Library Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 10: Exploring the Mind-Body Problem
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
Centuries ago, Descartes portrayed the mind and body as separate realities. This dualistic gap still permeates our understanding of ourselves. In this part we will show that monism, based on the primacy of matter, is not capable of expelling the demon of dualism. Only idealistic science—the application of quantum physics interpreted according to the philosophy of monistic idealism—really bridges the gap.
We will see that idealistic science not only heals the broken mind-body relationship, but also answers some of the questions that have puzzled idealistic philosophers for centuries—for example, how does one consciousness become many? Or, how does the world of subjects and objects arise from integral being? The answers to such questions are contained in concepts such as complex hierarchy and self-reference – the ability of a system to see itself as separate from the world.
In India there is a wonderful legend about the origin of the Ganga River. In reality, the Ganga is born from a glacier high in the Himalayas, but legend says that the river begins in the heavens and flows down to earth through Shiva’s braided hair. The Indian scientist Jagadish Bose, who expressed far-reaching ideas regarding plant consciousness, wrote in his memoirs that as a child, listening to the sounds of the Ganges, he wondered about the meaning of the legend. As an adult, he found the answer – cyclicality. The water evaporates to form clouds, then returns to the earth as snow, lying on the highest peaks of the mountains. The snow melts and becomes the source of rivers, which then flow into the ocean to evaporate again, continuing the cycle.
In my youth, I too spent hours on the banks of the Ganges, pondering the meaning of the legend. For some reason, it seemed to me that Vose had not found a definitive answer. Cyclicity, of course, but what is the meaning of Shiva’s braided braid? I didn’t know the answer then.
I had seen many different rivers, but the legend continued to puzzle me until I read Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. In legend, the river Ganga (another name for the divine mother) symbolizes the formless principle behind the manifested form – Plato’s archetypes; and Shiva is the formless principle behind the manifested self-consciousness – the unconscious. Shiva’s braided braid represents a complex hierarchy (Hofstadter’s eternal golden braid). Reality comes to us in manifest form through a complex hierarchy just as Ganga descends into the world of form through Shiva’s braided hair.
We will find that this answer leads to the idea of a spectrum of self-awareness. We will see that beyond the ego there is a self. Taking this larger self into account allows us to connect the various personality theories of modern psychology—behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and transpersonal psychologies—with the concepts of self expressed in the great religious traditions of the world.
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
Before exploring how idealistic philosophy and quantum theory can be applied to the mind-body problem, let us briefly review contemporary mainstream philosophy. We all have an overwhelming intuitive feeling that our mind exists separately from our body. There is also the opposite feeling (for example, when we experience bodily pain) that the mind and body are one and the same. In addition, we intuit that we have a self separate from the world – an individual self that is aware of everything that happens in our mind and our body, and by its own (free?) will causes some of the actions of the body. Philosophers of the mind-body problem explore these intuitions.
First, there are philosophers who argue that our intuitions about a separate mind (and consciousness) from the body are correct; these are dualists. Others deny dualism; these are monists. One school, material monism, believes that the body is primary and that mind and consciousness are merely epiphenomena of the body. The second school, monistic idealism, proceeds from the primacy of consciousness, considering the mind and body as epiphenomena of consciousness. In Western culture, especially in recent times, material monism has dominated monistic philosophy. On the other hand, in the East, monistic idealism retained its position.
There are many approaches to the mind-body problem, many ways of drawing conclusions, and many subtleties that require explanation. I would like you to keep these subtleties in mind as you join me on a tour of what I will call the University of Mind-Body Studies. Imagine all the great thinkers who have studied the mind-body problem gathered here, teaching in a traditional department the solutions to this problem that have been proposed throughout history – old and new, dualistic and monistic. Before you enter the university, I warn you: remain skeptical, and before agreeing to any philosophy, relate it to your own experience.
You easily find the university – a seductive smell spreads around it. As you get closer, you see that the scent is coming from a fountain called Meaning, located at the entrance. The elixir flowing from this fountain is always changing, but its aroma is always captivating.
You walk through the gate and look around. The university buildings belong to two different styles. On one side of the street there is an old, very elegant building. You have a weakness for classical architecture, so you turn in that direction. The modern skyscraper on the other side can wait.
However, as you approach the building, a picketer stops you and gives you a leaflet that says:
Beware of dualism!
Dualists take advantage of your naivety by preaching outdated ideas. Consider this: Suppose one of the robots in a Japanese car factory is conscious, and you ask its opinion about the mind-body problem. According to our leader, Marvin Minsky: “When we ask this kind of creature what kind of creature it is, it simply cannot answer directly; it must study its patterns. And it must answer by saying that it appears to be dual—consisting of two parts, “mind” and “body.” Robot thinking is primitive thinking. Don’t give in to it. Insist on monism that offers modern, scientific and sophisticated solutions.
“But,” you object to the picketer, “I myself sometimes feel this way—like separate mind and body. You don’t say… But in any case, who asked you! And just so you know, I like the old wisdom. I want to check everything myself, so please let me pass.”
Shrugging his shoulders, the picketer makes way for you. There is a sign in front of the building that reads: College of Dualism, Dean Rene Descartes. The very first room you enter, you are overcome with nostalgia. A middle-aged man, who you assume is a professor, silently stares at the ceiling. His face is somehow familiar to you, and you feel like you should recognize him. Suddenly you notice an emblem on his desk:
Cogito, ergo sum. Well, of course! This must be Rene Descartes.
Descartes responds to your greeting with a kind smile. With shining eyes, he proudly answers your request to explain the relationship between mind and body. He gives a clear explanation of his principle of “I think, therefore I am”: “I can doubt everything, even my own body, but I cannot doubt that I think. I cannot doubt the existence of my thinking mind, but I can doubt the existence of my body. Obviously, the mind and the body must be different things.” He says that there are two independent substances – soul substance and physical substance. The substance of the soul is indivisible. The mind and soul are made of this substance – an indivisible, irreducible part of reality, responsible for our free will. On the other hand, physical substance is infinitely divisible, reducible, and governed by scientific laws. But the substance of the soul is controlled only by faith.
“Free will is self-evident,” he says in response to your question, “and only our minds can know it.”
“Because our mind does not depend on the body?” – you ask.
“Yes”.
But you are not satisfied. You remember that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body violates the laws of conservation of energy and momentum, established beyond any doubt by physics. How could the mind interact with the world without periodic exchanges of energy and momentum? But we always find that the energy and momentum of objects in the physical world are conserved, remain the same. As soon as the opportunity arises, you mutter an apology and leave Descartes’ office.
On the door of the next office there is a name written: Gottfried Leibniz. As you enter, Professor Leibniz politely asks: “What were you doing there with old Descartes? Everyone knows that Descartes’ good interactionism does not stand up to criticism. How can the immaterial soul be materially located in the pineal gland?
– Do you have a better explanation?
– Of course. We call it psychophysical parallelism.
He explains succinctly: “Mental events occur independently of, but parallel to, physiological events in the brain. No interaction, no embarrassing questions.” He smiles smugly.
But you are disappointed. Philosophy does not explain your intuitive feeling that you have free will, that your self has causal power over the body. It sounds suspiciously like sweeping dirt under the rug—out of sight, out of mind. Smiling to yourself at your own pun, you notice that someone is waving their hand at you invitingly.
“I am Professor John K. Monist. All this dualistic talk about the mind must be making you dizzy,” this man says.
You confess your growing mental fatigue, and he declares with a hint of sarcasm, “The mind is a ghost in the machine.” In response to your obvious confusion, he continues: “A visitor came to Oxford, who was shown all the colleges, buildings, etc. Subsequently he asked – where is the university? He didn’t understand that colleges are universities. The university is a ghost.”
“I think the mind must be more than a ghost. After all, I have self-awareness…”
The man interrupts you irritably: “It’s all an illusion; the problem is using the wrong language. Go to the monists on the other side; they will tell you.”
Perhaps the man is right; after all, monists can be experts in truth. There are undoubtedly many more offices in the huge shiny building on the other side.
But here you are also greeted by a picketer. “Before you go in there,” he asks, “I just want you to know that they will try to deceive you with promises of materialism; they will insist that you must believe their statements because evidence will “certainly” be forthcoming in the near future.” You promise to be careful and he backs off. “I’ll pray for you,” he says, crossing his fingers.
The lobby looks luxurious, but you hear the noise, which comes mainly from the auditorium, on the door of which there is a notice on the door with the topic of the lecture: “Radical Behaviorism.” Inside the auditorium, a man is pacing back and forth, speaking to a fairly small audience. As you get closer, you realize that the lecturer is talking about the work of the famous behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Well, of course! A sign in front of the college states that its dean is Skinner; It is natural that his work should have a special position here.
“According to Skinner, the problem of mentalism can be avoided by going directly to prior physical causes, leaving aside intermediate feelings or states of mind,” says the lecturer. “Only those facts that can be objectively observed in human behavior in relation to the previous history of his environment should be considered.”
“Skinner wants to free himself from the mind – no mind, no mind-body problem – just as the parallelists try to eliminate the problem of interaction. In my opinion, both he and they avoid the problem to a greater extent than solve it,” you say to the professor in the next office.
“It is true that radical behaviorism is too narrow. We must study the mind, but only as an epiphenomenon of the body. Epiphenomenalism, the professor explains, is the idea—and, by the way, the only idea that makes sense in the mind-body problem—that mind and consciousness are epiphenomena of the body, produced by the brain, just as the liver produces bile. Tell me, how could it be otherwise?
“You should tell me this – you are a philosopher. Explain how the epiphenomenon of self-awareness arises from the brain?”
“We haven’t figured it out yet. But we will certainly find out. It’s only a matter of time,” he insists, wagging his index finger.
“Promises of materialism, just as the picketer warned!” – you mutter to yourself as you walk away.
In the office opposite the lecture hall, Professor Identity is persistently courting you. He doesn’t want you to leave his department without knowing the truth. In his opinion, the truth lies in the identity of the mind and the brain. They are two aspects of the same thing.
“But this does not explain my experience of the mind; if that’s all you have to say, then I’m not interested,” you state as you head towards the door.
But Professor Identity wants you to understand his position. He says that you must learn to replace mental terms in your language with neurophysiological terms, because for every mental state there is ultimately a corresponding physiological state that is actually real.
“Some people still preach something like this called parallelism.” You experience genuine pleasure because you can now easily understand philosophical terms.
In response, the professor, with professional confidence, offers another interpretation of the identity theory: “Even though the mental and the physical are the same thing, we distinguish them because they represent different ways of knowing. You have to study the logic of categories before you fully understand this, but…”
This last statement finally pisses you off, and you irritably say to him: “Listen, I have been walking from one office to another for several hours with a simple question: what is the nature of our mind that gives it free will and consciousness? And all I hear in response is that I can’t have such a mind.”
The professor is not embarrassed. He mutters something about consciousness being a vague and confusing concept.
You are still angry: “Consciousness is unclear, right? So, are you and I unclear? Then why do you take yourself so seriously?
You quickly leave before the puzzled professor can answer you. Along the way you reflect – perhaps my action was a conditioned reflex, initiated in my brain, and simultaneously arising in my mind as what seemed to be free will. Can philosophy really prove that man has free will, or is it powerless? But philosophy can wait—all you care about right now is a portion of pizza and a glass of beer.
Your attention is distracted by a dimly lit part of the building. Upon closer inspection you discover that the architecture here is older. The new building was built on parts of the old one. A sign catches your eye: “Idealism. Enter at your own risk. You may never be a true mind-body philosopher again.” But the warning only increases your curiosity.
The first office belongs to Professor George Berkeley. Interesting man, this Berkeley. He says, “Look, whatever you say about physical things ultimately refers to mental phenomena—perceptions or sensations, doesn’t it?”
“It’s true,” you reply, impressed by his words.
“Imagine suddenly waking up and discovering that you were dreaming. How can you distinguish material substance from dream substance?”
“I probably can’t do that,” you admit. “But there is a continuity of experience.”
“Continuity be damned. Ultimately, all you can trust, all you can be sure of, is the stuff of the mind: thoughts, feelings, memories and all that. So they have to be real.”
You like Berkeley’s philosophy; it makes your free will real. However, you hesitate to call the physical world a dream. Besides, there’s something else that’s bothering you.
“It seems to me that your philosophy has no place for those objects that are not in anyone’s mind,” you complain.
But Berkeley replies smugly: “They are in the mind of God.”
And this sounds like dualism to you.
A darkened room catches your interest and you look into it. Well well! What is this? There is a shadow theater going on on the wall, projected by the light behind, but the people watching the action are tied to their seats and cannot turn around. “What’s happening?” — you ask the woman with the projector in a whisper. “Oh, this is a demonstration of Professor Plato’s monistic idealism. People see only the shadow theater of matter and are seduced by it. If only they knew that the shadows are cast by the “more real” archetypal objects behind them – the ideas of consciousness! If only they had the fortitude to explore the light of consciousness—the only reality,” she laments.
“But what keeps people glued to their seats—I mean, in real life?” – you are interested.
“Why do people like illusion more than reality? I don’t know how to answer this. I know that in our faculty there are people – I think they are called Eastern mystics – who say that everything is caused by Maya, or illusion. But I don’t know how Maya works. Perhaps if you wait for the professor…”
But you don’t want to wait. Outside, the corridor becomes even darker, and on the wall an arrow with the inscription “Toward Eastern Mysticism” is barely visible. You are curious but tired; you want beer and pizza. Maybe later. Undoubtedly, the Eastern mystics will agree to wait. Easterners are known for their patience.
But you have to wait for beer and pizza. As you leave the building, you find yourself in the middle of a big discussion. The sign on one side says “Mentalism” and you can’t resist the urge to listen to these mentalists. “Who are their opponents?” – you ask yourself. Here! The sign says “Physicalism.”
At the moment the physicalists are speaking out. The speaker seems quite confident: “From a reductionist point of view, the mind is a higher level of the hierarchy, and the brain, the neuronal substrate, is a lower level. The lower level causally determines the higher; it cannot be the other way around. As Jonathan Swift explained:
And naturalists see: a flea has smaller fleas sitting on it, and they have even smaller ones that bite them, and so on ad infinitum.
Smaller fleas bite larger ones, but larger fleas never influence the behavior of smaller ones.”
“Don’t rush,” the mentalist warns, receiving the word in turn. —According to our ideologist, Roger Sperry, mental forces do not interfere with neural activity, disrupting or disturbing it, but accompany it; mental actions, with their own causal logic, occur as something additional to the actions of the brain at a lower level. The causal-effective reality of the conscious mind is a new emergent order that arises from, but is not reducible to, the organizational interaction of the neuronal substrate.”
The speaker pauses briefly; a physicalist from the opposite camp tries to intervene, but to no avail. “Sperry considers subjective mental phenomena to be the primary, causally efficient realities as they are subjectively experienced, distinct from, greater than, and irreducible to their physicochemical elements. Mental entities are superior to physiological entities, just as physiological entities are superior to molecular entities, molecular entities are superior to atomic and subatomic entities, and so on.”
The physicalist responds that all conclusions such as Sperry’s are a fraud, and that whatever any composition or configuration of neurons does is inevitably reduced to what the neurons of which it is composed do. Every so-called causal action of the mind must ultimately be traced back to some underlying neuronal component of the brain. The mind initiating changes at a lower level of the brain is like the brain substrate affecting the brain substrate without any reason. And where does the causal effectiveness of the mind, free choice, come from? “Dr. Sperry’s entire proof rests on the unprovable theorem of holism—that the whole is greater than its parts. I finished”. The speaker sits down, smiling smugly.
But the mentalists have a refutation ready. “Sperry argues that free will is that aspect of mental phenomena that is greater than their physical-chemical elements. This causally efficient mind somehow emerges from the interaction of its elements—billions of neurons. It is clear that the whole is greater than its parts. We just need to figure out how.”
The opposition does not want to give up. Someone with a big badge that says “Functionalism” comes on stage. “We functionalists view the brain-mind as a biocomputer, in which the brain is the structure, or hardware, and the mind is the function, or software. As you mentalists will no doubt agree, the computer is the most universal of all metaphors invented to describe the mind-brain. Mental states and processes are functional entities that can be embodied in different types of structures, be it the brain or a silicon computer. We can prove our point by building an artificial intelligence system that has intelligence – a Turing machine. But even here, although we use the language of software, describing mental processes as programs acting on programs, ultimately we know that it is all the action of some kind of hardware.
“But there must be higher-level mental programs that can initiate actions at the hardware level…” the mentalist tries to interrupt him, but the functionalist does not yield.
“Your so-called top-level program, any program, always runs in hardware!” Therefore, you have a causal circle: “iron” acting on “iron” without any reason. This is impossible. Your holism is nothing more than dualistic thinking in disguise.
You see that the mentalist is excited. For a mentalist, the accusation of dualism must be the ultimate insult. But someone is trying to distract you. “You’re wasting your time. The physicalists are right. Mentalism is pseudomonism; it does smack of dualism, but Sperry is also right. The mind does have causal efficacy. The solution lies in a modern, completely new form of dualism. Here is the philosopher Sir John Dual, who will explain it to you.”
When Dual starts talking, you have to admit that he knows how to make an impression. “According to the model proposed by Sir John Eccles and Sir Karl Popper, mental properties belong to a separate world, world 2, and meaning comes from an even higher world, world 3. Eccles argues that the function of mediating between the brain states of world 1 and mental states World 2 is performed by the connecting brain, located in the dominant hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Think about it, how can one deny that the ability of creative freedom requires a leap beyond the boundaries of the system? If you are the only system available, then your behavior must be deterministic, since any assumption of the mind initiating action must inevitably lead to the paradoxical mind-brain-mind causal loop that Sperry found himself in.”
Are you completely blinded by Duala’s charisma, or is it just the accent? But what about conservation laws? And doesn’t Eccles’ link brain seem like another form of pineal gland? In your opinion, this is true. But before you can ask those questions, something else catches your attention—a Chinese Room sign attached to a closed box with two holes.
“This is a revealing device built by Professor John Searle of Berkeley University to demonstrate the failure of the functionalist idea of the mind as a Turing machine. “I’ll now explain how it works,” says the friendly man. “But maybe you’ll go into the box first?”
You are a little surprised, but agree. You don’t miss the chance to experience the Turing machine being exposed. Soon a card with text falls out of a slot in the wall of the box. There are some characters written on the card—Chinese characters, you suspect—but without knowing the Chinese language, you cannot know their meaning. There is a sign in English asking you to consult a dictionary, also in English, which gives directions for an answer card that you must select from a pile of cards lying on the table. After some effort, you find the answer card and, according to the instructions, lower it into the exit slot.
When you step outside you are greeted with smiles. “Did they understand the semantic situation at all? Do you have any idea what meaning the cards conveyed?”
“Of course not,” you say with slight impatience. “I don’t know Chinese, if that was it, and I’m not clairvoyant.”
“However, you were capable of recycling symbols, just like a Turing machine does!”
You get the point. “Thus, a Turing machine, when it processes symbols, like me, does not necessarily understand the content of the communication taking place. Just because she manipulates symbols does not mean that she understands their meaning.”
“And if a machine, processing symbols, is not able to understand them, then how can we say that it thinks?” says the man speaking on behalf of John Searle.
You admire Searle’s ingenuity. But if the functionalists’ claim is wrong, then their ideas about the relationship between the mind and the brain must be wrong. Sperry’s idea of emergence is akin to dualism. And dualism is questionable, even when offered in Popper’s new packaging. You ask yourself if there is any way to understand consciousness and free will at all. Maybe old Skinner is right – we should just analyze behavior and leave it at that?
What is all this fuss around the fountain? You wouldn’t expect to see an Indian Buddhist monk on a chariot arguing with someone who could only be a king – throne, crown and all. To your amazement, the monk begins to dismantle his chariot. First, he unharnesses the horses and asks: “Are these horses identical to the chariot, O noble king?”
The king replies: “Of course not.”
Then the monk takes off the wheels and asks: “Are these wheels identical to the chariot, O noble king?”
Receiving the same answer, the monk continues the process until he has removed everything that can be removed from the chariot. Then he points to the frame of the chariot, asking for the last time: “Is this a chariot, O noble king?”
The king answers again: “Of course not.”
You notice the irritation on the king’s face. But of course, in your opinion, the monk proved what he wanted. Where is the chariot?
You should have lunch, because the flashing exotic images make you dizzy. Then, as if by magic, Professor John C. Monist appears in front of you again and says contemptuously: “See, I told you so. There is no chariot without its parts. The parts make up the whole. Any concept of a chariot separate from its parts is a ghost in the machine.”
And now you are really confused, completely forgetting about beer and pizza. How can a Buddhist monk – a true Eastern mystic, who obviously belongs to the idealistic camp – express arguments that are grist for the mill of such a cynic as Professor Monist?
However, if you are familiar with Buddhism, there is no mystery here. The Buddhist monk (his name was Nagasena, and the king’s name was Milinda) can say those things, as can the Professor Monist, because they both deny that objects have their own nature. However, according to material monism, objects do not have a nature of their own, separate from the ultimate units of analysis – the elementary particles of which they are composed. This is radically different from Nagasena’s position of monistic idealism, according to which objects have no nature of their own separate from consciousness.
Note especially that there is no need to attribute self-nature to subjects either. (This is where Berkeley’s idealism faces criticism.) According to classical idealism, only the transcendent and unified consciousness is real. Everything else, including the subject-object division of the world, is Maya, an illusion. This is philosophically insightful, but not entirely satisfactory. The doctrine of no-self (or the illusory nature of self) does not explain how the individual experience of self arises. It does not explain our very private selves. Thus it leaves aside one of our most compelling experiences.
This is our brief overview of philosophy. Dualism faces difficulties in explaining the interaction of mind and body. Material monists deny the existence of free will and consider consciousness to be an epiphenomenon – the noise of the programs of our material biocomputer. Even idealistic monists fall short, because they too, being too caught up in the whole, question the experience of the personal self. Can quantum mechanics help unravel some of these difficult questions?
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 11. In Search of the Quantum Mind
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
We saw in the previous chapter that none of the philosophical solutions to the mind-body problem can be considered completely satisfactory. Monistic idealism seems to be the most satisfactory philosophy, since it is based on the primary reality of consciousness, but even this leaves unanswered the question of how the experience of our individual, personal “I” arises.
Why is the personal self a difficult problem for idealism? Because in idealism consciousness is unified and transcendental. Then it is quite possible to ask why and how the feeling of separateness arises? The traditional answer given by idealists like Shankara is that the individual self, like the rest of the immanent world, is illusory. It forms part of what in Sanskrit is called maya – the illusion of the world. Similarly, Plato called the world a shadow theater. But no idealistic philosopher has ever explained why such an illusion exists. Some of them simply deny that explanation is possible at all: “The doctrine of Maya recognizes the reality of the multiple from a relative point of view (the world of subjects and objects) – and simply asserts that the relation of this relative reality to the Absolute (undifferentiated, unmanifest consciousness) cannot be known or described.” This is an unsatisfactory answer. We want to know whether the experience of the individual self is truly an illusion—an epiphenomenon. If this is the case, we want to know what creates this illusion.
If you saw an optical illusion, you would immediately look for an explanation, wouldn’t you? This experience of the individual self is the most permanent experience in our lives. Shouldn’t we be looking for explanations for why it occurs? Maybe if we figured out how the individual “I” comes into being, we could better understand ourselves? Can our model explain maya? In this chapter I will propose a view of the mind and brain (a system that may be called the mind-brain system) that, within the framework of monistic idealism, explains our experience of existing as a separate self.
Idealism and the quantum mind-brain
Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that the only understanding of the brain-mind that can provide a complete and consistent explanation is this: the brain-mind is an interacting system that contains both classical and quantum components. These components interact within the framework of a basic idealistic conceptual system where consciousness is primary. In this and the next two chapters I will explore the solution to the mind-body problem that this view offers. I will show that this view, unlike other solutions to the mind-body problem, explains consciousness, cause-and-effect relationships in mind-brain matters (that is, the nature of free will), and the experience of personal self-identity. In addition, we will see that creativity is a fundamental part of the human experience.
Of course, the difference between quantum and classical mechanisms here is purely functional (in the sense described in Chapter 9).
The quantum component of the mind-brain is restorative and its states are multifaceted. It serves as a means of embodying conscious choice and creativity. In contrast, because of its long recovery time, the classical component of the mind-brain can form memories and thus serve as a reference point for experience.
You may ask, is there any evidence at all that the ideas of quantum mechanics apply to the brain-mind? Apparently, there is at least indirect evidence on this matter.
David Bohm, and before him Auguste Comte, noted that the principle of uncertainty seems to operate in thinking. If we focus on the content of a thought, we lose sight of the direction in which the thought is going. If we focus on the direction of thought, then its content becomes vague. Observe your own thoughts and see for yourself.
One can generalize Bohm’s remark and argue that thinking has an archetypal component. Its appearance in the field of awareness is associated with two related variables: sign (instantaneous content similar to the position of physical objects) and association (movement of thought in awareness similar to the impulse of physical objects). Notice that awareness itself is similar to the space in which the objects of thought appear.
