Description: When Stuart Hameroff, now age 71, was a young man entering medical school, he expressed an interest in the study of consciousness. So, his advisors encouraged him to become an anesthesiologist, who could watch patients go in and out of consciousness several times every day. He specialized in anesthesiology, and by 1994, as a practicing anesthesiologist in Arizona, he introduced what seemed at that time some outlandish ideas about the human brain.
At the time few people believed him, until someone suggested he read “The Emperor’s New Mind” published a few years earlier, and written by Nobel-prize winning mathematical physicist, Roger Penrose. Hameroff had proposed a theory of consciousness based upon his observations of patients coming in and out of anesthesia, but he lacked a mechanism. Penrose had suggested a possible mechanism to explain the theory.
So the two teamed up to introduce a theory of consciousness which questions the current simplistic paradigm of firing neurons and synapses, and suggests that consciousness just may result from quantum physics activities at the subatomic level. These ideas could be as earthshaking as Galileo’s questioning of the earth-centered solar system, and open the possibilities for experiences based upon quantum physics: non-local out-of-body experiences; an afterlife within the space-time geometry; past-life regression and other phenomena currently defined as parapsychological.
Karen O’Malia’s Bio: karen became interested in biology in high school; majored in French, and studied Spanish, art history, and biology as an undergrad; did graduate work in biology, with a concentration in ecology; went back to grad school later for a Master’s in counseling. Continued to read on topics in biology, bio and organic chemistry, and medicine. Her three careers include teaching high school French, corporate financial sales and management, and legal pharmaceutical product liability case management.
Note: If you missed this session, click here for a graph that will further explain Karen’s presentation.
