Prof. Jonathan,

The existence of biophotons is not in any way a fictitious concept. Modern science, at first, took a step back to accept the presence of such particles, which doesn't fit in well within its dogmatic sheath. But, since the modern school of thought goes with the book of science (where we impose certain principles to quote something scientific- like evidence based, repetitive results etc), it has to finally accept the biophoton concept based on the evidence from experiments. That's how biophotons are introduced to the modern science in the discipline of biophysics. The presence of these particles would then introduce a new way of understanding things around us. It adds in life to epigenetics, morphogenesis, biophysics and even neuropsychology.

You are right in asking what connection do biophotons have to the concept of consciousness? This is based on the studies that propose biophotons to be the informational carriers at the cellular level as well as for their interaction with exogenous fields. The concept of biofield pops out in this context. Few decades back, when science knows nothing about the electric and magnetic phenomena associated with the brain and heart, we don't have techniques like EEG, MEG etc and their possible implications. Now, when we accept such possibilities (at the fundamental level associated with discrete electrons), we devised methods to understand the qualitative pictures and their deeper implications. In an analogous way, we have biophotons and the associated biofield. Various investigations have been carried out in understanding the nature of biophotons and their role. Prof. Konstantin Korotkov, from Russia, exclusively work on these lines. He came up with the GDV technique, which helps in capturing the fields generated by these biophotons and therein qualitatively interpret such phenomenon.

Prof. Popp and team have worked a lot on biophoton emssions. For the human body, the emission values are available in the following paper - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15244265. These readings are definitely not recorded during a dying condition, but there are papers available of biophoton emissions from a cancerous or stressed tissue in comparison to healthy tissue - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451865/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957070/. I have also tried to  postulate a pathway associated with biophoton emissions and consciousness - http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/862. Hope this helps in answering some of your questions.

Here is another one - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238455099_Signal_Characteristics_of_Biophoton_Emission_from_Human_Hands

Article Signal Characteristics of Biophoton Emission from Human Hands

Thanks Contzen....I know of other biophoton emission studies from various parts of the body. I am eager to know, if any one connected such activity at dying condition to the consciousness and its nature and location. Thanks once again, i'l go through referred articles

Great question and Contzen, great resources. As if there wasn't few enough hours in the day. 

Studying dying individuals is a difficult approach  keeping in mind sentiments but it would be ideal to understand the emission patterns during REM sleep where it is assumed that an individual looses consciousness or rather studies during coma. Biological cells are known to show increased intensity of these emissions, when they undergo physiological changes under chemical or physical stress (Slawinski, 1990; Slawinski, 2003) or a “flash of death” when the cells get damaged beyond repair. Read this paper - http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/388

Popp has given proof that there exists a decaying behavior - which graphically is displayed in the form of a hyperbolic curve  and is evidence of the coherence of the measured emission that indicates that light is stored in the tissue. So there may be a chance that in sudden death, the biophotons may be released as a flash of light but in a dying individual it may slowly decay.

Why not study people going to sleep?  Consciousness disappears just as much then.

What is a biophoton? Sounds a distinctly dodgy concept to me. Are you sure you mean bandwidth - you seem to be referring to frequency, which is an unrelated concept.

Hi Edwards,

a) Biophotons are photons of light (non-thermal in origin) in the ultraviolet and low visible light range that are produced by a biological system -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophoton 

b) What I actually mean by 'bandwidth' is the 'range of frequencies.' 

c) The case of death is qualitatively very different from that of the sleep. For example, during the sleep state, even though one is not conscious of the physical surroundings, one's breathing, heart pumping, brain mapping, and the digestive mechanisms still don't cease. Only at the physical level, one appears to have no consciousness. In general, we work with various layers (or levels) of consciousness (like sub-conscious and other altered states etc) in our day to day activities. The quality (or level) of consciousness is very different in the sleeping case, to that of a patient in a coma, to the one with anesthesia and in death. 

What I really expect is that, if suppose we find an outburst of biophoton emissions from certain body parts during death, then probably we can associate this location to the physical seat of consciousness or the center of consciousness (an integrated field). We may have conscious receptive fields associated with each of the body organs (having respective maps in the brain), and finally, an integrated version of these fields in the specific location of the brain or the body. Location of this integrated field is what gives us the seat of consciousness or the center of consciousness.

But why on earth should one think biophotons had anything to do with consciousness, Shashi?

Surely, sleep would be a much better test precisely for the reason you give - other functions that might give out photons would be much the same, only consciousness would change. In death you would have no way of knowing if the photons were to do with consciousness or perhaps putrefaction of rotting organs. 

Has anyone ever detected a 'biophoton' that is not just a photon due to reflection of light, or a result of body heat? It sounds like science fiction to me.