Thus, mental phenomena such as thought appear to exhibit complementarity. We can argue that although thought always manifests in a specific form (described by attributes such as attribute and association), between manifestations it exists as transcendental archetypes – like a quantum object with its aspects of transcendental coherent superposition (wave) and manifested particle.
In addition, there is ample evidence of a lack of continuity—quantum leaps—in mental phenomena, especially in the phenomenon of creativity. Here is a convincing statement from my favorite composer, Tchaikovsky: “Generally speaking, the germ of a future composition appears suddenly and unexpectedly… With extraordinary speed and force it takes root, sprouts, sends out branches and leaves and, finally, blossoms. There is no way I can define the creative process except through this comparison.”
This is exactly the kind of comparison a quantum physicist would use to describe a quantum leap. I won’t quote more, but great mathematicians such as Jules Henri Poincaré and Carl Friedrich Gauss similarly described their own experiences of creativity as sudden and discrete, like a quantum leap.
The same idea is very well conveyed by the comic by Sidney Harris: Einstein, with his usual absent-minded look, stands at the blackboard with chalk in hand, ready to discover a new law. The equation E = ta 2 is written on the board and then crossed out . Below it is written and also crossed out E = mb 2 . The caption reads “A moment of creativity.” Will E = mс 2 appear ? Unlikely. The comic strip is a caricature of the creative moment precisely because we all intuitively know that the creative moment does not follow such continuous, logical steps. (An excellent discussion of so-called sloppiness and lack of rigor in actual mathematics practice is given in George Paul’s delightful book How to Solve It.)
There is evidence of nonlocality in the functioning of the mind—not only the previously reported controversial data on far vision, but also data from recent experiments on brain wave coherence, which we will discuss later.
Tony Marcel’s research supports the idea of a quantum component of the mind-brain. These data are quite important and deserve special consideration.
Returning to Tony Marcel’s data
For more than a decade, Tony Marcel’s data were not fully explained satisfactorily by existing cognitive models. These data concern the measurement of final word recognition times in three-word sequences such as tree-palm-wrist and hand-palm-wrist, where the middle ambiguous word was sometimes masked by a pattern so that it could be perceived only unconsciously. It turned out that the masking effect eliminated the congruent (in the case of hand ) and incongruent (in the case of tree) influence of the first (preparatory) word on recognition time.
The absence of masking in which subjects became aware of the second word provides evidence for what is called the selective antecedent theory of word recognition. The first word influences the perceived meaning of the ambiguous second word. Only the preset (by the action of the first word) meaning of the second word is perceived. If this meaning harmonizes (disharmonizes) with the meaning of the third word being recognized, we get easier (difficulty) recognition – a shorter (longer) recognition time. If we view the mind-brain as a classical computer, as functionalists do, then in this kind of situation the computer appears to operate in a sequential, linear, and unidirectional manner, from top to bottom.
When a polysemous word is masked with a pattern, both meanings appear to be available for subsequent processing—regardless of the presence of a priming context—since similar amounts of time are required to recognize the third word in congruent and incongruent conditions. Marcel himself referred to the importance of distinguishing between conscious and unconscious perception and noted that a non-selective theory should be applied to unconscious identification (the selective theory applies only to conscious perception). In addition, it appears that such a nonselective theory must be based on parallel information processing, in which multiple pieces of information are processed simultaneously, subject to feedback. These parallel distributed information processing models are examples of a bottom-up connectionist approach to artificial intelligence devices, in which connections between different elements play a central role.
Without getting too technical, the linear and selective classical functionalist models easily explain the effect of prepriming context in cases where no masking is used, but cannot explain the significant change observed in cases of unconscious perception in experiments using masking. The same is true for theories of indiscriminate parallel processing. They can be fitted to one set of data or the other—cases of conscious perception or unconscious perception—but they cannot logically account for both sets of data in a consistent manner. Therefore, Marcel concludes in the paper cited above, “these data [for camouflage cases] are inconsistent with and qualitatively different from the data for non-camouflage cases.” Therefore, the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception has been a problem for proponents of cognitive models.
Psychologist Michael Posner has proposed a cognitive solution in which attention plays a crucial role in the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception. Attention involves selectivity. Thus, according to Posner, we choose one of two meanings when we use attention, as in the case of conscious perception of an ambiguous word in Marcel’s experiment. When we are not mindful, no choice occurs. Therefore, both meanings of an ambiguous word are perceived, as in the unconscious perception of a word disguised by a pattern in Marcel’s experiment.
So who turns attention on or off? According to Posner, this is done by a central processing unit. However, no one has ever found a central processing unit in the mind-brain, and this concept conjures up a picture of a succession of little people, or homunculi, contained within the brain.
Nobel laureate biologist Francis Crick alludes to this problem in the following story: “I recently tried without success to explain to an intelligent woman the problem of understanding how we perceive anything at all. She couldn’t understand what the problem was. Finally, in desperation, I asked her how she thought she saw the world. She replied that she probably had something like a television somewhere in her head. “So who’s watching it?” – I asked. Now she immediately saw the problem.”
We can also face it: in the brain there is no homunculus, or central processor, which turns attention on and off, which interprets all the actions of mental conglomerates, attributing meaning to them and setting up channels from a central control post. Thus, self-reference—the ability to refer to our self as the subject of our experience—is an extremely difficult problem for any type of classical functionalist model. We seek what is sought – this inherent reflexivity is as difficult to explain in materialist models of the mind-brain as the von Neumann circuit is in quantum measurement.
However, suppose that when one sees a patterned word that has two possible meanings, the mind-brain becomes a quantum coherent superposition of states—each corresponding to one of the two meanings of the word. This assumption can account for both sets of Marcel’s data—conscious and unconscious perception—without invoking the idea of a central processing unit.
The quantum mechanical interpretation of the data on conscious perception is that the context word hand projects from the ambiguous word palm (coherent superposition) a state with the value of hand (that is, the wave function collapses with the choice of only the value of hand). This state has a large overlap with the state corresponding to the final word wrist (in quantum mechanics, positive associations are expressed as large overlaps of meaning between states), and therefore recognition of this word is easier.
Similarly, in the quantum description of the incongruent case with no masking, the context word tree projects from the coherent superposition state palm to a state meaning tree; The overlap of meaning between the states corresponding to the tree and the wrist is small, and therefore recognition is difficult. When masking is used in both cases – congruent and incongruent – the word palm is perceived unconsciously, and therefore there is no projection of any specific meaning – no collapse of the coherent superposition. Thus, one can see direct evidence that the word palm leads to a state of coherent superposition containing both meanings of the word – both tree and palm (part of the hand). How else could we explain the fact that the effect of the priming (contextual) word in Marcel’s experiment almost completely disappears when the word palm is masked by a pattern?
The phenomenon of simultaneous access to both meanings of the word palm – the tree and part of the hand – is difficult to explain in the classical linear description of the brain-mind because it is an either-or description. The advantage of a quantum description based on the “both-and” principle is obvious.
I am aware that the evidence suggesting parallels between the mind and quantum phenomena—indeterminacy, complementarity, quantum leaps, nonlocality, and finally coherent superposition—is not conclusive. However, they might well point to something radical: that what we call the mind is composed of objects that are similar to the objects of submicroscopic matter, and obey rules similar to those of quantum mechanics.
Let me put this revolutionary idea in another way. Let us assume that just as ordinary matter is ultimately composed of submicroscopic quantum objects, which can be called archetypes of matter, so the mind is ultimately composed of archetypes of mental objects (very similar what Plato called “ideas”). I also assume that they are composed of the same basic substance that material archetypes are made of, and that they too are subject to quantum mechanics. Therefore, considerations regarding quantum measurement also apply to them.
Quantum functionalism
I’m not alone in this assumption. Decades ago, Jung intuited that mind and matter must ultimately be made of the same substance. In recent years, a number of scientists have made a serious attempt to explain brain research data by the existence of a quantum mechanism of the mind-brain. The following is a brief summary of their reasoning.
How does an electrical impulse travel from one neuron to another through the synaptic cleft (the point where one neuron contacts another)? According to the generally accepted theory, the signal is transmitted through a chemical change. However, the evidence for this is somewhat indirect, and E. Harris Walker called it into question, proposing a quantum mechanical process instead. Walker believes that the synaptic cleft is so small that the quantum tunneling effect may play a decisive role in the transmission of nerve signals. This effect is the ability of quantum objects to pass through an otherwise impenetrable barrier due to their wave nature. John Eccles discussed a similar mechanism, suggesting quantum effects in the brain.
Australian physicist L. Bass, and more recently American Fred Alan Wolf, noted that for intelligence to work, it is necessary that the impulse activity of one neuron be accompanied by the activity of many neurons correlated with it at macroscopic distances – up to 10 cm, which is the width of cortical tissue. According to Wolf, in order for this to happen, non-local correlations (of course, such as those suggested by the EPR experiment) are required that exist in the brain at the molecular level, in synapses. Thus, even our everyday thinking depends on the nature of quantum events.
Princeton University scientists Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunn used quantum mechanics as a model—though only metaphorical—of the paranormal abilities of the brain-mind.
Consider again the model used by functionalists—the classical computer. Richard Feynman once proved mathematically that a classical computer cannot simulate nonlocality. Therefore, functionalists are forced to deny the reality of our non-local experiences, such as ESP, since their model of the mind-brain is based on a classical computer (which is incapable of modeling or illustrating non-local phenomena). What incredible myopia! Recall again Abraham Maslow’s phrase: “If all you have is a hammer, you approach everything as if it were a nail.”
However, is it possible to simulate consciousness without non-locality? I’m talking about consciousness as we humans experience it—a consciousness capable of creativity, love, free choice, ESP, mystical experience—a consciousness that dares to create a meaningful and evolving worldview in order to understand its place in the universe.
Perhaps the brain harbors consciousness because it has a quantum system working side by side with the classical one, according to University of Alberta biologist C. Stewart and his collaborators, physicists M. Yumezawa and Y. Takahashi, and a physicist from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Henry Stapp. In this model, which I adapted for this book (see next section), the mind-brain is viewed as two interacting systems—quantum and classical. A classical system is a computer running programs that, for all practical purposes, obey the deterministic laws of classical physics and can therefore be modeled in algorithmic form. However, a quantum system operates on programs that are only partially algorithmic. The wave function evolves in accordance with the probabilistic laws of new physics – this is an algorithmic, continuous part. There is also a fundamentally non-algorithmizable discreteness of the collapse of the wave function. Only a quantum system exhibits quantum coherence, a nonlocal correlation between its components. In addition, the quantum system is restored, and therefore can deal with the new (since quantum objects remain forever new). The classical system is necessary for the formation of memory, for recording events of collapse and for creating a sense of continuity.
Interesting and thought-provoking ideas and data may continue to accumulate, but the point is simple: there is a growing belief among many physicists that the brain is an interactive system with a quantum mechanical macrostructure as an important addition to the assembly of neurons. Such an idea cannot yet be called generally accepted, but it is not the only exception.
The mind-brain is both a quantum system and a measuring device
Technically, we view the quantum mind-brain system as a macroquantum system consisting of many components that not only interact through local exchanges, but are also correlated in an EPR fashion. How to represent the states of this kind of system?
Imagine two pendulums hanging from a taut string. Or better yet, imagine you and your friend swinging like pendulums. Now you both form a system of conjugate pendulums. If you start to move, but your friend is motionless, then very soon he will also begin to sway – so much that very soon he will take all the energy and you will stop. Then the cycle will repeat. However, something is missing. There is a lack of unity in your actions. To fix this, you can both start swinging at the same time in the same phase. Once you start this way, you will swing together in a motion that would go on forever if there were no friction. The same would be true if you started swinging together in antiphase. These two modes of swinging are called normal modes of a double pendulum. (However, the correlation between you is entirely local; it is made possible by the stretched string that supports your pendulums.)
One can similarly represent the states of a complex system, albeit a quantum one, by its so-called normal excitation modes, its quanta, or, more generally, conglomerates of normal modes. (It’s too early to give these mental quanta names, but at a recent consciousness conference I attended we were playing around with names like psychons, mentons, etc.)
Suppose – what if these normal modes constitute the mental archetypes I mentioned earlier? Jung found that mental archetypes are universal; they are independent of race, history, culture and geographic origin. This fits quite well with the idea that Jung’s archetypes are conglomerates of universal quanta – the so-called normal modes. I will call the states of the quantum brain system consisting of these quanta pure mental states. This formal nomenclature will be useful in the following discussion.
Suppose also that most of the brain is the classical analogue of a measuring instrument that we use to magnify submicroscopic material objects to make them visible. Suppose a classical brain instrument magnifies and records quantum objects of the mind.
This resolves one of the most persistent mysteries of the mind-brain problem—the problem of the identity of mind and brain. Currently, philosophers either postulate the identity of the mind and the brain, without explaining what is identical to what, or try to define one or another type of psychophysical parallelism. For example, in classical functionalism it is impossible to truly establish the relationship between mental states and computer states.
In the quantum model, mental states are states of a quantum system, and when measured, these states become correlated with the states of the measuring device (just as in Schrödinger’s cat paradox, the state of the cat becomes correlated with the state of the radioactive atom). Therefore, in every quantum event, the brain-mind state that collapses and is experienced is a pure mental state measured (amplified and recorded) by the classical brain, from which follows a clear definition of identity and its justification.
Recognizing that much of the brain is a measuring device leads to a new and useful way of thinking about the brain and conscious events. Biologists often argue that consciousness must be an epiphenomenon of the brain because changes in the brain due to trauma or drugs alter conscious events. Yes! – says the quantum theorist – because changing the measuring device certainly changes what it can measure, and therefore changes the event.
The idea that the formal structure of quantum mechanics should be applied to the mind-brain is not new at all and has developed gradually. However, the idea of viewing the brain-mind as a quantum system/measuring device is new, and it is the implications of this hypothesis that I want to explore here.
Materialist-oriented brain researchers will object. Macroscopic objects obey classical laws, albeit approximately. How can a quantum mechanism be applied to the macrostructure of the brain so that it makes enough of a difference?
Those of us who want to explore consciousness will reject this objection. There are some exceptions to the general rule that objects in the macrocosm obey classical physics, even approximately. There are a number of systems that cannot be explained using classical physics even at the macro level. One such system, which we have already discussed, is a superconductor. Another well-known case of a quantum phenomenon at the macro level is the laser.
The laser beam travels to the moon and back while remaining pencil thin because its photons exist in coherent synchronicity. Have you ever seen people dancing without music? They move completely uncoordinated, right? But start tapping the rhythm and they will be able to dance in perfect harmony with each other. The coherence of laser beam photons arises from the rhythm of their quantum mechanical interactions, which operates even at the macro level.
Could it be that the quantum mechanism in our brain, which operates similarly to a laser, is opening up to the guiding influence of non-local consciousness, with the classical parts of the brain acting as a measuring device, amplifying and recording (at least temporarily) quantum events? I’m convinced it can.
Does the type of coherence that the laser demonstrates actually occur between different brain regions during certain mental actions? Some experimental data indicate the existence of such coherence.
Meditation researchers have studied brain waves from different parts of the brain—front and back, right and left—to find out the extent to which they are in phase. Using sophisticated techniques, these researchers showed the presence of coherence in bioelectrical brain wave activity measured in leads from different areas of the scalp of subjects in a state of meditation. Initial reports of spatial coherence in brain waves were subsequently confirmed by other researchers. Moreover, the degree of coherence was found to be directly proportional to the degree of direct awareness reported by meditators.
Spatial coherence is one of the amazing properties of quantum systems. Thus, these coherence experiments perhaps provide direct evidence that the brain acts as a measuring instrument for the normal modes of a quantum system, which we can call the quantum mind.
More recently, experiments with EEG coherence in meditating subjects have been extended to measuring brain wave coherence in two subjects simultaneously, with positive results. This is new evidence of quantum nonlocality. Two people meditate together, or become correlated through vision, and their brain waves exhibit coherence. What else, besides EPR-type correlation, can explain such data?
The most compelling evidence to date in support of the idea of quantum phenomena in the mind-brain is the direct observation of ESR correlations between two brains by Jacobo Greenberg-Silberbaum and his associates (Chapter 8). In this experiment, two subjects interact with each other for some time until they feel that a direct (nonlocal) connection has been established between them. Then the subjects maintain direct contact while in separate shielding chambers (Faraday cages) located at a distance from each other. When one subject’s brain responds to an external stimulus with an evoked potential, the other subject’s brain exhibits a “carryover potential” similar in shape and strength to the evoked potential. This can only be interpreted as an example of quantum nonlocality, due to the quantum nonlocal correlation between two brain-minds established through their nonlocal consciousness.
Don’t worry if a quantum computer seems similar to Eccles’ link brain and thus dualistic. A quantum computer is formed by quantum cooperation between some as yet unknown brain substrates. Unlike the hypothetical connection brain, it is not a localized part of the brain, and its connection to consciousness does not violate the law of conservation of energy. Before the directing influence of consciousness, the brain-mind (like any object) exists as a formless potency in the transcendental realm of consciousness. When non-local consciousness collapses the brain-mind wave function, it is through choice and recognition, not through any energetic process.
What about the fact that the quantum brain is a promising hypothesis, not an observed fact? It is true that the quantum mind-brain is only a hypothesis. However, this hypothesis is based on a strong philosophical and theoretical foundation and is supported by much suggestive experimental evidence. (The circulatory theory was formulated before the final piece of this puzzle, the capillary network, was discovered. Likewise, for mental processes to manifest and circulate in the brain, we need an EPR-correlated quantum network. It must exist.) Moreover, this hypothesis is quite specific in order to enable further theoretical predictions that can be subjected to experimental testing. In addition, because this hypothesis uses the classical (behavioral) limit as a new correspondence principle (discussed in Chapter 13), it is consistent with all the data that the previous theory explains.
All new scientific paradigms begin with hypotheses and theorizing. Philosophy turns into empty promises precisely when it does not help formulate new theories and ways of testing them experimentally, or when it does not want to deal with old experimental data that have not received an adequate explanation (as happened with material realism regarding the problem of consciousness).
The principle of complementarity between living and nonliving may be applicable here – the impossibility of studying life separately from a living organism, which Bohr pointed out. The dual mind-brain as a quantum system/measuring device is characterized by intense interaction, and it is this interaction, as we will see, that is responsible for the emergence of individual and personal self-identity. Apparently, there may also be additionality here. It may be impossible to study the brain’s quantum system in isolation without destroying the conscious experience that is its hallmark.
To summarize: I have proposed a new point of view on the mind-brain as including both a quantum system and a measuring device. Such a system includes consciousness collapsing its wave function, explains cause-and-effect relationships as the result of free choices of consciousness, and assumes creativity as a new beginning, which is what every collapse is. The following is a theoretical framework for understanding how this theory explains the subject-object division of the world and, ultimately, the personal self.
Quantum Dimension in the Brain-Mind: Collaboration of Quantum and Classical
Classical functionalism assumes that the brain is hardware and the mind is software. It would be equally unfounded to say that the brain is classical in nature and the mind is quantum. Instead, in the idealistic model proposed here, experienced mental states arise from the interaction of classical and quantum systems.
Most importantly, the causal efficacy of the quantum mind-brain system comes from a non-local consciousness that collapses the wave function of the mind and experiences the result of this collapse. In idealism, the experiencing subject is non-local and united – there is only one subject of experience. Objects move out of the realm of transcendental possibility into the realm of manifestation when the non-local unified consciousness collapses their wave functions, but we have proven that to complete the dimension, the collapse must occur in the presence of brain-mind awareness. However, in trying to explain the manifestation of the brain-mind and awareness, we find ourselves in a vicious circle of causality: without awareness there is no completion of dimension, but without completion of dimension there is no awareness.
To clearly see both this vicious circle and the way out of it, we can apply the theory of quantum measurement to the brain-mind. According to von Neumann, the state of a quantum system changes in two separate ways. The first of these is continuous change. The state propagates like a wave, becoming a coherent superposition of the states allowed by the situation. Each potential state has a certain statistical weight corresponding to the amplitude of its probability wave. A measurement introduces a second, discrete change to the state. Suddenly the state of superposition – a multifaceted state existing in potency – is reduced to only one actualizable facet. Think of the propagation of a superposition state as the development of a set of possibilities, and of measurement as a process that, through selection (according to the rules of probability), manifests only one state from the set.
Many physicists consider the selection process to be purely random. It was this view that prompted Einstein’s protesting remark that God does not play dice. But if God does not play dice, then who or what selects the outcome of a single quantum measurement? According to the idealistic interpretation, choice is made by consciousness – but a non-local unified consciousness. The intervention of nonlocal consciousness collapses the cloud of probabilities of the quantum system. There is additionality here. In the manifest world the selection process associated with collapse appears to be random, while in the transcendental realm the selection process appears to be choice. As anthropologist Gregory Bateson once noted, “Chance is the opposite of choice.”
In addition, the quantum mind-brain system must evolve over time according to the rules of measurement theory and become a coherent superposition. The classical functional systems of the brain play the role of a measuring device and also become a superposition. Thus, before collapse, the brain-mind state exists as potentialities of many possible patterns, which Heisenberg called tendencies. Collapse actualizes one of these tendencies, which, once the measurement is complete, leads to conscious experience (with awareness). The important thing is that the result of the measurement represents a discrete event in space-time.
According to the idealistic interpretation, the outcome of the collapse of any and all quantum systems is chosen by consciousness. This also applies to the quantum system we have postulated in the mind-brain. Thus, speaking about the interacting classical/quantum mind-brain system in the language of measurement theory, interpreted from the position of monistic idealism, we come to the following conclusion: our consciousness chooses the outcome of the collapse of the quantum state of our brain. Because this outcome is a conscious experience, we choose our conscious experience—but we are not aware of the process underlying that choice. It is this unconsciousness that leads to illusory separateness—identification with the separate “I” of self-reference (rather than with the “we” of the unified consciousness). The illusion of separateness occurs in two stages, but the underlying mechanism associated with it is called complex hierarchy . This mechanism is discussed in the next chapter.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 12. Paradoxes and complex hierarchies
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
Once, when I was talking about complex hierarchies, a listener said that this phrase caught her interest even before she knew its meaning. She said hierarchies remind her of patriarchy and power, but the term complex hierarchies has a liberating connotation. If you have the same intuition as she does, you should be prepared to explore the magical, puzzling world of paradoxes of language and paradoxes of logic. Can logic be paradoxical? Isn’t the power of logic the ability to resolve paradoxes?
As you approach the entrance to the Cave of Paradoxes, you encounter a creature of mythical proportions. You will immediately recognize him as the Sphinx. This Sphinx-like creature has a question for you, which you must answer correctly in order to gain the right to enter: what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? You are momentarily confused. What kind of question is this? Perhaps your journey will be interrupted at the very beginning. You are just a newbie in this game of puzzles and paradoxes. Are you ready for what seems like a challenging riddle?
To your great relief, Sherlock Holmes comes to the aid of your Doctor Watson. “My name is Oedipus,” he introduces himself. “The Sphinx’s question is a riddle because it confuses logical types, right?”
This is true, you understand. It was helpful to learn about Boolean types before embarking on this exploration. But what now? Fortunately, Oedipus continues: “Some of the words of the phrase have lexical meaning, but others have contextual meanings of a higher logical type. It is the overlap between these two types that characterizes metaphors that confuses you.” He smiles encouragingly.
Right, right. The words “morning”, “noon” and “evening” should contextually relate to our lives – to our childhood, youth and old age. Indeed, in childhood we walk on all fours, in youth we walk on two legs, and three legs are a metaphor for two legs and a stick in old age. Fits! You approach the Sphinx and answer his question: “Man.” The door opens.
As you walk through the door, the thought comes to your mind: how did Oedipus, the mythical character from Ancient Greece, know such a modern term as logical types? But there is no time to think: a new task requires your attention. One man, pointing to another standing next to him, asks: “This man Epimenides is a Cretan who declares that all Cretans are liars. Is he telling the truth or lying? Okay, let’s see, you reason. If he is telling the truth, then all Cretans are liars, and therefore he is lying – this is a contradiction. Let’s go back to the beginning. If he is lying, then all Cretans are not liars, and he may be telling the truth – and this is also a contradiction. If you give the answer “yes”, it echoes “no”, and if you give the answer “no”, it echoes “yes”, and so on ad infinitum. How can you solve such a riddle?
“Okay, if you can’t solve a riddle, at least you can learn how to analyze it.” As if by magic, another assistant appears next to you. “I’m Gregory Bateson,” he introduces himself. “You are dealing with the famous liar paradox: Epimenides is a Cretan who says: “All Cretans are liars.” The first condition creates the context for the second condition. It qualifies him. If the second condition were ordinary, it would have no effect on its first condition, but no! It requalifies the first condition, its own context.”
Your face brightens: “Now I understand – this is a confusion of logical types.”
