Science appears to be drawing ever closer to spirituality. Two scientists have now taken us on another journey on a subject that has had metaphysicians in a lather since the beginning of the historical record and scientists in denial: the riddle of the soul.
A scientific model for the soul has been proposed from quantum physics. Two scientists — Stuart Hameroff, an anaesthetist from the US, and well-known British physicist Roger Penrose — have theorised that the soul, according to their quantum model, exists in the microtubules within brain cells. Studying out-of-body experiences, the scientists conclude that when a patient has a near-death experience his “quantum soul” is released from the nervous system and re-enters the cosmos, before returning and reviving the patient, and argue that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in these microtubules. Their studies suggest the soul is constructed of the very fabric of the universe. Not far from Vedantic and other Eastern philosophies, in which consciousness is simply the property of everything that is, pervading and pervaded by all there is. In quantum mechanics, the values for physical constants defining our universe may be encoded in the fine structure of the universe itself, along with mathematical truth, Platonic ideas, and precursors of mass, spin, charge and consciousness.
In this new time, when top Western universities have begun to offer courses in the paranormal sciences, we find science is moving Eastward, to ancient truths.