Science fiction is also a derivative of imagination and imagination is what helps you look into the depths of your non local consciousness which goes beyond space and time. For a reductionist this does not apply, as a reductionist will try to apply everythingwithin the realms of their limited knowledge of science. Just like we do with the brain and with classical physics or god with religion. Diversification between disciplines is needed to understand what we see and what we don't see. the scientists who worked on the emerging photons from the body could not explain the phenomenon and hence in order to convince the reductionists they had to call it bio-photons or photons that emerge from biological matter. Light plays an important role and is absorbed, scattered or reflected from biological material but when absorbed can result in excitations just like the photoelectric effect to be later released from the surface. This release is not like the light from a tungsten bulb or an led but is very less like science of neutrinos, limited but precise. Another example is photosynthesis, we know everything that happens within the chloroplasts, where the end process is an electron transfer which is similar to what happens in the mitochondria. Beyond the physical, light follows quantum laws which until today are phenomenal and they will be, for now we are actually getting to understand the non physical, but just by reducing it to one discipline be it, science, religion, philosophy, etc, we will never understand it fully.

Surely the biophoton theory is reductionism then - trying to explain consciousness on the basis of reductionist ideas like 'photons'. Surely this is the thing we want to avoid - 'trying to explain things with their limited knowledge of science'. Reductionism seems to me to be a perjorative term used to mean 'ideas I don't like' more than anything. This seems to me to be a case of the pot calling the kettle very black!!

I do agree that the bio photon based approach to understand consciousness is reductive and so are other sciences but beyond a certain point all reductive approaches  have a phenomenal ending and that is why there has never been an end to scientific exploration. Which is good, because of that we survive , but the narrow minded approach of not looking into the phenomenal ends every theory abruptly. This is the reason Einstein found it so difficult to accept the spookiness of quantum entanglement.  Consciousness can be reduced by using bio photon research but the spookiness of the entanglement is purely non local and a phenomenon which is where the subjectivity of consciousness or the hard problem lies. Experiments may help us understand the how which may result in theories and experiments proving the same but the why shall always be phenomenal for its beyond the physical form to perceive dimensions that the non physical can perceive. All ideas are great and need to be respected for they are ideas that can sometimes change the world and moresoever gives you the chance to imagine. The pot may call the kettle black because that is the way it percieves it, for it may have not known that, if it had not been taught that. Whether black, white, grey...they are are all part of the colourful spectrum that was created to be experienced and that experience is what we experience or call consciousness.

We seem to be going around in circles Conzen. Who said anything about forgetting the phenomenal? I am a Leibnizian so everything for me is perception. I cannot see any comments so far in this thread that ignore the phenomenal.

And I cannot see what this has to do with Einstein, who was worried about randomness and the fact that retaining naive realism in the context of QM leads to an apparent violation of locality. Einstein's problem was that he had not through the implications of the Democritan atom paradox and the need for indivisibles to follow different rules from those of naive realism. It turns out that QM is entirely local, but does not fit naive realism. There is no spookiness. And I cannot see what any of this has to do with phenomenality or the hard problem of consciousness, if it exists!!

But it seems that you agree that the biophoton reductionist pot calling everyone else a black reductionist is simply a matter of ignorance. 

I would be interested in getting back to the question as to what makes anyone thinnk photons coming off human bodies have anything to do with consciousness? I cannot see any connection.

The problem of consciousness is its simplicity , which we know to over express and complicate. That's because we tend to complicate things when we don't understand it for that is the reason a philosopher runs away from science and vice versa. Coming back to bio photons, it is a well researched piece in the field of biophysics and the techniques to detect these emissions are on a rise. Its relation to consciousness is at a theoretical stage with a few experiments linking it to microtubules which according to Hameroff n Penrose are the structures that can compute consciousness . Biophtons are known to released in a flash in dying organisms and therefore could hold the possibilty of the release of the entangled particles from the microtubules. Some of the references and links have been provided in the beginning while most of them can be easily found on the web. 

I am very interested in the phenomenon of biophoton expression, however there are problematic issues such as meditation reducing biophoton expression and rhodiola effecting the same sort of reduction which facts might be difficult to incorporate into a theory of the non-material mind escaping the material body.

Dear Contzen,

The papers you reference appear to be complete nonsense. Perhaps what you call reductionism - using scientific words that are not understood? I cannot see how any of this has anything to do with Stuart Hameroff's microtubule theories - which say nothing about releasing entangled particles. Why waste one' slife with this sort of nonsense when one could be listening to Mozart or eating a good spaghetti alle vongole? Something one can be conscious of?

Dear Jonathan,

The papers that I have referenced are those that do not fit your conventional form of science where most of life's work goes in just looking at  one piece of evidence which gets referenced a thousand times with no meaning of existence. The life that you live is the life that you choose and should not be the life that someone else tells you to lead otherwise it is a waste of every bit of energy that is provide. Similar is with science, for it gives you the liberty to look beyond the unknown and not move in circles. Reductionism is good till a limit after which the philosophical and spiritual world need to understood to understand the unknown which a conventional scientist will disagree but a non conventional scientist will not. Hameroff and Penrose's theory has been studied extensively but today Hameroff himself has started talking about non local consciousness and entanglement which Penrose disapproves. We are driven by limitations of the physical world and therefore tend work within its domains but the pride of the physical world  does not last longer. No one forces you to believe in what others do, if you are happy listening to Mozart or eating Spaghetti its good for you..in fact the music that you listen too....has to do a lot with your consciousness, the only difference is it does control you. Good music feels good to the ears but the actual music within you begins when you hear it from  within. Tse are non conveaspects which are unfortunalety under science and which apparently some way or the other cross paths with eminent scientists like you and therefore I recommend 

