, including Conference Co-Chairman, International Symposium on Stem Cells (Tianjin, China 2008); Stem Cell Advisory Committee, International Stem Cell Registry; He has given keynote addresses at dozens of national and international societies, including ASAIO (2001), Annual Molecular & Cellular Biology Symposium (2002), Biotechniques Live/Drug Discovery Technology & Development World Congress (2005), International Stem Cell Conference (2007), Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS)(2007), Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum (2010), among others.
Dr. Lanza and his research have been featured in almost every media outlet in the world, including CNN, TIME, Newsweek, People, as well as the front pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, among others. Lanza has worked with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter, renowned Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner (the “Father of modern behaviorism”), Jonas Salk (discoverer of the Polio vaccine), and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His current research and work at Advanced Cell Technology focuses on stem cells and regenerative medicine and their potential to provide therapies for some of the world’s most deadly and debilitating conditions.
In 2007, Lanza published a feature article, “A New Theory of the Universe” in The American Scholar, a leading intellectual journal which has previously published works by Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead, and Carl Sagan, among others. His theory places biology above the other sciences in an attempt to solve one of nature’s biggest puzzles, the theory of everything that other disciplines have been pursuing for the last century. This new view has become known as Biocentrism. In 2009, he co-authored a book “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” with leading astronomer Bob Berman. In biocentrism, space and time are forms of animal sense perception, rather than external physical objects. Understanding this more fully yields answers to several major puzzles of mainstream science, and offers a new way of understanding everything from the microworld (for instance, the reason for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the double-slit experiment) to the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe. Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas stated “Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole.”
You can read some of Lanza's biocentric views here: http://www.robertlanza.com/why-youre-alive-and-can-never-die-the-larger-scientific-picture/
Here's much more of his reading material: http://www.robertlanza.com/who-is-robert-lanza/
Paul Bernstein, Ph.D.,
Educational Services, MA., publishes studies on telepathy, intuition, and other paranormal research.
You can read his paper on intuition here:
http://www.awakening-intuition.com/INTUITION_-_WHAT_SCIENCE_SAYS__SO_FAR__ABOUT_HOW_AND_WHY_INTUITION_WORKS.pdf
Charles T. Tart, Ph.D.,
a Core Faculty member of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, is internationally known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology. His two classic books, Altered States of Consciousness (1969) and Transpersonal Psychologies (1975), became widely used texts that were instrumental in allowing these areas to become part of modern psychology. Tart's recent release is The End of Materialism.
See Dr. Tart on Life After Life: an HBO 90 minute documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFv5UcxQ7Xs
Marshan Raub, R.N.,
has been a registered nurse for the V.A. for more than 20 years. I need to make special note of her on a personal level. Marshan has gotten me through the darkest hours with her message of hope. You see, Marshan has had an amazing after death communication which defies the materialist explanation that visitations from apparitions are "grief induced"; Marshan saw an apparition of her friend Denise BEFORE she learned of her death and had no expectation beforehand of her demise and before her ADC. Marshan's account is believable and her only wish is to share that with others. She wants us to know that our loved ones are not gone. She wants us to know that their love lives on and one day we will be reunited with them.
You can see Marshan's ADC account here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cOe9sbGaY3YJ:www.beyondreligion.com/su_personal/ADCs-denise.htm+after+death+communication+AND+denise&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
"Brandi Nichelle Hoffman".
