Fringe-ology (11 page)

I took a few minutes before the call to write down the names of five people I've lost, including my oldest brother, my brother-in-law, my mother, and two friends who had died, far too young, in the previous year. I scanned over their names, feeling silly about it, but still hoping Molloy might be real, the afterlife might exist, and one or more of them might come through.

The first half-hour was entirely unremarkable, not really any different than any other reading I've had. She supplied such a wide variety of information that I could have applied it, or not applied it, to any number of people. This was remarkably frustrating, especially because early on she mentioned that an older woman, who died of cancer, had stepped forward. This woman was so weak at the end that dying was a relief.

Surely, this could have been my mother. The problem is that it also could have been millions of other mothers—and to make matters worse, Molloy had nothing with which to follow it up, nothing that was specific
only
to my mother. When I asked her for something I could use as confirmation, she asked if my mother was a musician or had a career in music.

“No,” I said.

And Molloy had nothing more to give. In fact, she suggested I ask my father, who is still alive, if maybe my mother had some deeper interest or expertise in music than I had been aware. As if I didn't know my own mother, her overly sentimental taste in music and her off-key warbling whenever I heard it.

To be fair, there was one point at which Molloy went on something of a tear: I will not mention the name of the friend she seemed to be describing. He was an avowed atheist and materialist, and in this funny world we live in, his wife might find it insulting to his memory if I publicly suggested he might still be alive. In any event, Molloy claimed another spirit was coming through and immediately scored a number of hits: “There is someone to your side,” she said. “He wants to thank you. You said something for him, on his behalf, after he died, and he was very impressed. And grateful. He wants you to know he was honored. And he's also telling me he was honored . . . multiple times? There was more than one ceremony for him?”

She had my attention. This was all true.

“He was surprised today. You asked for him, right? He was surprised by that and honored by that.”

I had. His was one of the five names I had written down. And I felt somehow odd doing it. We had never really been close, never socialized. But I always felt we were somehow brothers. And I deeply admired and respected this man. When he died, I asked to be included among the speakers. I even stayed up till 3:00
A.M.
the night before, working for several hours to find the right thing to say.

“I'm getting that he died of cancer,” she said. “It caused him problems with his digestion, and was rare. And he was very, very weak at the end and ready to go.”

Yes. True as well.

“He was a writer? I'm getting that he was a writer and he is still proud of that, over there on the other side. He's saying ‘I really was a good writer.' . . . I like this guy! I'm getting a lot of energy from him!”

I allowed myself one question: “Is there anything he is surprised by?”

“Over there?” she asked “Or over here?”

“Well, the question I intended was over there,” I said. “But I'll listen to whatever.”

“He's laughing,” she reported. “He says you've got him! He was a big skeptic? A nonbeliever who thought, like, ‘You die and that's the end?' ”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, he was quite surprised,” she said. “But he's glad with how it's all turned out.”

In this entire section of the reading, which went on just a little longer, I took notes and reviewed them later. She did get a couple of details wrong. She said, for instance, that he fondly remembered a road trip with a specific friend. But I checked with the friend, who remembered no road trip at all. After reviewing my notes, I spent an hour on the Internet, trying to see if there was some way she might have connected myself, this deceased writer, and the fact that I spoke at one of his memorials. There had been no news accounts. Was there some reference to that event floating around on someone's blog?

I found nothing. And I think, to a real believer, this was it. Not just a dazzle shot, but confirmation. A conversation with someone who died, conducted through the intercession of a medium. To a skeptic, this was all just a bunch of crap—a run of lucky guesses that turned out to be right just by coincidence. And me? When I look at Molloy's performance in its totality, I am wholly unimpressed. Still, I think the following exercise is helpful. I think the most flattering claim that might be made for Molloy is that she
might
have heard from my friend. You can apply whatever percentage you like to that “might,” from .0001 percent to 99 percent. It doesn't matter to me because all those numbers feel the same: rawly painful.

Might
is a painful state of affairs for all of us, whether we are believers or skeptics.
Might
causes anxiety. And as a result, uncertainty is not the option we normally choose.

Instead, we choose a side:

Doreen Molloy connected me to my friend.

Or

Doreen Molloy was just guessing.

