Brief Peeks Beyond

by Bernardo Kastrup

  Criticism 13: To postulate a collective and obfuscated part of consciousness as the source of consensus reality is equivalent to postulating a reality outside consciousness.

  Rebuttal 13: From a strict philosophical perspective, this is outright incorrect. When we say that our personal psyches are merely segments of a broader mind-at-large, all we are doing is extrapolating a known and empirically undeniable ontological category – namely, consciousness itself – beyond the space-time limits we ordinarily associate with it. But when we say that there is a whole universe outside consciousness, we are inferring a whole new ontological category. These two things aren’t equivalent by any stretch of the imagination. Here is a rather dramatic analogy to help you gain some intuition about it: in order to model the early universe, physicists also extrapolate across space and time the validity of the laws of physics known on Earth today. Doing so is obviously different, and much more reasonable and parsimonious, than inferring an unprovable Flying Spaghetti Monster to be the hidden cause of all things! Now, in addition to this philosophical point, the practical implications of these two ontologies are also totally different. This is explored in details in essay 8.2, but let me anticipate a couple of points elaborated upon there: if reality is a transpersonal stream of consciousness and we are merely localizations of flow – whirlpools – in the stream, then physical death is a de-localization, or de-clenching, of consciousness, not its demise. Moreover, if the body is merely the outside image of a localization of experience, then mind and body are fundamentally the same thing. This may open new avenues for our quest to understand memory (see essay 3.3) and validates a richer form of healthcare: integrative mind-body medicine (see essay 8.3). Finally, there are other psychological, social and cultural implications explored in essay 8.2.

  Criticism 14: Why would consciousness deceive us by simulating a materialist world?

  Rebuttal 14: Was planet Earth deceiving us until a few hundred years ago, by simulating a flat world? Was the Sun deceiving us by pretending to move around the Earth? Consciousness is not simulating anything. Just like the Sun, from the very beginning it’s simply been doing what it does, which is a reflection of what it inherently is. It’s us, human beings, who misinterpret the activity of transpersonal consciousness and assume it to correspond to a universe outside consciousness. To suggest that the natural activity of consciousness is some kind of purposeful and deceitful simulation of our own delusions is astonishingly anthropocentric.

  Criticism 15: Monistic idealism is solipsistic and, as such, unfalsifiable.

  Rebuttal 15: Solipsism is the notion that all reality is an individual’s private dream; that other people don’t have inner life, but are merely shells projected by the individual’s own dreaming mind. Since there is only one person’s dream going on, the person can arbitrarily dream up empirical evidence for any explanatory model she wishes to entertain within the dream; her explanations of reality can’t be falsified by comparison to observations or the testimonials of other ‘people.’ Since Karl Popper made clear the arbitrariness of unfalsifiable explanations,18 we’ve known that they can’t be taken seriously. For instance, some creationists assert that the fossil record was placed on Earth purposefully by God, in order to deceive gullible souls with the idea of evolution and distinguish the faithful from the sinful. Such an assertion is unfalsifiable and, for obvious reasons, cannot be taken seriously. By equating monistic idealism to solipsism, this criticism attempts to label it equally unfalsifiable. The problem, however, is obvious: monistic idealism is totally different than solipsism. Under monistic idealism, other people do have inner life; they do have their own personal streams of experience and their testimonials carry weight. Moreover, still under monistic idealism, consensus reality arises from a part of consciousness – mind-at-large – that transcends personal psyches; it isn’t merely a personal dream. Although it’s still entirely in consciousness, reality isn’t produced by your personal imagination. Therefore, unlike solipsism, monistic idealism can be validated or falsified by comparison against observations and the testimonies of other individuals.

  Criticism 16: One cannot prove that monistic idealism is true.

  Rebuttal 16: I am tempted to answer this on the cheap and simply say: one can’t prove materialism either! But let us be a little more patient and thoughtful here. The claim of monistic idealism is that it can explain at least everything that materialism purportedly explains, but then with fewer postulates. Namely, monistic idealism does not require postulating a whole universe outside consciousness itself. This way, if the claim holds true, then monistic idealism wins over materialism on grounds of parsimony alone. In other words, if we can indeed explain all reality purely in terms of excitations of consciousness, then monistic idealism is better than materialism for the same reason that Darwinian evolution is better than the Flying Spaghetti Monster: both explain the evidence but the latter requires more postulates (namely, the Monster Himself, the realm where He supposedly exists, the mechanisms through which He interacts with material reality, etc.). So to attack monistic idealism by claiming that it is unprovable reflects a basic misunderstanding of the issue: one does not need to prove monistic idealism. Proof is a requirement for ontologies that postulate extra theoretical entities – which then need to be justified and substantiated – not for an ontology that postulates less. The proper way to attack monistic idealism is to try to show that it cannot satisfactorily explain what materialism purportedly explains. In other words, materialists should focus on the explanatory power of monistic idealism. That said, they should also keep in mind that the entire body of my work, including this book, lays out an extensive case precisely for the strong and broad explanatory power of monistic idealism.