“Yes, but this is not an ordinary mixture. Look, the first one overrides the second one. If yes, then no, then yes, then no, ad infinitum. Norbert Wiener said that if you introduced this paradox into a computer, it would finish him off. The computer would print the sequence yes…no…yes…no…until it ran out of ink. It’s a tricky endless loop that logic can’t get out of.”
“Isn’t there any way to resolve the paradox?” – you ask sadly.
“Of course there is, because you are not a silicon computer,” says Bateson. – I’ll give you a hint. Suppose a merchant comes to your door with the following offer: “I have a beautiful fan for you for fifty bucks – that’s almost nothing. Will you pay by cash or check?” What would you do?
“I would have slammed the door on him!” You know the answer to this question. (You remember a friend whose favorite game was the question “Which would you choose?” – I will cut off your hand, or I will bite off your ear. Your relationship ended very quickly.)
“Exactly,” Bateson smiles. — The way out of the endless loop of paradox is to slam the door, jump out of the system. That gentleman over there has a good example.” Bateson points to a man sitting at a table with a sign that says, “Only two can play this game.”
The gentleman introduces himself as J. Spencer Brown. He claims he can actually show you how to get out of the game. However, to understand this, you have to look at the Liar Paradox in the form of a mathematical equation:
x = – 1/x.
If you plug in the +1 solution to the right, the equation gives – 1 ; you plug in -1, and the equation gives + 1. The solution oscillates between +1 and -1, exactly like the yes/no oscillation of the liar paradox.
Yes, you can understand it. “But what is the way out of this mad endless hesitation?”
Brown tells you that there is a well-known solution to this problem in mathematics. Let us define the quantity called i as √—1. Note that i 2 = – 1. Dividing both sides of the expression i 2 = – 1 by i gives
i= -1/i.
This is an alternative definition of i. Now let’s try to substitute the solution x = i into the left side of the equation
x = -1/x.
Now the right side gives -1/i, which by definition is equal to i – no contradiction. Thus i, which is called an imaginary number, overcomes the paradox.
“It’s amazing.” It takes your breath away. “You are a genius”.
“It takes two to play the game,” Brown winks.
Your attention is drawn to something distant: a tent with a large sign reading “Gödel, Escher, Bach.” As you approach the tent, you see a man with a cheerful face who waves at you invitingly. “My name is Dr. Geb,” he says. — I am spreading the idea of Douglas Hofstadter. I assume you have read his book “Gödel, Escher, Bach.”
“Yes,” you mutter in some embarrassment, “but I didn’t understand everything about it.”
“Look, it’s actually very simple,” says Hofstadter’s messenger condescendingly. “All you need to understand are complex hierarchies.”
“Complicated what?”
“Not anything, but hierarchy, my friend. In a simple hierarchy, the lower level provides the higher one, and the higher one does not react in any way. In simple feedback, the layer above reacts, but you can still tell which is which. In complex hierarchies, these two levels are so mixed that you cannot define different logical levels.”
“But it’s just a label.” You shrug indifferently, still hesitant to accept Hofstadter’s idea.
“You don’t want to think. You missed a very important aspect of complex hierarchical systems. After all, I have been following your progress.”
“I trust you, in your wisdom, to tell me what I’m missing,” you say dryly.
“These systems—of which the liar paradox is the most important example—are autonomous in nature. They talk about themselves. Compare them with a common phrase such as “your face is red.” A common phrase refers to something outside of itself. But the complex phrase of the liar’s paradox refers to itself. That’s how you fall into her endless deception.”
You’re reluctant to admit it, but it’s a worthwhile guess.
“In other words,” continues Hofstadter’s messenger, “we are dealing with self-referential systems. A complex hierarchy is a way of achieving self-reference.”
You give in: “Dr. Geb, this is extremely interesting. I do have a certain interest in things that relate to the self, so please tell me more.” The person who spreads Hofstadter’s ideas does not need to be asked.
“The self arises as a result of the veil – a clear obstacle to our attempt to unravel the system logically. It is this lack of continuity – in the liar’s paradox, this endless fluctuation – that prevents us from seeing through the veil.”
“I’m not sure I understand this.”
Instead of explaining again, a Hofstadter supporter persuades you to look at a painting by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher. “In the Escher Museum, in that tent over there,” he says, leading you towards it. “The painting is called “Gallery of Engravings.” It’s quite strange, but it fits exactly with the essence of our discussion.”
Img. 32.
Escher’s painting “Gallery of Prints” is a complex hierarchy. The white spot in the middle shows discontinuity
Inside the tent you study the painting (Fig. 32). It shows a young man in an art gallery looking at a painting of a ship anchored in a city harbor. But what is it? There is an art gallery in the city in which a young man looks at a ship at anchor…
My God, this is a complex hierarchy, you exclaim. Having passed through all these buildings of the city, the painting returns to the starting point where it began to begin its cyclical movement again, thus prolonging the viewer’s attention to itself.
You turn to your guide with delight.
“You get the point.” Your guide smiles widely.
“Yes thank you”.
“Did you notice the white spot in the middle of the picture?” – Dr. Geb suddenly asks. You admit that you saw it, but did not attach much importance to it.
“The blank spot containing Escher’s signature shows how clearly he understood complex hierarchies. You see, Escher could not, so to speak, fold a picture back into itself without violating the generally accepted rules of drawing, so there had to be a discontinuity in it. The white spot reminds the observer of the discontinuity inherent in all complex hierarchies.”
“From discontinuity come veil and self-reference,” you cry.
“Right. — Dr. Geb is pleased. “But there is one more thing, one other aspect, which is best seen by considering the one-step self-referential phrase “I am a liar.” This phrase says that she is lying. This is the same system as the liar paradox you encountered earlier – only it removes the nonessential form of the condition within the condition. Do you understand?
“Yes”.
“But in this form something else begins to become clear. The self-reference of a phrase—the fact that a phrase speaks about itself—is not necessarily self-evident. For example, if you show this phrase to a child or a foreigner who is not very fluent in English, you might be asked, “Why are you a liar?” At first, he or she may not see that the phrase refers to itself. Thus, the self-reference of a phrase arises from our tacit, rather than precisely defined, knowledge of English. It’s as if the phrase is the tip of the iceberg. We call this the undisturbed level. Of course, it is unbroken from a systemic point of view. Take a look at another painting by Escher – it’s called “Drawing Hands” (Fig. 33).
Cassock. 33.
Escher’s painting “Drawing Hands”
In this painting, the left hand draws the right hand, which draws the left hand; they draw each other. This is self-creation, or autopoiesis. Moreover, it is a complex hierarchy. How does the system create itself? This illusion is created only if you remain logged in. From outside the system, where you are looking at it, you can see that the artist Escher drew both hands from an undisturbed level.
You excitedly tell Dr. Geb what you see in Escher’s painting. He nods approvingly and says with conviction: “Dr. Hofstadter is interested in complex hierarchies because he believes that the programs of our brain computer – what we call the mind – form a complex hierarchy, and from this complexity our glorious self arises.”
“But this is just a bold hypothesis, isn’t it?” You have always been suspicious of bold hypotheses. You have to be careful when scientists come up with crazy ideas.
“Well, you know, he thought about this problem a lot,” says a Hofstadter supporter wistfully. “And I’m sure that one day he will prove it by building a silicon computer with a conscious self.”
You’re impressed by Hofstadter’s dream—our society needs dreamers—but you feel the need to defend the logic. “I must admit that I’m a little wary of complex hierarchies,” you say. — When I studied logical types, I was told that they were invented to preserve the purity of logic. But you, that is, Dr. Hofstadter, intricately mix them not only in language, but also in real natural systems. How do we know that nature gives us such a right? After all, the paradoxes of language have a connotation of arbitrariness and artificiality.” You are very pleased that you can argue, if not with Hofstadter, then at least with his supporter, using what seems to you irrefutable logic.
But a Hofstadter supporter is ready for an argument.
“Who says we can keep logic pure? – he objects. — Or you haven’t heard anything about Gödel’s theorem. I thought you read Dr. Hofstadter’s book.”
“I told you I didn’t understand her. And it was Gödel’s theorem that became the final stumbling block for me.”
“It’s actually very simple. The theory of logical types was invented by two mathematicians – Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead – in order, as you say, to preserve the purity of logic. However, another mathematician, Kurt Gödel, proved that any attempt to create a mathematical system free from paradoxes is doomed to failure if the system is sufficiently complex. He proved this by demonstrating that any sufficiently rich system is doomed to be incomplete. You can always find a statement in it that the system is not able to prove. Essentially, a system can be either complete but inconsistent, or consistent but incomplete, but it can never be both consistent and complete. Gödel proved this theorem using the so-called mixed logic of complex hierarchies. In doing so, he consigned several concepts to the scrapheap, including the possibility of a complete and consistent mathematical system like Russell and Whitehead’s theory of logical types. Do you understand everything?
You don’t dare ask any further questions. Mathematics seems like a hornet’s nest to you. The more you linger around it, the more you risk being stung. You hastily thank your interlocutor and head for the nearest exit.
But, of course, on the way to him I stop you. Seeing me, you are surprised. “What are you doing here?” – you ask.
“This is my book. “I can interfere whenever I want,” I tease. “Tell me, did you believe Hofstadter’s promise to build a self-aware silicon computer?”
“Not really, but it seemed like an interesting idea,” you reply.
“I know. The idea of a complex hierarchy is fascinating. But has anyone explained how Hofstadter intends to create discontinuities in classical silicon computer programs, which by their very nature are continuous? It’s not so much that the programs are linked back to each other and become so intertwined that you can hardly trace their causal chain. That’s not the point at all. There really must be a discontinuity, a real leap beyond the system – an unbroken level. In other words, the question is how can our brain, considered as a classical system, have an undisturbed level? In the philosophy of material realism, on which classical systems are based, there is only one level of reality – the material level. Therefore, where is the place in it for an undisturbed level?
“Don’t ask,” you ask. – What do you propose?
“Let me tell you a story. One day someone saw the Sufi teacher Mullah Nasrudin, on his knees, adding yogurt to the water in a pond. “What are you doing, Nasreddin?” – asked this passerby.
“I’m trying to make yogurt,” answered the mullah.
“But it’s also impossible to make yogurt!”
“What if it works out,” the mullah said optimistically.”
You laugh. “Funny story. But stories don’t prove anything,” you object.
“Have you heard of Schrödinger’s cat?” – I ask in response.
“Yes,” you say, brightening a little.
“According to quantum mechanics, after an hour, the cat is half alive and half dead. Now suppose we set up a machine to observe whether a cat is alive or dead.”
You cannot help but say, “I know all this; the machine adopts the cat’s dichotomy. She is unable to give definite evidence until she is rescued by a conscious observer.”
“OK. But suppose we create a whole hierarchy of inanimate machines that successively observe the readings of each previous machine. Isn’t it logical to think that they will all acquire the quantum dichotomy of the cat state?”
You nod in agreement. This seems quite logical.
“So by having the cat wave function in the form of a quantum superposition, we are, in effect, opening up the possibility that all material objects in the universe can become infected with a quantum superposition. Quantum superposition has become universal. But this comes at a certain price. You understand?”
“No, I don’t understand.”
“The system is not closed.”
“Ah.”
“This openness or incompleteness becomes a logical necessity if, following Schrödinger, you give a quantum description to macroscopic systems. This is the real Gödel dilemma.”
“What are you implying?” – you ask, puzzled.
“To resolve the dilemma, we must be able to actually go beyond the boundaries of the system, and this means the existence of a quantum mechanism in our brain and a non-local consciousness collapsing it. Therefore, in order to have a truly complex hierarchy – discontinuity, unbroken level and all the rest – there must be a quantum system in our heads.”
“Indeed?”
But I end our conversation (jumping, using an undisturbed level). Everything that has a beginning must end somewhere in due time—even exciting ideas like the existence of a quantum system in our brains.
Okay, now you know what the complex hierarchy is, you agree that it only works for a quantum system within the overall idealistic framework, and you intuit that it may explain our own self-reference. Let’s see if this is true.
Return to Schrödinger’s Cat
To understand how complex hierarchy and self-reference arise in the brain-mind, let us return once again to Schrödinger’s cat.
According to quantum mechanics, after an hour, the cat’s state is half alive and half dead. If we set up a machine to measure whether a cat is alive or dead, then the machine becomes infected with the dichotomy of the cat. And if we install a whole series of irrational machines, in which each subsequent one measures the readings of the previous one, then the inevitable logical consequence of this is that they all acquire a quantum dichotomy.
It’s like the story of the islander and the missionary. The missionary explains how the earth is held up by gravity, etc. But the islander contradicts him, declaring: “I know who really holds the land. This is a turtle.”
The missionary smiles indulgently. “But then, my dear, who keeps the turtle?”
The islander remains unperturbed. “You will not deceive me,” he reproaches the missionary. “They’re all turtles, right down to the bottom.”
The essence of von Neumann’s chain, of course, is that the dichotomy of measuring instruments observing Schrödinger’s cat goes “all the way down.” The system is infinitely regressive. It doesn’t collapse on its own. We look in vain for collapse in the von Neumann chain, just as we look in vain for the truth value in the liar’s paradox. In both cases we come to infinities. We are dealing with complex hierarchies.
To resolve the dilemma, we must exit the system to an undisturbed level. According to the idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, non-local consciousness acts as the undisturbed level as it collapses the mind-brain from outside spacetime, thus ending the von Neumann chain. From this point of view, there is no Gödel’s dilemma.
However, from the point of view of the mind-brain, everything is different. Let’s build a rough model of the mind-brain’s response to a stimulus. The stimulus is processed by the sensory apparatus and presented to the dual system. The state of a quantum system propagates as a coherent superposition, and all classical measuring instruments connected to it also become coherent superpositions. However, there is no mental program that selects between different aspects of a coherent superposition; there is no program in the brain-mind that can be identified as a central processing unit. The subject is not a homunculus operating at the same level as the mind-brain programs.
Instead, there is a discontinuity, a disruption of causality in the process of choosing from possible alternatives in the pool of probability that is given by the quantum system. Choice is a discrete act in the transcendental sphere – the action of our non-local consciousness. No linear, cause-and-effect description in space-time is possible. This is the “blank spot” (as in Escher’s Gallery of Prints) in our picture of the complex hierarchy in the mind-brain. The result is self-reference. Consciousness collapses the general quantum state of the dual system, leading to the primary separation of subject and object. However, due to the complex hierarchy, consciousness is identified with the “I” of self-reference and experiences the primary awareness – I am.
The selfhood of our self-reference is conditioned by a complex hierarchy, but our consciousness is the consciousness of Being, which lies beyond the subject-object division. There is no other source of consciousness in the universe. The self of self-reference and the consciousness of primordial consciousness together create what we call self-consciousness.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 13. “I” consciousness
CHAPTER 13. “I” CONSCIOUSNESS
It is worth repeating the conclusion of the previous chapter, since it gives us a basis for understanding ourselves in the universe: the selfhood of our self-reference is determined by a complex hierarchy, but our consciousness is the consciousness of Being, which lies beyond the subject-object division. There is no other source of consciousness in the universe. The self of self-reference and the consciousness of primordial consciousness together create what we call self-consciousness.
In a sense, we are rediscovering an ancient truth. It is truly wonderful that humanity has always potentially known the origin of self-awareness from a complex hierarchy. This knowledge, common to many cultures, has manifested itself in different places and at different times in the archetypal image of a snake biting its own tail (Fig. 34).
Rice. 34.
Ouroboros (From the book “The Origin and History of Consciousness” by Eric von Neumann, Princeton University Press, 1982)
It is the appearance of the world of manifestation that leads us to the experience of a self or subject separate from the objects of appearance. That is, subject and object simultaneously appear in the initial collapse of the quantum state of the mind-brain. As the romantic poet John Keate intuitively surmised, “See the world, if you will, as a place to make souls.”
Without the immanent world of manifestation there would be no soul, no self that experiences itself as separate from the objects it perceives.
For the sake of convenience, we can introduce a new term to describe this situation. Before collapse, the subject is not differentiated from the archetypes of objects of experience – physical or mental. Collapse causes the subject-object division, and this leads to the primary awareness of the “I am” situation, which we will call the quantum self. (Of course, we could also say that the awareness of the quantum self causes collapse. Remember the circular nature inherent in self-reference.) Consciousness is identified with the emerging self-reference of its quantum self, in which the unity of the subject is still preserved. The next question is how does our so-called separate self—our unique point of reference for all experience, the individual ego—come into being?
The emergence of the ego
“We cannot escape the fact that the world as we know it is created in order to (and therefore to be able to) see itself,” says mathematician J. Spencer Brown. “But in order to do this, it obviously must first split into at least one state that it sees, and at least one other state that it sees.” The mechanisms of this subject-object division are the doubly fascinating illusions of a complex hierarchy and the identity of the self with the focus of our past experience, which we call the ego. How does this ego-identity arise?
I have already said that the mind-brain is a dual quantum system and a measuring device. As such it is unique: it is the place where the self-reference of the entire universe takes place. The Universe realizes itself through us . In us, the universe is divided into two – into subject and object. As a result of the mind-brain’s observation, consciousness collapses the quantum wave function and completes the von Neumann circuit. We resolve the von Neumann chain problem by recognizing that consciousness collapses the wave function, acting self-referentially rather than dualistically. How does a self-correlating (self-referential) system differ from a simple combination of a quantum object and a measuring device? The answer to this question is critical.
The brain’s measuring device, like all other measuring devices, records in memory every collapse – that is, every experience that arises in response to a certain stimulus. However, in addition to this, if the same or similar stimulus is presented again, the classical recording apparatus of the brain replays the past memory; this secondary playback becomes a secondary stimulus for the quantum system, which then responds to it. The classical system measures a new response, and so on. This re-interaction of dimension leads to a fundamental change in the quantum mind-brain system: it is no longer regenerative.
Each previously experienced, learned reaction increases the likelihood of repeating the same reaction. This leads to the following: the behavior of the quantum mind-brain system in relation to a new, unlearned stimulus is similar to the behavior of any other quantum system. However, when a stimulus becomes learned, the probability increases that after the measurement is completed, the quantum mechanical state of the binary system will correspond to the state of the previous memory. In other words, learning (or past experience) tunes the brain-mind.
This explanation is, of course, a theoretical analysis within the existing mind-brain model based on the idea of simple behavioral conditioning. Before a response to a stimulus becomes conditioned, before we experience it for the thousandth time, the pool of probability from which consciousness selects our response includes mental states common to all people in all times and places. As learning progresses, conditioned responses gradually begin to gain more weight than others. It is the process of developing learned, conditioned behavior of the individual mind.
Once a task is learned, in any situation involving it, the probability that the corresponding memory will trigger the conditioned response approaches 100%. In this limiting case, the behavior of a dual quantum system and a measuring device becomes almost classical. Here we see an analogue of Bohr’s correspondence principle as applied to the mind-brain. In the extreme case of new experience, the brain-mind’s response is creative. As learning progresses, the probability of a conditioned response increases increasingly until—in the extreme case of endlessly repeated experience—the response becomes completely conditioned, as behaviorism claims. This is important because classical conditioning, as postulated by behaviorism, becomes a special case of a more general quantum system.
Many learned programs accumulate at fairly early stages of individual physical development and determine the behavior of the brain-mind – despite the fact that unconditioned quantum reactions remain available for new creative experience (especially in response to unknown stimuli). But when the creative potential of the quantum component is not harnessed, the complex hierarchy of interacting components of the mind-brain essentially becomes a simple hierarchy of learned, classical programs: mental programs react to each other in a well-defined hierarchy. At this stage, creative uncertainty about “who chooses” conscious experience disappears; we begin to accept the existence of a separate individual self (ego) that exercises choice and has free will.
To better understand this idea, suppose that a learned stimulus comes to the brain-mind. In response, the quantum system and its measuring device become a coherent superposition, but with a significant bias in favor of the learned response. The memory of a classical computer also responds with learned programs associated with a given stimulus. After the collapse event associated with the primary experience, a number of secondary collapse processes occur. In response to classical learned programs, a quantum system evolves into relatively unambiguous states, each of which strengthens and collapses. This series of processes leads to secondary experiences that have a distinct quality, such as habitual motor activity, thoughts (such as “I did it”), etc. The learned programs that promote secondary events are still part of the complex hierarchy, but following them we find a break in their causal chain that corresponds to the role of the quantum system and its collapse by nonlocal consciousness. However, this discontinuity is obscured and interpreted as an act of free will of the (pseudo-) self; this is then followed by the (false) identification of the non-local subject with the limited individual self associated with learned programs. This is what we call ego. It is clear that the ego is our classical self .
Of course, our consciousness is ultimately one and is on the transcendental level, which we now recognize as the undisturbed level. However, within physical space-time (from the point of view of the classical programs of our mind-brain) we become obsessed with an individual self-identity: the ego. From within, being little able to discover the complex hierarchical nature of our system, we pretend to free will in order to hide our artificial limitations. The limitation arises from taking the view of learned programs causally influencing each other. In ignorance we identify with a limited version of the cosmic subject: we conclude: I am this body-mind.
As a real subject of experience (non-local consciousness), I operate from outside the system – transcending my brain-mind, which is localized in space-time – from behind the veil of the complex hierarchy of my brain-mind systems. My separateness—my ego—appears only as the apparent representative of the free will of this cosmic Self, obscuring the lack of continuity in space-time that represents the collapse of the quantum mind-brain state. In connection with the question of individuality, a quote from a poem by Wallace Stevens is relevant:
They said: “You have a blues guitar,
You don’t play things as they are.”
The man answered: “Things as they are
Change on a blues guitar.”
Things as they are (such as pure, undivided cosmic consciousness) appear as a separate, individualized ego; they are modified by the blues guitar of a simple hierarchy of learned programs of the individual mind-brain.
However, the separate self is only a secondary face of consciousness, since the non-local, creative potency of consciousness and the changeability of the quantum mind never completely disappears. They continue to be present in the primary quantum modality of the self.
Classical and Quantum Self
Psychologist Fred Attneave defines the ego as follows: “…stored information about past states of consciousness can be returned to consciousness. Thus, it becomes possible for consciousness to see its own reflection – although always (to break the metaphor slightly) with a time delay. I believe that the ego should be defined in this way.”
Note in particular the time delay that Attnive mentions: this is the reaction time between the collapse of a space-time event (the onset of a quantum mode) and the verbalized secondary classical mode, or introspection-based ego experience. There is impressive evidence to support this view of the timing of introspection.
Neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein and their collaborators discovered the intriguing phenomenon of introspection time in patients undergoing brain surgery at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. (In brain surgery, patients can remain awake because there is no pain.) Libet and Feinstein measured the time it took for a tactile stimulus, transmitted through the nerves as pulsed electrical activity, to reach the brain. It was approximately 0.01 s. However, Libet and Feistein found that the patient did not verbally report awareness of the stimulus until almost half a second later. In contrast, the behavioral response of such subjects (pressing a button or saying the word “ready”) required only 0.1-0.2 s.
Libet’s experiments support the idea that the normal classical ego-self arises from processes of secondary awareness of conscious experience. Almost half a second between the behavioral response and the verbal message is the time required for secondary awareness to be processed; it is the (subjective) reaction time required for “I am that” introspection. Our preoccupation with secondary processes (indicated by time lag) makes it difficult to recognize our quantum self and experience the pure mental states available at the quantum level of our functioning. Many meditative practices are designed to eliminate the delay in time and directly connect us with these pure mental states in their suchness (in Sanskrit – tathata). Available (albeit preliminary) evidence suggests that meditation reduces the time delay between primary and secondary processes.
In addition, there is indirect evidence that a decrease in time delay is accompanied by elevated experiences. George Leonard reported the sublime experiences of athletes. For example, in baseball, when a player in the outfield manages to catch a particularly difficult ball, his excitement may not be the result of success (as is commonly believed), but a consequence of reduced reaction time (making it easier for him to catch the ball), which allows him to catch a glimpse of his quantum self. Outstanding ball catching success and excitement occur simultaneously—essentially, each causes the other. Maslow’s data on peak experiences – the immediate transcendental experience of the self as rooted in the unity and harmony of cosmic Being (for example, the creative eureka experience) – can also be explained in terms of the reduced reaction time and quantum self of the experiencer.
The temporary delay of secondary introspection creates the possibility of feeling the continuity of the experience of our ego consciousness. Our so-called stream of consciousness is the result of mindless, introspective chatter. (At what price do we pay for the accumulation of experience!) Consciousness is divided into subject and object through the collapse of the quantum wave function of the mind-brain. Collapse represents an event of discontinuity in space and time, but we one-sidedly experience the subject-object division in the continuous, classical modality of the ego. We are almost unaware of the immediacy of experience available in the quantum mode, which T. S. Eliot in one of his poems called the “real estate point”:
Neither from there, nor there; at the point of real estate
there is a dance,
But neither stop nor movement.
And don’t call it fixity,
Where past and future gather…
…Except for a point, a point of real estate,
There will be no dance, and there is only dance.
