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Is the Soul Real? Neuroscience’s Surprising Answer — Transcript

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0:00What is the soul and is the soul
0:02immortal? I very strongly believe that
0:04this is a question for neuroscience.
0:06That is it's obviously there are
0:08theological answers to [music] this and
0:10there are philosophical answers to this
0:12but neuroscience also addresses these
0:15issues.
0:22There are three questions that I want to
0:24ask today about the human soul. First of
0:27all, does the soul exist as something
0:29separate from the brain? The current
0:30materialist way of looking at things is
0:32that uh all of our mind is just from the
0:35brain. Uh and if it does so, then what
0:38is the soul? And is the soul immortal? I
0:41very strongly believe that this is a
0:42question for neuroscience. That is it's
0:45obviously there are theological answers
0:47to this and there are philosophical
0:49answers to this. But neuroscience also
0:52addresses these issues. Uh and it does
0:54so I think in a fascinating way.
0:56The first question, does the soul exist
0:58as something separate from the brain?
1:00And uh I'd like to start with my own
1:02story. I started out as a materialist
1:04and an atheist uh as as a as a young
1:07man. And in medical school, I I fell in
1:10love with uh neuroanatomy and
1:11neurohysiology because I thought that
1:14learning about the brain, learning all
1:15the detailed beautiful neuro neuro
1:17anatomy would really help me understand
1:19who I was and understand what it was to
1:22be a human being.
1:24Uh I trained in neurosurgery at the
1:25University of Miami uh and have been at
1:28Stonybrook on faculty there since 1991.
1:31And I've done about 7,000 brain
1:33operations. And I've learned a fair
1:36amount in in not only academically but
1:39just in personal experience as to how
1:41the brain works and how the mind relates
1:44to the brain. Um, I saw a number of
1:48things over my career that made me
1:50question the traditional materialist way
1:52of understanding how the brain works.
1:55Um, the patients I'm going to show you
1:56here are real people. I've changed their
1:58names, but they're they're very real
2:00people. Um, the um picture on uh I guess
2:04it would be which side on your left uh
2:07is an MRI of the brain of a young lady.
2:10Um, and the black there is spinal fluid.
2:13Uh the brain is the gray stuff there.
2:15She's missing about twothirds of her
2:16brain. That's the way she was born. The
2:18image alongside of it is a normal brain
2:20for uh comparison. When she was a young
2:23baby, uh we scanned her and found this
2:25and uh we're rather pessimistic with her
2:27family about her chances of having a
2:29normal life. She grew up a completely
2:31normal person. Uh she was on the honor
2:33roll in high school. If you met her
2:34today, you'd say she's a bright bright
2:36young lady. She's perfectly fine. Uh
2:38missing twothirds of her brain. Uh this
2:40is a little boy named Joshua. Uh he was
2:43born missing also about twothirds of his
2:45brain. Uh and he um that again that
2:48black space there is just water. Uh he
2:51um was um evaluated by the ethics
2:54committee at my hospital and they
2:55recommended that he not be fed when he
2:57was born uh because he was in such
2:59terrible shape that that it'd be better
3:02if he passed away. We um rescended that
3:05order and fed him and uh he's now uh
3:08graduating from high school. Perfectly
3:09normal young man. Uh plays sports. Uh
3:12he's he's a great kid. Uh Maggie is a
3:15young lady who was uh in a gifted
3:17program uh when she was young. She's a
3:19brilliant young woman. Uh missing most
3:21of her cerebellum and part of the
3:23central regions of her brain. Uh she um
3:27has had to have some surgery to take
3:28care of fluid pressure there, but she's
3:30done very well. Uh she has a master's
3:32degree in in English literature and
3:33she's a published musician. Uh Nicholas
3:36is a little boy who's quite handicapped.
3:38He has cerebal palsy. uh and he's
3:41missing both hemispheres of his brain.
3:43The only part of his brain he has is his
3:44brain stem. Uh he is he is handicapped.
