And then the next step is to distill our brain or transplant
it. You know it's interesting, many years ago -- God over 30 years ago -- I did
an interview with a neurosurgeon who did head transplants.
D. Was it Robert White?
Robert White, exactly - yes. And I actually also spoke with
a member of his team, I think his name was Hernandez, but I'm not sure who was
in Mexico City who had been a part of the team.
They had done them on monkeys and they were doing it to understand blood
flow, so that they could figure out how to isolate the blood flow to the brain. They ended up doing some things where they
were able with children to reduce the temperature of the blood, cool the brain
using an external cooling apparatus for cooling the blood and then they were
able to operate on the brain for more extended periods of time without blood
because it was cooled down. As part of
this interview process, I talked to Arthur C. Clark -- called him up in Sri
Lanka and discussed with him the idea of people being able to remotely use
robotic devices. This in 1981, I figure,
1980. I was talking about this kind of
stuff with Arthur C Clark and with Robert White. I'm impressed that you know
about Robert White because it's so long ago.
D. You know, I know that some of Robert White's work was
inspired by another famous guy who lived even earlier and he was Russian. His last name was Demikhov and he's known to
be the father of modern transplantology.
If I'm not mistaken, he was the first one who transplanted the human liver
and after that, he was known for transplanting dog's heads. He basically did
surgeries and he"s known to have created 200 two-headed dogs. By his
experiments, he tried to show that transplanting the heads was physical. Of course, I know about Robert White because
he was kind of a unique specialist who isolated the brain of the monkey and we
can actually find video on the internet showing that and he almost proved that
an isolated brain can function and I remember that video where Dr. White said
that when he isolated the brain, the brain was thinking. It was alive and sending and getting signals.
And this is the kind of stuff that so much science fiction
has been created around -- from Steve Martin having his head in a jar to
cartoons with a brain on top of a robot.
And you're literally looking at ways to make this kind of thing happen
for real so that people can stay alive.
D. You know, in fiction and movies, people normally like
something scary, you know. They probably won't buy a ticket to go in to watch
the movie which will be about a kind utopia without some action. So I think that's why in world literature and
in world culture we can notice so many scary plots, scary books and movies. And
basically I think such scary scenarios, like a brain in a jar, shouldn't drive
the science. Science should create something positive which could really help
human beings and if we just think of a logical continuation of the process of
the brain isolation, we can logically come to the conclusion the brain shouldn't
function isolated. The brain was created to be connected with the body,
basically the main computer of the body, so we know that if we keep the brain
isolated there will be a process which is called apoptosis which will functionally
kill the brain. And, we don't want to keep anybody in the jar -- we want to
extend life and we want to finally bring people back to society. So that's why
we have plans to connect it to the body and we consider that connecting it to
the robotic body will be the most positive and the most inspiring scenario,
because first it will stimulate the technology -- we won't need any clone or any other dead
person to provide the isolated brain with the body. And finally we hope that
science will be able to develop the body which will be not less but even more
functional than the biological one, that finally we will be able to do the
transition from the biology to the non-biology to be more a capable species and
a more capable human being.
So what you're saying here is that you don't want to just
create a brain robot or brain technology interface, you want to develop a way
to take what is in the brain -- what makes up our consciousness, our soul, our
spirituality and put into some kind of a technological device so that the brain
is no longer a part of being a person.
D. Finally yes. Of course this formulation is very simple
and we will face many difficulties trying to accomplish this idea, but
basically personally I believe that there is something more subtle in the brain
which you can call, probably, the soul or in ancient eastern spiritual
traditions they call it the "subtle body." I mean I believe that our consciousness is not
just a computational process in the brain, I believe that there is something
more and I just recently interviewed Roger Penrose who said that there was
something more in the brain and he said that we needed to relate to quantum
mechanics to understand that and he said that he believed that even quantum
mechanics wouldn't be enough to understand the consciousness. So I'm trying to
initiate the mega-project which will finally lead us to the answer for the
answer to "what the consciousness is
R: This is what really interests me. I was on a conference call that you had a
couple of weeks ago and I asked then about my concern about - it's one thing to
transfer what a person thinks, but it's another to look at the harder to -- I'm
trying to use the right word -- evaluate, measure -- the soul, the spirit, the
feelings -- and it's interesting that you started with this -- looking at the
soul and the spirit as something that could be -- is it quantified, is it
replicable or how do you think about those ideas in terms of transferring it so
it works within some other kind of technological substrate?