Maya is now explained . Maya is not the immanent world, or even the ego. Real maya is separateness. To feel and think that we are truly separate from the whole is an illusion. We have achieved the ultimate goal of quantum functionalism – the explanation of our separate self. With the classical learned programs forming an apparently simple hierarchy, consciousness acquires an ego (the self-definition of “I am that”), which is identified with the learned programs and the individual experience of the individual brain-mind. Such a separate self, as Sperry suspected, has aspects of an emergent phenomenon. It arises from the introspective interaction of our learned programs, derived from our experience in the world, but there is one peculiarity. The separate self has no free will beyond the free will of the quantum self and ultimately the unified consciousness.
I hope you now understand the essence of quantum functionalism. While conventional mind-brain theories eschew the notion of consciousness as a disturbance, quantum functionalism begins with consciousness; at the same time he reclaims the behavioral account of brain-mind action as a limiting case and even agrees with materialists that ego free will is a fraud. However, the new theory is much more versatile as an aid to understanding the brain-mind, since it also recognizes the quantum modality of the self.
Materialist psychologists believe only in the ego – if at least in it. Many of them would say that there is no quantum self. However, imagine what if there was a drug that could separate the quantum self. What would life be like? This question is played out in the following parable.
Love for classical mechanics: a parable
Once upon a time there was a woman who believed in classical mechanics and classical logic. She became uncomfortable with all the talk about idealistic philosophy, mysticism and the like that many of her friends, and sometimes even her husband, had.
In her relationships with people, she could not understand what they wanted. She had always been good to her parents, but they wanted her to be involved. She didn’t know what they meant. She enjoyed sex with her husband, but he talked too much about love and trust. They were just words. What is the use of such words? Sometimes, lying awake after sex with the man who was her husband, she felt herself filled with feelings of emotional tenderness. She imagined that they were of the same variety as those that sometimes made her parents silently look at her with tears in their eyes. And she hated this sentimentality.
She couldn’t understand why some of her friends were looking for meaning in their lives. Some of them constantly talked about love and aesthetics. She had to hold back her laughter so as not to offend them, but she knew they were naive. She believed that there was no love other than sex. However, sometimes, when she unconsciously looked at the ocean, she was overcome by a feeling of oneness with the vastness of the ocean. Then she would lose a few moments of her existence and plunge into love. She feared such moments and hated them.
Several times she tried to talk about her worries, but those she confided in spoke soothingly about her inner quantum self, beyond her ordinary ego. She would never have believed in something so elusive. Even if she had some kind of inner self, she did not need it at all. Then, one day, she heard about the discovery of a drug that could separate a person from the quantum self. She found the man who discovered the drug.
“Will your remedy allow me to enjoy sex without sentimental feelings about love?”
“Yes,” said the man who had the drug.
“I can’t stand the insecurity of trusting people. I would rather count on mutual concessions and confirming words with deeds. Will your tool allow me to live my life without having to trust people?”
“Yes,” replied the inventor of the drug.
“If I take your remedy, will I be able to relax in the beauty of the ocean without having to deal with the feelings of so-called universal love?”
“Always,” her interlocutor replied.
“Then your remedy is for me,” she said, drinking the potion greedily.
Time passed. Her husband was beginning to sense a change in her. She behaved in much the same way, but, according to him, he could no longer feel her vibes. Then, one day, she told him that she had taken a drug to turn off her quantum self. He immediately found the man who gave his wife the drug. He wanted his wife to regain her quantum creativity.
The man who gave his wife the drug listened to him for a while and then said: “Let me tell you a story. Once there was a man who felt unbearable pain in his leg. Doctors could not find a cure and eventually decided to amputate. Waking up after long hours spent under anesthesia, the patient saw the doctor looking at him questioningly. Still not feeling too well, he asked the doctor: “So how?”
“I have some good news and some bad news for you. Let’s start with the bad ones. We cut off the wrong leg.” The patient looked at him blankly, but the doctor hastened to console him. “And now the good news, it turned out that your bad leg is not so bad. It doesn’t need to be amputated. You will be able to use it.”
The husband looked puzzled. The man who gave his wife the drug continued: “Your wife did not like the creative uncertainty of life that comes with the quantum self, so she freed herself from it. She preferred to walk on one leg. This is bad news for you. But now there is good news. I do have a remedy for husbands like you. I can train her to have the mental behavior you want from her. After my training, she will give you both tea and sympathy.”
The husband was delighted. And so it was done. His wife seemed the same again. At times she whispered tender words of love, as she had done before she took the drug. But her “soulful” husband still could not sense her vibes.
He went again to the man who gave his wife the potion and taught her loving behavior. “Behavior alone does not bring me real satisfaction. I want something inexpressible – I want to feel her vibes,” the husband complained.
The man said, “There is only one possibility. I can give you the drug and then train you like I trained your wife.”
Since there was no other alternative, the husband agreed. And since then this couple lived happily. No one in their city had ever seen a more loving couple. They were even elected life members of the local Walden II chapter, the first time such an honor had been bestowed.
Don’t worry, such a drug will never be found. At the same time, constant and optional behavioral, cultural, political and social conditioning does function like the chemical drug in the parable, holding back the potential that the quantum self offers us. So the next question is how can we take responsibility for the emerging knowledge that we are more than materialism admits? Where do we go next? This is the topic of part 4.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 14. Unification of psychologies
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
The self (“I”) is not a thing, but a relationship between conscious experience and the immediate physical environment. In conscious experience the world appears to be divided into subject and objects. When reflected in the mirror of memory, this division gives rise to the predominant experience of the ego.
Philosophers have thought a lot about the nature of the self (or “I”). This branch of philosophy is sometimes called phenomenology. Phenomenologists study the mind through introspection, much like the meditation used by Eastern mystical philosophers and psychologists. In addition, there are numerous Western psychological models (besides behaviorism). For example, the psychoanalytic model proposed by Freud states that the self is dominated by unconscious drives.
It is interesting to see how the model of the self we have called quantum functionalism explains the variety of experiences of the self, and to compare quantum functionalism with other philosophical and psychological models. This chapter includes such a comparison, which includes some ideas from philosophy, psychology, and the new physics (concerning the nature of the self and free will).
Characteristics Associated with the Experience of Self
The characteristic forms of the experience of “I” are:
L Intentionality (purposeful focus on an object, including desire, judgment and reflection).
2. Self-awareness (sense of self).
3. Reflexivity (awareness of awareness),
4. Ego experience (the feeling of being a unique entity with a certain character, personal qualities and a corresponding personal history).
5. Attention (the experience of the self’s ability to focus on a particular object).
6. Experience of the transpersonal self (moments of revelation or insight, as in the creative experience of “eureka”),
7. Implicit experience of the self (experiences in which there is a subject-object division of the world, but there is no explicit experience of “I”).
8. Choice and free will.
9. Experiences related to the unconscious.
Of course, these forms of self-experience are not mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary, they are closely related to each other. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at each of these forms.
Intentionality, self-awareness and reflexivity
In the philosophical literature, the reference to an object that accompanies most conscious experience is called intentionality. There are many modes of intentionality, such as desire, judgment and reflection. Thus, this word does not refer to intentions alone. The experienced intentional self is, of course, aware of itself, but that is not all; his thoughts and feelings are directed and purposeful.
So, one of the most common forms of experience of “I” is the experience of oneself as a subject with intentions directed towards some object. Another common experience of “I” occurs when we reflect on ourselves, when in a reflective experience we become aware that we are aware. This is also a subject-object experience, in which the “I” plays the role of the subject, and consciousness plays the role of the object.
What causes the division of the world into subject and objects? Different philosophies give different answers to this question. How does a subject emerge from a conglomeration of material objects like neurons and white matter? One answer is epiphenomenalism—the subject is an emergent epiphenomenon of the brain. However, no one has been able to show how such an occurrence could occur. Models of artificial intelligence (connectionism) depict the brain as a computer network with parallel information processing; Within this core philosophy, bottom-up theorists attempt to argue that subject-consciousness emerges as “order out of chaos,” as a new emergent function. At their core, all of these models face the same problem: there is no provable connection between the states of a computer (or neural) network and the states of mind that we experience.
On the contrary, according to monistic idealism, everything is in consciousness and comes from it. In this philosophy, the relevant question is how consciousness, which is everything, is divided into the experiencing subject and the experienced objects? Here, the quantum theory of self-consciousness can provide sufficient evidence of how such a division could arise. According to this theory, states of the mind-brain are considered quantum states, which are probabilistically weighted (that is, having one or another probability of actualization. – multi-aspect structures of possibility. Consciousness collapses a multi-aspect structure (coherent superposition), choosing one aspect, but this happens only in presence of awareness of the brain-mind. (Remember that awareness is the field of the mind in which objects of experience arise.) What comes first – awareness or choice? It is a complex hierarchy. It is this complex hierarchical situation that gives rise to self-reference, the subject-object division of the world.
Further processes of secondary awareness lead to intentionality—the tendency to identify with an object. The self of reflective awareness also arises from these processes of secondary awareness. Both primary experience and secondary processes normally remain in what is called preconscious in the psychological literature; this shading of the complex hierarchy of the primary process is fundamental to the simple hierarchical identity with our self.
Ego Experience
Polish psychologist S. Zaborowski, based on a review of psychological literature on self-awareness, defined self-awareness as the encoding, processing and integration of information about the self. In my opinion, this kind of definition is more successful than the term “self-awareness”; moreover, it corresponds to what is usually called ego experience. Self-awareness accompanies ego experience, but does not exhaust it.
The experience of the ego as the visible agent, encoder, processor and unifier of all our programs (to use Zaborowski’s computer metaphor) is the most compelling experience of the self. The ego is the image we construct of who we appear to be experiencing our daily actions, thoughts and feelings.
The ego has played a central role in many theories of personality. Radical behaviorism and social learning theory imply that the ego is the center of socially determined behavior – the result of stimulus, response, reinforcement. However, in more recent behaviorist literature, the ego is considered to mediate external behavior through internal mental thoughts. Thus, Zaborowski’s cognitive definition of self-awareness is similar to the later behavioral definition of the ego.
However, even according to the behavioral-cognitive school, the actions of the ego can be fully described in terms of input-output statements (even though the output depends on internal mental states). If this is so, then there is no need for the ego to be associated with self-consciousness. This paradox can be avoided by using the “visible” specifier in the definition of ego.
In the quantum theory of self-awareness, the subject-object division of the world is created by the collapse of the coherent superposition of quantum states of the mind-brain. However, as a result of conditioning, certain responses become more likely when the mind-brain is presented with a learned stimulus. Consciousness is identified with the visible (apparent) processor of learned reactions, that is, the ego; however, identification is never complete. Consciousness always leaves room for unconditioned novelty. This makes possible what we call free will.
Attention and consciously directed actions
As phenomenologist Edmund Husserl noted, self-awareness and therefore the ego is related to the direction of conscious attention. There are also cases when attention moves spontaneously.
In cognitive experiments that involve perceiving and responding to a stimulus, subjects are typically able to demonstrate a behavioral response (e.g., pressing a bell button) before they have self-awareness of awareness of the stimulus and before they are able to verbally report about awareness of the stimulus. This ability suggests that there is an experience of primary and secondary awareness and that the ego is associated with the secondary experience of self-awareness, but not with the primary experience.
Husserl, describing the inherent connection between self-awareness and the ability to direct attention (which is not given to self-awareness), proposed the term pure ego to designate the unified self, the two aspects of which are self-awareness and that which directs attention. In this book, as before, we will use the simple word selfhood to denote the unified self.
The cognitive functionalist/connectivist model does not provide any explanation for self-awareness. Attention is considered a function of the central processing unit, which determines the ego.
By contrast, in the quantum theory of self-reference, the self operates in two modalities: 1) the conditioned, classical modality of the ego, relating to secondary experience, which includes self-awareness; and 2) unconditioned quantum modality associated with the experience of primary awareness, such as choosing and directing attention without self-awareness. Therefore, the quantum model is consistent with the phenomenological model.
Experience of the transpersonal self
In some experiences the identification of the self with the ego is much less than usual. An example is the creative experience, in which the experiencer often describes the creative act as an act of God. Another example is the “peak experiences” studied by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Such experiences always occur suddenly, in contrast to the more ordinary ego-continuity of the stream of consciousness. We will call them experiences of the transpersonal self because they are not dominated by identification with the specific personality of the experiencer.
Experiences of the transpersonal self often lead to a creative expansion of ego-defined self-identity. Maslow (in the work mentioned above) called this self-actualization, and this book uses the term “an act of inner creativity.” In Eastern psychology, this creative self-creation is called the awakening of the mind – in Sanskrit, Buddhi. Since the word “mind” has a different meaning in the West, we will use the Sanskrit word buddhi to refer to the expansion of self-identity beyond the ego . Although the behavioral-cognitive model does not recognize transpersonal experience, quantum theory interprets it as direct experience of the quantum modality of the self.
The main characteristic of transpersonal experience is non-locality – the transfer or spread of influence without local signals. Possible examples of such nonlocal synchronicity include simultaneous scientific discoveries. Other examples are provided by paranormal phenomena such as telepathy.
Implicit experience of self
As the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre pointed out, much of our ordinary experience does not involve the ego self. Sartre gave the example of a man counting cigarettes. While counting, a person is absorbed in this task, and has no self-awareness or any other indication of his ego. Then a friend comes up to him and asks: “What are you doing?” The man replies: “I’m counting my cigarettes.” He regained his self-awareness. In this kind of experience there is consciousness, and the world is implicitly divided into subject and object; however, there is no or almost no secondary echo of experience.
Sartre’s example falls into the lower category of what the Eastern yoga interpreter Patanjali (circa 2nd century AD) called samadhi . Beginning with absorption in the object (the state of lower samadhi), the yogi begins the process of transcending the object into higher and higher samadhi. Eventually a state is reached in which the object is seen in its identity with the cosmic non-local consciousness.
In Eastern psychology, the subject of the experience of cosmic consciousness is called atman. In Christianity, this primary universal self is known as the Holy Spirit. In Buddhism it is sometimes called no-self (anatta) or “not-self” because it co-dependently co-occurs with awareness (without being hierarchically higher than awareness, its object). Other Buddhist philosophers (for example, in the text Lankava-tara Sutra) called the subject of pure awareness the universal cosmic consciousness. As the current Dalai Lama points out, the term “no-self” is misleading because it suggests nihilism. The modern psychologist Assagioli called this self, devoid of self, the transpersonal self. In the absence of a definitive Western term, we will use the Sanskrit word atman to refer to the self of the experience of pure awareness.
In the quantum theory of the self, the atman is interpreted as the quantum self—the unconditioned universal subject with which consciousness is identified and which interdependently arises with awareness upon the collapse of quantum coherent superposition. The experience of the individual self, or ego, arises in the mirror of memory from secondary echoes of primary experience. Substantial neurophysiological evidence indicates that there is a time delay between the experience of primary and secondary awareness.
Choice and free will
Of all the experiences of the self, perhaps the most perplexing are those that involve choice and/or free will. All conscious experience involves an opening to the future and in this sense can be considered to be associated with openness or possibility. The experience of choice and free will goes beyond such openness. We will differentiate between these two terms, although they are often used interchangeably. Choice refers to any occasion in which we choose between alternatives, with or without self-awareness. Free will refers to those cases in which we act as causal initiators of subsequent action.
Behaviorists and cognitive scientists typically claim that there is no such thing as free will or free will. If a person is a classical computer—whether with or without parallel processing—none of these concepts make sense. The proof is simply that no causal efficacy can be attributed to the ego, since its behavior is entirely determined by the state of its hardware (brain) and inputs from the environment.
Spiritual and transpersonal psychologists would agree with the behaviorist assessment that the ego does not have free will, but would insist that true free will exists. It is the free will of the atman—the consciousness that exists prior to any kind of reflective experience of the individual self. If the ego does not have free will, then how do we go beyond the ego in our ego, which is the goal of spiritual traditions? The answer that the ego is an illusion does not seem satisfactory.
With the help of quantum theory of consciousness, we can now resolve the conceptual problem associated with free will. In quantum theory, the primary self, the atman, is determined by choice. I choose, therefore (complex hierarchically), I am. However, with conditioning, choice is no longer completely free and becomes biased in favor of conditioned responses. The question is, how far does conditioning go?
Obviously, at the level of the primary process there is no conditioning, and, therefore, there is unlimited freedom of choice. At the secondary level, we have conditioned responses in the form of thoughts and feelings, but should we act on them? Our free will at the secondary level consists of the ability to say “no” to learned conditioned responses.
Notice that we have to use the two terms – choice and free will – slightly differently, and that’s a good thing. Modern neurophysiological experiments show that there is a definite advantage in not using the term “free will” in relation to, for example, situations in which a person voluntarily raises his hand. Recent experiments by Benjamin Libet clearly indicate that even before the subject experiences awareness of his action (necessary for free will), an evoked potential arises in his brain that signals to an objective observer his intention to raise his hand. In view of this, how can one say that this kind of free will is free? But Libet’s experiments also show that a person retains the ability to freely say “no” to a raised hand, even after an evoked potential signals the opposite.
This clarification of the meaning of free will can help us see the benefits of meditation – focusing attention on the field of awareness, either on a single mental object or on the entire field. Meditation gives us the opportunity to witness mental phenomena that arise in awareness – a conditioned reflex parade of thoughts and feelings. It creates a gap between the arousal of mental reactions and the urge to physically act on them and thus enhances our ability to freely say “no” to conditioned actions. It is not difficult to see the value of such reinforcement in changing habitual destructive behavior.
Experiences related to the unconscious
Some experiences relate to what remains unconscious in us – to processes for which there is consciousness, but no awareness. In quantum theory, there are situations when the quantum state does not collapse, but continues to evolve in time, in accordance with the dynamics of the situation. However, unconscious dynamics may play an important role in subsequent conscious events. This aspect gives us the opportunity to test the effects of quantum interference in experiments on unconscious perception.
According to the ideas of psychoanalysis, some experiences of the ego-self are repressed into what Freud called the “id” and Jung called the “shadow”. The resulting conscious experience defines the “persona” – the image that a person shows to other people, the image of who he considers himself to be. I will call the repressed part of the ego-self simply the personal unconscious. The influence of the personal unconscious distorts some of the experiences of our ego, and this unconscious influence leads to psychopathologies – in particular, to the neuroses with which psychoanalysis tries to work.
What can quantum theory say about how the personal unconscious arises? It arises as follows: the subject is taught to avoid certain mental states; as a result, the probability of the collapse of these states from the coherent superposition containing them becomes extremely low. However, such coherent superpositions can dynamically influence the collapse of subsequent states without any apparent external reason. Ignorance of the cause of behavior can lead to anxiety, which gives rise to neurosis. Over time, a person can imagine the causes and begin to eliminate them through, for example, neurotic behavior such as compulsive hand washing.
Similarly, Jung proposed that many of our transpersonal experiences are influenced by repressed archetypal themes of the collective unconscious—universal states that we do not ordinarily experience. These repressed themes can also lead to pathologies.
According to quantum theory, the eventual human form is subject to conditioning that prevents certain mental states from manifesting in the world. For example, the male body should tend to suppress those mental states that are distinctly female experiences. This is the source of the anima archetype described by Jung. The suppression of the anima adversely limits male behavior (in the same way, the animus archetype is suppressed in women, separating them from the male experience).
When we dream or are under hypnosis, the self becomes primarily a witness and enters a state of relative absence of secondary awareness events. In this state, normal inhibitions directed against the collapse of repressed mental states are weakened. Therefore, both dreams and hypnosis are useful for bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness.
Similarly, in a near-death experience, the close proximity of death releases much of the repressed unconscious conditioning, both collective and personal. As a result, many patients emerge from their near-death experience full of joy and peace.
To gain agency, it is important to avoid oppression both from ego/persona conditioning and from our tyrannical internal, repressed, unconscious, coherent superpositions.
Spectrum of self-awareness
By considering the characteristics of conscious experience as described by phenomenology, psychology, cognitive science, and quantum theory, we can arrive at an important summary of how the self manifests itself in us—that is, a description of the spectrum of self-awareness (see also Wilber). However, of all these theoretical models, only one—the quantum theory of consciousness—is broad enough to cover the entire spectrum; Therefore, we will start from the very beginning from an idealistic quantum view of consciousness.
In monistic idealism, consciousness is singular – one without a second, as Shankara said. The spectrum of self-consciousness consists of points with which a single consciousness is identified at different stages of human development. The whole spectrum is surrounded at the lower end by the personal unconscious, and at the upper end by the collective unconscious. However, all stages are in consciousness.
This scheme should be viewed from a developmental rather than a hierarchical perspective. The higher we develop, the more egoless we become, until at the highest level all discernible identity with the ego is lost. Therefore, levels beyond the ego are characterized by deep humility.
Ego level
At this level, the human being is identified with a psychosocially conditioned and learned set of contexts of activity. These contexts give the human personality its character. Depending on how absolute this ego-identity is, a person at this level is more or less prone to solipsism. The contexts in which such a person operates tend to take on an aura of infallibility, and he judges all other contexts in terms of the criteria of these personal contexts . A person believes that only he and his extensions and additions (his family, his culture, his country, etc.) have primary reality. Everything else is conditional.
Within the general ego level we can distinguish two bands. The first of them, pathological, is closer to the personal unconscious. It is strongly influenced by internal stimuli (non-collapsed coherent superpositions) from the unconscious. People whose self is identified with this stripe are often disturbed by the aspirations and impulses of the unconscious. Their ego is divided into a self-image and a shadow-image, the former expanding and the latter repressed.
The second band, the psychosocial, is where most of us live – with the exception of occasional excursions into lower and higher (in a developmental sense) areas of identity. For example, in higher realms we may be able to say “no” to a conditioned habitual response, thus exercising our free will; or we can immerse ourselves in creative activities, or we can love someone unselfishly. However, the usual impulses to action at this level are driven by a personal program that serves to preserve and strengthen the identity of the image-character, in the pursuit of fame, power, sex, etc.
Buddhi level
This level is characterized by a less limited ability to identify the self, exploring the full human potential. The personal motive of life at the ego level is replaced by the motive of internal creativity, self-exploration and actualization.
Within this level, several bands can be distinguished. However, these bands do not form a hierarchy and are not necessarily experienced in any chronological order. Some of them may even be missed.
The first of these, located closer to the ego level, we will call the psychic/mystical band. People whose self is identified with this band experience non-local psychic and mystical experiences that expand their vision of the world and their own role in it. These themes of the collective unconscious often come to the surface in dreams, creative experiences and the understanding of myths, which provide additional motivation for freedom and unification of the self. However, at this level of self-identity, people are still too driven by personal desires to move to a truly ongoing identity.
The second band is transpersonal (transpersonal). There is a certain ability and tendency to witness internal processes without necessarily externalizing them. The psychological contexts of human life are losing their absolute character. One discovers otherness, and some of the joys of this discovery (such as the joy of service) enhance motivation.
The third stripe is spiritual, representing an identity that few people on earth have demonstrated. Life passes mainly in samadhi, achieved easily and effortlessly (in Sanskrit – sahaja). The Self is more or less unified; themes of the collective unconscious are largely explored; and actions correspond to events. Due to the rarity these days of people whose self-identity falls into this band, there is very little scientific data available about it. Of course, many historical cases of this identity are described in the mystical and religious literature of the world.
The highest level is atman, the level of self (or non-self), achievable only in samadhi.
Note that the spiritual psychologies of India and Tibet speak of seven bands on the spectrum of self-identity (with one additional band at the ego level). The origin of this system is connected with the Indian idea of three types of attraction – three gunas: tamas, or inertia; rajas or libido; and sattva, or creativity. Indian psychologists postulate the existence of three ego bands, perhaps one for each type of dominant drive, but since it is recognized that all people have some portion of each guna, such a classification seems somewhat redundant.
It may be asked: how does a change of self-identity occur? There is a Zen story that deals with this issue: “The disciple Doko came to a Zen master and asked: “I am seeking the truth; What state of self should I train myself in to find it?” The Zen master replied: “There is no self, so you cannot bring it into any state. There is no truth, so you cannot prepare for it.”
In other words, there is no method, no preparation for changing self-identity. That’s why we call this process inner creativity. It is the process of breaking the boundary defined by one set of contexts for life, which creates the possibility of an expanded set of contexts. We will look at this process in more detail in Part 4. Note that the integration of theories of personality and self achieved here in the context of quantum theory of consciousness should also lead to the integration of various branches of psychology – psychoanalytic, behavioral, humanistic/transpersonal and cognitive. Although we have shown that a model based on ideas from cognitive science and artificial intelligence is not suitable for a complete description of human personality, it can nevertheless serve as a useful simulation of most ego-related aspects of the self.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 15. War and Peace
PART IV. RETURNING THE CHARM
I began writing this book in the summer of 1982, but I knew that there were deep contradictions in the material. They stemmed from a latent attachment to one of the fundamental principles of realist philosophy – that consciousness should be an epiphenomenon of matter. Biologist Roger Sperry spoke of emergent consciousness—causal consciousness arising from matter, from the brain. How could this be? There is an irresistible vicious circle in the assertion that something made of matter can have a new causal effect on it. I could relate this to the paradoxes of quantum physics: how could we influence the behavior of objects with our observations without postulating the existence of dualistic consciousness? I also knew that the idea of a dualistic consciousness separate from matter created its own paradoxes.
