The pull of eternity: hope for Immortality as a belief in supernatural

But if nature has its own memory, then it should be able not only to remember but also to forget. In humans, skills not only can be acquired but can also die out (e.g., if a piano player doesn't practice for a long time, his or her quality of play goes down). Similarly, one can expect that some of the regularities in nature can diminish and even disappear. Confirmation of this hypothesis can be seen in the unexplainable gradual decrease of the reproducibility of experimental phenomena in psychology and other sciences, known as the “decline effect”. In the 1930-th American parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rhine found that in some of his participants their abilities to correctly guess other peoples' thoughts were fading until they disappeared completely [60]. Later a similar decline effect was observed in other branches of psychology. In 1990, American psychologist Jonathan Schooler reported the “verbal overshadowing” phenomenon. According to this phenomenon, under some situations putting non-verbalizable thoughts into words can be disruptive: Participants' recognized objects they had seen and named worse than the objects they had seen but didn't name [61]. However, with years Schooler found it increasingly difficult to replicate this effect. Looking for an explanation, Schooler writes: “Perhaps, just as the act of observation has been suggested to affect quantum measurements, scientific observation could subtly change some scientific effects. Although the laws of reality are usually understood to be immutable, some physicists …. have observed that this should be considered an assumption, not a foregone conclusion” [62]. In private, Schooler sometimes called the decline effect “cosmic habituation” [63]. When we conduct a scientific experiment, we ask nature a question and expect a standard answer every time we repeat this question under the same experimental conditions. In science this repeated emergence of standard answers is called “replicability”. Yet it turns out that however hard scientists try to maintain the exactly same experimental conditions the nature's answers eventually fade. It's as if nature “habituates” to stimuli that are always there. In living organisms habituation is when an organism gradually stops reacting to a stimulus that happens repeatedly. To put it in other words, nature reacts like a living creature - it gradually “forgets” its own answer. Later a similar decline effect was found in other sciences, such as biology and pharmaceutics. For instance, drugs that used to provide a high therapeutic effect with years were loosing their therapeutic power even though they were taken by patients who had never used them before [ibid].

So, there are some grounds to assume that both autobiographical memory of a human individual and the “memory of the universe” (e.g., the laws of nature) can be stored in a certain hypothetical depository, which is beyond the physical universe. Throughout history, scientists gave this depository different names, such as the realm of ideas (Plato), or the morphic field(Sheldrake). The “depository hypothesis” doesn't replace the traditional explanation of human memory by synaptic engrams but rather complements this explanation. If this hypothesis is taken seriously, then the implicit hope for the “life after life” of an individual human consciousness is not without some grounds after all. And still, it remains only a hope.

A person in the ocean of time: Conclusions

I started this paper with the question of why renowned scientists and even institutions engage in projects that seem to have no practical value in the modern life. These projects include exploration of problems such as the origin of the universe, the future of Earth and the universe in billions of years from now, the structure of objects that are situated hundreds of millions of light years away from the Milky Way or are so fundamental that can exist only in theory, and the fate of humankind in the future measured on a cosmic scale. These studies require serious investments. At that human civilization exists only a few thousand years, is facing a number of urgent challenges (such as ongoing wars, refugee crises, global warming, undernourishment, lethal diseases, overpopulation, and ecological disasters), and can come to its abrupt end at any moment from a variety of lethal impacts. I hypothesized that the acute interest in global cosmic issues has its basis in the subconscious hope of modern people that a person's mind is immortal.

The historical analysis revealed that the hope for immortality of the soul was rooted in the belief of the ancients in the supernatural realm where gods and spirits lived and where after people's death their souls passed. Modern science proclaimed that the belief in the supernatural is a fallacy, and this imposed a ban on the hope for personal immortality.

Nevertheless, psychological research in the recent decades has shown that the belief in the supernatural is alive not only in small children and superstitious adults, but in the majority of educated adults who consciously view themselves as non-believers in magic or in god. The belief in the supernatural gives a person the subconscious hope that the individual human consciousness can be immortal. We reviewed various attempts to provide the implicit belief in the supernatural with evidence: Scientific exploration of paranormal phenomena and the possibility of participation between a person and the universe (e.g., the “effect of Mars”, the direct effect of thoughts on matter, the near dearth experiences), pseudoscientific theories (e.g., the “ancient astronauts” theory), and humanistic approaches (e.g., the “omega point” theory). We came to the conclusion that none of these attempts provided solid evidence for the supernatural phenomena, which leaves the implicit hope for personal immortality without support. The strong anthropic principle, based on the achievements of quantum physics, claims that at the level of quantum events the magical participation between human consciousness and the physical universe is indeed a reality. But SAP does not guarantee immortality of the human mind, as it links the physical universe to intelligent observers for only as long as the observers live.

Finally, we examined the assumption that the mind can survive death of the physical universe by joining the cosmic consciousness. We found that despite some evidence for the possibility that both human memory and memory of the universe are stored in a depository beyond the physical universe, this assumption remains mostly hypothetical.

And yet, the hope for immortality lives and keeps providing inspiration for scientific and non-scientific studies. Why is it the case? Because a hope takes its strength not from knowledge, but from passion and belief. And most people passionately want to live in eternity and, subconsciously, believe in the supernatural. This subconscious belief feeds the rational people's hope for personal immortality.

A lonely traveller on a yacht in the middle of a boundless water desert - this is my image of a person, at the dusk of his or her earthly journey, who firmly believes in science and is already unable to accept a common religious faith. Joys of discoveries of childhood, aspirations of youth, confident steps and achievements of adulthood - all of this is behind. And what is ahead? Almost nothing, on the honest rating. Of course, there are still remains of the health in the body, canned food in the storage, fresh water in the cistern and the yacht is still on the float… But in the mist that lies ahead the inevitable moment is already visible when the journey will come to its end. And still, something elusive and subconscious glimmers in the darkness - the little ray of hope. The hope that the omniscient being is looking at you and is ready to open their embrace to you, selflessly and unconditionally. That your life was not just a splash on the boundless surface of the ocean of time, and your deeds - both good and bad - will be appreciated in eternity. For a nonreligious person this hope has no scientific and logical grounds. A person like that understands that by his or her conscious disbelief in god and the supernatural he or she does not deserve this hope. And still, the hope is there. Locked in the dungeon of subconscious, this hope feeds endeavours that from a rational point of view are impractical and initiates inquiries in issues that are beyond our understanding. Against all odds, we live as if our soul is immortal.

But all life is against all odds. There is no ground for a system of such complexity as a human organism to exist and not to fall apart at any time, yet this system lasts. And it seems to me that this hidden, subconscious and “unlawful” for a rational person belief that life and the mind are irreducible to the laws of nature, that there is something bigger than an individual and even all humankind can possibly comprehend, that the supernatural is not a fallacy but a reality - is the feeding ground for the person's last hope: The hope for immortality.

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