The Continuity of Consciousness

This book comprises the second place winner in the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest. The winning prize was $300,000. In this book the concept of the continuity of consciousness is described, based mainly on recent scientific research on near-death experiences (NDE), but also on other experiences of enhanced consciousness. Since the publication of several prospective studies on NDE in survivors of cardiac arrest, with strikingly similar results and conclusions, the phenomenon of the NDE can no longer be scientifically ignored.

There are now good reasons to assume that our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced or nonlocal consciousness can sometimes be experienced separately from the body. The general conclusion of scientific research on NDE is indeed that our enhanced consciousness does not reside in our brain and is not limited to our brain. Our consciousness seems to be nonlocal, and our brain facilitates rather than produces the experience of that consciousness.

It is evident that these findings are important for our concepts of life and death, because of the almost unavoidable conclusion that at the time of physical death consciousness will continue to be experienced in another realm, one that encompasses past, present, and future. Based on these ideas it seems obvious that death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another.