A new interesting piece of research: https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/new-theory-suggests-consciousness-is-the-brains-energy-field-341866#:~:text=Electromagnetic%20energy%20in%20the%20brain,from%20the%20University%20of%20Surrey
Some excerpts:
Consciousness is in fact the brain’s energy field.
Early theories on what our consciousness is and how it has been created tended towards the supernatural, suggesting that humans and probably other animals possess an immaterial soul that confers consciousness, thought and free will – capabilities that inanimate objects lack. Most scientists today have discarded this view, known as dualism, to embrace a ‘monistic’ view of a consciousness generated by the brain itself and its network of billions of nerves. By contrast, McFadden proposes a scientific form of dualism based on the difference between matter and energy, rather than matter and soul.
The theory is based on scientific fact: when neurons in the brain and nervous system fire, they not only send the familiar electrical signal down the wire-like nerve fibres, but they also send a pulse of electromagnetic energy into the surrounding tissue. Such energy is usually disregarded, yet it carries the same information as nerve firings, but as an immaterial wave of energy, rather than a flow of atoms in and out of the nerves.
“How brain matter becomes aware and manages to think is a mystery that has been pondered by philosophers, theologians, mystics and ordinary people for millennia. I believe this mystery has now been solved, and that consciousness is the experience of nerves plugging into the brain’s self-generated electromagnetic field to drive what we call ‘free will’ and our voluntary actions.”
And this comes back to what Jackson Galaxy said and what we saw minutes after Bunny passed away. Mr Galaxy says in one of his many youtubes that whenever one of his cats passes away, another cat would “see” something leave the body in an upwards direction.
Minutes after Bunny passed away on 1st Feb 2023, Ming-Yi noticed Cleo (who had been keeping vigil) looking from Bunny’s body upwards towards the ceiling. Her gaze was transfixed for a few moments. It was exactly as Mr Galaxy described it.
I believe it was Bunny’s energy leaving the body and I’m comforted that it happened just minutes after he breathed his last. That means, all that is left is, to put it simply, “an empty shell” and…16 years and 9 months of sweet memories in our hearts.
The fact that the energy has left also makes it easier for us to decide when cremation (or burial) can take place. The Chinese practice is to wait for 8 hours (it’s cultural, not religious) before embalmment or burial/cremation. But for our pets, I always wait until the body is cold and hard to ensure there is really no more remnants of life. At the same time, nobody wants the body to start decomposing too. For small pets like cats, I think the body is ready to be buried/cremated after about 4-5 hours. Maybe humans need 8 hours while smaller animals need a shorter time.
Death is usually equated with brain death. I’ve actually asked morticians and doctors about this too. They say life ends with brain death. My unqualified opinion is perhaps life ends after the energy leaves the body – we cannot measure this energy, but cats can see it! And why not, if dogs can hear frequencies outside our human audible range and animals can see wider than our very narrow visible electromagnetic spectrum.
The law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are living beings with energy. When we die, that energy has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? Where does it go? Does it merge with other energies in the environment? Does it become some sort of universal energy? It will always be there because energy is never destroyed.
So from stardust to stardust till the next Big Bang then, when matter is formed and energy is reignited in new matter. That is how I see “rebirth”.
Hence, all we have is this life. All we have is now. Better do all the good we can ‘coz it might a long, long, long time before we become another being again!
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
– Carl Sagan