Rationalist Spirituality

by Bernardo Kastrup

  As a matter of fact, the fascinating experiences of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor are very telling in this regard. Dr. Taylor is a scientist, a neural anatomist who has had the unique opportunity to observe herself from “within” while having a massive brain stroke. As the stroke progressively incapacitated the left side of her brain, Dr. Taylor felt her consciousness expand way beyond her physical body. In her words: “I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale, gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. […] I remember thinking there is no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.”4

  It is striking how a specific brain malfunction seems to have allowed Dr. Taylor’s individualized consciousness to partially and temporarily jump back to its intrinsic state of boundless and unified awareness. Nonetheless, Dr. Taylor’s description is exactly what one would have logically expected if the hypothesis we are now discussing, that of the brain as a mechanism for creating an illusion of consciousness individualization, is correct. If the mechanism gets damaged in just the right way, it is logical to infer that the illusion may lift partially and perhaps temporarily.

  The questions that immediately arise are then: First, are the experiences of Dr. Taylor an isolated event or are there statistically-relevant instances of analogous observations? And second, where exactly in the brain does the kind of damage that leads to experiences of self-transcendence, like those undergone by Dr. Taylor, take place? As fortune would have it, science has precise answers to both questions. In a paper published in the respected neuroscience journal Neuron,5 an Italian team of neuroscientists studied 88 patients who had undergone brain surgery for the removal of tumors. In many of those patients, the surgery had caused localized damage to certain specific regions of the cerebral cortex. The team of scientist assessed, both before and after surgery, each patient’s predisposition to spiritual feelings. Particularly, they assessed each patient’s ability to transcend the self and feel somehow connected to the universe as a whole. By comparing these psychological assessments done respectively before and after damage had been done to the brain, the team were able to pinpoint the exact regions of the brain that, once damaged, caused an increased feeling of self-transcendence. The study showed that, in a statistically-significant number of cases, damage to small highly-localized regions of the left inferior parietal lobe and of the right angular gyrus was associated to a significant increase in the feeling of self-transcendence shortly after surgery, indicating a direct causal link.

  Here, I am interpreting the results obtained by the Italian neuroscientists in the context of the transceiver model of brain-consciousness interaction discussed earlier. More than that, in my view those results are consistent with, and supportive of, such transceiver model. Naturally, the same results can also be interpreted in a different way. Namely, it can be argued that they suggest that consciousness is generated by the brain, so that damage to the brain qualitatively modulates subjective experience. But think about this for a moment: assuming that subjective experience is indeed generated by, and confined to, the physical brain, having no reality outside of it, how could damage to the brain lead to the experience of transcending the very system that generates it? How could the (damaged) brain generate a feeling of identity with something outside of itself? This seems unnatural, counter-intuitive, and perhaps even illogical. On the other hand, if consciousness emanates from outside the known material constraints of the brain, as postulated in this book, it is indeed very natural and logical that specific damage to the brain could result in feelings of self-transcendence. The brain possibly works as a kind of filter of consciousness, evolved to increase survival fitness through enabling focused attention to stimuli directly relevant to survival. This idea is not new, and has been popularized in the 1950s by Aldous Huxley in his quote of eminent philosopher Dr. C.D. Broad: “The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of […] perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed […] by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”6 Specific brain damage could compromise the effectiveness of this filter, allowing the underlying self-transcendent experiences, ever present in potential, to be imprinted onto physical memory. A brain-consciousness interaction mechanism like Stapp’s model could then provide a mechanism for such imprinting through wave function collapse.

  Boundless consciousness could only conceive, understand, and become aware of itself if it could experience not being itself as such. It could only conceive, understand, and become aware of its own all-encompassing nature if it could experience limitation. It could only conceive, understand, and become aware of its own unified nature if it could experience fragmentation. Ironically, it seems that only through an illusory confinement of consciousness can nature realize its potential for self-understanding and self-awareness in a process of consciousness enrichment. The known material world can be inferred to be an instrument of this process.

  But we are not done yet. In fact, something of enormous significance seems to be lost when consciousness is individualized, even if such individualization is purely illusory: we lose the experience of direct contact with reality. To return to a handy analogy, it would probably be effective for the smart folks at NASA’s mission control to ultimately go to Mars themselves, to experience Mars directly, after having accumulated all relevant information about it through their robotic transceivers.

