Was William James Right About Consciousness? | Nicolas Rouleau
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He wrote the award-winning essay, ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death,’ in which he argues that the transmissive theory of consciousness may actually be more consistent with emerging scientific insights than the dominant assumption that the brain generates consciousness.
In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Rouleau shares the main arguments from his essay, which touch upon his collaboration with Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the ‘God Helmet,’ and his work with Michael Levin on ‘mind blindness’—the idea that science may be searching for mind in too restricted a place by focusing almost exclusively on neurons.
More information on Dr. Nic Rouleau:
https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-science/faculty-profiles/nicolas-rouleau/index.html
Personal website: https://www.rouleaulab.com/
Further reading and scientific references discussed in this video:
Rouleau’s BICS Essay: ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.’ https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/bics-afterlife-proof/bics-essay-contest-winners-runners-up/
Rouleau, N., Levin, M., et al. (2025) (Preprint; forthcoming in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society). Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments. https://tinyurl.com/439rrn8z
Rouleau, N., & Levin, M. (2023). The Multiple Realizability of Sentience in Living Systems and Beyond. eNeuro, 10(11). https://tinyurl.com/2s4bdtmm
Rouleau, N. & Cimino, N. (2022). A Transmissive Theory of Brain Function: Implications for Health, Disease, and Consciousness. NeuroSci, 3(3). https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4087/3/3/32
McCraty, R., et al. (2018). Long-term study of heart rate variability responses to changes in the solar and geomagnetic environment. https://tinyurl.com/254x3b9t
Rouleau, N., & Persinger, M. A. (2016). Differential responsiveness of the right parahippocampal region to electrical stimulation in fixed human brains: Implications for historical surgical stimulation studies. Epilepsy & Behavior, 60, 181–186. https://tinyurl.com/uc5jbr
Rajaram, M., & Mitra, S. (1981). Correlation between convulsive seizure and geomagnetic activity. Neuroscience Letters, 24(2), 187–191. https://tinyurl.com/3snrs4cs
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
4:00 What Nic Rouleau would say to William James about his theory of transmissive consciousness
7:14 What do we know empirically about how electromagnetic fields influence our brains?
10:27 How scientifically rigorous are the empirical data on the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on brains?
11:35 On Nic’s mentor, Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the God Helmet
14:42 Research on post-mortem brain tissue
18:09 What mental states are influenced by magnetic fields?
18:58 Electromagnetic effects in dead vs. living brains
19:45 On Michael Levin and the paradigm shift due to bioelectricity
21:24 Influencing the thoughts of deceased people
25:33 Are biological forms stored in the Earth’s magnetic field?
30:21 Shielding brains from electromagnetic fields
33:12 Mind blindness: we only see 1% of the minds out there
38:55 What is the best way out of mind blindness?
41:06 Plant-based computation
42:00 The Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL) and what Nic is working on
43:23 Minds in a Petri dish
46:13 What counts as embodiment?
48:44 Phenomenal consciousness on different levels
53:06 What theories of consciousness can get us out of the behaviorist trap?
57:25 Nic’s award-winning essay on consciousness beyond death
1:00:55 Intermediary states of consciousness, the Bardo Thodol
1:04:46 Consciousness when the radio, the brain, is completely broken
1:06:35 Why exactly is electromagnetism a better explanation of consciousness beyond death than NDEs or OBEs?
1:11:58 How does the God Helmet work?
1:17:31 Which electromagnetic fields influence our consciousness and which ones don’t?
1:23:59 Can all of consciousness be stored in the Earth’s magnetic field?
1:27:08 Children with past-life memories: could electromagnetism play a role there?
1:29:51 How do quantum theories of consciousness relate to the work of Nic?
1:33:42 Do our brains connect electromagnetically with each other?
1:35:28 Nic on the hard problem of consciousness
1:38:00 Aren’t you just a materialist 2.0?
1:40:25 On the meaning of Nic’s work
Copyright © 2026 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.
@JakubNowak-xe2ik
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Question for Dr. Rouleau: Regarding the influence of body position and Earth’s electromagnetic field on sleep, are you aware of any evidence that sleeping with the head facing north makes for a more active or vivid dreaming experience?
@MaherKhaddaj-bf7im
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The brain does not generate or filter consciousness; it is a structured form of Being that shapes the patterns through which Awaring Reality experiences itself.
@sinisajovanovic7199
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Everything around us is energy-ekecetricity Nikola Tesla ….
@adamkallin5160
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Why is he ignoring veridical NDEs?
@pompom906
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Young Frankenstein.
@jedser
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Do these theories point ro or away from free will?
@ricardofpalmaportfolio
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Of course the brain/filters consciousness.
@jmerdsoy
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Funny how many people just came to make a comment on the man's hair. I hope y'all caught some of what he said, as well.
@kbluesalt62
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
23.58 in…Frankenstein vibes 😅
@RobbieLong-i3z
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Nice interview, but ACTUALLY NDEs are excellent evidence for survival, especially those with veridical content. The guest unfortunately downplays this fact.
@OolaHula
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Our magnetosphere went from loosing 10% per century to 10% per decade and it is accelerating, welcome to clownworld things are gonna get weirder and weirder, until people finally have to talk about how strange everything has become.