Help came from an unexpected direction. As a scientist, I have always believed in a holistic approach to a problem. Since the nature of consciousness itself was now clearly the subject of my study, I believed that I should delve deeper into empirical and theoretical studies of consciousness. This implied psychology, but conventional psychological models—owing to their roots in material realism—avoided consideration of conscious experiences that challenged this worldview. However, other, less conventional branches of psychology, such as the work of Carl G. Jung and Abraham Maslow, started from different underlying assumptions. Their views were more in tune with the philosophy of the mystics around the world – a philosophy based on spiritual vision through the veil that creates duality. To remove the veil, the mystics recommended being attentive to the field of awareness (this kind of mindfulness is sometimes called meditation).
Eventually, after many years of effort, a combination of meditation, the study of mystical philosophy, a lot of discussion and just hard thinking began to lift the veil that separated me from the solution to the paradoxes that I was looking for. It was necessary to abandon the fundamental principle of material realism—that everything is made of matter—without resorting to dualism. I still remember the day the final breakthrough happened. We were visiting our friend Frederica in Ventura, California.
Earlier that day, Maggie and I had gone with our mystic friend Joel Morewood to hear Krishnamurti speak in the nearby town of Ojai. Even at 89 years old, Krishnamurti was very adept at commanding an audience. In a Q&A after the talk, he explained in detail what his teaching was all about: that to change, you have to be aware of it now, not decide to change later or think about it. Only radical awareness leads to the transformation that awakens the radical mind. When someone asked whether radical awareness was coming to ordinary people like us, Krishnamurti replied seriously: “It must come.”
Later that evening, Joel and I started talking about Reality. I explained to him in detail my ideas about consciousness arising from quantum theory, from the point of view of the theory of quantum change. Joel listened carefully and asked, “Okay, what next?”
“Well, I’m not sure I understand how consciousness manifests itself in the brain-mind,” I said, confessing my struggle with the idea that consciousness must somehow be an epiphenomenon of brain processes. “I think I understand consciousness, but…”
“Can consciousness be understood?” Joel interrupted me.
“Of course you can. I told you about how our conscious observation, consciousness, collapses a quantum wave…” I was ready to repeat the whole theory.
But Joel stopped me: “Then does the observer’s brain exist before consciousness, or does consciousness exist before the brain?”
I saw the trap in his question. “I am talking about consciousness as the subject of our experience.”
“Consciousness exists before experience. It has neither object nor subject.”
“Of course, this is what classical mysticism says, but in my language you are talking about some non-local aspect of consciousness.”
But Joel wasn’t distracted by my terminology. “Your scientific blinders are blocking your understanding. They make you believe that science can understand consciousness, that it originates in the brain and is an epiphenomenon. Listen to what the mystics say. Consciousness is primary and unconditional. It is all there is. There is nothing but God.”
This last phrase had an effect on me that cannot be described in words. All I can say is that it caused a sudden change in perspective—the veil was lifted. Here was the answer that I was looking for, and, at the same time, knew from the very beginning.
When everyone else went to bed, leaving me with my thoughts, I left the house. The night air was cold, but I didn’t notice it. The sky was so foggy that I could barely see a few stars. But in my imagination it became the shining sky of my childhood, and suddenly I could see the Milky Way. One poet from India, where I was born, imagined that the Milky Way marks the boundary between the heavenly and the earthly. In quantum nonlocality, the transcendental heaven—the kingdom of God—is everywhere. “But man does not see him,” Jesus lamented.
We don’t see it because we are so fascinated by experience, by our melodramas, by our attempts to predict and control, understand and manipulate rationally. In our efforts we lose sight of one simple thing – the simple truth that it is all God; in the language of the mystics this means that everything that exists is consciousness. Physics explains phenomena, but consciousness is not a phenomenon; on the contrary, everything else is phenomena in consciousness. I searched in vain for descriptions of consciousness in science; instead, I and everyone else should look for descriptions of science in the mind. We must develop a science compatible with consciousness, our primary experience. To discover the truth, I will have to make a quantum leap beyond conventional physics; I will have to formulate a physics based on consciousness as the building block of all existence. It’s a difficult task, but I just saw a glimmer of a solution. Therefore, it must also be simple—an effortless change of perspective. Krishnamurti’s words echoed encouragingly in my ears: it must come. I trembled slightly, and the Milky Way of my imagination slowly faded away.
To truly understand the mystical truth that nothing exists except consciousness, it must be directly experienced – just as in the sensory sphere it is necessary to see and taste a banana before one really knows what it is. Idealistic science has the potential to restore consciousness to a fractured entity like Guernica that haunts each of us. But the fragmentation of the self is due not only to the incomplete worldview of material realism, but also to the nature of ego-identity. If we, in our separate, split egos, want to be whole again, we must not only understand the situation intellectually, but also dive into our inner depths in order to experience the whole.
In the most celebrated of biblical myths, Adam and Eve lived a magical, whole life in the Garden of Eden. After eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they were cast out of this enchantment. The meaning of the myth is clear: experience in the world comes at the price of loss of charm and integrity.
How do we re-enter that magical state of wholeness? I’m not talking about a return to childhood or some golden age, or salvation in eternal life after death. No, the question is how can we transcend the ego level, the level of fragmented existence? How can we achieve freedom and at the same time live in the world of experience?
To answer this question, in this section we will discuss, in the context of idealistic science, what is commonly called the spiritual journey. Traditionally, spiritual paths have been charted by professional religious teachers – priests, rabbis, gurus, etc. As we will see, quantum science also has something important to offer here. I envision that in the future, science and religion will serve complementary functions—science can lay the objective foundation of what needs to be done to bring back the charm, and religion can guide people in the process of doing so.
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
In Clifford Simak’s Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel Transfer Station, the ruling council of our galaxy is concerned with whether Earthlings will ever be able to forget their warlike habits and become civilized, learning to resolve conflicts without violence. In the novel, a mystical object—a talisman—ultimately brings about the transformation necessary for earthlings to join the civilized galaxy.
War is as old as human society itself. Our conditioning, both biological and environmental, leads to the natural occurrence of conflict. For thousands of years, we have used violence to at least temporarily resolve these conflicts. Now, with the advent of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, such wars increasingly threaten our future—not only our lives, but also our global environment. How can we reduce this risk? What mystical talisman can transform our warring nations into a network of cooperative communities committed to resolving conflicts through peaceful and globally responsible means?
Existing social paradigms of the world are essentially reactive in nature, since they relate to individual situations in which conflict has already arisen or is impending. Therefore, the main concerns are related to national security, arms reduction and conflict resolution; all of these are reactive, situational measures to achieve peace. We have been trying to ensure peace in these ways for thousands of years, and it still hasn’t worked.
The situational approach to preserving peace is inextricably linked with the materialistic and dualistic worldview that has long prevailed in our ideas about ourselves. Today, as our self-image is increasingly shaped by scientific realism, this view has become narrow-minded. Sociobiology (the modern version of social Darwinism) portrays us as “selfish gene” machines—individual entities competing with each other for survival. According to this view, our destinies and behavior are governed by the deterministic laws of physics and genetics and environmental conditioning. Sociobiology is an inherently cynical amalgamation of ideas from classical physics, Darwinian evolution, molecular biology and behavioral psychology.
The sociobiological view of the human race is the opposite of the idea of peace in a fundamental sense. In sociobiology there is no place for peace as universal brotherhood between people, peace as cooperation coming from the heart, peace as altruism and compassion towards all people, regardless of race, color and religion. According to this view, the best we can hope for is situational ethics, pragmatic and legal containment of violence, and temporary truces in our competing and conflictual agendas for victory and survival.
In the idealistic paradigm proposed in this book, we do not start with questions such as: “Why is there so much conflict in the world?”, “Why can’t the peoples of the Middle East learn to get along with each other?”, “Why are Hindus and Muslims constantly fighting?” for power? and “Why do Western states sell deadly weapons to developing countries?” Instead we ask: “What is it that creates the movement of consciousness that creates all these conflicts in the world?” “Are there any compensating impulses in consciousness?” In other words, we are looking for a proactive, fundamental approach to preserving peace that includes all parts of the whole. As individuals, we begin to take responsibility for these larger movements of consciousness. We are the world, and therefore we begin to take responsibility for the world. The first step to accepting this responsibility is to understand, first intellectually, the positions of others in relation to us as individuals. In this respect, important emancipatory movements in consciousness do begin to compensate (at least in part) for the previous futile urges to violence.
Unity in Diversity
The ideas developed in this book assume an inner unity of human consciousness that goes beyond the diversity of individually evolving forms. Today, in many disciplines, there seems to be an opinion that violence is inherent in humans and is therefore inevitable. However, if the new view is correct, then our separateness – the main source of selfishness and callousness that leads to violence – is simply an illusion. Behind this illusion of apparent separateness lies the single reality of inseparability.
To come to terms with the significance of Aspect’s experiment, which proves our inseparability beyond any reasonable doubt, the pragmatic scientist uses instrumentalism – the idea that science does not deal with reality, but simply plays the role of a tool to guide the development of technology. But instrumentalism cannot be justified. This reminds me of one student who, during an experiment on the development of conditioned reflexes in frogs, taught a frog to jump on the command “Frog, jump!” Then he cut off one of the frog’s legs and gave his command “Frog, jump!” The frog jumped, and he noted with satisfaction in his laboratory notebook: “The conditioned reflex remains intact even if you cut off one of the frog’s legs.” He repeated the experiment, cutting off two and then three legs of the frog, and in both cases the frog jumped at his command. Finally he cut off the fourth leg and gave the command. This time the frog did not jump. After thinking a little, the student wrote down: “Having lost all four legs, the frog stops hearing.”
The idea of fundamental unity itself is not new; it constitutes the main revelation of most of the world’s religions. However, religious teachings, insofar as they emphasize some form of personal salvation as the goal of self-knowledge, tend to deny the world. In contrast, when approaching the philosophy of monistic idealism from the new scientific position described in this book, we obtain a point of view that assumes unity in a world of diversity. The new worldview affirms the world, showing the possibility of a more mature world.
The worldview of monistic idealism and idealistic science clearly shows that all manifested forms represent only one of many possibilities of a single wave that stands behind the form (of particles). The idea that unity lies beyond form also implies that all permitted variety of forms has only relative, and not absolute, intrinsic value. (This is similar to the Buddhist position that nothing in the world has an intrinsic nature of its own.)
When we look at the manifest world in this way, especially the world of people, we can easily understand the wisdom contained in respecting and valuing the diversity of human expression – an attitude towards cultural groups that many anthropologists have recently favored. The diversity of cultures reveals human potential in ways that life within the conditioning of any single culture could never do. Each culture reflects, although not completely, the image of the One. By looking at reflections in different mirrors, we can better understand the meaning and wonder of human existence.
Thus, the most modern trend in cultural anthropology marks a departure from the monolingual type of thinking, which considers the goal of civilization (and anthropology) to be one expression, one culture, one interpretation. A direction is emerging leading to polythematic development, which recognizes the value of diversity, showing multiple dimensions of consciousness. This movement from one language to multiple themes provides a clear path from the competitive military paradigm of material realism to the paradigm of peace and cooperation that idealistic science promises. In addition, in developing an effective paradigm for preserving peace, moving away from linear hierarchies is important.
From simple to complex hierarchy
If one historical concept could be identified that has driven people and their societies toward much of the war and violence, it would be the concept of hierarchy. As the human race moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture, various hierarchies arose and grew – monarchy, religious hierarchy, patriarchy, etc. – which began to subjugate human culture.
However, in the 20th century. many social changes have been driven by the realization that hierarchies are not necessary, necessary or universal, and, at best, of only limited use. In particular, we have seen artificial hierarchies based on race and gender begin to crumble around the world.
Likewise, there is growing recognition of the idea that the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that marked the 1990s reflected not who won the arms race, but which system was better – democracy or the rigid hierarchy of one-party dictatorship.
I suspect that such social revolutions against hierarchies are closely related to the revolt against the materialist worldview in modern science. What can the new idealistic science say about hierarchies? Often, what we think is a simple hierarchy appears so because we are not aware of the whole picture. When we see it – as in the case of the von Neumann chain – we find that we are dealing with a complex hierarchy.
In discussing the important element of surprise in the new model of the self based on quantum theory (Chapter 12), we traced the origins of the division of reality (subject/observer and object/world) to the concept of a complex hierarchy of interacting systems. However, this functional division does not fully explain our sense of separateness, since the unity of the observer and the diversity of the world are complementary aspects of reality.
Our apparent separateness comes from a disguise called simple hierarchy, which hides the true mechanism of our self-reference, which is a complex hierarchy. However, as soon as this separateness arises, hiding unity, it determines our perspective, thereby perpetuating itself. We become solipsists—a collection of individual island-universes with little awareness of their common ground—and we define our world in terms of our individual, separate selves: our families, our cultures, our countries. Have you noticed how television programs and Hollywood films of the eighties were narrowly defined in terms of solipsistic personal values and reflected the power of the Me generation?
Thus, in our country and throughout the world, we have seen movements of consciousness aimed at women’s liberation and racial equality, expressing complex hierarchy and unity in diversity. We have also seen the opposite movement of consciousness towards a simple hierarchy of the “me” generation. This pattern has existed throughout history. We are like a monkey on a pole, climbing half a meter up and then sliding down 49.999 centimeters.
There is now a shift away from the values of the “me” generation. Idealistic science has developed, and this is also a movement of consciousness. So far in human history these movements of consciousness have for the most part been unconscious oscillations between opposing and misunderstood extremes. Idealistic science includes both tendencies – towards solipsism and simple hierarchy and towards complex hierarchy – thereby giving each of us individually the freedom to act in new and creative ways.
Where to begin?
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the great idealistic treatises; it wonderfully and comprehensively explores spiritual paths for individual self-development beyond the ego. Surprisingly, the book begins with a description of a battlefield where opposing factions are preparing for battle. Arjuna, the leader of a group trying to restore justice, is upset that so many people will be killed in battle, including many relatives and friends whom he loves and values. He doesn’t want to fight. Krishna, his mentor, encourages him to fight.
Many people ask what kind of spiritual book is it if it encourages war rather than peace? The answer contains many levels of revelation.
At one level, the war described in the Bhagavad Gita is not an external war at all, but an internal battle. Conflict occurs in the heart of every spiritual seeker; it is fundamental to all who strive for full adult development. Arjuna found himself in a difficult situation where he had to kill his own relatives. Isn’t that what happens to people who want to realize their human potential? To move forward, a person must give up ego-identity, but at the same time he is faced with enormous inertia that prevents such movement itself.
On a deeper level, Arjuna experiences a conflict with his value system—his way of life. He is a warrior and must fight. And at the same time, he knows the value of love, respect and devotion to people from whom and with whom he learned the game of life. How can he kill these same people in battle? Thomas Kuhn would call this situation anomalous. The old paradigm is beginning to fail and must give way to a new one. Therefore Krishna incites Arjuna: change your paradigm; you must creatively come to new understandings so that you can fight without the conflict that weakens you.
Isn’t that what happens when we become attached to an ego-level value system that often makes conflicting demands on us? How to cope with a crisis created by anomalies and conflicting values? We must understand that a crisis is both a danger and an opportunity—an opportunity for creative inner transformation.
On yet another level, imagine that there is a real war going on and you are fighting in it. The Bhagavad Gita gives you instructions on how to fight war within the framework of your dharma – your understanding of personal, moral and social justice. The point here is that there are wars, and we participate in them. Many of us have been offended by the questions and misunderstandings that cause wars to break out around us. Remember, we are in the world; true pacifism is in jeopardy until the whole movement of consciousness is directed towards the preservation of peace. Therefore, when a real war occurs, we try to fulfill our respective roles as best we can.
Based on the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita in its modern interpretation, we will offer an individual program of spiritual quest aimed at achieving peace – personal and global. We learn that peace begins with the recognition that there is conflict, both external and internal. We will never achieve peace if we avoid or deny this fact; we will never come to love if we suppress the fact of hatred.
Likewise, our search for happiness begins with recognizing that grief exists. (Religions begin with this realization and offer ways to achieve the lasting satisfaction we call happiness.) Our quest for creative wisdom begins with the realization that despite all the knowledge we have accumulated, we do not know the answer to the particular question we are exploring; and so on. The first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is an introduction to recognizing the tendencies at our ego level that come from past conditioning. Likewise, we must recognize the tendency toward solipsism on both a personal and a social level.
Someone may object to me – isn’t this just another call to change yourself and, thus, change the world? Mystics and religions have preached this for centuries, but their teachings have not eliminated violence. There are several answers to this. The first of these I will express in the form of a question: have you ever thought about what the world would be like if a significant number of people in all ages had not chosen the path of transformation? Another answer is this: I think that in the past the calls of the mystics were heard by so few because of the practical lack of means of communication. There have always been barbarians (outsiders) who destroyed cultures before they could learn from them the benefits of peace through individual transformation. But in today’s world there is nothing “external”. Information technology has brought us all together into a global communication network.
The most important thing is that for the first time in history we can turn to inner growth not simply out of obedience to the authority of religion, or because we want to avoid suffering, but because a growing body of agreed upon knowledge and evidence points in favor of such a direction of development. In a new science that inspires a new worldview, we draw on science and religion and encourage representatives of both to explore and develop a new order together.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 16. External and internal creativity
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
In the new, unified psychology of the self, to the two factors that contribute to human development—nature and nurture—an important third element is added: creativity. From a psychological point of view, nature includes the unconscious instincts that control us – what Freud called libido; Education includes environmental conditioning, most of which is also unconscious. In this context, creativity can be seen as an impulse emanating from the collective unconscious.
In the Eastern idealistic psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, three gunas are mentioned , somewhat similar to the three impulses discussed above). The urge that comes from past conditioning is called tamas; This is inertia, or education. The impulse of libido is called rajas; this is nature. The third impulse is called sattva: creativity.
Creativity is creating something new in a completely new context. The novelty of the context plays a key role. This poses a problem for people working with digital creativity. Computers are very good at shuffling objects around within contexts provided by programmers, but they cannot discover new contexts. Humans can discover new contexts thanks to our non-local consciousness, which allows us to leap beyond the system. In addition, we have access to a vast archetypal content of quantum states of mind (pure mental states) that extends far beyond local experience during a person’s lifetime. Creativity is a fundamentally non-local mode of cognition.
An impressive example of the nonlocality of acts of creativity can be the simultaneous discovery of the same scientific idea by people who are not locally connected – living in different times and in different places. This phenomenon is not limited to the field of science. The similarity in the work of artists, poets and musicians living at different times and in different places is so striking that it can also serve as evidence of a non-local correlation. Thus, there is at least indirect evidence that creativity is associated with nonlocal cognition, a third mode of cognition in addition to perception and representation.
Creative meeting
It is generally accepted that the creative process consists of at least three distinct stages. The first of these is the preparatory stage of information collection. The second – the main stage of the creative process – is the emergence and dissemination of a creative idea. In the third and final stage of manifestation, the creative idea is given form. However, I doubt that creativity can result from a sequential and orderly progression through these three distinct stages.
Instead, I propose that the creative act is the result of the meeting of the classical and quantum modalities of the self. There are stages, but they are all complex hierarchical encounters between these two modalities; the hierarchy is complex because the quantum modality remains preconscious. The unifying consciousness is the undisturbed level from which all creative action flows. Creativity has a complex hierarchical nature, since even from the point of view of classical modality there is a clear lack of continuity.
The classical modality of the self, like the classical computer, deals with information, but the quantum modality deals with communication. Thus, the first stage of creativity is a complex game of information (development of competence) and communication (development of openness). It is complex because it is impossible to determine when information ends and communication begins; it is a discrete process. Here the ego acts as a scientist in the service of the quantum modality – and a strong ego is needed to deal with the destruction of the old to make way for the new.
In the second stage, the stage of creative insight, there is a meeting between the painstaking work of the classical modality and the inspiration of the quantum modality. To get a sense of this meeting, let’s think about the details of a quantum mechanism—the details of a quantum leap in creative insight. When a quantum brain state, in response to a situation of creative confrontation, develops as a pool of potential possibilities, this pool includes not only conditioned states, but also new, never before manifested states of possibility. Of course, the conditioned states of our personal, learned memory have a higher probability, and the statistical weights of new, not yet conditioned states are small. Therefore, the problem of the second stage of creativity is how to overcome in this game of chance the overwhelming odds of the skill of the former memory in comparison with the genuine art of the new.
The solution to this problem is not that unclear. There are five non-mutually exclusive possibilities. First, one can minimize mental conditioning by consciously maintaining a non-judgmental stance to reduce the likelihood of (unconscious) conditioned reactions. (This is also recommended for the first stage of creativity.)
Secondly, you can increase the chances of a creative idea manifesting itself, which has a low probability, through persistence. This is important because persistence increases the number of collapses of the quantum state of mind in relation to the same issue – thereby increasing the chances of realizing a new reaction.
Third, since the likelihood of a new component appearing in a coherent superposition of the mind is higher in the case of an unlearned stimulus (one we have not previously encountered), creativity is facilitated if we expose ourselves to previously unknown stimuli. Thus, reading about a new idea can cause a context shift in our own thinking on a completely different topic. To open the mind to new contexts, new stimuli that seem ambiguous are especially useful – as in surrealist painting.
Fourth, since conscious observation collapses the coherent superposition, unconscious processes have a distinct advantage. Uncollapsed coherent superpositions can then affect other uncollapsed coherent superpositions, thereby creating many more choices in the eventual collapse.
And fifth, since a necessary component of quantum modality is nonlocality, one can increase the likelihood of a creative act by talking and working with other people – as in the case of brainstorming. Communication extends beyond local interactions and the locally learned bases of knowledge of the participants, and the likelihood is high that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.
Thus, while the quantum modality plays an important role in allowing us to make the leap beyond the system necessary to discover a truly new context (inspiration), the classical modality serves an equally important function in enabling the persistence of will (hard work). The way H. Spencer Brown spoke about the importance of this persistence evokes an unforgiving sense of what it means to have a burning question: “To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and did, requires years of thought. Not activity. No reasoning. Not calculations. Not painstaking work. Not reading. No talking. You just have to constantly remember what you need to learn.”
The ego of a creative person must have a strong will to persist and must be able to cope with the anxiety associated with not knowing—with taking a quantum leap into the new. The contribution of the classic ego is rightly assessed by the saying: “Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent hard work.”
The third and final stage of the creative process – the manifestation of a creative idea – is the meeting of idea and form. The primary responsibility for giving form to the creative idea generated in the second stage falls on the classical modality. It has to tidy up and organize the elements of the idea and confirm that the idea works, but there is a lot of back and forth between idea and form. This interaction process is of a complex hierarchical nature.
Thus, creativity is a complex hierarchical meeting of the classical and quantum modalities of the self: information and communication, labor and inspiration, form and idea. The ego must act – but under the direction of an aspect of the self that it does not know. In particular, it must resist reducing the creative process to a simple hierarchy of memorized programs. This reduction for the sake of efficiency is a natural but regrettable tendency of the ego. The following lines from Rabindranath Tagore sum up all these aspects of the creative encounter:
The melody tends to bind itself to the rhythm,
While the rhythm flows into the melody.
The idea strives to find flesh in form,
and the form strives to find freedom in the idea.
The Infinite seeks contact with the finite,
And the finite seeks release in the Infinite.
What is this drama between creation and destruction –
This endless oscillation between idea and form?
Boundness seeks to achieve freedom,
And freedom seeks rest in bondage.
Creative experience “eureka”
They say that when Archimedes, while in the bath, discovered the principle of buoyancy, he forgot about his nakedness and rushed into the street, joyfully shouting: “Eureka, eureka” (I found, I found). This is a famous example of the sudden guess experiment. How can this experience be explained?
The model of creativity as the meeting of the classical and quantum aspects of the self provides a succinct explanation of the eureka experience. Think about the time lag between primary and secondary experiences. Our preoccupation with secondary processes, which this delay indicates, makes it difficult to recognize our quantum self and experience the quantum level of our functioning. The creative experience is one of those few moments when we directly experience the quantum modality, with little or no delay in time, and it is this encounter that causes a “eureka!”
The “eureka” (or aha!) experience typically occurs during the second stage of the creative process; it is not the end product of the creative act. A very important part of the process is the third stage, which consists of giving explicit form to the creative idea generated in the eureka experience.
Therefore, Archimedes probably had a strong experience of the primary process, which caused him ecstasy. I have already mentioned Maslow’s work on peak experiences. What Maslow calls peak experiences can also be interpreted as creative “eureka” experiences, except that the people he writes about did not discover a new physical law. Instead, they demonstrated examples of inner creativity—the creative act of self-realization.