3:47He he he can't speak. He can't walk. But
3:50he's fully conscious. Uh he's kind of
3:53funny. He laughs. He cries. He's he's a
3:55he's a emotionally a normal person even
3:59though he is handicapped, even though
4:01he's missing his entire brain
4:03hemispheres.
4:04So it raises the question, it sounds
4:06like a really strange question, but as
4:09you see, it's So strange is the brain
4:11the organ of the mind. You know the
4:13heart's the organ of circulation. The
4:15kidneys are the organ of making urine.
4:17But is the brain completely the organ of
4:20the mind? Clearly in some ways it it is
4:23but in other ways it may not be. Um this
4:26question was first addressed by Wilder
4:28Penfield who's a neurosurgeon uh worked
4:30in Montreal in the mid- 20th century
4:33probably the greatest scientist in the
4:34neurosurgical profession. uh and he was
4:37um the pioneer in epilepsy surgery and
4:40he would do uh awake brain surgery
4:43meaning that uh patients during the
4:44brain surgery would be fully awake with
4:46local anesthesia so they felt no pain
4:49and he would stimulate their brain to
4:50map the surface of their brain to remove
4:53fosi of epilepsy. Uh and he's devoted
4:57his career to studying epilepsy and he
5:00asked a fascinating question. He said,
5:01"Why are there no intellectual
5:03seizures?" When people have seizures, uh
5:06if the if they remain conscious during
5:08the seizures, they do one of four
5:10things. They'll have uncontrollable
5:12movements. Their their arm will shake.
5:14Uh they can have sensations like
5:16tingling on their skin. They can have
5:19emotions, powerful fear or or or or
5:22laughter or joy. Uh and they can have
5:25memories. You can have a seizure where
5:26you get this recurrent memory. But
5:29nobody ever has a calculus seizure.
5:33Nobody ever has a mathematic seizure
5:35where you can't stop doing long
5:36division. Uh and and Penfield said
5:41that's really odd. If you can evoke all
5:44these other things, why can't you evoke
5:47abstract thought, reasoning, theology,
5:50philosophy, thinking about God? It
5:53doesn't happen from seizures. And he
5:55said the most reasonable explanation is
5:56that that aspect of the mind isn't from
5:59the brain.
6:02Um he tested this further by
6:05intraoperatively with awake patients
6:07stimulating the surface of their brain
6:09to map the brain just like he would map
6:11a city and to find out where where
6:14different things were located on the
6:16brain again so he could protect them in
6:17removing epileptic fosi. But he couldn't
6:20find any kind of abstract thought
6:23centers in the brain. There's a movement
6:25center, there's a sensation center,
6:27there's a visual center, there's a
6:28hearing center, there are emotional
6:30centers, there are memory centers,
6:33but there's no center for thinking
6:35abstractly. There's no center for
6:36reason. And he said that's odd. That's
6:39the same thing that that he found with
6:41looking at the kinds of seizures that
6:43happen.
6:45Some of the most interesting work along
6:47this line has been done by Roger Sperry.
6:49um and his colleagues Sperry uh won the
6:52Nobel Prize for this work. Um back in
6:55the mid- 20th century, an operation was
6:57developed uh for people who would have a
6:59seizure in one hemisphere of the brain
7:01that would spread to the other
7:02hemisphere and these were catastrophic
7:04seizures that were very difficult to
7:06control. So what Sperry uh so and an
7:10operation that was developed not by
7:11Sperry but by by uh by others was to cut
7:14the brain in half essentially so that if
7:17a seizure started in one half of the
7:19brain it couldn't spread to the other
7:21half and that made the seizures much
7:22easier to control and and much milder uh
7:25and it was called a corpus calistomy and
7:27we still do that surgery today. So the
7:30hemispheres of the brain are
7:31functionally disconnected and Sperry who
7:34was a who was a neuroscientist realized
7:35that you could study what each
7:36hemisphere does because they're
7:38disconnected. So he did a lot of
7:40wonderful work and the left hemisphere
7:42controls speech, the right hemisphere
7:44controls spatial orientation and he got
7:46the Nobel Prize for that. But one thing
7:48that he noticed and I've noticed too is
7:50that people who have had their brains
7:52cut in half are pretty normal people. As
7:56you meet these people, the brains are
7:57cut in half and they're walking and
7:59talking. They feel normal. They have
8:01less seizures than they used to have. It
8:03would be the same thing as if someone
8:05just took a chainsaw and cut the laptop
8:07in half and it still worked just fine.