  Chapter 9

  Recapping our journey thus far

  Let us briefly recap our articulation before taking the next logical step. We started our journey by making two fundamental assumptions: the first, that there is indeed an ultimate purpose for life and existence in general; and the second, that this ultimate purpose can be at least partially understood by the human intellect. We inferred that existence can only have meaning if the universe, in its present form, is somehow not yet complete, in the sense that some of its potentials have not yet been realized. This way, the meaning of existence is to realize those potentials, thereby enriching the universe. We also discussed how the postulated incompleteness of the universe is entirely consistent with, and perhaps even necessary to, the notion of perfection.

  We went on to establish consciousness as the primary property of nature upon which existence depends. We established this based on the scientific understanding of human perception and its philosophical implications, as well as on Wigner’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. The latter postulates consciousness, emanating from immaterial aspects of reality, to be the causal agency of material existence. We then inferred that, as the primary ground of existence, it must be the potentials of consciousness itself that must be realized so the universe can become complete. The meaning of existence, then, is a universal process of consciousness enrichment.

  The empirical observation that brain states are highly correlated to consciousness states allowed us to infer that the brain is a transceiver of immaterial consciousness in the known, material reality. We referred to the quantum mind theory of Henry Stapp as a possible physical mechanism for the realization of this transceiver. With extensions of the Chinese Room thought experiment, we discussed the relationship between consciousness and intelligence. We inferred that intellectual prowess is just an indirect means, or a vehicle, to bring information about relationships and correlations to conscious awareness. This way, our intelligence creates mental models of objective reality through symbol associations and it is only through these models that we become consciously aware of that reality. In fact, in regular states of consciousness, all we are aware of are these models; nothing else. Our consciousness is thus individualized, but limited by the capabilities of
the material brain and its ability to capture and mirror reality. However, the insight of understanding, the “aha!” of comprehension, resides in consciousness, not in the brain.

  A problem then became inescapable: why would nature be such that consciousness, the primary ground of existence, is trapped in the confines of material brains? Our analysis indicated that this would be a logical contradiction, so we postulated that the original state of consciousness must have been boundless awareness. Consciousness, as such, would have been directly aware of all of existence. We also inferred that such boundless state logically requires consciousness to have been unified.

  Based on the concept of information, from information theory, we inferred that an apparent fragmentation and individualization of consciousness was necessary, at some point in the cosmological past, for an enrichment of consciousness through understanding and (recursive) self-awareness. Still, to remain consistent with the idea that the universe is enriching itself, as opposed to losing some of its own potentials, we concluded that, at its most fundamental level, consciousness must still be boundless and unified, like a field.

  Chapter 10

  A return to boundless consciousness

  The ultimate purpose of existence is an enrichment of consciousness with understanding and self-awareness, both of which may be just different names for the same idea. As we have seen, this enrichment takes place necessarily through an initial “fragmentation” and confinement of consciousness to physical transceivers. Only through this illusory fragmentation and confinement are understanding and self-awareness at all possible.

  As understanding and self-awareness grow, consciousness expands. We see more, in a figurative sense. We understand more of the cause and effect relationships in the universe. We gather more insight about the universe, its properties, and the way it works. Once all potentials are ultimately realized, the illusion of individualization will have served its purpose. At that moment, it is logical to infer, the illusion of fragmentation, individuality, and limits, will be lifted. The universe will be complete in its comprehension and awareness of itself. Its conscious awareness will return to its intrinsic, boundless state of unity, but now enriched with complete understanding and infinite, recursive self-awareness.

  The meaning of life is a gradual return to a unified, boundless state of consciousness enriched by the understanding and self-awareness accumulated during material experience through the transceivers of consciousness.

  We have seen that consciousness, under the illusion of confinement, is limited to the amount and quality of information about the universe that can be mirrored by our mental models. So the illusion of confinement is necessary: it allows for the gathering of information. On the other hand, and this is a crucial point, the reality of boundless awareness allows for each individual experience originating from exposure to that information to be automatically and seamlessly extrapolated to the whole of universal awareness. This is the mechanism by which we, as individuals, can contribute to the ultimate goal of the whole. Therefore, the illusion of fragmentation and the reality of boundless unity must both be an inherent part of each moment of our lives.

  The logic above indicates that, in principle, it should be possible for us to be aware of our boundless nature while physically alive. Indeed, there is nothing in the logic we have followed thus far to suggest that a temporary or partial return to boundless awareness is impossible to an individualized consciousness like you or me. A permanent loss of that individualization by all conscious entities prior to an accumulation of sufficient insight from information would violate our articulation, but not a temporary or partial one. From this perspective, there is no logical reason to believe that you or I could not temporarily achieve a state of (partial) boundless and unified awareness during our lives. After all, we have already inferred that such state is the most fundamental reality of consciousness.