@paulrayner5650
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The brain is made of consciousness and filters consciousness.
@markcollins1577
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
1:41:23 point when all of this provenance is summed up it is between '0' and 1; beauty and wisdom as one; tripartism of light [complementary reflective spaces of pattern and awareness] transitive SSO experiences across kind of minds we term orbital complexity.
@unfurlurl
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The problem with overly abstracted materialist scientismic people, is that they religeously cling to a rigid set of rules and entrap themselves, ignoring overwhelming data. In this case, very small children with extremely accurate knowledge of dead people, places and the families etc. This alone is only explainable one way. Good luck to him.
@06bahari
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
For those interested in consciousness research, the Essentia Foundation website is one of the most stimulating places, and Hans Busstra is an excellent interviewer. However, he sometimes misses great opportunities to push his guests out of their comfort zone.
In this podcast, Nic Rouleau once again illustrates the disregard of materialist scientists for NDEs. He states at one point that NDEs do not, in his opinion, prove the survival of consciousness after the death of the physical body, i.a. the brain, while his experiments testing the impact of weak but complex magnetic fields on dead brain tissue definitely prove that the brain transmits …as well. Because, as Rouleau explains, he adheres to William James's theory that the brain both produces and transmits consciousness.
He refutes NDEs as proof of the survival of consciousness using the standard materialist arguments that they also occur in the absence of a death threat (psychological distress, certain drugs, meditation, direct brain stimulation, etc.) and are, at best, reactions of a dying brain.
Materialist scientists usually refute subjective statements, even if they are repeated many times, as long as the underlying experiences cannot be reproduced at will in a laboratory environment. Therefore, any statements coming directly from people who have had NDEs are dismissed as anecdotal. Still, Busstra should have given a crucial response: Near-death experiences are far more vivid and are experienced as far more real than reality itself. How can a dying brain with no measurable activity produce experiences that are far stronger than those of a normally functioning brain?
And what about the profound, lifelong impact on the lives of those who experience an NDE? This never happens with any other artificially induced NDE-like experience. Wouldn't this rather argue in favour of the theory that NDErs had access to what Kastrup calls 'Nature' and what others call 'universal consciousness' or 'the One'?
Busstra also missed another important opportunity to dispel outdated materialist beliefs when Rouleau stated that he supports W. James's theory that the brain both transmits and produces consciousness. This raises three important questions. Firstly, it does not answer the long-standing challenge for materialists to explain how matter can produce qualia. Secondly, what exactly is 'transmitted consciousness'? Thirdly, what is matter? The most advanced theories explain force fields as the fundamental building blocks of matter. Doesn't this mean that matter is based on immaterial stuff?
Proactively avoiding answering such questions, Rouleau hides behind IIT. However, IIT does not provide answers to such questions; rather, it leaves them aside while focusing on the only measurable property of consciousness: information. In doing so, it remains within and without a materialist framework. However, in a diplomatic compromise, Rouleau stated at the end of the interview that he is a pragmatic scientist and that there are clearly boundaries that science will never cross because they cannot be measured or reproduced.
@AletheiaPraxis1
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
If our consciousness is not tide to our brain, then why we are not aware when we are sleeping, have brain damage, being unconscious, or have mental ilnesses. Not to mention that your personality is tied to memories, fellings… this can't be stored in a signal outside of physical body
@michaelakendall6568
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
1:30:27 The Radical Pair Hypothesis.
@uguptuzirby8451
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
@1:26:12 the planet is a dolphin, here you go!
@TheDAT9
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The whole Universe is Electric. Main stream science won't admit it, but they will eventually be dragged kicking and screaming to have to admit it.
@Matt-gz2ol
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
At 19:30 he said people report having premonitions. … Who has a premonition then goes and "reports" it? To whom? And who is documenting it?
@TraceyWood-v4y
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Mk Ultra. Etc
@TraceyWood-v4y
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
The Sun assists for well-being on a cellular level and mind. This cloud seeding going on to cover the sun is effecting both the covering of the sun keeping low frequency waves also you have to also look into DARPA and Military Weapons they are ommiting radio waves. Ie look up Havana Effect . These black projects are years ahead te technology. And what is going off around the world ie media mind control causing fear thoughts 💭 the weather and also earthquaked can be caused by these waves.
@junebb131
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Dr Nicolas Rouleau, his hair is literally magnetic. Love it!
@TraceyWood-v4y
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
Maybe also explain two individuals who energetically merged and I saw the light around us both . I'm not talking about matter ie our bodies either . Like two atoms colliding and experiencing this total all enveloping Love vibe only. No negativity. Then telepathic communication faster that light and 400 miles apart . It was instant. Unnerving to a point ☝️ of being observed from a distance. Started some awaking though I realized I had to underneath to understand it . Like a fall . There is more to this . It resembles a ladder 🪜 going up and down . Showing both positive and negative sides . And until you bring the unconscious conscious it will keep you looping . Think left brain right brain .
@TraceyWood-v4y
March 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
When you have had a outer body experience. You are aware your body is just a vessel . That is the only way I can experience it . When your looking at your sleeping body behind laying on a bed. We are Consciousness and Energy
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