Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (40 page)

Epigenetics also involves the study of all the processes involved in an organism’s development. Its approach to these processes is fundamentally different from Darwin’s evolutionism, in which, independent of environmental factors, only natural selection and random variation play a decisive role. Could the origins of life on earth, along with the origins of the many different species of plants, animals, and eventually humans, as well as the origins of an incredibly complex molecule such as DNA, be explained through coincidence alone? To quote nineteenth-century biologist and zoologist Edwin Grant Conklin, “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”

In the next few sections I will come back to the basic principle of epigenetics that DNA function is determined by information outside of the DNA because it forms the foundation of my view on the role of DNA as interface between nonlocal consciousness and the ever-changing body.

The Possible Function of Junk DNA

What exactly is the function of DNA? The euphoria that greeted the discovery of the complete structure of human DNA has since subsided a little because the precise mechanism of DNA has become increasingly unclear. The function of junk DNA in particular has continued to perplex the scientific community. Scientists had originally hoped to discover the genes underlying certain illnesses and to use them to find cures. They have indeed identified some genes that play a part in certain malignant or hereditary diseases, but the precise mechanism remains a mystery.

Is the information stored
inside
a gene because of a particular sequence of A, G, T, and C, or does the gene merely provide access to information? Can DNA receive instructions via (nonlocal) information exchange? As mentioned, this is the theoretical premise of epigenetics. Computer expert Simon Berkovich posits that 95 percent of DNA with an as-yet-unidentified function, junk DNA or intron, might be used for identification purposes, comparable to the bar codes that contain all important information about products that are bought and scanned at the supermarket checkout. Needless to say, with three billion base pairs, DNA has a vast number of information-coding options. Berkovich sees DNA as the individual access code to individual information, shared information (of the species), as well as morphogenetic (formative) information stored in nonlocal space. Similarly, physicist Rosario N. Mantegna suggests that the noncoding regions of DNA (junk DNA) might play an important role in biological information exchange.
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The development of DNA in living organisms is a nonlocal affair and, because of this nonlocality, therefore a quantum process, which makes it—in keeping with the orthodox, “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum physics—a fundamentally unknowable process. According to the quantum physicist Niels Bohr, life is unknowable, and quantum physics, given its incompleteness, can never provide a scientific explanation for life processes. In his “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum physics, life is viewed as complementary to the physically verifiable, just like waves and particles are complementary aspects of all elementary processes. Not the development itself but only the result of the development of macromolecules such as DNA or protein can be demonstrated. Most quantum physicists believe that all molecular and submolecular processes are influenced and coordinated from nonlocal space and therefore immeasurable. Quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger posited as early as 1944 that DNA might be a nonstatistical macromolecule; according to his theory, DNA could function as a “quantum antenna” for nonlocal communication.
Nonstatistical
(unpredictable, chaotic) processes are quantum mechanical processes, which originate in nonlocal space for living organisms, as opposed to
statistical
(predictable, orderly, regular) processes, which originate in the nonlocal space of dead matter. Schrödinger speculates that the DNA of living organisms has “receptor” or “resonance” potential for receiving and decoding information from nonlocal space. Physicist and computer scientist Peter Marcer too believes that a living organism can obtain its nonlocal and holographic information only through DNA. All information is present and stored as wave functions in nonlocal space and is thus nonlocally accessible and essential for the complex organization and evolution of living organisms.
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Anesthesiologist and consciousness researcher Stuart Hameroff, by contrast, sees DNA as a potential quantum computer, in which the three billion base pairs function as qubits (quantum bits), with bits in a quantum superposition of
both
1 and 0. In a normal computer this is
either
1
or
0. Quantum superposition occurs during the coherent organization of photons and the self-organization of biological processes.
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Biophotons

In the 1920s biologist and medical scientist Alexander Gurwitsch discovered that ultraviolet radiation plays an essential role in cell division. Since 1972 researchers have been studying the release of photons in living organisms, known as biological luminescence. Much of this research has been carried out by biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp and bioscientist Marco Bischof, who developed the concept of biophotons. The research has been comprehensively documented in Bischof’s book
Biophotonen
.
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Living cells emit coherent light, a pulsating stream of tens of thousands of photons per sec/cm
²
, which is about one hundred million times weaker than daylight but can still be registered with special cameras. The light spectrum of these biophotons has a frequency ranging from 200 to 800 nanometers (in the range of ultraviolet to infrared light). This extremely low intensity coherent light (“biological laser”) appears to be involved in intracellular communication, which has prompted the hypothesis that electromagnetic and other coherent fields are responsible for directing biological functions such as cell growth, cell differentiation, and cell division. This is known as bioinformation. Because the release of biophotons has been demonstrated only in the DNA and cell nuclei of living, fractioned (divided into pieces) cells of plants and mammals, Popp and Bischof view the DNA molecule as the probable source for the creation of a coherent field of photons, for which reason it could function as interface between nonlocal space and the living organism. A review article by Dutch cell biologist Roel van Wijk details the current state of scientific research into the origins and effects of information exchange by biophotons. But even though no specifics of the biophoton theory have been refuted so far, and researchers have actually corroborated many aspects, the theory still lacks definitive proof.
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What is the source or the origin of the photons that originate in living systems? In the previous chapter I explained how, in current interpretations of quantum physics, the electromagnetic fields of the brain are considered to be the effect rather than the cause of consciousness. According to neurobiologist Herms Romijn, as we saw, the electromagnetic fields, possibly based on “virtual” photons, may be the carriers or the product of consciousness. The electromagnetic fields of the brain and of the heart are of course much more powerful than those of biophotons, but by viewing electromagnetic fields (photons) as a biological quantum phenomenon, we can view the latter, far weaker fields also as an effect of information from nonlocal space that cells receive through their DNA. Both the emission of single photons with informative properties and the nonlinear, hyperbolic reaction of biophotons in living cells to sunlight seem indicative of a biological quantum phenomenon. A nonlinear, hyperbolic reaction is specific to a quantum process. This hyperbolic reaction to sunlight is identical to the process of photosynthesis, which is now also seen as a biological quantum process.
¹⁰
Without sunlight, life on earth would be impossible.