External and internal creativity
Understanding creativity as an ordinary expression of the quantum self can encourage anyone to engage in creative activities. In this context, a distinction must be made between external and internal creativity. External creativity involves discoveries in the external world; the results of external creativity are intended for the whole society. On the contrary, inner creativity is directed towards the person himself. Its result is a personal transformation of the context of a person’s life.
In the case of external creativity, the product we create competes with the existing structures of society. Thus, in addition to creative passion for the problem to be solved, we need talent or giftedness and knowledge of existing structures (including early conditioning). This combination may occur in relatively few people, although it does not have to be that rare.
Inner creativity requires neither talent nor erudition. All that is required is deep curiosity of an immediate, personal type (what is the meaning of my life?). It is only necessary to be aware that with the development of the ego there is a tendency to neglect our creative abilities – especially as regards further self-development – and, in fact, to declare – I am who I am, I will never change. For inner creativity, it is necessary to realize that life at the ego level, no matter how successful it may be, contains anxiety and is devoid of joy.
Inner creativity
The universe has a creative capacity; Our creativity is living proof of this. In a deterministic universe, the world mechanism allows us to develop only in its own image and likeness – as thinking machines. But in reality, there is no world mechanism. In our desire for harmony, prediction and control of everything that surrounds us, we created the idea of a world mechanism and projected this deterministic image onto nature. However, a statistically harmonious, lawful universe would be a dead universe; our universe is not dead because we are not dead. However, we do have a tendency towards a static equilibrium, like death: this tendency is the ego.
They say that the Persian mystic Zarathustra laughed when he was born. Like many myths, this one contains an important meaning. He shows that consciousness, once it becomes manifest, finds itself in a difficult position – being ridiculous in its inability to escape conditioning. Only a baby can laugh at conditioning. By the time the baby reaches adulthood, he – like everyone else – will be conditioned by society and culture, civilization. After watching a Woody Allen film, we may well conclude that we have to pay for civilization, for social conditioning, with neurosis; and Woody Allen is absolutely right. There is a good chance that the child will grow up neurotically unable to laugh at his conditioned experiences.
Even under these conditions, our creative nature breaks through our conditioning every now and then. Some of us have creative ideas. Others shine with life through dance. Still others find creative inspiration in completely unexpected contexts. These are reminders. When creativity breaks through the ego, we are able to remember that there is something beyond the conditioned self. Then we can think about how to open this beyond. How to find a direct connection with the source of life-affirming meaning?
We very often admire ourselves and our manipulations. Often this admiration is strongest in youth. We become captivated by our creativity and use it to manipulate the world. For many of us, this self-admiration continues for quite a long time; for some people it never ends. Moreover, this admiration is often fruitful, and it has given us many of the wonders of our civilization.
But nothing lasts forever in this world. While yesterday I might have felt creative, today the bite of the three-headed demon of universal misfortune might fill me with sadness. The three heads of the demon are boredom, doubt (conflict) and suffering.
What do we do when such suffering floods us in our daily lives? If we are still fascinated by ourselves, we come up with ways to avoid it. In our sometimes manic escape from boredom, we chase novelty—a new partner or a new computer game—as a defense against this particular demon. To avoid the pain of discomfort, we seek pleasure – food, sex, drugs and the like. And we lock ourselves into rigid belief systems to ensure that doubt is prevented. Alas, all this effort is just additional conditioning.
Trying to resolve the problems of inner emptiness and doubt with the help of external fullness or internal strictness is the classic approach of materialism. If we can change the world (and other people as part of this world), then we do not need to change ourselves. And yet, because reality is not static, we do change: we become cynical or slip into overwhelming hopelessness. We fluctuate between ups and downs, mountains and valleys, and life becomes a roller coaster ride – a cheap melodrama, a soap opera.
Even our wonderful civilization, of which we are rightly proud, is constantly threatening us. The creativity of our fellow humans, which has created our entertainment industry to avoid sadness, has also created the means of destruction that promise and deliver suffering. This makes some of us wonder whether wise creativity is possible. Can creativity be used to gain wisdom? Can we express our creativity in constructive ways?
There is a story about Gautama Buddha: once upon a time in Bihar, in India, where Gautama lived, there was a very hot-tempered man named Angulimala, who vowed to kill a thousand people. As a reminder, and to count his victims, he cut off the index finger of each man he killed and made a necklace from those fingers that he wore around his neck (hence his name Angulimala, which means “necklace of fingers”). Quite cruel, isn’t it? Okay, after he killed 999 people, he fell victim to numbers (a phenomenon well known in sports circles – when it can be difficult to go on an unprecedented winning streak in baseball or win the last leg of a tennis tournament). No one came close enough to him to become his thousandth victim. Then Buddha appeared. Ignoring all pleas and warnings, the Buddha approached Angulimala. Even Angulimala was surprised that the Buddha came to him voluntarily. What kind of person is this?
“Okay, for your bravery, I will grant you one wish,” Angulimala generously offered.
Buddha asked him to cut off a branch from a nearby tree. R-time, and it was done.
“Why did you waste your wish?”
“Will you grant my second request, the request of a dying man?” – Buddha asked humbly.
“OK. What kind of request is this?
“Will you return this fallen branch to its original state on the tree?” – Buddha asked with absolute equanimity.
“I can not do it!” – Angulimala cried in surprise.
“How can you destroy anything without knowing how to create? How to revive? How to connect again? – asked the Buddha. They say that this meeting had such an impact on Angulimala that he became enlightened.
But the question that Buddha asked two and a half millennia ago remains relevant today. Imagine asking this same question to our scientists who are using their creativity to create weapons of destruction. How do you think they will respond to it?
Uncontrolled creativity is a double-edged sword. It can be used to enhance the ego at the expense of civilization. Creativity should be exercised with wisdom, which leads to the transformation of our being so that we can love unselfishly or act altruistically. But how does a person gain wisdom?
It is impossible to specifically describe what causes wisdom or makes a person wise. The Zen story puts it this way: a monk asks a teacher to explain the reality beyond reality. The teacher picks up a rotten apple from the ground and gives it to the monk; the monk becomes enlightened. The gist of the story is this: the heavenly apple of wisdom is perfection. The earthly apples of knowledge by which we understand the idea of transcendence are rotten apples, merely misleading allegories and metaphors. However, this is all we have; we’ll have to start there.
If you are able to cope with the uncertainty of being beyond the ego, then you are ready for inner creativity. Methods of inner creativity include meditation, which could be defined as a practical attempt to achieve self-identity beyond the ego. Some inner creativity techniques, such as Zen koans, make use of apparent paradoxes. In other techniques, the paradoxes are more subtle.
One paradox is this: we use the ego to go beyond the ego. How is this possible? Over the centuries, many mystics have marveled at this paradox of inner creativity, but it disappears when viewed from the perspective of the new psychology of the self (chapters 12 and 13). Our self is not the ego. The ego is only a temporary, working identity of the self. As we try to shift the center of gravity of our being more towards the quantum modality, we find that we cannot cause quantum leaps by any conditioned maneuvers. So we methodically break the conditioning. We cannot gain greater access to the quantum modality if we constantly feed the demon of unhappiness – one of the agents of the ego. Therefore, we give up the pursuit of pleasure, the attachment to excitement, the frantic attempts to avoid boredom, doubt and pain. We let go of limiting belief systems like materialism. What’s happening? Are you ready to find out?
In other words, as we accumulate experience, changes constantly occur in our psyche, but usually these are low-level changes. They don’t transform us. In inner creativity, we direct our creative abilities precisely to self-identity. Usually creativity is aimed at changing the external world, but when we creatively transform our own identity, it is called internal creativity.
In external creativity, quantum leaps allow us to view an external problem in a new context. In inner creativity, a quantum leap allows us to break out of established patterns of behavior, which, taken together, make up what is called character, developed as we grow up. For some people, this requires a discrete eureka experience or quantum leap. For others, there seems to be a gradual turning around. This always involves a patient awareness of the immediate state of affairs, of what obstacles arise from our past conditioning and prevent us from living in the new context that we intuitively understand.
Remember Plato’s cave? Plato described the situation of human beings in relation to their experience of the universe: We are in a cave, tied to our seats, and our heads are fixed so that we are always looking at the wall. The universe is a theater of shadows projected onto the wall, and we see the shadows. We observe illusions that we allow to condition us. The real reality is behind us, in the light that creates shadows on the wall. But how can we see the light when we are so tied that we cannot turn our heads? What did Plato want to say with his allegory? And what about us people in the cave? We also cast a shadow on the wall – a shadow with which we identify. How to weaken this ego-identity?
The modern Plato – Krishnamurti – offers this answer: we need to make a complete turn around, and this requires full awareness of the situation, what we are, and what our conditioning is.
For example, imagine that you are jealous. Every time your significant other talks to someone of the opposite sex, you experience intense bouts of self-doubt and anger. You try to change your feelings and behavior, but you cannot change by thinking and reasoning alone. This is where inner creativity comes into play. Inner creativity techniques are designed to create a small gap between you and your ego identification. In this clearing you can use your free will – the birthright of your quantum modality.
So what does it take to achieve transformation? For external creativity, we develop talent or a certain competence, or both – but creativity is not limited to these things.
Likewise, for inner creativity, one develops and practices awareness of one’s conditioning—what is within. With external creativity, if we have enough talent and have developed a certain competence, if we are open-minded and have a burning question, then a creative quantum leap can occur. Likewise, in inner creativity, when we recognize our potential for inner growth but have no pretensions about ourselves, when we are vulnerable, change can occur. So in any case, what you do is just a trigger. Both internal and external creativity are associated with a lack of continuity and causality.
How do we know when we have made the transformation? We become aware of this as the context of our lives shifts from the level of our personal ego to the level of buddhi, from the predominance of the classical self to a more comprehensive functioning in both classical and quantum modalities. What does this mean? The simplest way to say it is to mean a general state of living with a natural sense of love and service to others—a natural surrender of one’s separateness in favor of the quantum self. Rabbi Hillel said:
If I do not exist for myself, then who am I?
If I exist only for myself, then what am I?
When both questions move us to action with equal urgency, transformation has taken place. However, transformation is an ongoing process, always defining an increasingly compassionate context for our being.
Stages of adult development
Perhaps of all cultures, the most extensive research into inner creativity has been conducted in Eastern India. One of their discoveries, now supported by science, is the connection between inner creativity and development. Hindu researchers of inner creativity have outlined four periods of its development:
1. Brahmacharya (which literally means “celibacy”) is the period of learning and ego development (including initial initiation into spirituality) spanning childhood and adolescence.
2. Garhastha (which literally means “life of a householder”) is the period of living in the world with ego-identity and enjoying the bittersweet fruits of the world.
3. Banaprastha (which literally means “life in the forest”) is a period of self-discovery and cultivation of the awakening of buddhi.
4. Sannyasa (which literally means “renunciation”) is the period of development on the level of Buddhi, leading to self-renunciation and transcendence of all duality, all various impulses and thus to liberation.
Today’s psychology paradigm typically recognizes only the first two of these levels of development. However, few researchers—notably Erik Erikson, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow—have offered a broader context for human development.
Also noteworthy is the idea of a midlife crisis or transition, which gained popularity in the 1970s. Obviously, this formulation concerned many people, as evidenced by the following joke: a priest, a pastor and a rabbi were arguing about the point at which human life begins. The priest gave the standard answer: “Life begins at the moment of conception.” The pastor avoided a direct answer: “Perhaps life begins in twenty days or so?” Finally, the rabbi said, “Life begins when your children pass away and your dog dies.”
In the next chapter I will explore the idea of awakening buddhi in the light of the idealistic literature and insights presented in this book. Further development at the level of buddhi, leading to freedom, which in Hinduism is called moksha, and in Buddhism – nirvana, is extremely esoteric in nature and beyond the scope of this book.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 17. Awakening of Buddhi
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
In one of the Upanishads there are such significant lines:
Two birds, who are inseparable and known by the same name, are sitting next to each other on the same tree. One of them eats a sweet fruit; the other looks but does not eat.
This is a beautiful metaphor for the two ends of the spectrum of selfhood; at one end we have the classical ego, at the other we have the quantum atman. In our ego, we eat the sweet (and bitter) fruit of worldly pleasures and forget about our quantum modality, which gives meaning to our existence. We exteriorize ourselves in local aspirations and become lost in the ordinary dichotomies of the world—pleasure and pain, success and failure, good and evil. We pay little attention to the possibilities available to us in our internal non-local connection, with the possible exception of rare cases of creativity and marital love. The older we get, the more we get stuck in our usual lifestyle. How to change this pattern of action and develop an individual program for adult development?
Fortunately, much empirical data has been accumulated over thousands of years, which is summarized in spiritual literature. Before we discuss these strategies, it is necessary to understand the two birds metaphor.
Many people think that the spiritual journey is like climbing a mountain, and that different spiritual paths are routes leading to the top along different sides of the mountain. With this understanding of the metaphor, there is a tendency to think hierarchically and believe that since we strive for a goal (the top of the mountain), the closer we are to it, the better we are. Once again we find ourselves caught in the higher/lower dichotomy typical of the ego level.
The opposite of this is to say, like the mystic Krishnamurti, that truth is untrodden ground. But if there is no path, then only very little guidance is possible. This is a gigantic waste of the wisdom gained from available empirical evidence.
One of the heroes of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, Yudhisthira, was threatened with death if he did not answer the question: “What is religion?”
It is worth remembering Yudhishthira’s answer, which saved his life: “The cards of religion are hidden in the cave,” he said. “The path to it is indicated by studying the lives of great people.”
Therefore, we will consider the paths as examples of those methods that have been used in the past and are still used today to change our identity from the level of the ego and, through the level of buddhi, towards the atman.
According to the Bhagavad Gita, there are three main paths, each of which is called
yoga, which means “union” in Sanskrit. Here is the further meaning of the two birds metaphor: the birds are already united. The goal of yoga is to realize unity. With this awareness, a change in identity begins.
The Bhagavad Gita identifies the following three yogas:
1 . Jnana yoga, the path of enlightening the intellect with reason (buddhi). (Jnana in Sanskrit means “knowledge”.)
2. Karma yoga, the path of action in the world. ( Karma means “action” in Sanskrit.)
3. Bhakti yoga, the path of love. ( Bhakti in Sanskrit means “devotion,” but in spirit the word is very close to love.)
These three yogas are by no means unique to the Gita or the Hindu tradition. Jnana yoga is popular in Zen Buddhism. Catholicism generally favors karma yoga (the ability to bring about transformation through acts called sacraments), while Protestantism leans heavily towards the path of love. (The love of faith is answered by a love called mercy, but mercy cannot be earned by works.)/div>
Jnana yoga aims to awaken the mind buddhi through the intellect, but the trick is to bring about a change in the normal contexts in which the intellect operates. Intelligence is an artful caricature of creativity; it involves a logical shuffling of known contexts; it mixes creatively with other ego-level drives coming from conditioning and libido. How can the intellect be awakened to the comprehension of a new self-identity? If you asked a Zen master about this, he might clap his hands and ask you to hear the sound of one hand clapping. This clap is intended to frighten the “bird” from the Upanishads, lost in illusion, to make it jump – to make a quantum leap in order to realize its unity. Paradox is a very effective way to stir up a bogged down intellect. A person thinking about a paradox finds himself in a situation of “double entrapment” and must make a leap to escape it. This method is commonly used in Zen Buddhism.
There are many misconceptions about Zen koans. They often seem so pointless. One day at a party I met a man who had recently returned from Japan, where he had spent some time in a Zen monastery. He offered a koan to the crowd: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Some of those present became desperate trying to solve the riddle. After all, how can you clap with one palm? After all, you need two palms to clap, right? In the end, the guy gave in and demonstrated his decision. He slammed his hand on the table. It was the sound of one hand clapping. Everyone was delighted.
It’s easy to think of koans as this man did—as riddles to be solved intellectually, and they can be fun to explore rationally because they allow for every imaginable possibility. But such intellectual solutions do not help us lift the veil that is the ego. The function of the koan is much more subtle. If you were to offer table slapping as a solution to the above koan to a Zen master, he might say, “I’ll hit you thirty times” (or actually do it), or rate your understanding at 20%, or give some other value. equally shallow answer. He would know that you didn’t understand the koan.
Our ego is eager to find out the answer to riddles and paradoxes, not to understand their meaning. We use intellect, not intuition. Intellectualization, in itself, simply increases the inertia of the ego. It has its place and role, but at the proper moment the intellect must yield to ignorance in order for new knowledge to be possible.
A Zen story speaks very convincingly about this. A certain professor came to a Zen master wanting to learn something about Zen ideas. The master asked if the professor would like to have tea. While the master was preparing the tea, the professor began to explain everything he knew about Zen. The master prepared tea and began to pour it into the professor’s cup; The cup was filled, but the master continued to pour.
The professor cried out: “But the cup is already full!”
“Just as your mind is filled with ideas about Zen,” replied the Zen master.
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson has noted the similarities between the koan technique and the “double hold” in psychotherapy. The double grip neutralizes the ego, paralyzing it. The ego-self cannot cope with the hopeless swing from one choice to another, for example in this situation: if you say that this dog is Buddha, I will hit you. If you say that this dog is not Buddha, I will hit you, and if you don’t say anything, I will hit you.
The necessary conditions that create a double entrapment situation are: a) there are two people involved, and b) there is a connection between them that cannot be broken. That is, the situation is such that a person caught in a “double capture” temporarily renounces the autonomy of his ego. Of course, once the leap to a new context of life occurs—in Zen this event is called satori— the master’s work is done, and he lovingly releases the “double grip.”
With the help of the “double grip” catapult, the Zen master aims the thinking mind to transcend ego-identity. In contrast, in the Sufi and Christian traditions, teachers focus on the feeling mind, instructing it to love without expecting anything in return. The ego-“I” itself is no more capable of selflessly loving than it is capable of solving a koan. In both cases, teachers want to create a creative challenge for their students.
Can you imagine what it would be like to love someone just for the sake of it – not because there is an opportunity for ego reward, not because you are in love, not because you have reasons to love? This love comes from the level of Buddhi. We cannot summon it of our own free will. We can only surrender to it in creative unfolding.
There is a Chinese fable about the similarities and differences between heaven and hell. Both heaven and hell are feasts with large round tables laden with delicious food. In both places, the chopsticks are about one and a half meters long. Now about the difference. In hell, people try in vain to use chopsticks to eat themselves. In heaven, everyone simply feeds the person sitting across the table from them. Will they feed me if I feed someone else? Letting go of this ego-level uncertainty leads to the awakening of trust.
Unconditional love requires trust from the lover as much as it promotes trust on the part of the loved one. The great Chinese teacher of Taoism, Zhuang Tzu, used to tell his students the following parable: imagine that a man is sailing on a boat and suddenly sees another boat coming straight towards him. Frustrated and angry, he screams loudly and frantically waves at the helmsman of that boat to change his course. But then the boat comes closer and he sees that there is no one in it. His anger passes, and now he himself turns away from the empty boat.
What happens, asks Zhuang Tzu, if we approach others from the emptiness of the heart, without preconceived ideas? In such an open-minded situation, the selection probability pool extends to the creative dimension. The quantum wave of our mind expands and is ready to include new reactions: I am not driven to love by desire, need for protection, or image – I am free to love without any reason. It is this unconditional love that suppresses our tendency to react.
Of the three types of yoga described in the Bhagavad Gita, karma yoga is the simplest and, at the same time, the most difficult. It is also the most important for our time, for the ultimate goal of karma yoga is right action. On the path to the sublime being from whom right action emanates, significant spiritual development is necessary. The Gita suggests a gradual, three-stage approach.
In the first stage, an action should be practiced without the desire to receive its specific fruits. “Give the fruits of action to God,” says the Gita. This is what is commonly called karma yoga.
In the second stage, a person acts out of service to God. If you asked Mother Teresa where she finds the strength to serve the needy in Kolkata and around the world day after day, she would say – by serving the poor, I am serving Christ. In her work she encounters Christ every day, and that is enough for her. This is karma yoga in which love has awakened.
At the last stage, man lives as a means of right action, and not as a subject acting on an object. This is karma yoga on the threshold of liberation.
Although spiritual development occurs in stages, no method is limited to just one stage. At all stages of self-development, all three yogas are used simultaneously – action, love and wisdom. Buddhism clearly recognizes this spiral nature of the various types of yoga. If you look at the Eightfold Path of the Buddha, you will find all three paths in it. If we use them together, then one path strengthens the other. The more we act selflessly, or the more we meditate, the more we are able to love. The more we love, the more mature our wisdom becomes. The wiser we are, the more natural selfless action is for us.
Note that all three paths depend on our awareness of what is happening within and without us. This awareness is so crucial to all paths that Krishnamurti is absolutely right when he says that there is no path and recommends only awareness. All that is needed is the practice of awareness, which is meditation.
Jnana: awakening to reality
When we connected mysticism with monistic idealism (chapter 4), we introduced the concept of consciousness as the basis of being, Brahman. As we developed a cosmology of one becoming many, it became clear that consciousness-Brahman arises as a subject (atman) co-dependent with objects. Co-dependently, the knower (subject of experience), the field of knowledge (awareness) and the known (object of experience) arise. However, neither the subject nor the object has any nature of its own, no independent existence: only consciousness is real.
The problem is how to comprehend this reality. Language is no good here. Take for example: “there is only one consciousness.” Not bad, but by saying “one” we are already making a distinction, subtly implying duality. There are beautiful words of Shankara: “one without a second.” Better, but not perfect. Another approach is expressed by a joke: how many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? One and not one.
It is very difficult to express non-relative reality in relative words. In his writings, which have been called the first truly post-modern philosophy, Jacques Derrida introduced the concept of deconstruction – the destruction of all metaphysical statements about reality by destroying the very meaning of any statements. The same thing was proposed a thousand years ago by the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. The immediate wisdom achieved through the careful practice of this deconstruction represents the pinnacle of jnana yoga.
Now the quantum physics of self-reference provides another way of thinking about this indefinable: complex hierarchy. Before consciousness collapses the object/awareness in space-time, nothing manifest exists. But without awareness there is no collapse, no choice to collapse. What exists before the collapse? The complex hierarchy – the endless oscillation between yes and no answers – prevents us from experiencing the original: the sound of one hand clapping. What is the experience of atman? To creatively transform intellectual understanding of idealistic metaphysics into realized truth, go deep into the question – achieve inner conviction, awaken your heart.
The mystical philosopher Franklin Merrell-Wolf said: “Reality is inversely proportional to definability.” This is the main advice in jnana yoga: the more indefinable something is, the more real it is. Follow the thought to increasingly subtle depths. Then…
The consequence is awakening, which leads to self-identity at the level of buddhi. For most people, except for a few carefully trained scientists or philosophers, jnana yoga may be too difficult. Fortunately, the other two methods (karma yoga and bhakti yoga) are more achievable by many.
Meditation
According to many philosophers, there is only one method of inner creativity – meditation (which consists of learning to pay attention, to be dispassionate, and to witness the continuous melodrama of thought patterns). To break free from the egoic level of existence, you may need to be quite specific about what is happening in your daily life, becoming aware, perhaps painfully, of how you are controlled by your attachments and habits. Or, to open up to love, you can focus on your relationships in the world. Or you might want to contemplate reality. All of these methods require a fundamental practice of mindfulness and detachment. This is what meditation teaches us.
Of all the many forms of meditation, the most common is performed in a sitting position. If you keep your attention on your own breath (with your eyes open or closed), or on the flame of a candle, or on the sound of a mantra (which is usually done with your eyes closed), or on any object, then you will be practicing concentration meditation. In this practice, whenever your attention wanders and thoughts arise—as they invariably do—you must gently and persistently bring your attention back to the object of meditation, maintaining concentration to transcend thinking, to push it from the foreground to the background of awareness.
In another form, called mindfulness meditation, the object becomes thought itself—indeed, the entire field of awareness. The principle here is that if the attention is allowed to freely observe the flow of thoughts without focusing on any particular thought, it will remain at rest in relation to the moving thought parade. This form of meditation can give you a detached, objective view of your thought patterns that, over time, will allow you to transcend thinking.
The difference between concentration meditation and awareness meditation can be understood by applying the principle of uncertainty to thinking. When we think about our thinking, either the individual thought (position) or the train of thought (impulse) becomes blurred or uncertain. As the uncertainty about a single thought becomes smaller and smaller, the uncertainty about the train of thought tends to infinity. When the connection of thoughts is lost, we become focused on the here and now.
In awareness meditation, it is the uncertainty about the connection that is made less and less, thereby causing us to lose the characteristics or content of thoughts. Since attachment comes from the content of thoughts, when the content is lost, attachment also disappears. We become impartial observers or witnesses of our thought patterns.
