Peter LUGTEN
The Journal of Neurobehavioral Sciences - 2026;13(2):75-85
Living beings create order while, under the second law of thermodynamics, producing greater disorder through metabolic heat dissipation. Consciousness creates additional order that supports survival and reproduction, generating an entropy debt that must be discharged non-metabolically as heat according to Landauer's principle through information erasure within the "explanatory gap" of the hard problem. Consciousness is assumed to depend on tryptophan in microtubules and its capacity for heat dissipation through superradiation. After post-mortem microtubule decomposition, this mechanism would cease, violating Landauer's principle and the second law; therefore, survival after death would imply life-before-death solipsism. This framework distinguishes near-death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) from life after death and proposes natural biophysical mechanisms. NDEs and OBEs may result from disinhibited microtubular consciousness after electroencephalographic activity stops, while microtubular tryptophan remains activated by ultraviolet photons. These photons may originate from light reaching the retina or skin and be transmitted to the brain through mitochondria and microtubules functioning as optical waveguides. Ultra-weak photon emissions also accompany membrane depolarization at death. The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics may explain entanglement between microtubular and environmental photons, potentially accounting for rare veridical extraocular perceptions. Veridical auditory experiences may involve ambient sound stimulation of Heschl's gyrus through auditory-nerve axonal solitons or transcranial low-frequency sound perception. Finally, near death, a pseudo-solipsistic sense of "added time" may produce an apparent eternity despite progressively declining microtubular stimulation in the dying brain during the final stages of consciousness.