DNA as a Source of Information for Each Cell

As the only person-specific and permanent cell component in our body, DNA plays an essential role as interface for the body’s design, the continuity of all bodily functions, and the interaction between nonlocal consciousness (and memories) and the body. This approach retains the already-discussed interface model based on nuclear spin resonance (quantum spin correlation).

All matter, including all of our body’s cells, molecules, and atoms, is made up of 99.999 percent emptiness or vacuum, and this vacuum is filled with energy and information that originates in nonlocal space, just as the universe around us is saturated with information and energy. As a result, our DNA is always in contact with all possible forms of information from nonlocal space. DNA transmits information directly and nonlocally via coherent systems in remote molecules, cells, and organ systems. But information is also communicated indirectly via signal proteins, messenger proteins, and antibodies produced by DNA and transported in the bloodstream to the cell membrane. Information is also exchanged via the DNA-induced electromagnetic fields in neurons, which find their way to the body via the autonomous nervous system (the sympathetic and the parasympathetic systems) and the central nervous system. Finally, there is indirect information exchange from the brain (hypophysis, epiphysis or pineal gland, brain stem) via hormones and neuropeptides, which are also produced by DNA in certain cells. DNA appears to be the direct and indirect personal coordinator of all information required for the optimum function of our body. And for this our individual DNA receives the necessary information from nonlocal space.

This conclusion is reinforced by our immune system, which protects our individual organism from foreign invaders such as viruses, bacteria, and foreign cells that enter the body with blood transfusions and tissue and organ donations. Governed by DNA, the immune system must identify self and nonself antigens, coordinate the generation of necessary antibodies from an unprecedented number of options, and provide an immunological memory storage that remains directly accessible and up-to-date throughout life. People enjoy lifelong immunity from the infectious diseases they suffered in childhood.

Where in the body could this immunological memory be stored while the body’s composition changes every second? And how could this ever-changing immunological information be stored in DNA? In my opinion, this immunological information could also be stored in nonlocal space and directly accessible to the individual DNA in each cell via nonlocal information exchange. This view seems to be corroborated by an article in
Nature
that provides evidence of resistance to certain antibiotics among strains of bacteria in animals living in the wild in extremely remote areas, thus ruling out any contact with the antibiotic in question.
¹¹
We can only assume that the bacterial DNA received information via nonlocal space from strains that developed resistance as a result of irresponsible and careless use of antibiotics elsewhere in the world.

Nonlocal Information Transfer via DNA

In view of the these facts and arguments, DNA probably plays a central role in the reciprocal information transfer between nonlocal space and the field of resonant and coherent cell structures. I would compare DNA to the high-speed processor in my computer. This processor, which consists of a tiny oscillating quartz crystal and a couple of million transistors on a few dozen square millimeters, is constantly moving, switching, and copying data at a speed of four hundred million bits per second. The processor with its oscillating crystal does not contain any information itself, but it transmits information that enters encoded in the form of electromagnetic waves with certain frequencies. For living systems too the fact that all organisms possess rhythmic oscillation, vibration, or periodic movement is essential for (nonlocal) information exchange. Each living cell is composed of countless vibrating molecular structures. All molecules (including DNA) and atoms in a human cell are part of a living organism with an oscillating activity, each with its own characteristic frequency between 100 and 1,000 Gigahertz.

The oscillating activity of cells and the propagation of waves in and between cells are nonlinear processes (quantum processes), which have been demonstrated in calcium ions in genes, in proteins, and in cellular networks of neurons and cardiac muscle cells. There is evidence for transitions from simple to complex oscillating behavior, for instance during the development of action potentials (in the heart or neurons) or of chaotic patterns and complex feedback mechanisms in living systems. This means that in living organisms many processes, like the development of the electrical signals in the heart or brain, or feedback mechanisms in and between cells, are considered to be typical for quantum processes. Scientists have even found evidence of this oscillating property in activated white blood cells. The oscillating activity triggers resonance between molecules with identical frequencies, thus producing a cohesive whole of vibrating molecules.
Resonance
refers to vibration with the same frequency. The coherence of vibrating molecules creates powerful interference patterns that, in an ordered state, not only behave like a whole but actually become a whole. The parts lose their individual identity. Recent experiments with epithelial cells in the intestine appear to prove this. When a group of cells was damaged by toxic substances and significantly changed as a result, a group of identical detector cells, which are mechanically separated and which cannot communicate via chemical or electrical mechanisms, underwent an identical significant change despite a lack of exposure to any toxic substances. Their synchronous (coherent) response without direct contact suggests nonchemical and nonelectric remote communication between these cells. The authors of the research paper do not exclude biophotons as a possible source of this remote information exchange.
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