This essay was originally written in 1999, but based on ideas I had in 1984. At that time I was studying for a never-completed degree in Biology, but no matter how hard I tried to focus on my daily lectures problems relating to the underlying structure of reality itself became my obsession. Once the breakthrough was made, I internalized these concepts into my own personal world view.

Although I told them to friends at the time, I did not try to write them down until the end of the century. At that time I showed them to a theologian who was interested and gave me some good feedback, but also encountered some confusion and hostility from people who had closed minds on these subjects and who rejected them without bothering to look at them. It was unsettling to realize that people could be so threatened by new ideas.

It is only now that I feel I should release them into the world, for people to accept or reject as they will. Since I first came upon them back in 1984, there have been some that have approached or skirted around the edges of my theories, but none that have put all the pieces together in quite the same way and arrived at what seems to me to be a logically irrefutable conclusion.

I think that many people will find the answers they seek here, and rightfully take comfort from this way of looking at our world. For that reason alone, I feel that I have a duty to share it. Not everyone will agree, and I accept that. People will accept or reject these ideas according to their own natures. My only wish is that those who reject them first make the effort to understand them.

Christopher Ross

INTRODUCTION

In this essay, I will outline what I believe to be secular arguments for the persistence of life (by which I mean experience) after death. One of the problems in presenting a non- religious theory of life after death is that most people who worry about such questions actually want answers to the day to day problems of life. My purpose is more humble; merely to present a coherent argument, not solve the problems of our world. Even so, I believe that the questions of the nature of reality and existence are so important in and of themselves as to be worth answering, if such answers are possible. I must add that I do not have any issue with people who have, or seek, a religious answer. My conception neither confirms nor denies any of the existing world religions. It exists outside of them.

The model of reality that I will propose in this essay may well seem very unusual and counter-intuitive, but I do not see this as an argument against it. To most people, quantum mechanics and Einsteinian physics seem counter-intuitive, yet they are now important parts of the scientific worldview. And like those theories, my model will not make the established “common sense” view of the world redundant for everyday use.

An engineer designing a motor vehicle need not take relativistic effects into account, such as the difference in the vehicle’s length between when it is at rest and moving at full speed. When I set my watch in the morning I do not have to make allowance for the difference in the speed of time between ground level and my eighth floor office to avoid missing my train. Likewise, the normal citizen will not have to incorporate my ideas into his or her daily routine. But, as the work of Einstein and Bohr et al shows, in the quest for the ultimately true picture of the world, we must often go beyond the requirements of common sense. Common sense works well for common events, but an ultimately true picture must include events which are decidedly uncommon as well as those which are mundane.

Unlike other theories, my conception looks at the world as it is experienced directly. It takes the subjective point of view, not the objective. This is because we can ultimately only know our subjective experiences with certainty. In contrast, the objective is always conjectural.

But even so you may ask, what is so important about the observer? Why should we think of the subjective experience as fundamental?

The development of modern physics since roughly 1900 has been largely about putting the subjective back into the supposedly objective Newtonian “clockwork universe”. I want to stress that the line of reasoning I will outline below is not “science”, but nevertheless I do believe that modern science gives some support for it. Einstein demonstrated that the point of view of the observer would directly affect the way they saw the physical world, and the kind of measurements they would make of it.

Even more indicative is the role the observer takes in Quantum physics, the area of science devoted to the extremely small. In this, the presence of the observer, and the act of observation, are central to not just how we understand the physical world, but what it actually is. The observer is creating the world they observe, in a very literal manner.

It should be borne in mind that both branches of physics are routinely accepted. While there are still mysteries to be uncovered, our modern technology relies on these principles to work. They are “true” from a scientific standpoint.

There is a classic thought experiment used in Quantum physics, proposed in 1935 by Erwin Schrödinger, which has become known as “Schrödinger’s Cat”. In quantum physics, subatomic particles prior to being observed are considered to be “entangled”, that is they exhibit all possible values at the same time. They only select one value at the moment of observation. Schrodinger’s thought experiment applies that principle to the macroscopic world.