8:10Like there's something odd about this.
8:13The follow-up research on that is
8:16something that still gives me chills.
8:17Um, and I I learned about this decades
8:20ago and it's it I I think it's among the
8:22most fascinating results in cognitive
8:24neuroscience. Justine Surgeent was a
8:27researcher in McGill in Montreal uh
8:29worked like about 20 years after Sperry
8:33and she studied people with split brain
8:35surgery and what she did was she found a
8:39way to present pictures of things like
8:42pictures of arrows to each hemisphere
8:44separately at the same time. So she put
8:47arrows up that the right hemisphere
8:49would see one arrow, the left hemisphere
8:51would see the other arrow, but no part
8:53of the brain saw both arrows. One half
8:56saw one arrow, the other half saw saw
8:58the other arrow. And she asked the
9:00people, are the arrows pointing in the
9:03same direction or not?
9:05And they always got it right.
9:08But how did how could they compare
9:10arrows when no part of the brain saw
9:11both arrows?
9:14So she concluded that there was
9:16something in the mind that wasn't in the
9:18brain.
9:22Yer Pinto has um furthered that research
9:26um in which he tells stories to split
9:29brain patients where the first half of
9:32the story is presented to one
9:33hemisphere, the second half of the story
9:36is presented to the other hemisphere.
9:38But you don't understand the story
9:39unless you see both. A good example
9:42would be if the left hemisphere gets a
9:44can see a baseball and the right
9:46hemisphere can see a broken window. So
9:49Pinto would ask the patient what
9:51happened
9:52and the patient's always answered the
9:54baseball broke the window. But no part
9:56of the brain saw both the baseball and
9:59the window.
10:01So there's something in the mind that's
10:04not in the brain.
10:08Wilder Penfield also studied free will
10:12and he did a very very interesting study
10:15during these awake brain operations. He
10:17would stimulate the surface of a
10:19patient's brain and if you stimulate the
10:20right place you can make them do things
10:22like make them raise raise their arm.
10:25He would ask them during the surgery to
10:27occasionally raise their arm themselves
10:29without him stimulating them. And you
10:31can't feel your brain. Your brain has no
10:33sensory things and the patients are
10:34under surgical drapes. can't see what
10:36he's doing. And he would ask them, "When
10:39your arm goes up, I want you to tell me
10:41whether you did it or whether I did it."
10:44And they always got it right. Hundreds
10:47of thousands of trials of this in 1100
10:49patients. No one ever missed it. No one
10:52ever got it wrong.
10:54And he concluded then that he couldn't
10:57find any place in in the brain that
11:00simulated free will.
11:03That free will wasn't in the brain. that
11:05you could always tell this is my will.
11:07This is not someone doing it to me.
11:10So free will is not a brain function.
11:16Benjamin Liebbit did probably the most
11:18famous research on free will. And what
11:21Liebbit found and I it it would take a
11:23while to go in details about how he did
11:24his experiments. They were they were
11:26quite quite quite ingenious. But he
11:28would record electrical signals from the
11:31scalp and these are people who haven't
11:33had any surgery. They're just normal
11:34volunteers. And what he found was that
11:37when you decide to do something simple,
11:41there tends to be a spike in brain
11:43activity that happens about a half
11:45second before you decide. Like if if if
11:47you're going to turn on a light switch,
11:49about a half second before you turn on
11:51the light switch, your brain spikes.
11:53And that's before you're aware that
11:55you're going to turn it on.
11:59So what and that seems at first glance
12:02that everything is driven by your brain.
12:04Your brain makes makes you do it and you
12:06don't really have any free will. It's
12:08all just chemicals driving you to do
12:09things. But he was a very clever
12:11researcher and what he did is he asked
12:14people to veto your decision. That is
12:17that when you're about to flip the
12:18switch, say no, I'm not going to do it.