I think, in the end, when it comes to the broader picture of psi, what we have learned is more complicated than that. What we have learned is that believers and skeptics both have findings to support their cause. The believers have reams of research data suggesting some form of psi appears to be at work. But the skeptics can argue that fools and their money are soon parted—the purported psi effect so weak we can't count on it to produce accurate information on any practical basis.

And that's the stunner: even if psi is real, there isn't anything to
do
with it—at least not as the matter stands right now. The Army discontinued its remote viewing experiments because psi couldn't be operationalized to provide consistently actionable intelligence. For several years, Sony had a lab devoted to psi research that closed because they couldn't turn it into a product.

The science is clear: if psi exists, the most reliable way to see it is through the lens of statistics. As a result, believers should stop and think before ever consulting a psychic. But toward the end of this book, we'll find more reason to take heart. Because there is a better way to feel as if we've communicated with someone who's died. And for the people who experience that sense of connection, there is no better way to get through the night.

Consciousness Outside the Brain

What is a mind? Do minds really exist? . . . Are minds subject to the laws of physics? What, indeed, are the laws of physics? To ask for definitive answers to such grandiose questions would, of course, be a tall order. Such answers I cannot provide: nor can anyone else, though some may try to impress us with their guesses.

—Roger Penrose,
The Emperor's New Mind

D
r. Stuart Hameroff had a plane to catch. But he had been invited to speak at this event, and he wanted his opportunity to talk even more once it seemed like he might never go on. The occasion was the Beyond Belief Conference, a gathering peopled by the world's leading atheist scientists and philosophers—including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Patricia Churchland. The evening's moderator and event organizer was Roger Bingham, a researcher in the field of evolutionary neuroscience, who had invited Hameroff to speak after the two had dinner and exchanged emails. Bingham had a rather mercurial view of how to run the weekend-long conference, thinking it should unfold spontaneously: Consequently, he told Hameroff and all the other presenters what
day
they would speak, but not the hour. Bingham would call them up to the stage when the moment felt right.

Hameroff runs a highly esteemed conference himself, on the subject of human consciousness. He thought that improvising the order of speakers seemed a hippie-dippy way of doing things. He agreed to appear but informed Bingham that he would have to speak on day one. He had to fly back home to Arizona that night, where he had a shift to work in his capacity as an anesthesiologist.

As the first day of the conference passed, Hameroff sat listening not just to his fellow presenters but the clock as it ticked. Nearly the whole day went by with no signal from his host. So as the last session of the day approached, he cornered Bingham. “Roger,” he said, “I gotta speak in the next session or I'm leaving.”

Hameroff thought this reminder would settle the matter, but Bingham wouldn't commit. In fact, he seemed willing to just let the clock on Hameroff's availability run out. “Listen,” said Hameroff, believing he needed to muscle his way on. “You got me here, and I'm going to speak today.”

Some people, particularly in Hameroff's position, might have been more than willing to just go home. This was not a friendly crowd for him. In fact, it was the opposite. Hameroff was by now famous for having proposed, in partnership with the legendary mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, a quantum-based theory of human consciousness. The theory mounted a kind of frontal assault on all that mainstream science holds dear, insisting that consciousness originates below the level of the neuron. Even more dramatically, in Hameroff's own public estimation, quantum consciousness might not only open the door to multiple paranormal claims, but invite them in for tea.

The speakers before him had delighted in ridiculing all things paranormal and supernatural. But Hameroff was glad for the chance to confront his critics. And when Bingham relented and put him on, Hameroff made a show of flouting the differences between himself and his audience. “So far,” he said, “to my way of thinking, most of this conference has been like the Spanish Inquisition but in reverse. The scientists are kind of frying the people who believe in religion. I personally am not fond of organized religion. I don't have a problem with bashing organized religion. However, I think there is room in science for spirituality.”

From there, Hameroff's talk spun back and forth through the centuries. He argued that fundamental ethical and spiritual values had perhaps been embedded into the fabric of the universe. These ideal forms were located at the quantum scale, he theorized. And essentially, the human mind's apprehension of God or spirituality reflects this innate system of values. In less than thirty minutes, Hameroff connected Plato's theory of ideal forms, quantum mechanics (QM), anesthesia, neuroscience, and spirituality. Whatever points he lost for lack of detail, he gained in sheer audaciousness. But when he finished, the sound of maybe six or eight hands clapping was drowned out by the multitude's collective silence—the hushed whisper of fabric, of one hundred butts shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Bingham was the next to speak into a working microphone. And in his deep, British accent, he cheerily noted the obvious: “You seem to have enraged just about everybody,” he said.

