I maintain that inanimate objects are excitations of consciousness, like vibrations are excitations of a guitar string or ripples excitations of water. There is nothing to a vibrating guitar string other than the string itself, yet the string manifests a discernible behavior that we call ‘vibration.’ Analogously, there is nothing to a ripple other than water, yet water manifests a discernible behavior that we call ‘rippling.’ In this exact same way, inanimate objects are simply ‘ripples’ of a transpersonal stream of consciousness that I call mind-at-large. Ultimately, they are nothing but consciousness itself; images in mind of excitations of mind.
Living beings, on the other hand, are images of processes of self-localization in mind-at-large, like a whirlpool is the image of a process of self-localization in a stream of water. Again, as there is nothing to a whirlpool but water, there is nothing to a living being but consciousness. In summary:
Inanimate objects: ripples in mind-at-large.
Living beings: whirlpools in mind-at-large.
Very well. My claim is that the formation of whirlpools in mind-at-large leads to what psychiatrists call dissociation. The localized, self-reinforcing vortex of experiences begins to reverberate in the center of the whirlpool, in a phenomenon that neuroscience has identified as back-and-forth communication between different brain areas.21 Remember: the brain is what the center of the whirlpool looks like. So it is entirely natural that we should find an image of this reverberation process in the brain. And as is the case with any reverberation process, the reverberating mental contents become amplified and end up obfuscating all other mental contents outside the whirlpool. It is this obfuscation that causes the whirlpool to dissociate itself from the rest of mind-at-large. To help you gain some intuition, here is how the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation describes a psychological condition called Dissociative Identity Disorder:
[It] is the most severe and chronic manifestation of dissociation, characterized by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states …accompanied by an inability to recall important personal information …The amnesia typically associated with Dissociative Identity Disorder is asymmetrical, with different identity states remembering different aspects of autobiographical information. There is usually a host personality who identifies with the client’s real name. Typically, the host personality is not aware of the presence of other alters.22
Clearly, what causes dissociation is a loss of lucid awareness – an ‘inability to recall’ or ‘amnesia’ – by one segment of mind of what’s going on in the rest of mind. I maintain that it is the obfuscation of outside mental contents by the reverberation process inside a whirlpool that causes this. Indeed, it causes the illusion that we, human beings, are separate from each other and from the rest of the Universe. As such, each living creature is a dissociated ‘alter’ of mind-at-large. The outside image of the alter is a biological body.
Now, inanimate objects, being mere ripples in mind-at-large, do not entail the localization of flow that leads to reverberation. There is thus no obfuscation. There is no dissociation. Inanimate objects aren’t alters of mind-at-large, but merely the outside image of other processes unfolding in mind-at-large.
Here is an analogy to help you visualize this: the outside image of conscious processes unfolding in your psyche is neural activity in your brain. If you daydream about a tropical holiday location with trees, waterfalls and singing birds, all those images will correlate with particular, measurable patterns of activated neurons in your head. Theoretically, a neuroscientist could identify different groups of neurons in your brain and say: group A correlates with a tree; group B with a waterfall; group C with a singing bird; etc. But, based on your direct experience of what it feels like to imagine this scenario, is there anything it is like to be group A in isolation? Is there anything it is like to be group C in and of itself? Or is there only something it is like to be the whole daydreaming you – your whole brain – imagining trees, waterfalls and birds as component parts of an integrated scenario? Do you experience multiple separate streams of imagination – one for trees, another for waterfalls and another for birds – or only one stream wherein trees, waterfalls and birds are all together? Do you see the point? Unless there is dissociation, there is nothing it’s like to be separate groups of neurons in a person’s brain. We can only speak of the holistic stream of imagination of the person as a whole.
For exactly the same reason that there is nothing it is like to be an isolated group of neurons in a person’s brain, there is nothing it is like to be an inanimate object. An inanimate object is simply what a segment of a global, holistic stream of imagination in mind-at-large looks like from the point-of-view of a whirlpool. There is indeed something it’s like to be mind-at-large as a whole (see essay 2.6), but not an inanimate object in and of itself.
All right, let’s now take another step in this line of reasoning. In exactly the same way that a whirlpool causes disturbances in the flow of water surrounding it, the formation of an alter in mind-at-large also causes ripples of consciousness in its surroundings. These ripples are like the wake left by the whirlpool’s rotation, which propagate beyond the boundaries of the whirlpool itself. It is because of this wake that we can perceive other living beings in much the same way that we perceive inanimate objects: when we see and hear another person, what we perceive are the ripples that the whirlpool corresponding to this other person has imprinted onto mind-at-large, and which end up penetrating our own whirlpool through our sense organs. We call these ripples ‘photons’ and ‘air vibrations,’ respectively.
While alters cause ripples in mind-at-large, not all ripples arise because of alters. In other words, while living beings can be perceived as images in consciousness, not all images in consciousness are of living beings. Some ripples arise spontaneously in mind-at-large itself, as a direct result of its own stream of imagination. Though both whirlpools and ripples are nothing but water in movement, ripples aren’t whirlpools. Monistic idealism holds, not panpsychism.