D. You know, my thoughts will always be thoughts and it will
always be a kind of vision because I am not a scientist and in this project I'm
totally relying on science. Probably our science is not developed enough to
transfer one's individual consciousness to a new substrate, but I think that at
one level the development of science it's quite feasible to set such a goal and
I think if we set up some intermediate goals, like we did in the Avatar project,
this will finally lead us to the goal, or to the point where science will be
able to understand the nature of consciousness enough to be able to
transfer. I talked to several scientists
and some of them still consider consciousness to be a computational process in
the brain so they believe that the data from the brain can be downloaded or we
can create something which could work in parallel with our brain enough to if
the brain dies to continue living so that this way the transition of the
personality will be smooth without interrupting life experiences. And some
scientists told me that they believe that consciousness was something more than
just a computational process and it could be a quantum nature in case we
created a quantum carrier for the consciousness. In other words, a quantum computer could
substitute the brain in the future. Then we could probably teleport it -- the
consciousness -- using quantum teleportation, but again, it's just a kind of
theory, you know, but you remember even space flight was a theory some time
ago, so I believe the nature of science is to set the goals which may seem
unachievable, but finally to achieve those goals to improve human beings, to
improve society, the world.
R: Fascinating. This
is the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show WNJC 1360 AM reaching metro Philly and
South Jersey sponsored by Oped News.com.
If you're just picking up in the middle of this interview, we'll have it
on Oped News.com/podcasts and on iTunes and look up my name Rob Kall. I've been
speaking with Dmitry Itskov, He is the Founder and organizer of Global Future
2045, the website for that is GF2045.com.
And Dmitry's vision is to bring together the smartest, best scientists
in the world -- this conference literally brings many brilliant innovators
together to work on a long term goal of creating a technology that will allow
for -- how did he put it? transition of the personality will be smooth without
interrupting life experience from a biological brain to a technological
substrate that would support consciousness with spirituality and feelings and
soul in a technological substrate or device like a robot or something that
could basically be repaired and replaced and live forever. Did I get that right?
D: Yeah, absolutely right, thank you.
R: Now you brought up the example of teleportation, and you
say - and it kind of rings a bell. I'm
an old Star Trek fan and the idea of teleporting and transferring consciousness
and biological material. You're talking about quantum teleportation of
consciousness and someway putting into this technological vessel. But I want to get back to something, I want
to get back to this -- you said that you started by talking to spiritual people
and I ask you how you're going to transfer spirituality and soul and feeling
and you say, well that's for the scientists. But, you have a number of
spiritual people participating in this event. So how do they connect with the
scientists and what have you learned from them and what do they bring to the
table in this project?
D: You know, my desire has always been to establish a kind
of cooperation between scientists and spiritual people because among those
spiritual masters which I met, there were many people who actually supported
the science. And you know, now a days, there is a problem of some kind of
opposition even with science and religion, science and spiritual people and I think
with our project, with the Avatar project and we could change this energy, and
we could create a precedent of a deep and very productive cooperation between
spiritual people and the scientists. And
first I would like to say that the spiritual leaders invited, especially those
people from the spiritual circles which support science, want to have the
dialogue and want to work together. And
the second point on why I'm bringing them is that I think it will be very
useful and very fruitful to have them in the project which is aimed at
understanding what consciousness is and what is eventual for the development of
the consciousness, because basically, modern science has no answer to this
question. And in parallel, we can find
some ancient texts and we know some spiritual traditions which basically have
the description of the consciousness and from those texts we can get the sense
of how we can help our consciousness to evolve -- you know, what we can do to
extend our consciousness -- to develop it. So I found spiritual masters who have
their personal and very deep experience in the process of developing their
personal consciousness and who basically have a different world view from the
ordinary person because their perception of the world is very different, you know.
Those spiritual books and their experience which we can find in the book looks
like real sci-fi, as well. So I want them to share their experiences and I want
those masters to participate in the project, first, to probably give some
ethical recommendations to the scientists, second, I think they will be useful
in sharing their spiritual experiences and hopefully giving some vision to
which point we will get why this technology project and this cooperation will
probably advance the science significantly and will probably help to overcome
that problem which we have in society -- I mean the opposition -- we could
probably eliminate the opposition between science and spirituality in the
world.
R: That's a big challenge. The human race has a history of
there not being a lot of cooperation sometimes with some of the leaders of
religions and scientists.
D: It is a challenge because sometimes, for many people,
religion became just a number of dogmas but in some spiritual traditions there
is something which is different, you know, there is something sacred and
myself, as I mentioned, I came to some of these ideas through my personal
spiritual quest and I think there are some spiritual practices which are very
useful for human beings. I think if we bring this into this process -- not the
dogma, but something sacred -- really scared and useful, then we could benefit.
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