Hameroff, in turn, smiled broadly. “That was my plan,” he announced.

Looking over the audience, in fact, Hameroff could see amygdalas working overtime: He says Richard Dawkins, the King of Reason, seemed so filled with emotion that he could not even look at the podium where Hameroff stood. Instead, he stared off sulkily in the other direction. And during the next fifteen minutes or so, during the question and answer portion of his presentation, Hameroff collected the great wages of his sin. Physicist Lawrence Krauss accused him of getting all of his facts about quantum mechanics wrong. “
Everything
you said is nonsense,” he announced. A philosopher who specializes in Plato accused him of arguing for something that, well, she had never read before. (Hameroff figured she should read more.) But the most telling exchange came near the end, when neurobiologist Terrence Sejnowski admitted that, in a sense, the pursuit of science hasn't yet fully explained scien
tists
. “Where I think reason and rationality really shine,” said Sejnowski, “is in being able to go step by step through the evidence that you have, putting together rational arguments and writing a paper. But is that actually how we make discoveries? Right? . . . We all know, working scientists know, that it's often an accident . . . or often it's an idea you have in the shower. Where do these ideas come from? They're not deductive. From a lot of experiments and experience, something clicks.”

Hameroff's body language marked the occasion: he leaned over the podium and sagely laid his right index finger over his right cheek. He rested his chin on the pedestal of his thumb and arched his eyebrows, inadvertently mimicking the state Sejnowski was talking about—the state of sudden insight. This was, at least metaphorically, what Hameroff's entire talk had addressed—the apprehension of knowledge buried in the fabric of reality itself. Merely acknowledging a mystery we all share in common seemed to open the door, just a crack, to a sense of shared experience and purpose, because for a moment or two the entire crowd seemed to fall into a kind of reverie. But then Hameroff mentioned he had a plane to catch, and the crowd, perhaps sensing its opportunity slip away, happily went back to jeering him.

The door, so briefly open, slammed shut.

The sense of unity, so narrowly present, dissipated.

Hameroff left, got on a jet plane.

His talk may not have revealed the truth about the universe. But the audience's reaction to it most definitely revealed the truth about all of us.

H
ERE, AT THE
U
NIVERSITY
of Arizona Medical Center, Hameroff's colleagues sometimes call him Stuart. But they seem to revel in calling him “Hammer.”

In person, Hameroff is (usually) mild mannered and dryly humorous, built strong and low to the ground like a nature-made brick layer. His evident good health is the product of clean living, in Arizona dry heat. Though he is famous for his theory on consciousness, he spends his work days in the windowless bowels of a hospital surgery ward, an anesthesiologist in charge of a small troop of residents. His “Hammer” nickname arises, I suspect, from a number of areas. He himself admits he likes to engage in public debate, as he did at the Beyond Belief Conference, and he might occasionally go too far in political arguments with some of the hospital's more numerous conservatives. Hameroff's job is also, in a sense, to
drop
the hammer. He puts people to sleep for surgery, and if all goes well he wakes them up again. Anesthesiology is perhaps the least glorified aspect of medicine. The surgeon, so skillful in rending one millimeter of flesh from another, gets the glory. The anesthesiologist, twirling the knobs that control a collection of gases, goes relatively unnoticed. “It's like flying a plane,” says Hameroff, waiting for his next surgery in a set of scrubs. “Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”

He is only half-joking. When things go smoothly, when the patient's blood gases and vital signs are all as they are supposed to be, the anesthesiologist can stay the course till something changes. But when a patient goes south, it's “time for a new plan,” as Hameroff puts it. Hameroff, however, doesn't have a worrier's personality. With big, alert almond eyes and a face that settles into a smile by default, Hameroff has the bravado of a pilot—a man who steadily lifts a multitude of souls into the ether, then settles them down again, safe to get on with the rest of their lives. In his early sixties, he also has the air of a man who has lived long enough to know himself and be comfortable with what he sees. He spends his morning stopping in to see the patients he'll put to sleep later, leaning over their bedsides and pelting them with a steady stream of humor only an anesthesiologist would find funny. “Don't worry,” he tells patients, “the whole operation will only take a second, as far as you know.”

