Consciousness and the Brain, Part Six: Spiritual Implications, with Stuart Hameroff #GJWMotivation

Thinking Allowed Conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove Hello and welcome, I'm Jeffrey Mishlove This is part six of our six-part series on consciousness in the brain with professor Stuart Hameroff of the Banner University Medical Center at the University of Arizona, where he is a professor of anesthesiology and psychology. He is the co-founder and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He is also the organizer of the annual Science of Consciousness Conference that has been held at the University of Arizona and elsewhere for more than 20 years now. In addition, Professor Hameroff is the co-author of the Ork Or Theory of Consciousness that he developed along with the great mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, one of the developers of the theory of black holes. Welcome. Thank you, Jeffrey. Stuart, it's a pleasure to be with you. Now, we've covered an awful lot in the first five episodes of this series, and it's going to be hard to recapitulate all of that for viewers who may not have had the opportunity to listen in earlier. But, we should say at the outset that your theory of consciousness, the Ork Or Theory, is one that entails not only the conventional thinking about the brain and electrical transmission along the neurons, but also deals with deeper structures inside of the brain called microtubules, and how those structures connect with the universe at the quantum level. Yes, that's right. I think looking at the brain as a computer made of individual neurons is naive and probably wrong, and that we need to look deeper inside the neurons. And there we find these structures called microtubules that process information and appear that they are quantum processors, that they connect to the quantum world and perhaps deeper and deeper levels of space-time geometry, giving rise to non-locality, including action at a distance and various non-localities that could be consistent with parapsychology and even spirituality. Mm-hmm. And we've also talked at some length about how your work as an anesthesiologist, taking people in and out of consciousness on a regular basis in the operating room, has shaped your approach to the study of consciousness. Yes, it has. You know, I've been doing it for 40 years, and still every time you push the propofol or you give them anesthetic gas, it's still a mystery of where do they go? But the real question is why they're here in the first place. And studying anesthesia allows us to pinpoint, since anesthesia is fairly selective at erasing consciousness, sparing other brain functions, and irreversible, to pinpoint the action, the site of action of consciousness or the mechanism of consciousness by looking at where anesthetics act. And now it's looking at that they act in microtubules in what are called quantum channels, regions within microtubules with pi-resonance structures from aromatic rings that give rise to quantum events that can allow this connection to space-time geometry. Mm-hmm. That's a mouthful. Pi-resonance structures from aromatic rings. Could you break that down a little? Aromatic rings are structures like benzene or phenyl rings or indole rings that have extra electrons that are delocalized. So they're not attached to any one carbon atom. They're actually spread out and form a cloud of delocalized electrons, and this gives rise to quantum effects because they can be a dipole over here and a dipole over here at the same time. It's a superposition, and we know that plants utilize something like this in photosynthesis to give rise to quantum coherence, which allows the efficiency of photosynthesis, and it's looking like microtubules have these quantum resonances according to the great work of Anirban Bandyapati and resonances that are quantum in various frequency ranges. So the microtubules kind of look like a musical instrument mediating quantum vibrations. Mm-hmm. And your theory, the ork-or theory, the first phrase there, ork, or the first syllable, represents consciousness as an orchestration. Right. So that would be what happens in the brain, in the microtubules, to give rise to the full-rich consciousness that we have as opposed to protoconsciousness that's happening here, there, and everywhere in the universe. So I think consciousness is kind of like the kind of consciousness we have. I liken it to an orchestra. So if an orchestra is warming up before they start playing, they have these disconnected tones, they're all tuning their instruments, and it's not music. It's tones. It's noise. It's sound. And then all of a sudden they break into the symphony, or if it's a rock band, or a jazz band, or whatever, music. We know the difference between music and noise, and I think that's the difference between consciousness and protoconsciousness. And when this orchestration occurs in the brain, though, I presume, and maybe you can clarify if I'm not correct about this, it's a kind of quantum coherence. Yes, yes. I think you need quantum coherence for, for example, binding. You know, we look at a visual scene like this one, and we, there's vision, there's sound, there's smell, sometimes there's taste, there's memories, and yet these aren't, and the different sensations are processed in different brain regions and even at different times, yet they're all unified or bound into one conscious experience. I have a visual scene that correlates with the, with what I'm hearing and everything else of what's going on. So it's not, you know, a hodgepodge here and there, it's one, it's one scene. And that, I think, involves quantum coherence and quantum entanglement in the brain. Now, the philosopher and psychologist Susan Blackmore, who's something of a skeptic of these ideas, talks about the self as being nothing more than a concept that, that we have. But when you talk about the coherent orchestra that creates consciousness, that might be thought of as, as an actual self. Yes, I think the self where there's one of us, there's I'm me and you're you, is a unified quantum coherent sense of self. It's a, it's a quantum coherence. Of course, Sue Blackmore and other reductionists would deny consciousness even, that it's a concept. It's, it's kind of an illusion. So I think when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. So I think people like that really don't have a clue about what consciousness is. And so they kind of dismiss it. They, they say, well, it's not really anything. It's postmodern deconstruction. They chop it up into little bits, and in the end, there's nothing left. Mm-hmm. But you're suggesting what we might think of as a more platonic view, that, that some things are real and even eternal in the universe, like mathematical ideas, aesthetics, morals, and, and that this is intrinsic to the universe itself. Our conscious, our consciousness, our minds, are able to access this platonic world. Yes, that was Rod Penrose's idea, that when collapse occurs, it's associated with consciousness, and the choices are not random as they would be in other interpretations of quantum mechanics, but are influenced by platonic values. And platonic values including mathematical truths, which are kind of encoded in the fine scale structure of the universe, but also aesthetic and ethical values. So if something is pleasing, it's because it resonates with a deeper level structure. If something feels good, if something tastes good, or if you feel happy, it's because you're resonating with deeper level structures of the universe. That's the basic idea. You know, earlier I asked you in a private meeting that we had, what do you think, why are we here? What's the purpose of life? And you gave me an interesting answer. Yes, I've been thinking about evolution, and the idea that these proto-conscious events that could give rise to good feelings were present in the primordial suit before consciousness, before life originated, and actually was the spark of life, actually. That life organized in order to take advantage, and access, and optimize feelings. And that this played a key role in evolution, that species evolved to optimize feeling good. So I guess the the meaning of life, or the purpose of life, would be to feel good. And by that, I mean by resonating with deeper level structures of the universe. You know, of course, there are hedonists, and Epicureans, and others who talk about the pleasure principle, but I get a sense that when you talk about feeling good, you're talking about something that might even be akin to the idea of wisdom, some sort of deep alignment with the universe itself. Well, I think knowing and understanding is a pleasurable feeling also, and certainly that that would be one. And I have thought of terming this quantum hedonism, but you know, even altruism, you know, it's better to give than to receive. It feels better to give than to receive. And if you live a spiritual life, and are meditating, and reverent, and so forth, that makes you feel good. So feeling good is kind of not just the hedonistic, you know, immediate gratification. It could be, you know, higher level, more altruistic, and spiritual approaches that also make you feel good. Whatever floats your boat, and there's all kinds of people. Well, you know, it's very unusual for a scientist such as yourself to be talking about the spiritual implications of a scientific theory. Most scientists wouldn't dare to go there. But you seem quite comfortable doing it, not only because of your personality, but I think because you feel that there's scientific justification. I think there is. In my own experience, you know, I'm not a particularly religious person, but I am spiritual, and I do feel a connection. And there have been so many things in my life that just cannot be ascribed to coincidence. Just insights I've had, or premonitions, or feelings that turn out to be correct. And so I think there is something to it. But it's hard to prove this, but it just feels right to me. And I think that if consciousness is quantum of factor, involves quantum mechanics, then non-locality, interaction over distance, is all possible. Until we really know for sure what consciousness is in the brain, we can't exclude it out of the brain. Well, let's talk about some of the recent research that has come up concerning what happens to the brain at the end of life, and how this might be related to your theory. Right. So in anesthesia, we use brain monitors that measure EEG. We use simple electrodes here, because it's too difficult to do 32 or 16 electrodes. So we use these simple strip electrodes on devices that were designed to measure depth of anesthesia. And they process the data. They take EEG. They take maybe a muscle tone of the forehead. They don't really tell us what they take, because it's proprietary. But they give a number, zero to 100. And 80 to 100 would be awake. So presumably, if we measured ours now, it would be between 80 and 100. They say that if your patient under anesthesia is between 40 and 60, they're not awake. And these were designed to prevent awareness under anesthesia. There's problems with them, because they're telling you what happened a couple of minutes ago. So I personally don't use them, because I don't want to know what happened two minutes ago. I want to know what's happening now. But they're useful, and a lot of people do use them. Now, a doctor named Lakmir Chawla at George Washington University, who's a palliative. He's an intensivist and a palliative care specialist, and takes care of people as they die. So if someone's terminal, and they and or the family make a decision to withdraw care, Chawla wanted to make sure they were