  As of this writing, I am not aware of any better materialist counter-argument than those listed and refuted above.

  2.3. Finding truth within the dream

  Imagine that you are lying on your couch one lazy Sunday afternoon, relaxed and unworried. Your life isn’t perfect, but everything seems to be going fine lately. There are no oppressive thoughts in your mind demanding your attention. You surrender fully to the moment and find yourself closing your eyes, even though you aren’t tired.

  Slowly, you begin to drift into a strange world of fleeting hypnagogic images. Even one wrong thought could cause the whole thing to collapse, but you deliberately and carefully allow yourself to slide further in. A subtle, delicate transition in awareness gradually takes place. You realize in amazement that you are now dreaming, even though you still retain awareness of the couch you’re lying on.19 The phenomenon is as interesting as it is surreal: the old reality seems to have been replaced with a parallel timeline in a parallel realm. Despite your bewilderment, the dream continues to pull you deeper in, like the entrancing, irresistible song of a mermaid. You fight to remain lucid but it’s no use. Soon, you completely forget about the couch, the Sunday afternoon and even who you are. You’re now fully entranced; fully in the dream. Connections with your real life are severed.

  Except that a nagging feeling remains in the back of your mind: deep within, in a way that isn’t self-reflective, there is that intuition that you aren’t really from this land where you now find yourself; that you aren’t really this character you seem to be playing in this story. You can’t pin it down; you can’t define or articulate what it means. It’s just a hazy, diffuse and slippery feeling. And since you quickly conclude that there’s nothing you can do about it, you decide to simply go on with your life.

  But what’s your life about again? You look around and find yourself sitting at the shore of a beautiful lake. Tall mountains surround it. A warm summer breeze caresses your skin. Someone is sitting next to you, to your left, but you can’t really remember who she is. You just know that the situation is perfectly ordinary. Whoever she is, she belongs right there with you. As she stares out to the lake, apparently lost in thoughts, she asks:

  — What do you think will happen when you die?


  Strangely, her question doesn’t surprise you. What does is that the answer seems to flow autonomously out of you, as if someone else were speaking through your mouth:

  — I know that I have a soul and that, after I die, my soul will simply return to where it came from, which is another world.

  — But where is this otherworld you speak of? Where is your soul right now? Why can’t I see or touch it?

  You know intuitively that your friend is asking the wrong questions.

  — You think of my soul as a kind of ghost that inhabits my body and, after I die, floats out in space like a gas cloud. This isn’t how it works.

  — How come not? If your soul exists it must be somewhere. And this otherworld you speak of, where your soul is supposed to go after you die, must also be somewhere. Where is it? Is it behind those mountains? Is it up in the sky?

  — No, it’s in none of those places. It’s nowhere. And you will never be able to see, touch or measure my soul. Can’t you see that you are thinking about it in the wrong way?

  — How so? You’re beginning to sound very flaky with all this woo. It’s very simple: if we can’t find or measure the soul anywhere, it isn’t there; it doesn’t exist. If we can’t find this otherworld of yours anywhere, it doesn’t exist. It’s just as simple.

  Beginning to lose your patience, you take a deep breath and manage to carry on:

  — You are assuming that my soul is inside this body. But it is this body and this place that are inside my soul. So you could never find my soul anywhere here. It’s the wrong place to look.

  — Are you saying that the lake, the valley and all those enormous mountains around us right now are all inside your soul?!

  Before you can reply, she giggles sarcastically and continues:

  — You must have a mighty big soul then!

  — You don’t understand. Our notions of space and time are entirely relative to this realm. They only exist within it. It makes no sense to speak of the size or age of my soul, because my soul is not inside space or time.

