Abalo
It was Lavoisier, in his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry (1789), who stated, "In nature, nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed." As psychobio-physiological subjects, humans are also subject to the same phenomenon. The body renews, transforms, ages, and dies at the cellular level many times throughout life, to such an extent that at different stages of human development, it is very difficult, with rare exceptions, to recognize the current body as the previous one.
Therefore, understanding death without starting from a dynamic view of the phenomenon, which must include a transcultural approach alongside the scientific one, is a useless and reductive exercise. It is an uncontestable fact that evidence-based science claims for itself the status of truth, dominating discourse and reflection on reality with an "objective" character. Consequently, in a not-too-different way, its propositions regarding death are reduced to limited data, hindered by the constraints of the scientific method, which is more suited to describing correlations than to delving into the domains of causality, typically relegated to metaphysical speculations. It is also true that the reduction of death to a biological phenomenon does not stem from a true scientific attitude, which is generally humble and open, but from a kind of scientism that still prevails today, turning science into the new religion of humanity, as A. Comte predicted in his Positivist Catechism at the end of the 19th century.
Recently, discoveries in the field of quantum physics and consciousness sciences, along with more than 170 years of research in diverse areas—such as the exploration of the existence of a biofield (by Konstantin Korotkov, PhD, and Bruce Lipton, PhD) responsible for health and illness, paranormal experiences studied by scientific parapsychology since J.B. Rhine (Duke University, North Carolina), near-death experiences (NDE) recorded by, among others, Raymond Moody, PhD, MD, and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, MD, and prenatal memories evoking supposed past-life memories, rigorously studied by Ian Stevenson, PhD, MD (University of Virginia)—are just some examples that illustrate the emergence of a new paradigm in the approach to death and its relationship with life as a whole.
At the center of this theme, consciousness emerges from the study of the human mind as the reference paradigm: it is known that it survives the body for an average of three minutes after death. This finding was obtained from a study conducted by the University of Southampton, published in 2014 by Sam Parnia, PhD, MD, and colleagues. The study, carried out over four years and involving more than 2,000 people from three countries, highlights that, according to the same study, 13% of participants reported feeling separated from their bodies during a state of brain death.
In other words, evidence-based science is on the path to confirming what anthropology, culture (including art), philosophy, religion, and spirituality have sustained for millennia: the survival of consciousness after physical death. The definition of existence and of the existent goes far beyond Bios (being more than just a physical body, because one is more than physical matter) into dimensions that we can only currently fully explore through quantum research or through the use of transpersonal experiences and altered states of consciousness. Whether one accepts or rejects this idea, the evidence outweighs the criticism.
For Korotkov, PhD in informatics and biophysics from the University of St. Petersburg, who became known for discovering, through a new scientific method based on the technical improvement of Kirlian photography (GDV - Gas Discharge Visualization of the human light system), there is a non-material, energetic matrix, known as the "biofield." This matrix contains fundamental information related to the subject’s bio-physical-psychological existence, health, and illness, particularly trauma.
Thanks to this discovery, the possibility that, in the coming decades, medicine may become more energetic and preventive than chemical and palliative is increasingly strong. Korotkov states that "a new line of research is evident: the science of consciousness." For over 20 years, this author has supported the widely known claim that mathematics, quantum physics, and neuroscience already converge toward this new paradigm, which shapes much of what is known today in psychosomatics. It is quite possible that, thanks to the exponential advancement of science and technology, the fall of prejudices, and an open scientific practice, as it should be, we will be able to prove what intuition, sensitivity, and human experience as a whole already know.
Francisco Marques, Phd Master MD
Abalo Exhibition with Manuel Tainha, Plato, Évora, March 2024