12:20I've changed my mind. And the veto
12:23didn't have a spike in the brain.
12:26So he said it's not so much that that he
12:28showed there was free will but they
12:30showed there was free won't.
12:34that is that your brain and he he
12:37commented he was he was a religious man
12:39and he said this is the traditional um
12:43religious way of understanding human
12:45motivation that we're hit with
12:47temptations
12:49from our brain but we have the free
12:52choice to do it or not
12:55because the free choice to do it or not
12:56did not have any new brain activity at
12:59all. It was independent of the brain.
13:02So, the brain keeps hitting you with
13:04these things. Have that extra piece of
13:06cake.
13:08But you can say yes, yes or no, and you
13:11can't blame your brain.
13:15Adrienne Owen is a researcher um I think
13:17he's currently in Indiana. He was at
13:19Cambridge in England. Did a fascinating
13:21study um in patients in persistent
13:24vegetative state. Persistent vegetative
13:25state is the deepest level of coma. uh
13:28it's just a step above brain death and
13:30it happens when people have had very
13:32severe brain injuries from from lack of
13:34oxygen or from uh from motor vehicle
13:36accidents. And um it it's called
13:39vegetative because it's it's been
13:41assumed that these people are basically
13:43vegetables, meaning that they they have
13:45no mind. They're just a body and there's
13:47no mind left. Um you some of you may
13:50recall the Terry Shiavo stuff that went
13:52on about 20 years ago. She was in
13:54persistent vegetative state. What Owen
13:57did is he put uh patients in MRI
13:59machines and did functional MRI imaging
14:02that shows brain activity and he would
14:04ask them to think about things with head
14:06with with a with a headset. He'd say,
14:09"Think about walking across the room or
14:10think think about uh your family or
14:12thinking about or think about playing
14:14tennis." And they would show patterns of
14:17brain activation in in their very
14:18damaged brain. And he then did that with
14:21normal volunteers and found the patterns
14:23were identical.
14:26implying that they were understanding
14:27what he was talking about. And then what
14:29he did, he was very clever. He asked the
14:31same questions, but he mixed up the
14:33words so they didn't make any sense.
14:35Instead of uh think about walking across
14:37the room, he say room across walking
14:40about think. Doesn't doesn't make any
14:43sense. And the brain was silent.
14:45So these people were understanding the
14:48questions he was asking even though
14:50their brains were practically destroyed.
14:54And he actually found he and others
14:56other people have have replicated his
14:58work that about 40% of people in in
15:00persistent ve vegetative state show
15:02clear evidence of being able to
15:04communicate. There are people who can do
15:05mathematics in persistent vegetative
15:07state. You ask them what's 9 plus 6. You
15:10count when you hit 15 the brain lights
15:12up. Uh there are people can tell their
15:15family histories. You know is your
15:16brother's name George? Brain will light
15:18up. So um you can communicate with
15:21people in the deepest level of coma in
15:23in many cases.
15:26Near-death experiences are sort of the
15:28paradigmatic example of um a separation
15:32between the the soul or the mind and the
15:34brain. And while some near-death
15:37experiences may be not genuine, they
15:39they may be hallucinations or or
15:41whatever, there's no doubt that there is
15:44a real core of real experiences.
15:47uh they're they're probably about 20% of
15:49near-death experiences um are veritical,
15:52meaning they could be checked. The
15:54person knows things that occurred when
15:56they were dead, things that went on
15:59inside the room, etc. Uh the probably
16:01most famous near-death experience was
16:03Pam Reynolds who was an aneurysm patient
16:06operated on in 1999.
16:09And in order to safely operate on the
16:11aneurysm, her surgeon had to stop her
16:13heart after cooling her body down to
16:16about 50° Fahrenheit. And um that gave
16:19him about 30 minutes to fix the
16:21aneurysm. He drained all the blood out
16:24of her brain, fixed the aneurysm, and
16:26then rewarmed her and started her heart
16:29again. And she survived and did very
16:31well actually. She said that in the
16:34recovery room, she said, "You know, I
16:35watched the operation."
