Where does consciousness reside?

Since the passing of my father, I've given considerable thought to death, perhaps more than is healthy. I've looked deeply into the nature of reality, heaven and hell experiences, how our physical world works, and how the unseen spiritual realm might work. I came across this random comment on my internet travels and thought I would share my thoughts.

Quote: sorry. regardless of what has been written about others, the fact is that when I am given anesthesia or go to sleep, I am UNCONSCIOUS. Consciousness is a product of the biological brain and can be blocked there. Remove the biology and the consciousness is GONE. Indeed it makes one wonder what one’s ‘spirit’ really is (other than a simple life energy perhaps). It doesn’t seem to have any functionality when one is ‘out’.

I appreciate that sacred writers tell us it is not so, and it indeed may not be so for them. But it’s hard to get past one’s own experience. Awareness can be blocked in the brain, so with out that brain we have none.

I wish it weren’t so.

My response:

Consciousness is not synonymous with arousal or being awake. When one is asleep or under anesthesia, their consciousness is still there when they wake up, so, it didn't go anywhere, it just became dormant. A person can be asleep, yet, their brain is still very much active. For example, you have dreams while you are unconscious. Likewise, a person can be in a deep coma, yet, they can still be aware. That's why nurses are told to watch what they say around patients in a coma.

Second, there's quite a big difference between being unconscious and being dead, and we don't know that consciousness is purely the product of the biological brain. Science can't even tell us where consciousness resides because it deals with the material, tangible world. Consciousness is intangible and subjective. There are theories, but nothing is proven. Consciousness is very much a mystery.

There is the idea of non-local consciousness. That is, consciousness doesn't reside in the brain, but outside, possibly in a fourth spatial dimension. If that is true, then the brain merely acts as an antenna or receiver for the consciousness. There are certain physical and biological processes that can interfere with that connection, such as sleep, comas, or brain damage, but the connection isn't lost until death. Once the body dies, the connection is severed, and our consciousness unplugs, as it were, and becomes fully aware of the multidimensional (spiritual) world around us.

The body/brain is then a receptacle for our spirt/soul/consciousness (whatever you want to call it). If you've seen the movie Avatar, you'll get the idea. Near-death experiences, while anecdotal, would support this hypothesis. In many accounts, people were accurately able to describe what was happening to them when they should have been dead or at the very least unconscious. In any case, the rule of thermodynamics teaches us that energy never dies, it just changes form. And what is death but the changing  of one form into another form.