Briefly, it supposes that an experimenter places a cat in a sealed box. There is a subatomic particle in the box that may (or may not) decay, releasing a tiny amount of radiation. The particle is next to a Geiger counter that will detect this radiation, and will release a vial of poison to kill the cat the moment the particle decays. The experiment concludes that as the particle has both decayed and not-decayed until the moment in which it is observed, the cat in the sealed box must therefore be considered both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and reality is required to choose one of the two possible options. (Of course this is only a thought experiment, and no cats were actually poisoned!)

My contention is that this experiment is true no matter if the cat’s fate is decided by the decay of a quantum particle, or some more mundane manner such as flipping a coin. Either way the principle is the same – the animal’s condition is known once observed, but prior to that is merely theoretical. From the point of view of any outside observer, it simultaneously exists in all possible configurations. Adding the quantum particle decay element to the experiment actually makes no difference to the results.

Some may point out that there is a difference in the specific mathematics behind the resolution of a quantum state and regular probability, in that one uses “Real Numbers” and the other uses so-called “Imaginary Numbers” (those are the actual technical terms). However the real-world effect is the same – the cat is either alive or not, and it’s state cannot be known before observation – and that is what interests us here.

When two results from different experiments are identical, the only conclusion is that the two experiments were themselves equivalent in some fashion. I once put this to an academic physicist, and his answer was a frank but honest “I don’t know”. He said that such philosophical questions weren’t something he thought about as a physicist. That is a fair enough answer from his professional point of view, but also one which gives us license to answer the question ourselves.

The subjective observer plays a fundamental role in modern physics; it cannot therefore be denied that the observer plays an essential role in the creation of our reality. That realization was the start of my intellectual inquiry. If the observer is fundamental, what kind of reality does that leave us in? The following essay is an attempt to answer that question.

THE OBSERVER

In order to analyze the properties of the observer, we must first attempt to model the observer’s experience. We must arrive at a meaningful, consistent model of the subjective universe. This is, by definition, the one which the Observer inhabits. It is, as we shall see, a very different universe to that of the objective world model we are accustomed to using in our daily lives. Although it is the world we live in moment-to-moment, the subjective point of view is surprisingly difficult to describe. However, for the purpose of this discussion it is essential.

I have deliberately kept the assumptions of my model as few as possible. The whole point of the exercise is to describe the observed universe without recourse to any hypothetical “facts” that are outside the direct experience of the individual. This is not a criticism of models which make use of working hypotheses to make sense of the observed world. Such “worldviews” are essential to science, and to every aspect of our daily lives. My point here is to attempt – as far as is possible – to examine the observed universe directly, without recourse to any worldview at all.

My only assumption is that the observer exists; “I think, therefore I am”, to use Descartes’s famous phrase. I therefore assume that my perceptions, be they of the “inner” world of the imagination or “outer” world of waking life, are indeed my perceptions. Beyond that, I will make no assumptions or value judgments about them. It should be noted that, for the purposes of this model, it is also unnecessary to define “consciousness” or “the observer”. It is sufficient that such a thing exists. As we shall see, to attempt to describe these terms any further would be counterproductive, in fact. It would actually invalidate the model because it would assert that the observer relies on an external context or “explanation”. For the purposes of my model, that the consciousness exists is the only important aspect of it.

This last assertion may seem strange, but philosophy has long recognized that it is impossible to analyze certain basic ideas that appear to underpin our understanding of the universe. Take for example the concept of “difference.” There is nothing difficult to comprehend about this notion; it is one of the most fundamental ideas we possess. But we run into a difficulty when we try to define what it means exactly. It is impossible to define the idea of “difference” without using the concept of difference itself in the definition. For example, to define it as “not the same” merely allows one to avoid using the word “difference,” but the idea is still present.

Hence, we have to accept that there are some concepts that cannot be defined solely by reference to anything else, but which are understood by every human being, apparently from birth. Philosophy refers to these irreducible concepts as “a-priori”. There are many other examples that fall into this category, such as the idea of existence, the concepts of numbers and of the infinite and the finite, and the products of the senses (which cannot be described to those who have not experienced them). Though it is frustrating for the intellect to accept these barriers to its powers of analysis, we have little choice in the matter. However, while this may seem a serious impediment to analysis, we shall see later that it is in fact highly instructive.