16:38He said, "What?" You know, she's you
16:41were brain dead. You couldn't possibly
16:42watch the operation. So, she said that
16:44as soon as her brain went dead, she
16:46popped out of out of her body, floated
16:48up to the ceiling, watched the surgery.
16:50She said that her vision was amazingly
16:52accurate. And it was a beautiful scene.
16:55And then she told him what he talked
16:56about during the surgery. She told him
16:59what the instruments looked like and
17:00what music was playing in the room
17:02during the surgery. Um, and things like
17:05this have happened a number of times. Uh
17:07so in my view there's there's no
17:09question that some near-death
17:10experiences are very real. Uh the other
17:13thing that for me is very convincing is
17:15that people have surveyed the literature
17:17and there are thousands of of examples
17:18of this in the literature where people
17:21go down a tunnel and they see uh loved
17:23ones and relatives at the other end of
17:24the tunnel. Nobody in the medical
17:27literature who's had a near-death
17:29experience has ever seen a living person
17:31at the other end of the tunnel.
17:34It's not like you kind of want your
17:35mother and your mother's still alive and
17:36you see her at the other end of the
17:38tunnel. Only dead people are at the
17:39other end of the tunnel, including
17:41people that you didn't know were dead.
17:44There are a number of examples of people
17:46who were in car accidents where someone
17:48in the car died
17:50and they didn't know the person died
17:52because they were critically injured
17:53also and they saw that person on the
17:55other side of the tunnel, but not people
17:57in the car who didn't die.
18:02Everybody asks about Phineas Gage.
18:04Phineas Gage was a gentleman who um in
18:06in a work accident in the 19th century
18:09had an iron spike that was driven
18:10through his brain and his personality
18:12changed. He was a he he was a a
18:14religious up upstanding man before this
18:17and after this he was he wasn't too bad
18:19a guy but he kind of lived the high life
18:21a little bit. And people say well that
18:23doesn't that prove that the brain
18:25completely controls the mind and it
18:27doesn't. uh Gage's emotional state
18:30changed uh but there's no evidence that
18:32there was any change in his mathematics
18:34or reason or things like that. So
18:36obviously if you have brain brain injury
18:39you can have changes in the way you
18:40behave but that doesn't mean that every
18:42aspect of the mind comes from the brain.
18:46A question that um is being asked
18:48particularly nowadays with AI is is the
18:50mind a kind of computation
18:53and uh no it's not. uh it's not a kind
18:55of computation for a very simple reason.
18:58Everything in your mind
19:01is pointed at something. It has a
19:03meaning to it. Right? You when when you
19:05think you always think about something
19:08you can think about um Dallas, you can
19:10think about um a laptop, think about
19:13your family.
19:15But nothing in computation has any
19:17aboutness to it. That is a word
19:19processor. A word processing program
19:22doesn't care about your opinion in the
19:25essay you're writing.
19:28You you can write a pro essay and a con
19:30essay. It doesn't matter. Computation
19:33has no aboutness. A camera doesn't care
19:36whether you're taking a picture of a
19:38sunset or a picture of a snows scene.
19:40Could couldn't care less. So computation
19:44has no meaning in it. The only meaning
19:46is what we ascribe to it. So, not only
19:49is the mind not a kind of computation,
19:52it's the opposite of computation. Now,
19:54you can study the brain as if it were a
19:56computer,
19:59but that's just an artificial framework
20:01you're imposing on the on the brain, but
20:03the mind is not a kind of computation.
20:05It's the opposite.
20:07Then you can ask the question, did did
20:08the mind evolve?
20:10Um, I don't really think that anything
20:12evolved, but um but I certainly don't
20:14think that uh that the mind evolved. And
20:16the reason is very is very simple. If
20:18natural selection is is a is a real
20:21force that can actually create bi
20:24biological novelty, which I don't
20:26believe for the most part that that it
20:27can, um, it can only work on physical
20:30things. And at least part of the mind,
20:33as we've seen repeatedly, is not
20:35physical.