Meditation Research
Do meditation techniques, absurdly simple in principle, although difficult in practice, really enable people to achieve altered states of consciousness? Based on the assumption that there may be a unique physiological state corresponding to the state of meditation, brain physiologists have tried to answer this question by measuring various physiological indicators (heart rate, galvanic skin response, bioelectrical brain wave activity, etc.). ) in subjects during meditation. Although this assumption has never been confirmed, meditators exhibit such significantly distinct physiological characteristics that many researchers have recognized meditation as a fourth major state of consciousness, along with wakefulness, deep sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep associated with dreaming. The main evidence that meditation is a special state of consciousness comes from studies of brain wave patterns using electroencephalography (EEG).
The pattern of brain wave activity corresponding to the state of wakefulness is dominated by low-amplitude, high-frequency (more than 13.5 Hz) beta waves. During meditation, these waves are replaced by high-amplitude, low-frequency alpha waves (7.5-13.5 Hz). This predominance of alpha activity, corresponding to a relaxed, passive receptivity, is one of the important characteristics of the meditative state of consciousness, although it cannot in itself be considered a sign of the state of meditation. To achieve predominantly alpha wave brain activity, simply close your eyes.
Other striking characteristics of the brain wave pattern during meditation have been discovered. When people in their normal alpha state are presented with an unexpected stimulus, their brains respond by abruptly returning to beta activity. This phenomenon is called alpha blocking. Adepts of concentration meditation demonstrate the unique nature of their meditative alpha-dominant state in that they do not experience alpha blocking when presented with a sudden stimulus. Although alpha blocking occurs in people who practice mindfulness meditation, what makes their type of meditative alpha state unique is something else. When a person in a normal waking state is presented with a repeated stimulus (for example, the ticking of a clock), within a very short time he becomes so accustomed to the stimulus that his brain wave pattern no longer changes. This is called a habituation reaction. (In a normal subject, habituation occurs as early as the fourth presentation of the stimulus.) Adepts of mindfulness meditation demonstrate a unique lack of signs of habituation, both in the meditative state and while awake.
Research has shown the importance of passive visual attention (called soft gaze) in achieving the meditative alpha state. Such passivity can be achieved by simply lowering the eyes down or rolling them up, as is common in some Tibetan practices. Additionally, high alpha activity is achieved through passive attention to space. It is now generally accepted that the alpha state is beneficial because it typically marks a release from bodily and mental tension, allowing us to delve deeper into self-exploration.
Another aspect of the meditative state is the appearance of theta waves (3.5-7.5 Hz) in the EEG picture. Theta waves can be extremely important as they are also known to be associated with creative experiences.
The presence of theta waves in the pattern of brain wave activity during meditation brings to mind the fact that in children under the age of five there is a predominance of theta activity, which gradually turns into a predominance of alpha activity, corresponding to the EEG pattern of the normal waking state in adolescents, and in eventually gives way to a predominance of beta activity in adults. Since the developing consciousness of children is dominated by the quantum modality (that is, there are fewer secondary processes of awareness), we can assume that theta waves are in some way characteristic of the quantum modality of the mind-brain. If this assumption is correct, then the appearance of theta activity during both sitting meditation and creative experience may indicate a transition of consciousness to the primary process of the quantum modality.
Modern attention research provides some insight into how mantra repetition or concentration meditation works. In experiments conducted at the University of Oregon, psychologist Michael Posner and his colleagues present subjects with one letter, such as B, and then, after a period of time, a pair of letters. On some trials, subjects are asked to focus on the first letter, but on others they are not. Subjects respond “yes” or “no” depending on whether the pair is made of the same letters, such as BB, and experimenters measure the time required for this response.
From my point of view, the most interesting result is obtained when subjects are asked to focus on the first letter in those trials where the subsequent pair of letters does not correspond to the first letter: in this case, the reaction time increases noticeably. Focusing attention on the first, preparatory stimulus influences the processing of unexpected stimuli. (Conversely, in the absence of conscious attention to the first stimulus, reaction time remains unchanged.)
Thus, focusing our attention interferes with our ability to perceive objects other than the object of our attention. The quantum state of the brain evolves over time as a pool of probabilities that includes new stimuli, but focusing attention on an existing stimulus changes the probability of a response in favor of that stimulus, while the probability of collapse corresponding to a new perception becomes low. Therefore, focusing on the mantra diverts our attention from idle thoughts. Our consciousness is literally incapable of focusing on two things at the same time. As we focus our attention more and more steadily on the mantra, the external world that exists within us as an internal map begins to recede. Eventually a state is reached in which the thinking mind itself seems to cease to be perceived as a result of a kind of habituation effect: that is, although secondary awareness events still occur, they are few and far between. This occurs when primary processes can reveal themselves in their suchness.
The strategy of mindfulness meditation is also consistent with the structure of our brain. Ultimately, all the thoughts and feelings of our secondary awareness process are inevitable; we cannot fight them for any length of time simply because of the structure of our brains. In mindfulness meditation, thoughts and feelings are allowed to arise, but a distinction is made between the contents of consciousness and the subject—consciousness itself. In mystical literature this idea is conveyed by the metaphor of troubled water:
The seed of mystery is hidden in troubled waters.
How can we perceive this mystery?
Water finds peace through real estate.
How can you find peace?
Moving with the flow.
If we flow with the stream, the so-called muddy contents of consciousness – our thought patterns – settle to the bottom of the stream, to the bottom of the awareness that we witness. Using this strategy, we can witness for longer and longer periods of time because we no longer interfere with the experience of the secondary process of awareness through introspection. This allows us to experience the suchness, or impersonality of the witnessing consciousness.
Thus, in both concentration meditation and awareness meditation, a startling experience of suchness is achieved, which gives us some insight into the primary consciousness beyond the murmurs of the secondary ego. Beyond thinking and beyond the ego there is a primal consciousness. With practice, the experience of this primal consciousness can become stronger.
Freedom in Meditation: Karma Yoga
Karma yoga, or the path of action, begins with learning to act without attachment to the fruits of one’s action. The ego always wants to receive these fruits. This is why the system of rewards and punishments is so ubiquitous in all cultures. Refusing the fruits of action is heresy both from the point of view of the habit-bound ego and from the point of view of the authorities – because it makes the system of rewards and punishments ineffective.
Thus, the path of karma yoga is associated with renouncing the rewards and punishments that condition our behavior. How can we break with our conditioning? With the help of meditation, which is an integral part of karma yoga.
When you first start meditating, most likely nothing special will happen. During this initial period, it can be very difficult to maintain about twenty minutes of sitting meditation. This requires real discipline. In my own case, it took several months before I started to notice anything.
Maggie and I’s marriage began with a commitment to open communication. In less exalted language this means that in the early years we quarreled a lot. After a fight, I usually had negative thoughts regarding compromises and retreats – I’ll prove it to her and all that. One day, after about three months of meditation, I was upset because of an argument, but I noticed that I was not having the usual negative thoughts towards my wife. Something has changed.
Another time, not long after this, I had a heated argument with my ten-year-old stepson, who, like me, is very logical – and you know how annoying logic can be when tempers clash. I was angry, but suddenly I noticed that my anger was only on the surface. Internally, I enjoyed how skillfully he objected to me. I had a choice between reacting angrily or enjoying the situation, and I chose to say no to the habitual reaction. At first I made these choices mainly internally, but over time they began to manifest themselves in my external actions.
In fact, these kinds of incidents are quite common and can sustain us during the first few crucial months of practice. Most importantly, they show that meditation actually helps us see ego patterns. Some of them may even disappear.
Pat Carrington, in her book Freedom in Meditation, tells how one of her clients quit smoking: “While traveling on an airplane, he was meditating and had the impression that he heard his own voice telling him: “Free yourself from your desires!” » This very cryptic statement was followed by an experience of jubilation, and then these words: “I can … smoke a cigarette if I want – but I shouldn’t do it.”
In meditation, we try to reduce the almost one hundred percent probability of our habitual reaction to a conditioned stimulus. For example, I want to smoke. The ego has two reactions: I should smoke because… and its exact opposite – I should not smoke because… Meditation breaks the monopoly of these reactions, creating a clearing. In this gap a creative reaction is born: I decide whether to smoke or not to smoke. Only when such a thought arises creatively is a radical change possible, transforming a person from a smoker to a non-smoker. Such an event becomes possible with intense and persistent practice.
It is important not to separate meditation from the rest of your life, but to allow it to transform your actions. You will find that it is not as easy as it seems. The ego is well protected from change. Psychologist Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) recounts an experience in which he and several of his friends had just completed a group meditation. Everyone was supposed to feel satisfied when one of the meditators, intent on reconciling the incompatible, said, “Oh, that was wonderful. Now we can go have a beer and eat pizza.” It can be very difficult to break this habit of making distinctions.
After all, the idea that beer and pizza are relaxation and meditation is work is just a belief. As long as we hold these beliefs, there will be little benefit from sitting mindfulness meditation—no matter how blissful it may be. We must complement our meditation practice with careful examination of the belief systems that limit us. The idea is to, like Mahatma Gandhi, not hold beliefs that we do not fully embody in our lives. Beliefs held without putting them into practice are useless. They are dead reflections of the spectacle of life.
Once Einstein, posing for the artist Winfried Reiber, who was painting his portrait, noted that Hitler in pre-war Germany damaged himself in the eyes of the whole world when he confiscated the property that the Einstein family left when they emigrated to the United States. However, Einstein’s wife had a different point of view. She remembered with longing the personal values she had in Germany and regretted that she had so few of them here. She missed “her grandmother’s silver, tablecloths, carpets, books and old Meissen porcelain.” She was attached to these things. “But they weren’t attached to you,” Einstein said sarcastically.
That’s the problem. Our thoughts, our beliefs are not tied to us. If you don’t cling to them, they will pass. Recently, the film “Gandhi” caused excitement all over the world. I hope that so many of us have embraced Gandhi’s thoughts. He liked to say: “My preaching is my life.” He lived according to his beliefs. Any belief that is not put into practice is unnecessary baggage. The purpose of meditation is to help us release baggage so we can live freely.
At one of my seminars, someone asked how I could preach the rejection of belief systems while at the same time helping to create a new idealistic science, which, in a sense, is also a belief system. This is a legitimate question, to which I answer in the spirit of Gandhi: do not make a new science a new belief system. Use it, or the philosophy of monistic idealism, or any of the teachings of the great traditions, to discard existing belief systems that only constrain your minds and hearts. If you have the opportunity, join the efforts of new science in the search for an enlightened life. Then science will be your sadhana (practice), playing the same role in your life as it plays in mine. But if science is not your field, and if you are sincerely seeking radical change, find your own path. Follow the path of your heart. Don’t pick up other people’s baggage, or their weight will make your spiritual journey burdensome.
The eureka experience! inner creativity
The poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
The immortal, like a diamond,
Proud not of his years,
But of the sparkling edge of his moment.
The secret of immortality is to live in the moment of the present, here and now; here and now is timeless. Like poets who see glimpses of immortality, teachers of inner creativity constantly talk about the importance of experiencing the here and now. But what exactly is meant by here and now? Most of us cannot even intellectually comprehend the meaning of this term, except as a refined abstraction—let alone experience a state of present-centeredness.
We cannot voluntarily live in the here and now, but we can cultivate the conditions that allow such a life to arise. We can enter into it through meditative practice – sitting and repeating a mantra or practicing impartial awareness meditation. A mantra can transport us into the here and now, depriving our senses of all other stimuli other than itself, and allowing us to establish a new relationship with reality.
When there is complete absorption in the object of meditation, staying here and now is called samadhi. The subject becomes only implied. In higher samadhis, penetration into the essence of the object occurs, and, ultimately, the object is seen in its suchness, in its identity with all consciousness. This is also called the experience of no-self (anatta) because there is no separate self anywhere. In Zen Buddhism this is called satori with a living awareness of the suchness (tathata) of an object. Some people call this gnosis, or enlightenment. The state of samadhi or satori is accompanied by a feeling of deep joy.
A somewhat different experience of timelessness occurs when a state of perfect witnessing is achieved through meditation. Objects also arise in awareness, but the witness remains completely unattached, abstaining from judgment. The consequence of this experience is the same effect of deep joy. (Of course; the creative power of experience only emerges when we become, over time, able to bring the attitude of witnessing into everyday life.)
The joy of meditative experiences is the original joy of consciousness in its pure form. According to Indian philosophy, Brahman, the basis of existence, manifests as sat-chit-ananda, where cam means existence, chit means consciousness, and ananda means joy (or bliss). Everything that appears in spacetime is cam. Things exist. By contrast, self-awareness is of a very special nature. It needs a brain-mind to be manifested. Joy is even more special. Only after ego development has been completed can a person realize that he is experiencing something much greater than the individual self. This realization brings about joy—the joy of beginning to understand who we really are.
In some traditions this “eureka” experience of inner creativity is called enlightenment. This name is somewhat accurate. In our ego we are usually identified with our brain-mind. In samadhi we learn that our identity is the light of consciousness that fills us and all that exists. The ego has no essence.
Unfortunately, the term “enlightenment” also creates a lot of confusion. Many people think of the experience of enlightenment as an achievement: I am now enlightened. Although this experience opens the way for a change in self-identity, ego-level tendencies persist and the achievement orientation may prevent complete transformation.
But the experience itself is only the threshold of this transformative potential. A creative act is not complete without its result, and inner creativity is no exception. After the experience of samadhi or satori, or perfect witnessing, disciplined practice is still required to carry the awakening of buddhi into action in the world.
Awakening Love: Bhakti Yoga
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna a very instructive thing. “Arjuna,” he says, “I will reveal to you the secret of all secrets, the most direct path to the awakening of Buddhi. It consists in seeing Brahman in everyone and in everyone (in this context Brahman means “God”), and serving it devotedly. There is no need to struggle with subtle forms of discursive wisdom. There is no need to practice action without the fruits of action. Even formal meditation is not necessary. Just love God and serve God in everyone.”
Of course, there are some subtleties here too. What does it mean to love God? Many people get this wrong. They believe that this means ritual worship of some image or the very idea of God.
Idealistic literature mentions five ways to love God; they are all related to the human form:
1. Love God through self-love.
2. Loving God through service.
3. Loving God through friendship.
4. Loving God through the mother-child relationship.
5. Loving God through erotic relationships.
This list does not exhaust all possibilities. There are other, very realistic methods. For example, Francis of Assisi loved God through his love of nature, a practice forgotten in modern Christianity but lived on in American Indian traditions. Consider what the impact of reviving this practice would be on environmental protection.
In the method of love, it is necessary, firstly, to try to avoid the predominance of locality in our relations with non-local consciousness. Of course, in any human relationship locality prevails. We communicate through sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—the common modalities of experience. But they are not only means of communication. If this were the case, it is doubtful that we could really communicate with each other meaningfully. Therefore, we practice devotion to the spirit of relationships, abandoning calculation in our interactions with other people.
Secondly, as mentioned earlier, for each of us the ego becomes a solipsistic universe, a locked prison cell in which only I and my applications are real. Others have to reckon with me, my culture, my race, etc. in order to be accepted in my universe. Developing a selfless loving relationship is one way (perhaps the most direct) of overcoming ego solipsism.
The ego loves itself so much that it wants to be immortal. In the West, this thirst for immortality is expressed in the desire for power and glory; in the East it led to the idea of reincarnation of the individual soul. Is it possible to transform this love of ego into love of atman—the inner quantum self? Man must discover another immortality for himself. Through love and patient forgiveness of oneself and others, one focuses on the unchanging aspect of oneself as a way of transcending the transitory ego. In Sanskrit this method is called santa, which means “passive”. It was widespread in many contemplative Christian communities.
The other four ways on the list above involve being actively involved in your relationships with others. Altruistic service to others, called seva in Sanskrit, comes naturally to many people; This fact puzzles proponents of the “selfish gene” idea, who believe that altruism is possible only between people who have a common genetic heritage. This method was the practice of Mother Teresa, who expressed her love for Christ by serving people – and it was a beautiful expression. To serve one must sacrifice one’s own egoistic needs and desires, and this is a direct insult to the solipsism of the ego. The free outpouring of love marks the awakening of compassion—and compassion is an integral part of Soto Zen practice.
In America, under the influence of the myth of the value of rugged individualism and the market economic system of relations, we have almost lost the institution of male friendship. In the market model, a person evaluates relationships through cost-benefit analysis. Fortunately, the tendency to apply such pragmatic criteria to friendship is beginning to wane, as perhaps evidenced by the popularity of poet Robert Bly’s recent work on male bonds. Another major challenge to friendship is the requirement for efficiency. Friendship is not always effective. It often involves self-sacrifice, abandoning the limitations of efficiency and time, and emerging from the cocoon of the ego. American women have traditionally been less bound by the market economic model of relationships. However, this trend is now growing as more women work in the market system, trying to divide their time and energy to meet the demands of both careers and homes. If women can resist this trend, they can bring their capacity for committed friendship into the market system and teach men how to humanize their economic relationships and be friends again.
Relationships between a man and a woman
Because of biological differences, intimacy is a unique test in the relationship between a man and a woman, and has great potency in breaking through ego boundaries.
A close relationship with a person of the same sex is in a certain sense easier due to the common experience shared by all men or all women. But men and women, subject to different biological and social conditioning, practically belong to different cultures. From the point of view of Jung’s archetypes (anima – the female experience repressed in the man, and animus – the masculine experience repressed in the woman), the consequence of the demands of form is repression, which causes a deep contradiction in our ability to communicate with the opposite sex.
There is a mystical story in Plato’s Symposium. Humans were originally bisexual creatures with two sets of arms, legs, and genitals. But the power of these bisexual creatures was so great that the gods were afraid that they would usurp the privileges of heaven. Therefore, Zeus divided the creatures in two. Since then, separated people have been forever searching for their missing halves. This story metaphorically expresses the unconscious urge we have to make the unconscious anima or animus archetypes conscious so that we can be whole. But the unconscious drive is not only instinctive – it also represents the eros of the personal unconscious that Freud wrote about. Eros enhances the creative ability that comes from the collective unconscious.
Somewhere along the path of intimacy between two committed people, the anima in the man and the animus in the woman awaken, and as a result, it becomes possible for both of them to move to the level of buddhi. Think about it. The reason for ego solipsism is that, in reality, there is no local way for a person to put himself in the place of someone else. (Read Thomas Nigel’s article “What’s It Like to Be a Bat ?”) One is therefore inclined to think that one’s personal universe is universally representative. The experience of anima and animus is a truly non-local experience, and suddenly otherness makes sense – the other becomes a human being like me. His or her individual experiences and perspectives become as valid as mine. By discovering this otherness, we discover unconditional love – love that can take us to the level of existence in the state of buddhi.
By breaking out of the cocoon of our solipsism-ego with even one person, we become potentially capable of loving all others. It’s like expanding your family. That is why the Sanskrit proverb says that “to the liberated, the whole world is family.”
When the whole world becomes a family, we begin to see the true nature of immanent consciousness. We love people for who they are. We don’t need them to conform to our patterns or cultures. Instead, we respect them and admire the breadth and extent of their diversity. We begin to see what Hindus call lila – divine play.
The flute of inner time plays
whether we hear it or not.
Its coming sound is what we
call “love.”
When love reaches its extreme limit,
it reaches wisdom.
How fragrant is that knowledge!
It permeates our dense bodies,
it passes through walls –
Its interweaving of notes is as if
millions of suns were lined up inside.
There is truth in this melody.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 18. Idealistic theory of ethics
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
In Dostoevsky’s unforgettable novel The Brothers Karamazov, the characters, Ivan and Alyosha, are tormented by ethical considerations regarding what should be considered right and wrong. But this was written in 1880. How often do modern men and women attach such importance to ethics in their actions? Central to the erosion of the importance of ethics and values in our society has been the tacit acceptance of cognitivist-behaviorist notions of human personality—the idea that we, as classical mechanisms, are entirely determined by our genetic and social conditioning. Our moral values are too often influenced by political pragmatism and rationalization that puts the letter above the spirit of the law. We eagerly adapt to the images of good living that a consumerist and exploitative society offers us. In such a culture, traditional values are like a broken rudder, doing little to help us steer a meaningful course in the midst of choices large and small that can lead us to ruin.
Likewise, we have no guiding principle when we try to focus on the ethical dimensions of scientific and technological projects such as genetic engineering and the arms race. Will we ever be able to scientifically justify ethics? Can we find a scientific basis for ethics? If so, perhaps science will once again be able to serve humanity on a fundamental level. But if there is no scientific basis for ethics, then how can ethics influence science – not to mention the powerful but unbridled godson of science – technology. This comes down to the classic mechanistic argument: if our actions are determined by forces beyond our control, then it is useless to use ethics to control them.
Some authors believe that the crisis of values will be solved if students return to reading classics like Plato, but I argue that the problem runs deeper. Our science has increasingly discredited religious superstitions and rigid dogmas and undermined the practice of primitive rituals and adherence to mythical patterns of life, but it has also compromised what remains constant in religious teachings, rituals and myths – values and ethics. Is it possible to restore values and ethics free of dogma? Is it possible to understand values and ethics in isolation from their mythological foundations?
Probably not, but the chances will increase if science itself can establish that ethics is part of the overall scheme of things. Without a scientific basis, ethics continues to be expressed in a culture-dependent and arbitrary manner. Let us take as an example scientific humanism, which supports human values. Humanists say – do to others as you would like others to do to you, otherwise you will not be accepted in the human community. But this formula doesn’t work. This is a reactive position, while ethics is fundamentally proactive.
Any arbitrary standard is clearly antithetical to science. Likewise, recent talk about establishing ethical standards in the practice of science remains empty if ethics cannot be established on a solid foundation of scientific principles. It seems necessary to recognize the establishment of ethics and values as a truly scientific matter.
Recent advances in quantum physics already suggest the possibility of fundamental contributions from physics to the subject of ethics and values. Alain Aspect’s experiment convincingly shows that our separation from the world is an illusion. Based on this evidence alone, some people hope that the quantum worldview allows for, and even requires, ethics and values.
With an idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics we can go even further. Once we understand the conditional disguise that hides the complex hierarchical mechanism of our mind-brain and creates the illusion of separateness of the ego, we are only one step away from developing a science of ethics that will allow us to live in harmony with the scientifically established principle of inseparability. Our spiritual/religious heritage can be very helpful in developing this program. A bridge between the scientific and spiritual philosophies of idealism can heal practices in society that question and too often compromise ethics and values.
The basic principles of this kind of science are already clear. Ethics should reflect our search for happiness, which lies in resolving internal value conflicts. In other words, ethics should be a guide to moving toward wholeness—a guide to unifying our classical and quantum selves. Another principle is the fundamental inseparability of ethics and creativity. The new ethics cannot be shackled by ritualistic belief systems. Instead, it must flow meaningfully from the human being’s desire for inner creativity. It is clear that such an ethic must sometimes conflict with the beliefs of material realism.
As a result of the development of such science, we will be able, at the most personal level, to take responsibility for the world that we are. As Viktor Frankl once observed, we must complement the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast with the Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. This will mean that many of us live lives full of inner creativity. In such a world we may even come closer to the elusive goal of peace within each of us, as well as between us.
Before we look in detail at the new science of ethics, let us take a look at the two systems of ethics that have dominated Western thought.
Kant’s categorical imperative
According to the German philosopher of the 18th century. To Immanuel Kant, the question of morality is a question of individual motivation. Kant believed that motivation comes from the realm of ideas and that all human beings have an intuitive sense of what, in general, is their moral duty. Thus, we have an unconditional requirement to fulfill this duty. Why should I be moral? According to Kant, we hear an internal command: do your duty. This imperative is an internal moral law that each of us accepts for ourselves. Morality consists in fulfilling these duties, regardless of desire or unwillingness. In addition, Kant assumed that these duties constituted universal laws. They are applied rationally and harmoniously to all human beings, so that there is no conflict between the duties of one person and the duties of another.
What are these responsibilities? Kant believed that they are based on rationality and that we can discover them using reason. We can do this by asking ourselves: Would I like the action I am considering to be universal? If this is desirable, then we have discovered a universal law. This argument is noticeably circular.
Kant’s ethical theory is an interesting mixture of idealistic and realist aspects. He postulates a sphere of ideas from which categorical imperatives arise. This is clearly idealistic metaphysics. We apply the moral law to ourselves, make a decision and take responsibility for it. This is clearly consistent with idealistic views. Moreover, Kant appears to have believed in an objective moral law, which is a realistic belief. This is where Kant is mistaken. (Of course, the universality of Kant’s moral law is questionable, if only on the basis of empirical observation of truly ambiguous situations that challenge our knowledge of right and wrong with the utmost severity.)
Kant also correctly guessed that the internal moral law comes from the free, immortal soul. Unfortunately, he believed that we are deprived of access to this inner self.
According to Kant, where ethics ends, religion begins, along with its system of reward and punishment. Simply put, religions claim that as a reward for our good deeds we receive an afterlife in heaven, and as a punishment for our sins we receive an afterlife in hell.
Material Realism Position: Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism, which is often summarized as “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” was proposed in the 19th century. philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mile. It continues to dominate the Western psyche—especially in the United States. Happiness is primarily defined by pleasure: “The highest good is that which brings the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number of people.”