2.6. Finding God in metaphysical parsimony
Theology has been the subject of much bashing by neo-atheists over the past several years. A blog post by militant materialist Jerry Coyne, in September of 2014, seems to encapsulate the essence of their grievance: ‘What good is a discipline that tries to tell us about the qualities of a nonexistent object?’ Coyne asks rhetorically. ‘It’s as useful as a bunch of scholars trying to tell us about the characteristics of the Loch Ness Monster, or Paul Bunyan.’23 Any counter-argument to this is delicate, since it necessarily requires defining the most overloaded word in the history of language –‘God’ – in some particular way that many are bound to disagree with. Yet, there are some common attributes almost always associated with God, and God alone: omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. Thus, it is fair to say that if one can identify a subject of study for which there is concrete, objective evidence and which incorporates the three attributes just listed, then one will have refuted Coyne’s argument against theology. This is precisely what I intend to do in this essay. But in order to make my argument, I first need to take you on a brief tour of a more parsimonious, logical way of interpreting the facts of reality than the materialist metaphysics entails. Bear with me.
Consciousness is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure. As I elaborate more extensively upon in essay 2.1, all things and phenomena can be explained as excitations of consciousness itself. As such, reality consists of a transpersonal flow of experiences, while our personal awareness is simply a localization of this flow – a whirlpool in the stream. The body-brain system is merely what the whirlpool looks like from the outside. It is no surprise, then, that brain activity correlates with subjective experience. Yet, for exactly the same reason that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water, the body-brain system doesn’t generate consciousness.
This worldview entails that the brain we can see and measure is simply how the first-person perspe
ctive of personal experience looks from the outside; that is, from a second-person perspective. In other words, neurons are what our thoughts, emotions and perceptions look like when another person experiences them. They aren’t the cause of subjective experience, but simply the outside image of it. A neuroscientist might put a volunteer in a functional brain scanner and measure the patterns of his brain activity while the volunteer watches pictures of his loved ones. The neuroscientist would have precise measurements showing a pattern of activity in the volunteer’s brain, which could be printed out on slides and shared with the volunteer himself. The patterns on those slides would represent what the volunteer’s first-person experience of love looks like from the outside. In other words, they would be the image of subjective processes in the volunteer’s personal consciousness; the footprints of love.
But if the neuroscientist were to point at the slides and say to the volunteer: ‘This is what you felt when you looked at the pictures of your loves ones,’ the volunteer would vehemently, and correctly, deny the assertion. The first-person experience of love doesn’t feel at all like watching neurons activate, or ‘fire.’ You see, the image correlates with the process and carries valid information about it – like footprints correlate with the gait and carry valid information about it – but it isn’t the process, for exactly the same reason that footprints aren’t the gait. Looking at patterns of brain activity certainly feels very different from feeling love.
As our personal psyches are like whirlpools in a broader stream, so the broader stream itself is a transpersonal form of consciousness that underlies all reality. I call it ‘mind-at-large.’ Now, for the same reason that the experiences of another person appear to us as a seemingly objective image – namely, an active brain – the seemingly objective world around us is the image of experiences in mind-at-large. Moreover, for exactly the same reason that feeling love is completely different from watching the brain activity of someone in love, the first-person experience of mind-at-large will feel completely different from your watching the world around you right now. The world is the image of experiences in mind-at-large, but mind-at-large doesn’t experience the world the way we do, for the same reason that our volunteer inside the brain scanner doesn’t experience patterns of firing neurons! The volunteer experiences love, not firing neurons. When we look at the world around us, we do see the footprints of experience, but not the gait. And this is why theology not only has a concrete and worthy subject of study and speculation, but perhaps the ultimate one. Allow me to elaborate.
George Berkeley used to say that empirical reality was an experience in the ‘mind of God,’ his terminology for mind-at-large.24 The terminology, although admittedly old-fashioned and ambiguous, was and remains appropriate: if all reality consists of ripples (that is, inanimate objects) and whirlpools (living creatures) in the stream of mind-at-large, then the attributes omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent apply to the stream. Just think about it: all reality is excitations of mind-at-large, analogously to how quantum field theorists say that all reality is excitations of a postulated quantum vacuum.25 Therefore, mind-at-large is omnipresent. Unlike the quantum vacuum, however, mind-at-large is, by definition, conscious. Therefore, it is omniscient. Finally, whatever else we may want to say about it, reality is certainly the manifestation of mind-at-large. What else could it be? There is, thus, a strong sense in which mind-at-large is also omnipotent, since it has operational control over all reality (whether this operational control entails libertarian free will is a different question, explored in Chapter 7).