20:36So, you can't evolve something that
20:38isn't inherent to matter.
20:42So, is the brain the organ of the mind?
20:44seem like a crazy question, but it's not
20:47crazy at all because our capacity for
20:50reason, our capacity for free will can't
20:54be evoked from from the brain. But we
20:58certainly have this capacity.
21:00So I think the most reasonable
21:02scientific conclusion
21:06is that the brain is the organ of
21:07movement, perception, memory, and
21:10emotion. Those definitely come from from
21:12the brain. There's no question about
21:14that. But there is no organ of intellect
21:16and will. Now, the brain in some sense
21:20is necessary for normal functioning of
21:22the intellect and will. That is, you're
21:24not going to be able to think too
21:25clearly about calculus if you've just
21:27been hit over the head head with a
21:28baseball bat. And your will can be
21:32affected by alcohol, which affects the
21:33brain. But that doesn't mean that that
21:36your intellect and your will come from
21:37the brain
21:39because there's a ton of scientific
21:41evidence that they don't come from the
21:42brain.
21:44So the first question we ask is does the
21:46soul exist? And the answer is yes. The
21:48soul exists. The soul is what animates a
21:52human being. Our soul is everything that
21:55makes us alive. So part of the soul is
21:59brain activity.
22:02moving, sensing, emoting and
22:05remembering. But part of the soul is
22:08this abstract capacity that we have. So
22:12what really then is the soul?
22:15It's like a hybrid.
22:18Well, the soul can do a variety of
22:20things. It it knows, it loves, you know,
22:23we we know things, we love things, and
22:25it animates us. It's make it makes us
22:28living human beings. It has no parts as
22:31Sperry and surgeons in Pinto found. If
22:34you cut the brain in half, you don't cut
22:35the soul in half.
22:37It has no location.
22:40Meaning um uh near-death uh experiences
22:44don't happen in a place, at least in
22:46this world, that we can put our finger
22:48on. You know, you can't find the tunnel
22:51anywhere that people [clears throat] go
22:52down. Uh soul is not in time. Near-death
22:56experiences are are are timeless in a
22:58sense.
22:59And the soul abides meaning it exists
23:01even after death and it can even exist
23:03with severe brain injury.
23:06So the soul is a spirit
23:10and our spirit is our soul. We are the
23:13only living creatures whose souls are
23:15spirits. Animals have souls. Even plants
23:18have souls. But their souls are entirely
23:21material. Their souls let like like an
23:23like an animal soul lets the animal
23:25remember and move and perceive and do
23:28things like that. Very very very
23:29important stuff. But animals don't do
23:31calculus. Animals don't think about God.
23:35Animals don't even have free will. They
23:36can have appetites but they don't think
23:39morally about things. So we are the only
23:42living creature that has a spiritual
23:44soul. And again, while the one can make
23:47a very strong theological argument about
23:49the truth of this and even a
23:51philosophical argument, you can make an
23:53equally strong neuroscientific argument.
23:56And since truth is unitary, the
23:59arguments, if they're true, all have to
24:01line up. And in fact, they do line up.
24:05We are a paradigm of all creation.
24:08Meaning, we're a mixture of spirit
24:10and matter.
24:13We have one foot in matter, our our
24:15body, our movement, sensation, memory,
24:17and and emotion, and one foot in spirit,
24:20intellect, and free will. And that's
24:22been referred to by theologians as the
24:24great chain of being.
24:27We are made in God's image in this sense
24:29that God is infinite spirit, his
24:31knowledge, love, and power. And the
24:33human soul knows, loves, and acts. And
24:35we are created in his image. The
24:37spiritual aspect of our soul is God's
24:40image.
24:42Is the soul immortal?
24:45One could at least think that, okay,
24:47well, all right, so we have souls, so
24:48it's a spirit. But when our body dies,
24:51the spirit blinks out, goes away.
24:56The question then is, can a spirit die?
25:00What does it mean for a spirit to die?
25:05Which we can get at by asking, what does
25:08it mean to die?