Utilitarianism is an interesting mixture of materialism, localism, objectivity, epiphenomenalism and determinism – all elements of material realism. Happiness is brought only by material (objective and local) things – objects of hedonism – such as wealth, sex and power. Therefore, we must strive for them. So that this does not look like a philosophy of hedonism, let’s add a little socialism, whereby the goal ceases to be individual happiness. We must strive precisely for the maximum happiness of society on average. War will cause suffering to some people, but it is justified if it brings happiness to the majority.
According to utilitarianism, ethical considerations are objective. By studying the consequences of an action for pleasure or pain, we can attribute to it a magnitude of happiness or a magnitude of unhappiness in relation to the whole society. Bentham even developed the absurd hedonic calculus to calculate the happiness index of a single action.
Many philosophers admit that even under utilitarianism we should be free to pursue the right course. However, upon closer inspection, we see that behind this philosophy lies the strong belief that subjectivity (or personal choice) in matters of morality is an irrelevant epiphenomenon that plays no decisive role. That is, we may think that we are making a choice, but this is illusory thinking. Events and actions are subject to natural (deterministic) law. Ethical theory allows us to predict the outcome and thereby gain control (by siding with the so-called good). The intuitive understanding of an action as good or bad also does not play any role, since intuition does not exist in this philosophy.
Finally, utilitarianism says nothing about personal responsibility: we are creatures of determinism. As long as ethical considerations are subordinated to the objective science of ethics (the realistic science of ethics), everything is consistent with the philosophy of determinism: questions of choice and responsibility do not arise.
However, even today – when on a societal level we seem to make most ethical decisions based on the philosophy of utilitarianism – on a personal level we are still struck by Kant’s ideas. Many people still follow an internal moral law, or are tormented by it—or both. Some of us question the validity of initiatives such as the hedonic calculus; others have difficulty with the utilitarian-ethical aspect of natural law. Many people are concerned that moral responsibility has no place in utilitarian ethical philosophy.
There seems to be a growing consensus that the realist science of ethics in the form of utilitarianism is simply incomplete. It denies the validity or usefulness of many genuine subjective experiences.
Idealist ethics
Let’s assume that we are not classical mechanisms. What if, as this book argues, we are consciousness manifesting as dual quantum-classical systems? Can we create a more reliable and complete science of ethics in the quantum universe? Once we understand that we have an inalienable right to act freely and creatively in the quantum modality, all arguments for the subjective aspects of ethics take on an immediacy of reality. Recognizing that we are free to act means recognizing that we are responsible for our actions. Does this mean that the purpose of ethics and values is to be rules of responsibility—rules of what should and should not be done? According to quantum theory, the choice belongs to our consciousness. Is the goal of idealistic ethics to identify good choices as opposed to bad choices, to classify right and wrong better than realist ethics does?
At first it seems simple. Take, for example, the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. Can this rule be derived from idealistic metaphysics? Of course, by definition: since we are all one consciousness, to harm another is to harm oneself. Loving another means loving yourself.
What if the Golden Rule served as your criterion for making choices, your code of duty? Imagine that you and a friend went boating on a large lake without life jackets. What do you do when the boat sinks? You’re not a very good swimmer, but you think you can make it to shore. However, your friend does not know how to swim at all and panics. If you love yourself, you will want to save yourself. If you love your friend as yourself, you will try to save him or her. From a rational standpoint, you feel the urge to use every opportunity to survive, but we know that in many cases people try to save another, even if it is a stranger. Does the Golden Rule help resolve this dilemma?
The goal of ethics is rightness, virtue. It is for this purpose that we conscientiously teach ethical rules – for example, the Ten Commandments or the Eightfold Path of the Buddha – rules developed by eminent idealistic thinkers. We naively assume that if we remember the rules, they will pave a clear path for us with clearly marked crossroads – a path that will lead us safely through the vicissitudes of life to the pinnacle where we clearly emerge as a Virtuous Person, an Ethical Person.
Alas, as we soon discover, things are not that simple. We discover the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. We find that there can be a conflict between interpretations or versions of the good, as in the case of the sinking boat described above. We find that there is no fair distribution of rewards and punishments according to ethical merit. Some pranksters have destroyed or turned the wrong way signs at many important intersections along our Road to the Top of Good. This is why many books on ethics, written by wise and thoughtful people, have failed to truly solve the problem of ethics for us. In an excellent analysis of ethical conflict, Sartre concludes that ultimately people have to choose their path based on their instincts or feelings. What does Sartre mean?
We can analyze Sartre’s thought using the ideas of classical and quantum modality from the quantum theory of the self. Although we have free will in the quantum modality, we are also classically conditioned beings with a tendency to react as if we were classical machines. This tendency to avoid choice extends to the tendency to avoid responsibility. We want to be free in the quantum modality, but at the same time we want to have a map for this freedom. Unfortunately, any path mapped is a classic path—a fixed path—that does not necessarily lead directly to the ethical goal in all situations.
It is necessary to understand this inevitable predicament. Sartre understood this, and this is what constitutes the essence of existential ethics. Understanding the difficulty of applying general ethical principles to an infinite variety of specific circumstances helps us recognize certain contradictions in our own ethical behavior and the behavior of others. It helps us become less prone to superficial judgments.
Thus, ethics cannot be formulated, let alone the manifestation of ethics in life. Interestingly, this also helps answer Kant’s (and everyone else’s) question: why am I moral?
Why am I moral?
There is a certain irony in the fact that ethical principles have been diligently passed down from generation to generation without equally careful guidance on how to be ethical. Without an explicit context of commitment to growth toward transformation, one simply cannot truly live these principles. Properly understood, ethical standards are not rules of outward behavior, but primarily instructions for internal reflection on how we behave outwardly. These are techniques for manifesting freedom in us, for facilitating our ability to operate in the quantum modality. Thus, the principle “Love your neighbor as yourself” is useless for most of us as a rule of conduct, since we do not truly love ourselves and therefore, in reality, do not know what love is at all.
At the heart of this injunction is the recognition that we do not exist separately from our fellow man. Therefore, loving yourself means loving your neighbor, and vice versa. Therefore, the task is simply to learn to love. Love is not a thing, but an act of being. Love as meditation, practiced as constantly as possible, is different from love as a set of prescribed behaviors or as a response of pleasure. Love as meditation allows us to loosen the boundaries of our ego a little – from time to time allowing the consciousness of our neighbor into our awareness. With patience and persistence, love actually happens in us. And it is this love—not externally imposed or inferred forms of behavioral love—that transforms our behavior and reaches our neighbor.
Here is the answer to the question that inevitably arises when studying Kant’s ethical philosophy. If “Do your duty” is a universal categorical imperative, then why does it plague only some of us and not others? The answer is that, first, as Kant himself recognized, ethics and internal moral laws are signs from our inner self, prompting us to know our full self. Secondly, and more importantly, the injunction to do our duty affects only those of us who are committed to exploring our full self, awakening to the level of buddhi beyond the ego. When we become bogged down in our ego identity, we gradually lose the ability to hear these inner commands.
It is interesting that religions strike a chord with their idea of reward and punishment. The reward for moral action is indeed heaven, but not in the afterlife. Heaven is in this life; it is not a place, but an experience of living in quantum nonlocality. Likewise, to avoid the ethical imperative is to perpetuate existence at the ego level and condemn one’s self to a lifetime of hell.
What is sin? It is important to ask this question because organized religion often focuses its energy and influence on ideas of sin, good and evil, reward and punishment. Most organized religions envision some version of hell as a post-mortem punishment for sins. Most of them also care about forgiveness or remission of sins before death so that the sinner can escape hell.
According to quantum ideas of ethics, the only sin is to completely bog oneself or drown others in classical functioning, to prevent oneself or others from accessing the quantum modality and the manifestation of freedom and creativity. (This is entirely consistent with the Christian idea of original sin as separation from God.) Indulging in this stagnation does indeed land us in hell—the earthly hell of ego bondage, as the following story suggests:
The virtuous man died and, as expected, ended up in a delightful place. He was hungry and therefore asked the servant for food. He was told: “To receive food, you only need to desire it.”
Wonderful! But after eating his customized dishes, he felt lonely and told the attendant: “I want to have female company.” He again replied that he only needed to wish to have it. Therefore he wished, and again for a while he felt satisfaction from his beautiful companion.
Then he began to get bored and approached the attendant again. “This is not what I expected,” he complained. “I thought that a person feels boredom and dissatisfaction only in hell.”
The servant looked at him and asked: “Where do you think you are?”
Our ego-selves too often try to find balance by averaging opposing concepts such as good and evil. This bifurcating tendency of classical modality causes a lot of trouble because it leads, whether intentionally or not, to judgment by absolute standards. Such judgments often limit a person’s potential. They certainly limit the potential of the judge and, often, also limit the potential of the judged. We have no moral right to impose ethical standards – or any standards – on another person, since this interferes with his freedom. (This does not mean that we cannot imprison a person who clearly and undeniably threatens the freedom of others. There is a place for social utilitarianism in idealistic ethics, just as there is a place for scientific realism in monistic idealism.) Imagine how many conflicts there are it would have been possible to avoid this in the world if no one had ever imposed their ideology on others!
The transformative good we strive for is the good of the quantum modality, transcending the polarities of good and evil. This is the goodness of the atman consciousness.
Preaching something that is not practiced can be dangerous. Most of us can only conjure up ugly images of moral rightness, for history speaks of terrible cruelty in the name of morality. Gandhi understood the main rule of ethics this way: Ethics should be a spiritual practice with purely internal foundations. One day a woman brought her little daughter to Gandhi and made a simple request: “Tell my daughter not to eat sweets. It’s bad for her teeth. She respects you and will listen to you.”
But Gandhi refused. “Come back in three weeks,” he told the woman. “I’ll see what I can do.”
When the woman came to him again three weeks later with her daughter, Gandhi sat the little girl on his lap and gently told her, “Don’t eat sweets. It’s bad for your teeth.”
The girl timidly nodded in agreement, after which she and her mother went home. When they left, some of Gandhi’s comrades were upset and asked him indignantly: “Didn’t you know that a woman and her child had to walk several hours to meet you, and you made them walk that distance twice in three weeks? Why didn’t you give the little girl this simple advice when they first came?”
Gandhi laughed. “Three weeks ago I didn’t know if I could stop eating sweets. How can I advise something if I can’t practice it myself?”
If ethics were an immutable and rational system of behavior, how could it be detailed enough to cover all situations and conditions in a changing world? Instead, ethical or moral choices are best expressed in ambiguous ways. Ambiguity breeds creativity, and creativity is often necessary to find “ethical solutions to dilemmas.” Take, for example, the sinking boat scenario already described. The problem with applying the golden rule in this situation is that if you were drowning, then, of course, you would want your friend to save you, but if you knew that this attempt would only lead to both your death and his, then they would have wanted him to save himself. The uncertainty of the situation creates ambiguity—inevitable doubt about what is ethical—that only a creative response can resolve.
Russian physicist Yuri Orlov, who developed his recently published theory of doubt in a prison cell, considers the development of healthy doubt to be a characteristic of double entrapment. The incoming information creates two competing situations in the mind of the doubter from which he cannot distance himself. According to Orlov, the solution lies not in tossing a coin, but in creativity: “It is important that there is a conflict: on the one hand, the dilemma cannot be resolved, and on the other hand, it must be resolved – moreover, relying on one’s own inner voice, and, say, not to a random number generator.”
According to Orlov, doubt arises because there is no logical solution. Logic leads only to a paradoxical oscillation between possibilities. The same is true for a moral dilemma. When logic is insufficient to arrive at an ethical answer, that answer can only be arrived at through a creative quantum leap. Even when logic can be stretched to arrive at a parsimonious solution, creativity often produces a deeper solution that truly revolutionizes the context of the problem. Ethics appears to be inherently about inner creativity, a transformative encounter with our quantum self. This is implicit in the Christian message of forgiveness (“if you are hit on one cheek, turn the other”), which is so difficult for us to adapt to in our classical modality.
Although we idealize this access to the buddhi-level quantum self, we find it very difficult to act on it in our responses to personal grievances. To achieve maximum access to the quantum self, maximum creativity and maximum freedom, we must be committed to a radical transformation of the psyche. It would be fantasy to expect otherwise. The mistake that most prophets made was not emphasizing the fundamental importance of the urge to reform. Externally applied prescriptions are purely temporary treatments. No, people are generally unable to manifest the ideal without coming into seemingly intractable conflicts with conventional ideas of justice, reward and punishment, and with other social conventions that support the pursuit of happiness and the so-called virtuous life.
In the quantum modality we avoid preconceived answers: the goal is creativity; we must remain open to broader possibilities, without automatically – as a conditioned reflex – not choosing the shortcut of a pre-given ethical formula. The goal is to empower people to find surprising solutions to situations like the one where friends drown in a lake. Surely this is the kind of creative intervention that occurs when a middle-aged woman lifts a truck to free her injured son or husband. Perhaps it is in ethics that we experience our greatest potential for freedom.
Thus, we can define the fundamental principle of idealistic ethics as preserving and increasing our own and others’ access to the quantum modality – to being at the level of buddhi (which includes both freedom and creativity). Let us now analyze the stages approach (different stages of spiritual life) described in idealistic literature from the point of view of the ethical journey of manifesting morality in our lives. For the journey of inner creativity is not over until its result—the transformation of our self—becomes fully available for transmission to others in communication.
Three stages of idealistic ethical practice
One of the best examples of idealistic literature is the Bhagavad Gita, and we will follow it in this review. This source examines human ethical development from the point of view of three spiritual paths – the yoga of action (karma yoga), the yoga of love (bhakti yoga) and the yoga of wisdom (jnana yoga). At each stage of human ethical development after ego utilitarianism, one of these yogas predominates – although they are all practiced simultaneously. Each of these yogas contains the practice of ethical action.
In the first stage, corresponding to the yoga of action, a person learns to act without attachment to the fruits of action. It is the ego’s craving for the fruits of action that prevents us from seeing clearly the nature of our conditioning. This inability to see our conditioning prevents us from realizing our duty and keeps us from acting ethically. This is the preparatory stage. We begin to understand the conditioning of our actions, so we can choose to act morally. Sometimes this stage ends with an awareness of our fundamental unity with the world—a “eureka” experience of inner creativity.
In the next stage, the yoga of love, we act in service to others (or, in a more religious sense, as an instrument of God). This is the altruistic stage, the central stage of ethical and moral action. We discover otherness – the independent, rather than conditional significance of the individual manifestations of another person. We hear the voice of duty and obey it. We directly and directly serve the good of all, not just the abstract greatest good for the greatest number of people. Once we see what the fundamental moral duty is, we follow it uncompromisingly. Our service opens our hearts to love others. The more we love, the more we are able to act ethically towards ourselves and others.
In the third stage, in the yoga of wisdom, we act through the perfect alignment of our will with the will of the quantum modality of the self. In this alignment we subordinate the will of the ego level to the current choice of the unified consciousness. This is similar to the Christian ethical doctrine of “Thy will be done.” However, this last formulation can lead to serious confusion if the “Thou” is understood as separate from the “I.” Such separateness implies that a person surrenders his free will to some external agent, but for a person reaching this stage of maturity, the “you” is not separate from the “I”. Therefore, by subordinating the ego to the quantum modality, a person becomes truly free and creative. Strictly speaking, at this stage there is no longer any need for ethical and moral guidance, since there are no longer any conflicts. All this – ethics, morality, conflicts – dissolves in the will of a single consciousness. Then only correct actions are possible.
Finally, let’s consider an issue that troubles many ethical philosophers. What if the moral life comes into conflict with the so-called right life. Of course, this depends on how one defines right life. As we undergo transformation from the ego level to the buddhi level, the definition of right life as the pursuit of happiness gradually gives way to understanding it as a life full of joy. The constant pursuit of temporary pleasures is replaced by a sustainable, effortless life in a state of integrity. But the moral life is a life of service. Is there a possible conflict here? The point of view of practical idealism was well expressed by the poet Rabindranath Tagore:
In my sleep I dreamed that life was joy.
I woke up and realized that life was service.
I acted and saw that service is joy.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS
Self-aware universe. How consciousness creates the material world. Chapter 19. Spiritual joy
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
This book sets forth a basic idealistic framework for self-exploration leading beyond the ego. What is it – religion or science? And what is the role of philosophy?
The term “religion” comes from the word religiere , meaning “to reunite”. The pinnacle of the process of adult development, indeed, should be considered a reconnection with what we were originally – with the primary processes of our mind-brain, with the non-individual self. So in this sense the idealistic program really is a religion.
However, all major religions have dualistic tendencies. In most religions, there is a deification of a particular teacher or disseminator of a certain teaching or a certain belief system. Ultimately, all of this must be transcended. Therefore, in its final stage of development, the idealistic scheme must go beyond all religions, creeds, belief systems and teachers.
Can an idealistic scheme be called science? I believe that most, if not all, of the stages of adult development are objectively verifiable (in the sense of weak objectivity) and therefore can be considered science. Not long ago, psychologist Gordon Allport said that we have no liberation psychology. Okay, here’s some psychology at last.
Perhaps, considering the phenomenon of human spiritual search as the latest extension of psychology will lead to a final rapprochement between science and religion. In this psychology of liberation, science and religion will perform complementary functions. Science will engage in further objective – theoretical and practical – research related to the phenomenon. Religion will be concerned with disseminating the scientific knowledge thus obtained – but on a subjective level, since objective teaching of this kind of knowledge is largely useless. To crown them both and serve as a guide for them will be philosophy – idealistic metaphysics, which will continue to be enriched with new insights.
Fundamentally inaccessible to verification (in the scientific sense), idealistic metaphysics can be formulated extremely briefly: consciousness is the basis of all being, and our self-consciousness is That consciousness. But in the simplicity of this statement lies its richness. Evidence of this can be found in the vast philosophical literature in which people have tried to expound and explain this metaphysics in different eras and in different cultures. This book represents the most recent contribution to the ongoing work of idealist philosophy—a contribution suited to our predominantly scientific culture.
In spiritual traditions, two important schemes for the spiritual way of life are formulated: of these, in first place is the scheme based on the denial of the world. The Buddha said that the phenomenal world is dukkha, suffering. In Christianity, a person’s entire life is considered a punishment for original sin. In much of Hindu Vedanta philosophy, the phenomenal world is seen as an illusion. In this tradition, the emphasis is on enlightenment, renunciation and nirvana as various forms of salvation from the illusory world of suffering. We turn to spirit because the material world has nothing to offer us; we declare spiritual upliftment to be the highest virtue. From this position, science, aimed at exploring the world, seems opposite and resistant to spirituality, and this apparent dichotomy gave rise to antagonism between science and spirituality.
However, within spiritual traditions there have always been—though never predominant—persistent peace-affirming voices. Thus, in Japan, along with Rinzai Zen with its emphasis on enlightenment, there has always been Soto Zen, which emphasizes the awakening of compassion to serve the world. In India, among all the world-denying Upanishads, one – the Isha Upanishad – is distinguished by the fact that it proclaims the possibility of immortality in life itself. In China, Taoists also preached the philosophy of peace and joyful living in the world. In India, the Bauls sang the splendor of spiritual joy.
Due to its world-affirming nature, spiritual joy welcomes the study of manifest nature, which is mainly what ordinary science is concerned with. It is therefore not surprising that we have finally created a science—an idealistic science—that is truly compatible with the spiritual philosophy of joy. This idealistic science calls on the world’s religions to change their emphasis and recognize both fundamental joy and suffering, both the spirit and the world. Achieving this goal will mark the final rapprochement of science and religion.
In addition to science, religion and philosophy, we ourselves and our free will exist. In one of the last verses of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to decide by his own free will whether he chooses an idealistic lifestyle. This is a decision that you, I and all of us must make of our own free will.
Numerous surveys have shown that a surprising number of Americans have had mystical experiences. If only they could make these experiences the basis for awakening to buddhi-level being! And when such a return of enchantment becomes available to a significant number of people, there may well be a change in the movement of consciousness throughout the world.
I believe that such a mass movement of consciousness can be called a revival. Similar periods of transition have occurred in many cultures and civilizations. The next such renaissance will be very special because, thanks to modern communication technologies, humanity has become interconnected. The next resurgence will have repercussions around the world; it will be a global revival of the world.
The Bhagavad Gita depicts such events of rebirth as the coming of an avatar – the teacher of the world. In the past, such avatars were sometimes isolated, individual people; other times it was groups of people. But now the world is much larger and requires an unprecedented number of people to become avatars to lead the next renaissance. Imagine our journey at a time when there is a huge rise of humanity from fragmentation to unity in diversity. It would truly be a hero’s journey.
Hero’s Journey
The myths of many cultures contain a theme that mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.” The hero painfully experiences separation from the world, goes alone to meet mysterious forces, and finally returns in glory, bringing with him the knowledge he has acquired. The ancient Greeks expressed their gratitude for the benefits of fire in the myth of Prometheus: Prometheus went to heaven, stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to people. In India, Gautama Buddha gave up the comforts of his life as a prince to undertake a hero’s journey that led him to enlightenment. He returned to teach the truths of the Eightfold Path. Moses, the hero of Israel, sought his God on Mount Sinai, received the Ten Commandments, and returned with them to unite his people. In each case, the reunion gave birth to the doctrine of unification – a new way of manifesting the spirit in the experience of everyday life.
I see the myth of the hero’s journey being played out again in the scientific quest for the nature of reality. However, the individual heroism of earlier days has given way to collective heroism. Many unknown scholars have charted the heroic path through each of the three stages of myth.
The Cartesian separation of mind and matter was historically necessary so that science could freely pursue its own path without being constrained by theology. It was necessary to study unconscious matter without theological bias in order to gain an understanding of the mechanics and interactions that shape all matter, including living and conscious matter. It took almost four centuries to achieve today’s relative mastery of these physical forces.
There were many turning points and many heroes along this path of division. Descartes raised the sails, and very soon Galileo, Kepler and Newton became the helmsmen of the ship of heroes. Darwin and Freud completed the division by extending the laws of mechanics into the realm of the living and conscious, and hundreds of sailor scientists supported this division.
In the twentieth century, the sails of the ship of heroes began to be blown by a fresh wind blowing in a different direction. Planck discovered the quantum of action, Heisenberg and Schrödinger discovered quantum mechanics, and together these discoveries forever changed the previous materialist, separatist course. According to Bertrand Russell, in the twentieth century matter began to look less material and mind less mental. Everything was ready to build a bridge across the four-century gap that separated them: the hero’s return had begun.
Prometheus brought fire, Buddha brought the Eightfold Path. Each return led to a revolution in the dynamics of society, to a genuine paradigm shift. Today we see in the interpretation and assimilation of quantum mechanics within the framework of idealistic science a potential for paradigm shift similar to that possessed by the fire of Prometheus and the noble truths of the Buddha.
Mythology is the history of the play of consciousness. If you refuse to explore consciousness, if you do not reject the idea of consciousness as an epiphenomenon, then the myth may pass you by. Now is the culmination of the most universal of all myths – the return of the hero, but only a few can see it clearly. Such blindness led Marilyn Ferguson to dub the evolving paradigm shift the “Aquarian conspiracy,” but it is the most overt conspiracy that history has ever known.
The legacy of the Separatists of the past—mind-body and mind-matter dualism—cannot be eliminated by asserting a monism based on material realism, as many mind scientists tend to do. As Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield emphasized, “Declaring these two things [mind and body] to be the same does not make them so.” Of course he doesn’t. When a monistic point of view is rashly adopted, old schisms are simply replaced by new ones – as long as this point of view is internally contradictory and does not take into account the legitimate concerns of idealists (about how to include all three elements – body, mind and consciousness – in our model of reality).
The paradigm described here is based on truly unifying ideas that take into account the interests of both the idealist and materialist camps. These ideas are explored not only in the theories of quantum physics, but also in experimental studies in cognitive psychology and neurophysiology.
There is still a lot of work ahead. Even though the new view provides a consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics and resolves the mind-body paradoxes, a host of questions must be answered before a consistent picture can emerge. If consciousness is the fabric of the world, then how can we find new laboratory experiments to confirm this idea? This is just one of the questions that remains unanswered.
The ideas explored here of a new idealistic science based on the primacy of consciousness – ideas growing out of efforts to unify science and idealistic philosophy – deserve your personal and serious assessment. If this assessment motivates you to explore consciousness, to begin your own hero’s journey toward transformation, then my work has not been in vain.
For centuries we have celebrated the objectivity of science, but in our own lives we have cherished subjectivity and religion. We allowed our lives to become a series of dichotomies. Can we now ask science to unify our way of life and revolutionize our religions? Can we demand that our subjective experiences and spiritual philosophy be allowed to expand our science?
“Someday,” said the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, “after we have subdued the winds, waves, tides and gravity, we will have to conquer… the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will open fire.” We have already subdued the winds, waves, tides and gravity (okay – almost). Can we begin to tame the energies of love?
Can we recognize our full potential—the unified access to our classical and quantum selves? Can we allow our lives to become an expression of the eternal surprise of infinite Being? Yes we can.
The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami
Contents
PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS