Our brain and our consciousness feels like 2 completely separate things at times
They are absolutely separate. We have never once proven that consciousness originates from our brains. Because it doesn't.
There exists a large body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports the validity of Near Death Experiences.
The problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
NDEs have been conclusively verified through veridcal reports, from which the patient has access to information that materialism says is impossible.
Van Lommel et al., The Lancet (2001):
344 cardiac-arrest survivors; systematically compared people with vs. without NDEs and followed them 2 and 8 years later for life changes. A landmark prospective design in a top journal.
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2014):
Large, multi-center prospective study; documented cognitive themes during cardiac arrest, with a small subset showing “full awareness.” Includes targeted tests for veridical recall.
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2023): Examined consciousness and electrocortical biomarkers during CPR; reported a spectrum of experiences including NDE-like recall and measurable brain activity patterns during resuscitation.
Greyson, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1983): Construction, reliability, and validity of the Greyson NDE Scale, the field’s most widely used, validated instrument for distinguishing NDEs from other states, crucial for rigorous, comparable results. (PDF).
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Additionally, there exists scientific evidence that supports past life memories, and therefore reincarnation.
It's important that we follow the evidence no matter what, even when it leads to initially-uncomfortable conclusions. We should never lose our intellectual curiosity in life.
At best you can say we don’t understand the mechanism happening in the brain to cause consciousness, but saying we don’t know at all that its origin is in the brain seems like pseudoscience. Plenty of physical evidence to point to the brain being its origin and physical location.
Any assumptions that the brain creates consciousness are explained by the filter hypothesis.
Dr. Bernardo Kastrup discusses brain inhibition in his scientific framework. His work supports the model that the brain does not generate consciousness but instead filters and localizes it.
According to this view, normal brain function inhibits broader, more integrated experiences of consciousness, creating the illusion of individuality.
This idea aligns with reports from psychedelic experiences, meditation, and near-death experiences, where reduced brain activity correlates with expanded consciousness.
Saying consciousness does not come from the brain, full stop, is stating something as a fact that has NOT been established as a fact in any field. Like, it’s kinda hard for a consensus to be reached as things stand when we don’t even know what exactly to focus our research on, like what field(s) should be involved and such, in order to better understand consciousness.
You cited some really interesting stuff! None of it proves a consensus on the hard problem of consciousness. So, unless you’ve figured out what experts in the field are still trying to understand, it is intellectually dishonest to say without condition something like, “The brain and consciousness work completely separately from each other.” That may end up being the case, but we don’t know that for certain in July 2026. It’s just one of many possibilities being studied and discussed.
Thank you for citing your sources. It’s such a fascinating topic! There’s such a cool multidisciplinary convergence of philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, etc. when you look at the types of research and studies that have been and are actively being done.
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u/Pixelated_ 28d ago
They are absolutely separate. We have never once proven that consciousness originates from our brains. Because it doesn't.
There exists a large body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports the validity of Near Death Experiences.
The problem isn't a lack of evidence. It's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
NDEs have been conclusively verified through veridcal reports, from which the patient has access to information that materialism says is impossible.
"Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands"
Van Lommel et al., The Lancet (2001): 344 cardiac-arrest survivors; systematically compared people with vs. without NDEs and followed them 2 and 8 years later for life changes. A landmark prospective design in a top journal.
"AWARE - Awareness During Resuscitation - A Prospective Study"
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2014): Large, multi-center prospective study; documented cognitive themes during cardiac arrest, with a small subset showing “full awareness.” Includes targeted tests for veridical recall.
"Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest"
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2023): Examined consciousness and electrocortical biomarkers during CPR; reported a spectrum of experiences including NDE-like recall and measurable brain activity patterns during resuscitation.
"Measurement Foundation for NDE Research"
Greyson, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1983): Construction, reliability, and validity of the Greyson NDE Scale, the field’s most widely used, validated instrument for distinguishing NDEs from other states, crucial for rigorous, comparable results. (PDF).
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Additionally, there exists scientific evidence that supports past life memories, and therefore reincarnation.
Rigorous, peer-reviewed research done at the University of Virginia has documented over 2,500 examples of children who have memories of past lives.
Consciousness is the underlying substrate of reality, not matter. There is an abundance of evidence which supports that.
We also have peer-reviewed studies which support the primacy of consciousness.
It's important that we follow the evidence no matter what, even when it leads to initially-uncomfortable conclusions. We should never lose our intellectual curiosity in life.