THE PROBLEM OF ALTERNATIVES

One question about the nature of reality that is important to my argument is that of the nature of alternatives. Quantum Physics holds that when an object is unobserved, its actual nature is indeterminate. I feel that this principle holds for macroscopic phenomena, as well for those on the quantum level. Take for example, a coin which has been spun, and is now covered by a person’s hand. The coin may have landed head side up, or tail side up. An observation will reveal only one of these alternatives. Before the observation, each of these possible states has an equal claim to existence (or nonexistence, as the case may be). When the observation is made we usually conclude that the other alternative never existed, in hindsight. But is this proposition necessarily correct?

There are some physicists who consider that, as there is no difference in the validity of the two possibilities, save that one was observed and the other was not, then both must in some sense exist. They suggest that the universe has divided at the moment of observation. There are now two versions of the observer, each having made one of the possible observations. The universe is constantly splitting in this fashion, whenever an observation is made. This is known as the “Multiple Universes Theory”. Whether the reader chooses to accept that all of the possible outcomes of each and every observation actually exist in some “real” sense, or that they exist in a “potential” sense, from which the universe randomly selects one to be realized, does not alter the validity of this description of the observed universe. The difference between the two statements seems to me to be purely semantic. The “real” outcome could not exist without the “unreal” alternatives; otherwise, it could not be discussed with reference to any other possible states.

The presence of alternatives is inherently vital to the universe’s existence. Without them, it would be impossible to “know” things about the universe at all. It would be impossible to think or to observe, because it would not be possible to posit any alternative to the current state of affairs. An observer would be like a rock falling down a slope, simply obeying physical rules while unconscious of any alternatives to its situation. Bear in mind that by the word “alternatives,” I mean even purely hypothetical ones. A person falling from a building may not have any choice in the matter, but he or she can at least conceive of one in the moments that remain to them!

If there is no intrinsic difference between something that happened and the alternative that did not, then it follows therefore that no observation can be ultimately relied upon. In the model I am proposing, destruction is merely a type of change. Take the example of a handwritten note which, for whatever hypothetical reason, you want to destroy. Each observation of the note is a “repetition” of the event. To destroy it is to prevent the even from reoccurring – that is, preventing it from being read again.

The act of crumpling it into a ball will reduce probability of repetition somewhat. The note’s probability of re-occurrence is only slightly reduced, however. If it is carefully smoothed out, it might be read again; the phenomenon will reoccur. To be more certain of destroying it, you might tear it up into little pieces and scatter them. The probability of re-occurrence is now greatly lessened, but not reduced to zero. With care and effort, the pieces might be collected and reassembled. Frustrated at your lack of success, you cast it into an open fireplace. You watch as the note is consumed utterly. If it is not disturbed, the ashes can sometimes be read by forensic scientists, but to dash even this hope you take a poker and grind the remains into a fine powder. Now, surely, the note has been destroyed. It cannot possibly reoccur. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

You might later discover that you accidentally destroyed the wrong note, and that it is still on your desk. Or you might have dreamed the whole thing, and wake to find the note unchanged. A secret government agency may be controlling your mind. You may be a squid-like creature from a distant galaxy, who has allowed itself to be hypnotized into believing it was a human as a bizarre means of staving off boredom. The number of scenarios is as infinite as the reader’s imagination.

I have made these examples fairly whimsical, but the message from them is inescapable. None of the above scenarios is impossible. Incredibly unlikely yes, but not impossible. And that is the vital point. I said in my introduction that an ultimately true picture must take into account even the most uncommon events, as well as the more mundane ones. A serious model of reality cannot ignore the fundamental uncertainty of all events and perceptions.