We can then say that empirical reality consists entirely of outside images of ideas in the mind of God. We cannot know how the world is felt by God simply by looking at the world, for the same reason that a neuroscientist cannot know what love feels like just by looking at brain scans. Yet, when we contemplate the magnificence and incomprehensible magnitude of the stars and galaxies through our telescopes, we are essentially looking at a ‘scan of God’s brain.’ Indeed, a detailed study has found that the structure of the universe at the largest scales is very similar, clustering-and interconnect-wise, to the structure of a brain.26 A striking image comparison published by the New York Times on 14 August 2006 illustrates the similarity very powerfully.27 All nature – from atoms to galaxy clusters – is an outside image of God’s conscious activity, in exactly the same way that a brain scan is an outside image of a person’s subjective experiences. Theologians themselves have explained this in their own language as, for instance, a careful read of Henry Corbin will reveal.28 This way, God is literally all around you. When you die, you’re quite literally reabsorbed into God, as religious scripture has insisted upon throughout the ages. Your personal psyche – a whirlpool in the stream of God’s thoughts and feelings – dissolves back into its original matrix. The outside image of this reabsorption process is your physical body losing its integrity and melting back into the Earth. How the process feels like from within, however, is a mystery for which our only clues are the reports of near-death experiences (see essay 6.1). As such, the mystery of death consists in the shift of our experience of the world from second-to first-person perspective.
Clearly, theology does have a very concrete subject: mind-at-large, or God. And theology also has concrete data to make inferences about this subject: nature itself. If one denies the validity of nature as data for the study of God, one must deny the validity of brain scans as neuroscience data. What theologians call Creation is the ‘scan’ – the outside image, symbol, metaphor, icon – of God’s ongoing, conscious, creative activity. Creation is an act of thought, the icon of an evolving idea in the mind of God. ‘All the world an icon,’ as Tom Cheetham summarized it.29 Goethe, in Faust, preferred the word ‘symbol.’ He wrote: ‘All that doth pass away / Is but a symbol.’30 What in nature doesn’t pass away?
This understanding touches on many currents of religious, philosophical and even scientific thought. For instance, French physicist Olivier Costa de Beauregard once concluded that the measurable universe we see is simply the passive, obverse side of an active mental universe, which he called ‘infrapsychisme.’31 Physicist David Bohm’s notions of implicate and explicate order also echo important aspects of this understanding: the explicate order is the world we can measure, while the implicate order is the reverse, hidden, primary reality whence the explicate order springs as a projected image.32 ‘Measurement is an externalization of that which can be known from within,’ says my friend Fred Matser in a stunning display of intuition.33 The core idea in these and other analogous systems of thought is that reality has two sides: an inner side (direct experience, implicate order, ‘infrapsychisme’) and an outer side (the outside image of direct experience, explicate order, obverse side). Even renowned contemporary physicist Lee Smolin seemed to acknowledge this when he wrote:
Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe – through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.34
He went on to identify the ‘internal aspect’ with direct subjective experience: ‘Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains.’35 Notice that the duality I am suggesting here is merely one of points of view, not of substance: the outside image of an experience is itself also an experience.
Furthermore, if we look at how cultures throughout history have used the words ‘soul’ and ‘body,’ it is easy to see that ‘soul’ corresponds to direct experience and ‘body’ to what the experience looks like from the outside. As such, our own soul comprises our direct experience of life – our inner life – whose obverse side is our body. What Plato called the ‘world soul’36 is simply God’s direct subjective perspective; the reverse side of the measurable universe. The measurable universe, in turn, is the obverse side of God’s soul. The Universe, thus, is God’s body. As such, na
ture is a perfectly valid subject of study for theology, in exactly the same way that the human nervous system is a perfectly valid subject of study for psychiatry.
Coyne could counter all this by saying that we already have the natural sciences for studying nature, and that the scientific method is much better suited for this purpose. This is as strictly correct as it misses the point entirely: theology is an attempt to see past the mere images and make inferences about the subjective processes behind those images; it is an attempt to see past the ‘brain scan’ and infer how it ‘feels to feel’ love in a direct way; it is an attempt to see past the footprints and understand where the hiker wants to go, as well as why he wants to go there. In this sense, theology and the natural sciences are entirely complementary.
And this isn’t all. If we are whirlpools in the broader stream of mind-at-large, then the implication is clear: at bottom, our personal psyches are not only one with each other, but also one with mind-at-large. After all, there is nothing to a whirlpool but the stream itself. This way, we are merely alters of mind-at-large, in the exact same sense that people with Dissociative Identity Disorder also have multiple alters.37 It follows that the expression of the deepest, most obfuscated regions of the human psyche – which depth-psychology has come to erroneously call the ‘unconscious’ – may reveal something about the direct subjective perspective of mind-at-large itself. And here is the key point: people express their ‘unconscious’ perspectives through symbols and allegories, much of which forms the basis of religious texts. Carl Jung’s masterpieces Aion38 and Answer to Job39 make this abundantly clear. Therefore, insofar as theology provides a way of interpreting the symbols and allegories of the ‘unconscious’ psyche so to make sense of God’s subjective perspective, it also has a valid subject of study and a valid source of data.
Brief Peeks Beyond Page 6