25:10What does death really mean? So, if you
25:12think of a chair, a tree, and a dog,
25:16say, how do those things die? Well, a
25:19chair, at least metaphorically, could be
25:21said to die. And what happens if a chair
25:24dies is that it's reduced to wood chips,
25:27just a pile of dust. You say, well,
25:29there's no longer any chair. It's just a
25:30pile of dust. The matter in the chair
25:32never goes away,
25:35but it's just dust now instead of a
25:37chair. The tree is the same thing. When
25:40the tree dies, it rots and just goes
25:42back into soil. The dog is is the same
25:45thing. So life is an integration of
25:48matter to make a living thing. And death
25:51is a disintegration of matter.
25:54When we die, our bodies don't go away.
25:57They disintegrate.
25:59But every atom inside our body will end
26:01up somewhere else.
26:05So the physical body can can uh can
26:08disintegrate. But can a soul a spirit a
26:10spiritual soul disintegrate?
26:13And to get a feeling for the answer to
26:15that question, think about the number
26:18eight.
26:19There are two ways that the number eight
26:21can be represented. One is written down
26:24on a piece of paper
26:27and the other is conceptually thinking
26:29about the number eight. Well, certainly
26:32the number eight written on a piece of
26:33paper can disintegrate
26:36if you put the paper in fire and burn
26:38it. It just becomes a pile of ash. So,
26:41in that sense, the number eight can die,
26:43can disintegrate if it's material.
26:46But the number eight conceptually, one
26:49might say the spiritual number eight
26:52can't die.
26:54You're you're not going to hear from a
26:55mathematics department at the local
26:57university that the number eight passed
26:59away yesterday.
27:01>> [clears throat]
27:02>> And so now we have to count from 6 7 9 9
27:0510. Right? So numbers don't die.
27:09Abstract things don't die. And spirits
27:12don't die.
27:14Matter disintegrates. Spirits can't
27:16disintegrate. And note that this
27:19immortality is natural.
27:21Of course it comes from God. But we are
27:25naturally immortal.
27:28That is that it's in our nature that our
27:30spirit cannot disintegrate and cannot
27:32die.
27:35Your spiritual soul has no off switch.
27:38Your body has an off switch but not but
27:41not your soul.
27:43And the soul is mortal.
27:46One question that has utterly fascinated
27:49me um for many years and I thought about
27:52it philosophically, theologically etc.
27:55has bothered me a little bit. When
27:57people have near-death experiences,
28:00they report beautiful scenes. They say
28:02the colors are just breathtaking and
28:05that their their vision is like nothing
28:06they've ever experienced on Earth.
28:10And you know, and I'm I'm I'm a I'm a
28:12scientist of sorts. I say, "Well, how
28:14can you see without eyes?"
28:17You know, we're talking about a
28:18spiritual soul. Spiritual souls are neat
28:20things, but they don't have eyes.
28:24you know, in the resurrection they'll
28:25have eyes, but you're in that
28:26intermediate state. So, how do you how
28:29do you see anything?
28:31And um Thomas Aquinus um addressed this
28:37question almost a thousand years ago and
28:40um he gave kind of a of a of an analogy.
28:44He said, "Imagine that life on earth is
28:48like being inside a church with stained
28:50glass windows at night. And the church
28:53is lit from indoors with candles.
28:56So, it's kind of dim in there. You can
28:59see things. You can see the, you know,
29:00the windows at night, but it's dark
29:02outside. And you just see this dim
29:05inside of the church. And imagine you're
29:08getting towards daylight, but it's still
29:10dark. And then the candles go out.
29:14And that's when you die.
29:18But as the sun rises,
29:20suddenly you see incredibly beautiful
29:22things. You see by God's light from
29:26outside.
29:28So the light that people are seeing, I
29:29think, in near-death experiences is
29:32divine light.
29:34And that's how we see. It's a different
29:36kind of light.
29:40So thank you. uh and we discuss these
29:43issues in much more detail and other
29:45issues in the uh in the immortal mind.
29:48And uh thank you for for listening.
29:52[applause]

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