There is no item of information that cannot theoretically be contradicted, even if the likelihood of such a contradiction happening is very small for some of the most fundamental things we know about our world. To take an extreme example, it is entirely possible that we might wake up to find that our whole life up to this point has been a dream, and that the true nature of reality is very different from that which we have come to accept. This occurrence is incredibly unlikely of course, so much so that we rightly dismiss it in our everyday lives, but the fact that it is not impossible, that it’s probability of occurring is non-zero, is very important. There is no possible way to ultimately prove anything by observation.

Thus we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that no knowledge can be certain. Once that is granted, it follows that only a theory based on the subjective experience can have any ultimate validity as a description of, or explanation for reality. As I have previously stated, this does not lead us to the conclusion of an irrational, unstructured universe. Indeed, I believe that it allows us to solve some of the most basic philosophical questions that human beings have asked throughout the ages. The Subjective Model gives us an insight into the structure of reality. Other theories that are based on objective evidence concern themselves with what it is made of.

ORDER AND DISORDER

What does the subjective model allow us to say about the Universe? The first thing that we must explain is the phenomenon of “order”. How can the order we see around us arise? Order is obtained when a rule is applied to a set of random elements. A good example is that of shaking dirt to produce an organized set of layers. The parts are ordered according to their size and weight. The organizing rules in this case are the characteristics of the particles. Grains with similar characteristics of size, weight and texture are likely to gather together. There is another way of describing this phenomenon. When the grains are “ordered,” what we mean is that there is a high probability that their type of particle will be repeated in the same spatial region. In other words, order can be described as the repetition of an event, or group of events. (Note that I am including objects as a type of event. “Objects” are, after all, simply observations.)

If the subjective model is valid, then the only source of structure available to us is probability. To say that an observable universe must lie within the boundaries of total predictability and total chaos is to say that every event must have a certain finite probability of occurrence. This proposition accords with the world we see around us. All events/observations in our lives have a probability of occurrence; breathing, heartbeats, dawn and sunset are examples of events with a very high (but not 100%) probability of occurrence. Lightning strikes, lottery wins and death by meteor impact are events with a very low probability of occurrence. Interestingly, an occurrence of an event in one’s life seems to result in an increase in its probability of repetition. In other words, the effect of the act of observation is to make the probability of repetition greater than the probability of initial occurrence. However, as the probability is never one hundred percent, the repetition is never absolutely guaranteed, of course.

THE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE

At this point I must establish some rules about what is possible and what is not. I propose firstly that we rule as impossible those events which are fundamentally unobservable. This is the only class of events which can be said to be truly impossible. Because of the impossibility of proving that anything is truly known, no event that is observable in principle can be ruled out of the possible universe, no matter how unlikely it’s occurrence may seem.

But what do I mean by an observable event? I can best illustrate it by demonstrating that some things are unobservable. Take for example the idea of reversing time in the universal sense. By this I mean a total reversal of time throughout the cosmos. This is the effect we witness when we watch a film being run backwards and see omelets un-scramble themselves and the broken eggs leap back into their shells. Clearly, if this were to actually happen to us, we could not be aware of it. We would “un-remember” the events, and no trace of them would be left to show that they had ever happened. If, during the course of my writing the previous sentence, time had reversed back to the era of the dinosaurs and started again, I would have no way of being aware of the fact. It is therefore nonsensical to speak of time reversing, for such an event would by definition leave no trace on the observable universe.

Time cannot be stopped for the same reason. If time were stopped, no memories could be acquired. There is an analogue to this state in everyday life. A person who is under general anesthetic is not conscious of time passing. The last moment before losing consciousness and the first moment after regaining it are seamlessly joined (I have had personal experience of this). To continue with the film analogy, it is as if two pieces of film were joined to create a “jump cut”. One moment you are being wheeled into the operating theater, the next moment you are being taken out of it. It would make no difference if ten minutes or ten billion years had elapsed while you were unconscious. The effect would be the same to the unconscious person.

These points are straightforward enough. Less obvious perhaps is that the same effect would occur with either perfect repetition of observation or with perfect non-repetition. The presence of variation is essential to life and perception; for example, if there were only one color in the world we would be unaware of the concept of color. The effect of our only being able to see the color red would be equivalent to our only being able to see in black and white. Likewise, the presence of too many colors, each of which we only ever saw once, would lead to chaotic sensory input. The colors would become meaningless, as with no repetition they could not convey information about the future.

LIFE

We cannot yet be sure what the precise rules that define “life” are, but that such rules exist is clear. It might be that no two people completely agree on what they are, but this does not present a difficulty for the line of reasoning I am following, which is after all subjective in nature. That there is a phenomenon which we call “life” is sufficient. However, as I have demonstrated above, life requires that the order around it is only partial. Too much or too little would be lethal. Life could not exist if there were no variation in its experiences at all. Likewise, if there were no repetitive factors in our lives (such as heartbeats, breathing and eating) we could not long exist. Indeed, life itself could not have evolved in the first place. The same constraints that apply to biological life also apply to the life of the psyche. People cannot flourish in total chaos, but neither is complete predictability a healthy mental environment.

It seems to me that we can now make a model that describes “life” as it is experienced on a moment-to-moment basis. If we take every possible observation as a point on a line, and assume that they are distributed randomly, then there will be some regions of that line where, through sheer chance, the points are grouped in a manner that corresponds to a coherent “pattern”. That is to say, a region where there is a very high probability that various events will be repeated (the aforementioned heartbeats, breathing, etc.).

As I have just demonstrated that only some combinations of events will produce an observable “moment”, life emerges as a self-organizing phenomenon. If the sequence of events which make up the “life” is broken by unconnected and therefore incoherent passages, these will be overlooked by the observer. They fall into the category of unobservable events that I have established above. Life may be said to be composed of change, but there must be a certain amount of stability, or we could not be aware that anything was being changed. Change, in this model, refers to a shift in the probability of occurrence of an event. For example, if the fender of your car is dented, this reduces the probability that you will see the fender in its original state again, and increases the probability that you will see it in its newly crumpled state.

CHANGE, DESTRUCTION AND DEATH

As we have already seen that only a subjective model of reality can be valid due to the uncertainty of all observations, it follows that objects can only be destroyed relative to the observer. This result is crucial, as the observer cannot be destroyed relative to itself. A sizable change in the repeatability of the surrounding points will ‘destroy the world’ from the observer’s point of view, but the point of view itself must remain. I propose that this event is what is commonly referred to as “death.” In other words, this subjective model requires that there is existence after death. It must be stressed that we cannot know what form such existence would take, although it seems likely to me that it would resemble our current lives to some degree.

It is interesting that my results of my logical exercise do appear to resemble the instinctive beliefs that many people arrive at; that we have a part of ourselves that continues after death, and that this continuation may take place in a different sphere of reality than the one we know. I do not believe that this is a coincidence. I believe that most people have some intuitive feeling for these concepts – indeed, as these principles govern every aspect of our lives, it would be more surprising if they did not.

Before looking into these matters I always assumed that the “common sense” conception was merely simple wish fulfillment, but I wonder now if a deeper, more instinctive understanding is actually involved. I suspect that our brains understand these things at a basic level; it is just our conscious minds, seeing the apparent deaths around us, that have become confused!

If I am right, why don’t people come back from the dead? What is death anyway? Why does it exist at all? As I have said earlier, my proposals are not an attempt to describe the details of our daily lives. I do not want to get bogged down in trying to explain every aspect of our particular reality in terms of my conception. But this particular question is too central to pass over.

I believe that the answer lies in what scientists call the Anthropic Principle. Briefly, this is the simple sounding but rather powerful proposition that the universe is the way it is because if it were not, we could not be observing it in the first place. Astrophysicists have pointed out that if any of the various physical laws and constants were altered even fractionally, the universe would not be able to support life. While this would appear to be a literally astronomical coincidence, it is obvious that any universe that was not able to support life could not contain anyone to study it! There may have been countless universes created before this one, but there could not have been anyone in them to observe them.

My proposition relies on a similar logic; humans need death to exist. This is true at a biological and evolutionary level, and also at a personal level.

What I am saying therefore, is that we see the existence of death in our observed reality because we could not be the sort of beings we are without it. As many philosophers have pointed out, death is central to what makes us human. Our personalities, and our civilization could not exist without it, and certainly could not have formed spontaneously. Progress relies on death. Our biological evolution relies on death. Human mind is not designed for immortality, as we get bored and set in our ways too easily. No one wants to die, but perpetual continuation of our minds would need substantial rewiring. Such a creature could conceivably exist, (and may do in the future) but would not be human as we understand it. In other words, any creature with a mind configured the way ours are, would find that death exists in its world. It is a required precondition for human existence as we currently understand it.

If you doubt this, try a thought experiment: how would our existence be different if there were no death in our world? When we usually imagine immortality, what we are actually imagining is simply living longer. True immortality would involve being around infinitely, in this world. No creature that was configured in any way remotely similar to a human could maintain sanity, or even happiness, with such an existence. And that is just the personal element. Scientifically, evolution requires that organisms be mortal, that each generation dies out to be replaced by the next, slightly different one. And there is the practical issue; if there was no death, populations would quickly rise to beyond the planet’s carrying capacity. Without dying off, bacteria alone would flood quickly the world given their potential reproduction rate. That is the power of exponential growth. Like it or not, our world requires the existence of death. A reality or existence that did not entail death would have to look very different to our own.

IDENTITY

One objection that may be made to my model is that, if only the point of view is retained after death, can this be described as the continuation of the individual? The answer to this question can be found, I believe, in our experiences of our daily lives. I personally change my personality, my identity, my past and my circumstances on a regular basis. This is not the result of a disturbed mind – I simply refer to my nightly experience of dreaming, an experience shared by every member of the human race. On occasion, I also have dreams in which I do not appear as an individual at all. “I” am present only as a disembodied point of view, as though I were watching a film. And yet, we think of the things we experience in dreams as happening to “ourselves,” for they certainly form a part of our life-experiences. A lifetime might be subjectively described, in fact, as a string of sensory impressions which exhibit a high degree of internal consistency for about sixteen hours, after which they break down into regions of inconsistency and discontinuity for what appears on waking to have been approximately eight hours.

There are also some types of mental disorders which illustrate the point I am making here. Take, for example, an individual who has lost his or her memory. With no knowledge of their past, how can we say that they are the “same person?” And yet, they would certainly claim that they are. Likewise, all human beings change throughout their lives, and have forgotten vast amounts of their experiences during that period, and yet do we believe that we were literally different individuals then? We do not. We have no difficulty in accepting our pasts as being “ourselves,” despite the alien-ness of the personas we had as children or young adults. We do not hold funerals for the people we once were.

It seems to me then that the proposition that we are composed of our memories, or our current conception of self, is indefensible in the light of our everyday experience. Our conception of ourselves, of our identity, is not fixed. It is a fluid, ever-changing phenomenon, and cannot be considered a constant element of our lives. The concept of identity itself might be important, but the particular details of that identity would seem to be irrelevant. (And the knowledge of identity might not be an essential element of “existence” either; it was not in the case of my purely observational “movie watching” dreams).

This contention appears to contradict our most cherished ideas of “self” and “existence”, but the fact that identity-shift is a common aspect of our daily lives suggests to me that the proposition is a valid one. It is impossible to discuss our own lives in terms of an immutable, stable definition of self. The use of this argument to describe an afterlife is no different; in order for us to reject it, we must reject the validity of our own current existences.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I would restate my belief that, when a rigorous model of reality is formulated, that model must necessarily be subjective in nature. As a result of this, all phenomena can be seen as various probabilities of occurrence and repetition. This leads to the conclusion that existence after “death” is a logical requirement of the reality we experience. The subject of “life after death” has long been considered as fundamentally outside the scope of the reasoning mind, to be the province of belief and “revealed truth,” but my line of reasoning demonstrates that it is possible to arrive at conclusions about these subjects without resorting to religious assertions. While I freely acknowledge that many may find my ideas both unorthodox and sensational, I believe that a review of my reasoning demonstrates their soundness. Granted the validity of the subjective, probability-based model, continuation of existence after death is a logical requirement. The probability of the total nullification of the point of view is zero, as such an occurrence is outside the set of possible observations.