Where Is Consciousness?

Does consciousness exist only during life?
Or does it persist before, after, and perhaps even between lives?

Investigating the Question

Journalist Scott Smith represents a growing category of independent investigators willing to explore difficult questions without collapsing into either cynicism or belief. In his article “Is There Evidence of Life After Death?”, Smith examines near-death and death-bed phenomena with a measured approach—avoiding sensationalism while engaging directly with available evidence.

A common dismissal of such experiences is that the dying brain produces a chemically induced hallucination. Even if this were partly true, it does not necessarily invalidate the experiences themselves. Brain chemistry and subjective perception are not mutually exclusive.

At times, our thinking becomes unconsciously dualistic: if an experience has a physical correlate, it is assumed to be nothing more than that correlate. Yet correlation alone does not resolve questions of meaning, origin, or continuity.

Observations at the Threshold of Death

Beginning in 1959, Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson examined thousands of death-bed visions over nearly two decades, drawing from observations by physicians and nurses across cultures and settings. Their findings complicate simple neurological explanations:

• Pain-killing drugs did not increase such visions

• Brain dysfunction tended to reduce them

• Prior use of psychoactive substances showed no correlation

• Oxygen deprivation was not a reliable predictor

• Personal belief in an afterlife was not a determining factor

• Some patients experienced visions without knowing they were dying

These observations do not prove an afterlife. But they do suggest that reductive explanations strain to account for the consistency and structure of these experiences.

The Limits of Reductionism

To investigate life after death, we must first allow for the possibility that consciousness is not strictly confined to the brain. One cannot test for wetness while denying the existence of water.

Political theorist Fred Frohock, in Beyond: On Life After Death, notes that purely neurological explanations often require speculative leaps—attributing extraordinary capacities to the brain at the moment of death without supporting evidence. He concludes that near-death experiences may be both transcendent and physically correlated, rather than exclusively one or the other.

Rejecting evidence solely because it is experiential is not objectivity—it is constraint. Subjective phenomena can be approached systematically, especially when patterns recur across cultures, belief systems, and conditions.

Where Is Consciousness?

This question sits at the center of the inquiry.

By the late twentieth century, research began challenging the assumption that consciousness is limited to the brain. Studies suggested that consciousness may involve the entire body—and possibly extend beyond it. These ideas were disruptive, not because they were mystical, but because they destabilized long-held scientific boundaries.

If consciousness participates in shaping reality rather than merely reflecting it, then will, intention, and perception take on practical significance. This moves the discussion beyond philosophy and into lived consequence.

As Max Planck once observed:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”

The question then becomes unavoidable: what comes first—consciousness or the brain?

Consciousness as Fundamental

If consciousness precedes the brain, then our understanding of death, continuity, and identity must change. In a strictly materialist framework, consciousness is a temporary byproduct of biology. In alternative models, biology becomes a vehicle through which consciousness expresses itself.

Dean Radin has noted that modern science often treats consciousness as irrelevant to understanding reality—as though the universe would function identically without experience at all. Yet growing evidence suggests that intention and awareness may play a role even at the quantum level.

This does not negate science. It invites it to expand.

Closing Reflection

The question of where consciousness resides cannot be answered by location alone. It may not be in the brain so much as participating through it.

If consciousness is fundamental, then life and death may represent transitions rather than absolute boundaries. And the investigation of consciousness becomes not an escape from science, but one of its most challenging frontiers.