“Hey,” he says, “you'll be right back.”

The patients, every last one, smile appreciatively. Extending his flying analogy, he likens them to nervous travelers, waiting in an airport. “This isn't easy on any of them,” he says. “I'm the one standing up and I do this every day. This is a difficult experience for them.”

One older woman starts to cry when he turns to leave. “Whoa, whoa,” he says, taking the woman's nervous, shaking hand in his own. “What's wrong?”

“I'm scared,” she says.

“I know,” replies Hameroff. “I understand. But you're going to be okay. We're going to take good care of you.”

The woman is having gall bladder surgery. Minor stuff. But she is scared she'll never wake up. Hameroff keeps hold of her, with both hands, and stares into her eyes. “Hey,” he says, “I promise.”

The woman's panicked eyes soften a little. Hameroff makes sure she has a relative to sit with her until surgery. Then he finally lets go. Seeing him in this environment is something of a revelation. Helping people negotiate the tricky boundary between life and death is difficult work on the best day. Reminders of his own mortality, and that of his loved ones, lie on tables all around Hameroff all day long. But publicly, at least, the fifty hours a week or more he spends working in the innards of a hospital are just his sideline—the day gig that supports his real calling: consciousness research.

Hameroff is, in many respects, an unlikely candidate for this kind of leading role in international intellectual life. He rose, seemingly in a matter of months, from an almost complete unknown in a Tucson hospital to one of the most pilloried and publicized figures in consciousness studies, invited to speak all over the world.

In ways less well known, he was truly born to all this. He hails from a colorful family in Buffalo, where his father Harry, a former carnival barker, worked the stages of burlesque theater and vaudeville, which explains Hameroff's own taste for corny comedy and his ease speaking into a microphone. Hameroff's paternal grandfather, Abraham, was also a big influence. An intellectual dilettante, Abraham knew a lot about a lot—and never saw much need to turn it into a paying job. “I owe him,” says Hameroff, “because he got me involved in thinking about a lot of big ideas at a very young age.”

His grandfather was supported by what Hameroff refers to as “family money.” And so the old man was free to come in and give his grandson science books and engage him in conversations about Einstein, at any time of day. “It was heavy stuff,” remembers Hameroff. “I think I was about six years old when he started that.”

Those conversations rendered him, he says, an “idealist, which is really the research end of my business.”

In elementary school, he told his science teacher he wanted his class project to address “the fundamental nature of life.”

“How are you going to do that?” his teacher asked.

The young Hameroff wasn't sure. He wound up designing a more basic experiment. But the idea gestated in his subconscious mind. “I used to have a kind of nightmare,” he says, “a recurring dream in which I was trying to understand the nature of reality. In the dream I was standing at the edge of the universe, and trying to get to the other side.”

When the time came, Hameroff chose medical school. He was interested in the mind-body problem. How is it that electrical signals and chemical pulsations between neurons result in our experience of life? Neurology seemed a likely career path. Maybe psychiatry. Then, while Hameroff was doing an internship at the Tucson medical center, the chairman of the anesthesiology department offered some advice. “He told me that anesthesiology was key to understanding consciousness,” says Hameroff, “and when I looked at it, he was right.”

As Hameroff quickly learned, all the normal brain processes continue under properly administered anesthesia save one: consciousness. The patient goes right on breathing, neurons go right on firing, secreting, and absorbing chemicals. The only thing missing from “normal” brain function is the most crucial aspect of human experience: awareness. Consciousness.

Hameroff liked the idea of specializing in anesthesiology even more when he realized he would be sitting at a sweet, personal nexus: the meeting of blood, anesthesia, and neural cells isn't just medicine. It's also physics.

His grandfather.

Einstein.

His dreams of standing at the edge of the universe.

In anesthesiology, the interlocking details of Hameroff's personal narrative just clicked. But the result didn't manifest itself with any drama for another twenty years. In the interim, Hameroff got married. Had a kid. Got divorced. Life happened, but he never lost interest in the topic. In fact, he continued working on it, publishing a collection of medical papers and penning a 1987 book,
Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular Consciousness and Nanotechnology
, that went relatively unnoticed outside a small coterie of professionals interested in the topic of artificial intelligence—the problem of whether or not a computer can ever be created that is capable of mimicking all the operations of the human brain.