  What, then, is this boundless state of consciousness that, as we inferred above, humans must be able to experience? Is there any evidence that this has been achieved by anyone? Spiritual literature abounds with testimonials of people who claim to have achieved an analogous state of consciousness as a result of meditation, religious practice, psychedelic substances, or even spontaneously. In fact, many books have been written on that, so I will seek a different perspective here: I will try psychiatric and psychological perspectives.

  In the first year of the 20th century, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke first published an evolutionary theory of consciousness.1 According to Dr. Bucke, consciousness evolves through four stages: “perceptual mind”, “receptual mind”, “conceptual mind”, and “intuitional mind”. In the stage of perceptual mind, there is actually no consciousness. A perceptual mind, in Dr. Bucke’s terminology, is akin to what we today would see as a computer equipped with a few sensory devices like cameras and microphones. Perceptual symbols from the cameras and microphones are processed by the computer, but that processing is supposedly not accompanied by inner experience. In the second stage, or receptual mind, perceptual symbols are associated together to form higher-order compound symbols Dr. Bucke calls “recepts”. Going back to Haikonen’s cognitive architecture, recepts would be analogous to internal compound symbols derived from associations between different percepts, the associations being performed by associative neurons. The manipulation of recepts in the brain is postulated to be accompanied by simple states of conscious awareness, akin to animal consciousness. In the third stage, or conceptual mind, Dr. Bucke adds the concept of language. Language, as we discussed when talking about the Chinese Room argument, is a collection of indirect symbols, or labels, that refer to recepts and percepts. In much of our human reasoning, the labels of language actually replace cumbersome recepts and percepts in an elegant, compact, and efficient way, greatly facilitating our ability to think. Dr. Bucke argues that these succinct and indirect labels, which he calls “concepts”, are necessary for a conscious individual like me to be able to “stand apart from myself and contemplate myself” so I can “analyze and judge the operations of my own mind as I would analyze and judge anything else.”2 In other words, in Dr. Bucke’s taxonomy, the stage of “conceptual mind” encompasses the recursive self-awareness that most, if not all, humans possess. Finally, in the stage of intuitional consciousness, there is a postulated merge of the concepts in a kind of complex union of all prior thoughts and experiences of an individual. Dr. Bucke’s description of this fourth stage entails that consciousness somehow breaks free from the structure of the brain. He calls this stage “cosmic consciousness”, which he describes as “a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe.”3

  Dr. Bucke listed a number of historical characters, as well as contemporaries of his, who he believed had achieved the fourth stage, or cosmic consciousness. Some of them he extensively interviewed and studied himself. He questioned whether the experiences reported by these individuals truly reflected a reality perceived by them while in a higher state of consciousness, or perhaps were simply the result of a collection of hallucinations and delusions. This is a question any rational person would immediately ask. Dr. Bucke’s answer to this is as sharp as it is disarming. In his own words: “We have the same evidence of the objective reality which corresponds to [cosmic consciousness] that we have of the reality which tallies any other sense or faculty whatever. Sight, for instance: You know that the tree standing there […] is real and not an hallucination, because all other persons having the sense of sight to whom you have spoken about it also see it […] Just in the same way do the reports of those who have had cosmic consciousness correspond in all essentials.”4 Indeed, all we have to assess the truthfulness of objective reality, given that we are locked inside our own heads, is the consistency of the reports we get from others about that objective reality. If we apply this same litmus test to the perceptions of people in a higher state of consciousness, we may be logically forced to accept the reality of those perceptions on the same groun
ds that we accept the reality of anything else.

  The work of Dr. Bucke has become one of the foundations of the field of “transpersonal psychology”, which is defined in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology as a form of psychology “concerned with the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness.”5 Myriad scientific studies can be found under the umbrella of this field, which deal with states of consciousness apparently transcending the limitations of the physical brain.

  Perhaps the best known psychiatrist to help define some of the foundations of transpersonal psychology was Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. One of Dr. Jung’s best known concepts is that of the “collective unconscious” of humanity, derived from his work with, and observations of, schizophrenic patients.6 The collective unconscious is postulated to be a kind of reservoir of experiences of all humans, and perhaps even of other life forms, where the famous “archetypes” of Jungian psychology reside. Every human being is postulated to have access to this collective transpersonal repository of archetypes, thereby requiring a form of subtle, transcendent consciousness. Whether or not it is strictly necessary to attribute ontological reality to Dr. Jung’s concept of a collective unconscious, the empirical, clinical motivations for postulating such a concept are intriguingly suggestive of some form of consciousness that transcends the boundaries of individual human brains.