comfortable and to give them painkillers if they needed it. So we started using these brain devices. And what they found was that some of them were already at low levels, in some cases brain damaged, or even brain dead. And they put these numbers on. And what they found was that in, not in the brain dead subjects, but in the other subjects, what they found was that this number would dwindle, say from 50-ish down to about 10, or below when the heart stopped. And it doesn't, there's a little noise, so it never actually goes to zero. And then when the heart has stopped, the blood pressure is gone, or there's no blood pressure, they saw in a good percentage of patients, about half the patients, a spike or a sudden upsurge of activity when the body was dead. And as far as anyone can tell, of course, defining clinical death is another question. But when they analyzed this, so the number went up to, in some cases, 80 to 100. But above 50, and a general upswing. And when they analyzed it in the machine, it was highly coherent. And in fact, gamma synchrony, which is a marker of consciousness, and in fact, even very high frequency gamma, above normal gamma. And some people say, well, it's just a last-ditch gasp of neurons firing and outfiring. But it's not firing, it's actually gamma synchrony, and it's coherent across both hemispheres. So it's hard to explain that, it's hard to account for the fact that this could be just random last gasp activities. So, what does it mean? Well, some people would like to believe it's the soul leaving the body. It could be, we don't really know. And we don't have a good explanation otherwise. But it's something that can be studied and looked at in the future. It reminds me of a phenomenon that's been discussed quite a bit amongst parapsychologists with whom I interact, called terminal lucidity. It's been observed clinically that people, shortly before they die, I observed it with my own mother who had Alzheimer's. But shortly before she died, she entered into a state of hyper awareness, where she was extraordinarily articulate. It's as if something like that sort might be going on. Yes, and Peter Fenwick, who has studied death and dying for many, many years, and is very articulate on this, talks about deathbed experiences. And I actually saw this with my mother. And I had heard Peter speak about it, and it was a very moving, where people who are terminal in their last days, or even weeks, often are sort of half here and half there. They're being, well, we don't know where, but they appear to be in communication with deceased relatives, and almost are annoyed that you're distracting them. And I saw this with my mother. And just shortly before she died, she just started talking to my father, who had been dead for many, many years, and kind of ignored me, and didn't really want to, and was just addressing him. I mean, at the foot of the bed, presumably, she saw him. And she was carrying on half of a conversation. And I was amazed, because it was so much like what Peter Fenwick had described in many, many subjects. So it's not just here and there, it's a fairly common phenomenon. Well, you know, you are not a philosophical dualist, to my knowledge. You are a pan-psychist. Well, a pan-psychist in a way, but that term usually is meant to imply consciousness as a property of matter. And I think it's before matter, because matter forms during collapse. So I'm more of a pan-experientialist, and I think matter itself is very transient, because it collapses, then immediately goes, it collapses to give a material object then, and then immediately goes into superposition, usually at a very small scale, so it all averages out. So more of a pan-collapsist, if there's such a term, because I think collapse is occurring constantly everywhere, and it's creating the universe. And when that happens, I think there's moments of proto-consciousness, and when we put it all together, we get the kind of consciousness we have. And by collapse, we're referring from the transition from what you could call a quantum wave function, where things are spread out, maybe in many locations at once, to being in a particular time and place. Giving rise to the classical world that we experience. We don't see the superpositions, we see the result of the collapse, and that gives rise to consciousness. That's the basic idea. Well, this sets the stage for my question now about, it's usually dualists who are associated with the idea that there is a spiritual world, and yet I hear you being quite open-minded to that idea, a spiritual world that we might access in our dreams, or that we might access after death. You've even suggested the possibility of reincarnation, that the self can maintain its coherence and its structure outside of the body, and perhaps enter into another body. I think, you can't say it's impossible. I think it's possible. I think that under normal circumstances right now in your brain and my brain, consciousness is happening in and around the microtubules in the space-time geometry that comprise them. And if blood stops flowing, and the heart stops beating, and the microtubules eventually lose energy, and the quantum information isn't lost or destroyed, but can kind of dissipate or delocalize to the universe at large, but remain entangled so that a self, it wouldn't all just scatter, but remain entangled as an entity, as a person, as the self or the soul, quantum soul, if you want to use that term. And if it's a cardiac arrest, and the patient's resuscitated, the quantum soul, if you want to call it that, can go back inside, and the patient said, hey, I had a near-death experience. I saw a white light. I talked to my deceased relatives. I had the sense of calm and wonderment. And generally, these people have changed forever in a good way, or maybe even floating out of their body in an autobot experience, having that experience. But if the patient is not resuscitated, if the patient dies, then what happens to this quantum soul? Well, we don't know. But it can persist. Conceivably, it can persist and perhaps enter another set of microtubules somewhere, a zygote or an embryo or another person, and in reincarnation. There's a lot of very interesting anecdotal evidence for reincarnation. And so, we can't rule it out. Until we know what consciousness is, I think all bets are off, and these things are possible. And not just anecdotal evidence. At the University of Virginia, they've accumulated well over, I believe, 2,000 cases of young children who, as soon as they're able to speak, begin reporting memories of a previous lifetime. And often, researchers are able to identify those memories with an actual previous life in a nearby village or some other location in which the details turn out to be accurate. Yeah, Bruce Grayson and Jim Tucker and those people have done amazing work. Jim Tucker is a pediatrician, or a pediatric psychologist, I'm not sure. And he's studied a lot of these. And his stories are quite interesting and quite convincing. So, could be. It seems as if you're willing to say that a serious scientist such as yourself, looking at the brain, looking at consciousness, looking at the structure of neurons, needs to be open to this kind of data. I think so. You know, if you're really a rigorous scientist, you can't let your biases override what's conceivable. And people who are materialist reductionists rule out, a priori, the possibility of non-locality, and therefore can't accept what I just said, and what you've suggested, and claim the high road in science. But I think they're wrong. I think they're fooling themselves. Well, that's very important because they do, in fact, claim that they're being more scientific than people who are open to these possibilities. And it strikes me as ironic that 150 years of careful research papers, many of whom contributed by some of the great scientists of their era, that some people feel comfortable not just ignoring, but treating this data with scorn. Yeah, they take the more rational than thou, I like to call their attitude, as in holier than thou, because they claim the scientific high road. And it's true, they control a lot of the funding agencies, and academia, and they frown on things like we've been talking about. But really, until we explain consciousness, we can't rule these things out. And I think that's why consciousness is the most interesting question there is. It's also the most important thing there is. If we didn't have consciousness, we wouldn't have anything. And if you don't have a good consciousness, if you're not happy, then that's a problem. And if you're brain dead, or you don't have consciousness, then there's nothing. So it's the most important entity in the world, and it's the most interesting scientific and philosophical question in the world. Well, you've devoted your professional career to looking at these questions, Stuart, and it's been a pleasure sharing these six conversations with you. I've been doing these interviews for a long time, and this is the first time that I've actually done a six-part series with someone, and you're the appropriate person for it because of the range of your thinking. I don't know of anyone else who has been able to talk about biomolecular computing, and nanotechnology, and quantum physics, and the deep structure of the neuron, and integrate all of that with spiritual ideas. Well, thank you, and I'm honored that I'm the one who got this gig for six shows. And I might just close by saying that there are practical applications of this. For example, if the microtubules in the brain have megahertz resonances, which they do, then stimulating them with megahertz should alter mental states, and perhaps even treat mental disorders. And in fact, ultrasound, which is mechanical vibrations in the megahertz, is something that we use clinically in anesthesiology for imaging, and it's been around for many, many years. And we've shown in the last three or four years, I should say, that transcranial ultrasound, putting ultrasound into the brain, it does get through the skull, bounces off the brain, comes back out, is painless, safe, and improves mental state, mood. So 30 seconds of ultrasound actually gives about an hour of improved mood. And we're starting studies now for depression, but also Alzheimer's, because in Alzheimer's, the microtubules fall apart. And because of the resonance effect, it looks like ultrasound stabilizes microtubules and prevents their depolymerization. And also brain injury, where you want the microtubules to be active and create new synapses. So I'm very pleased that, hopefully at least, this somewhat esoteric intellectual pursuit will lead to something clinically useful in ultrasound for mental and cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer's. So in other words, your theory has practical applications. You've been able to stimulate a lot of other researchers. Your theory has what we would call heuristic value in science, because it generates research ideas. But now you're talking about pragmatic applications. Yeah, yeah. Useful, clinically useful applications. And I'm all for that. I've enjoyed the intellectual pursuit. As I said, I find it the most interesting question in the world. I can't imagine anything more important, affecting all aspects of everything, including politics and world peace and contentment and so forth. And if, to boot, we can improve people's lives by TUS, transcranial ultrasound, to treat Alzheimer's and brain injury and other mental and cognitive disorders, all the better. Stuart Hameroff, thank you so much for being with me for this six-part series on consciousness in the brain. Thanks for having me. And thank you for being with us.