nonlocal consciousness

Nonlocal consciousness is a term used by cardiologist Pim van Lommel to refer to consciousness that exists beyond time and space, with no material or biological basis.¹ Van Lommel and others have proposed the theory of nonlocal consciousness, which postulates that deeper consciousness is not generated by the brain.² He considers that aspects of quantum mechanics, such as quantum nonlocality, help explain how consciousness functions.³ The concept is discussed principally in connection with the near-death experience (NDE), the Out-of-Body Experience (OBE), and the filter theory of consciousness.

Van Lommel developed the concept through research into patients who survived cardiac arrest. He considers that, based on cases of corroborated out-of-body experiences, there are good reasons to assume that consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of the brain,⁴ and concludes that the brain most likely has a facilitating or receiving, rather than producing, function in the experience of consciousness.⁵ He proposes that the informational fields of consciousness reported during cardiac arrest likely consist of waves rooted in an invisible realm beyond time and space that are always present around and through the body.⁶ On this basis, he considers that the near-death experience (NDE) can be explained in all its elements as an experience of nonlocal consciousness.⁷ Van Lommel proposed that nonlocal consciousness features an interconnectedness offering the chance of communication with the thoughts and feelings of others, including deceased friends and relatives⁸ - a phenomenon studied elsewhere as after-death communication (ADC). He considers that, beyond a reasonable doubt, there is a continuity of consciousness after the death of the physical body,⁹ believes that death, like birth, is merely a passing from one state of consciousness into another,¹⁰ and believes that essential consciousness existed before birth and will exist after death, with no beginning and no end.¹¹

Peter Fenwick considers that all end-of-life experiences bearing a relationship to the NDE or to the survival of consciousness after death suggest that consciousness is nonlocal, as van Lommel describes it, more a field structure than something created by the brain.¹² According to “Surviving Death”, the veridical out-of-body experience reported by Pam Reynolds during a state of no brain or heart activity suggests that consciousness can exist independent of the body.¹³ Bruce Greyson wrote that consciousness is not localised exclusively in the brain,¹⁴ and also authored the Greyson 2003 American prospective Near-Death Experience (NDE) study. Journalist Leslie Kean considers that data from modern mediumship experiments, together with the wider body of psi research, support a model of nonlocal consciousness that continues after the death of the body, as against a materialist paradigm of consciousness.¹⁵ The medium Freda said that the mind, which is all that we are, is eternal and indestructible, and that the physical brain is merely an instrument for the mind’s expression rather than the mind’s source, meaning consciousness can be separated from it.¹⁶

Jane Katra coauthored two books on nonlocal consciousness and healing with physicist Russell Targ, a pioneer in the development of the laser: “Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Mind and Spiritual Healing” and “The Heart of the Mind: Using Our Mind to Transform Our Consciousness”.¹⁷

Julia Mossbridge and Chris Ramsay have discussed nonlocal consciousness in terms of an informational substrate. Ramsay holds that information exists omnipresently and that everyone has access to it across space and time,¹⁸ and considers the body to be a processor that plucks non-locally existing information out of the substrate and applies it to physical reality.¹⁹ Mossbridge similarly considers the mind, rather than the body, to be the processor of information, holding that the mind does not go away when the body dies,²⁰ and describes the informational substrate as the mind of the universe, holding all information from the birth to the death of the universe.²¹ She considers that the individual mind ceases when the body dies, while the universal mind retains awareness that the body existed in physical form.²² She holds that, under this model, precognition works with a substrate aware of what needs to happen, rather than only with events that reach physical manifestation in time.²³

Ross Coulthart attended a consciousness conference in Barcelona, Spain, in 2025.²⁴ At the conference, scientists including Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose discussed nonlocal consciousness and the idea that the human brain is an attenuator, transmitter and receiver rather than a computer.²⁵ Coulthart considers that what the consciousness scientists described - a brain able to plug into an external unitary or Akashic field - is inherently the idea of a soul.²⁶ Hundreds to thousands of people have engaged Coulthart on the idea that there is something intrinsic in human consciousness that allows humans to connect with the phenomenon.²⁷ Mossbridge has repeatedly urged the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Studies to study consciousness rather than only the craft, and the group agreed with her at its most recent gathering.²⁸ She holds that anyone who does not recognise a relationship between the human mind, mind as a universal thing, and UAP has not understood the phenomenon,²⁹ and considers the consciousness aspect of UAP to be a cultural taboo, avoided because treating the phenomenon as merely craft in the sky is easier.³⁰