That this kind of science is only mean't for those that think out of the box, for that is when we look beyond our conventional ways of research and reading. An idea may sound ridiculous for there are skeptics for anything and everything but the skeptics are good, as they make people think more and more. Its better to say I don't know than to criticize the works of people who have put in half of their life trying to understand the phenomenal. Bio photons exist and they will hold an answer to some bit of consciousness in the localized form for today people are talkin about using such models in AI and beyond the biologics, they don't seem to me as wasting their time and life. 

Dear Contzen / Jonathan,

Sometimes the problem is the terminology. non-local means something very different to a student of consciousness as it does to a quantum mechanic. I think J Shashi's question is easily understandable (from any perspective) and arguing on neologisms is precisely the problem why quantum consciousness and quantum physical studies clash like fire and petrol. If I am not mistaken, J. Shahsi is simply asking, are there any studies that have been carried out on dying persons that have attempted to record the energies at "any wavelength" visible or not that may be present as a person passes from life to death. It seems a valid question despite the ambiguous terminology. I am not aware of such a study.

Jonathan, I highly recommend you take a look at the work of Anirban Bandyopadhyay, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan. http://www.anirbanlab.co.nr

Prof. Jonathan,

The existence of biophotons is not in any way a fictitious concept. Modern science, at first, took a step back to accept the presence of such particles, which doesn't fit in well within its dogmatic sheath. But, since the modern school of thought goes with the book of science (where we impose certain principles to quote something scientific- like evidence based, repetitive results etc), it has to finally accept the biophoton concept based on the evidence from experiments. That's how biophotons are introduced to the modern science in the discipline of biophysics. The presence of these particles would then introduce a new way of understanding things around us. It adds in life to epigenetics, morphogenesis, biophysics and even neuropsychology.

You are right in asking what connection do biophotons have to the concept of consciousness? This is based on the studies that propose biophotons to be the informational carriers at the cellular level as well as for their interaction with exogenous fields. The concept of biofield pops out in this context. Few decades back, when science knows nothing about the electric and magnetic phenomena associated with the brain and heart, we don't have techniques like EEG, MEG etc and their possible implications. Now, when we accept such possibilities (at the fundamental level associated with discrete electrons), we devised methods to understand the qualitative pictures and their deeper implications. In an analogous way, we have biophotons and the associated biofield. Various investigations have been carried out in understanding the nature of biophotons and their role. Prof. Konstantin Korotkov, from Russia, exclusively work on these lines. He came up with the GDV technique, which helps in capturing the fields generated by these biophotons and therein qualitatively interpret such phenomenon.

Sleep state is very different from that of the death. One is like keeping your laptop in a sleep mode and the other crashing your OS and Motherboard. What is consciousness analogous to? To motherboard or OS?

Prof. Jonathan, you are right, during death, it's in a way tough to find out if those emissions result from rotting organs or the other. Then we have to understand fundamentally, what does dying (or rotting) of organs points us to. Is it not consciousness? What is the difference between a living cell (or organ) and a dying (or dead) cell (or organ)? Is it just stopping the functional activity? If so how are billions of cells integrated or connected? Does death mean killing individual cells one by one (or) sudden cessation of their integrity?

Even if we kill millions of cells individually, still we can be alive, this shows that death is associated with the more fundamental aspect. Death can be understood in two ways, first, where there is a failure of some organ(s) and the other where the connection or integrity is disrupted (even though individual organs may work pretty well). First one is again associated  with the later. This shows that the connection or integrity plays a crucial role here. This calls for the holistic explanation as to how all the cells or organs are connected, the fundamental driving force.

Hence, in this connection, we can extract more information from biophotons during death from that of the one in a sleep state.

Shashi, bio photons are known to be regulated and can therefore serve as cellular signals. Cell to cell communications are shown to be mediated by red light laser in young hamster kidney cells which were also observed in pig neutrophilic granulocytes and intestinal epithelial cells. Pulsed stimulation causes depolarization because of high  K medium in neural cells which can enhance bio photon activity while removal of Can ions or addition of tetrodoxin can weaken the activity. Initiation or maintainence of bio photonic activity by glutamate can be blocked by oxygen and glucose deprivation and with sodium azide -  cytochrome c oxidase inhibitor. These are some of the works that are currently going on in the field of bio photon communication which is way beyond the 7 key signalling chemical based pathways known until date. The beauty lies in the conversion of a chemical signal to an electric signal where the delivery of the signal is faster and beyond comparison to a chemical signal. Microtubules act as optical fibers for delivery of information as biophtons which has been proven in a recent study where external light induced bio photons could transmit along sensory and motor nerve fibers and could be blocked by inhibitors, so if it is possible in neural cells it maybe possible for all cells. This is where consciousness and the Orch-or theory can be applied.