Jan Pilotti: Conscious Experiences Everywhere – besides in the brain

Although Einstein concluded that nothing can go faster than light, his theory of special relativity cannot exclude phenomena faster than light. Superluminal particles and tachyons have been advanced as speculations, but they have never been found. However, it is easy to show that Einstein’s theory allows for superluminal systems straightforwardly in two dimensions, with one space and one time dimension. But our three-dimensional space, with length, width and height mathematically shows the need for three timelike dimensions. It is argued that near-death experiences where people talk about more dimensions support the reality of spacetime.

No one has yet explained even ordinary conscious experiences in terms of brain processes, and I will argue that the NDE gives clues towards solving the so-called ‘mystery of consciousness.’ This leads to a view of conscious experiences located in higher dimensional spacetime, which can be seen as One Great Consciousness. The brain then does not produce consciousness but acts as doors of perception to this Universal Consciousness. Finally I will discuss if and how it is possible to decide scientifically or otherwise between brain-materialism and One Great Consciousness in terms of an overall world view.

Jan Pilotti MD studied mathematics and theoretical physics and earned a B.Sc. at Stockholm’s University Sweden. As a young student he discovered a possibility of mathematically extending Einstein’s theory of relativity to include superluminal Lorentz transformations in a six-dimensional Minkowskian spacetime, with three space and three “timelike” dimensions. This was 1971 and long before string theory assumed more space dimensions. So, he didn’t get any support for the idea of more dimensions and left theoretical physics without finishing any Ph.D. dissertation.

Ironically a mystical experience at a summer camp with a communist group opened him up to the Soul of the Universe. He started to meditate and then studied at medical school. Soon he found Raymond Moody’s book Life after Life and thought that NDE perhaps was related to the extra spacetime dimensions. He has edited and written about NDEs and OBEs in a Swedish book of readings in 1982 and in 1987 in another Swedish book he started to present the idea of Conscious spacetime. He is also M.D. and has worked as a child- and adolescent psychiatrist, mainly with family and trauma therapy.

After retirement he returned to studying physics and consciousness. In English he has published Conscious Spacetime. An outline to experiential monism. In The Mystery of Consciousness. Essays on spacetime, Evolution and Well-being. Ed. I. Fredriksson. McFarland 2014. And in a conference book on physics 2020 published a chapter How Minkowski Could Have Discovered Superluminal Lorentz Transformations and six Dimensional Spacetime. https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/2019conf.html where he in mathematical detail shows how Einstein, Minkowski, Pauli and many others missed superluminal Lorentz transformations and six dimensions and a possible connection to both quantum theory and consciousness. A revised and enlarged version be found on https://https://www.academia.edu/114149181 or https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377759560

A more detailed dialogue about consciousness and its relation to six-dimensional spacetime can be found in On the best available evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death at https://www.academia.edu/109869489 2021.

He is currently an affiliated member of Institute for Foundational Studies Hermann Minkowski https://minkowskiinstitute.com/