The Spirit Will Be Reached by Science
Spirit is Science. On June 20, 1991, I wrote in the Jornal de Brasília newspaper that the time will come when the Spirit will be clearly taken into consideration by all. Researchers are getting there, and as I have said: what Religion knows by intuition Science will one day prove in the laboratory. (As I have argued so many times, there can never be immutable convictions or denials without remission in Science). Science without Religion may lead to dryness of the Soul. Religion without Science may degenerate into fanaticism. That is why, in the ideal age we all want to see coming over the horizon of History, Science (brain, mind) enlightened by Love (Religion, fraternal heart) will raise human beings up to conquer Truth.
Just as the rapid material progress in the 20th century (it was 1991 then)—as we quickly moved from horse-drawn carriages to interplanetary rockets—the same will happen in the realm of feelings (Spirit), so that the world can be more pleasant. As poet and journalist Alziro Zarur (1914-1979) used to say:
“Reaching equilibrium is our supreme goal. Goodness will never be defeated by evil.”
Such equilibrium will come when creatures, either through Love or through Pain, understand that the intelligence of the brain must be aligned with that of the heart. Humankind will always evolve, one way or another . . . Or are we, materially speaking, still in the times of cavemen?! . . . Of course not! But progress shall also take place spiritually and morally, and I believe it will come more often as an effect of Master Pain, which, by the way, is the liberation of the Soul.
Spirit and Laboratory
Still on the definition of what Spirit is, and always trying to encourage this discussion, I have published throughout decades on the media quite a number of my reflections. In one of them I addressed the thesis by the American physician Stuart Hameroff and the British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, who state that consciousness would be scientifically proven.
Based on a theory from 1996, they both suggested that the brain would be a biological machine with 100 billion neurons working as an information network. When interviewed by the English newspaper Daily Mail, in October 2012, the two researchers explained the quantum theory of consciousness, through which the Souls would be within structures called microtubules located in brain cells. The quantum information in these microtubules would be, in their opinion, responsible for the experience of consciousness.
Dr. Hameroff’s explanation was:
“Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says ‘I had a near-death experience’.”
In a scientific article from 2014 published in the Physics of Life Reviews, the same authors conclude:
“Consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe. . . . Our views of reality, of the universe, of ourselves depend on consciousness. Consciousness defines our existence.”
The Spirit and the Mind
These are still theories, subject to criticism—which is natural in academic debates. But we are glad to see the growing interest in a topic whose field of research is very extensive, with more and more contribution from very serious people. It is necessary to point out all the time that the Spirit (or Soul) is not restricted to a product of the physical mind, the material thinking, although the basis of its interaction occurs through the amazing machinery called brain. A comprehensive study will somehow reveal such relationship. We are dealing here with the eternal, intelligent essence which, while bound to the body—by a luminous cord that is detached as a result of death—animates life as we know it in the world. Solomon, the wise ruler, tells us in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 about the “silver cord,” which, when loosed, takes the dust (body) back to where it came from, and the Spirit returns to God, who gave it. Actually, as I have been saying for decades now, the Spirit is not a simple projection of the mind.
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