  — You make no sense to me. If you say that your soul goes to another world after you die, that requires movement in space and time…

  You know in your heart that you will never be able to explain in words what you mean. The very structure of language presupposes the notions of space and time intrinsic to this realm. Nouns presuppose the existence of things within this realm. How to explain the soul if it isn’t a thing? How to explain the otherworld if it isn’t in space and time? ‘I can’t make sense of this even to myself,’ you admit. Indeed, everything you said came from intuition, not from a linear or logical grasp of what it all entails. You realize that even you don’t really understand what you’ve been talking about. The irony is rather cruel.

  Almost imperceptibly, you sigh and stare out to the lake in resignation. The breeze causes the water to ripple gently, forming intricate and rather beautiful interference patterns. To the right, where a stream drains into the lake, eddies form and dissolve in a beautifully choreographed dance. For a moment you drift away…

  Then you hear your friend say abruptly, in a firm but benevolent voice:

  — Here, let me help you understand what you’ve been trying to say.

  As you turn to face her, you freeze: she is holding a gun pointed straight at your face. Before you can even ask yourself what’s happening, she smiles…and fires. Time slows to a crawl as you watch the bullet emerge from the barrel, travel through the air and finally hit you right between the eyes. Your entire body shudders and propels itself upward…

  …But you land safely on your couch. Startled, you sit up and look around. It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon and there’s nothing to worry about. While you’re still halfway between the dream and real life, it dawns upon you with crystalline clarity: ‘Of course! This is what I meant to explain to her! Her trying to find my soul and the otherworld in her frame of reality was like looking for my real body and this living room inside my dream…’

  2.4. Survival of consciousness beyond death: an implication of common sense

  This essay is about a surprising but direct implication of our common sense about the nature of reality; an implication that you are probably unaware of. Becoming aware of this implication has the potential to change your life.

  Our common sense asserts that the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the smells we feel, the textures we sense, are all the actual and concrete reality. We take it for granted that they are all really ‘out there,’ in the sense of being outside our head. On the other hand, the mainstream materialist metaphysics asserts that death is the end of our consciousness. Even if we don’t acknowledge this intellectually or spiritually, most of us fear the end of consciousness with enough sincerity to betray our belief in its possibility.

  Now, the point of this essay is extraordinarily simple: these two assertions are mutually exclusive. They cannot be both true. Either your common sense is utterly wrong and everything you sense around you right now, including the book in front of you, is a kind of ‘hallucination’ inside your head, or your consciousness doesn’t end upon what we call physical death. By the time we come to the end of this brief essay, I believe you will agree with me.

  Let’s start with the postulate that bodily dissolution – death – indeed implies the end of consciousness. Such belief is entirely based on the idea that your body, particularly your brain, generates all your experiences. After all, what other reason could we have to believe that consciousness ends if the brain stops working? But if the belief is true, then all of your subjective experiences and their qualities – colors, sounds, flavors, textures, warmth, etc. – are merely representations created within your head. The ‘real world out there’ has none of the qualities of experience: no colors, no melodies, no flavors, no warmth. Supposedly, it is a purely abstract realm of quantities akin to mathematical equations. It cannot even be visualized, for visualization always entails qualities of experience. In essence, if this is true, your entire life unfolds inside your skull. Your actual skull is somewhere beyond the room where you are sitting, enveloping it from all sides. After all, the room you are experiencing right now is supposedly within your head.

  But what if all this is baloney? What if the colors, sounds and smells you are experiencing right now are the real reality – the actual world – not ‘hallucinated’ representations within your skull? Then the necessary implication is that all of reality is in consciousness, for reality is then made of the qualities of subjective experience. But if that is so, then it is your body that is in consciousness, not consciousness in your body. After all, your body is in reality, not reality in your body. Hence, the dissolution of your body cannot imply the end of consciousness; not any more than the death of your character in a nightly dream can imply your physical death. It is the character that is in your dreaming consciousness, not your consciousness in the character. Do you see the point?

  As such, either all reality you can ever experience is a kind of ‘hallucination’ inside your skull, or we have absolutely no reason to believe that physical death entails the end of consciousness. It’s one thing or the other. You take your pick: which alternative is crazier? I’ve taken mine: I am unable to deny the reality of my immediate experience of the world, which far precedes the models and abstractions of our mad materialist culture.

  So let us dare entertain the possibility that reality is exactly what it seems to be: that it has qualities, not just quantities. Let us acknowledge what every civilization before Western rationalism always took for granted: that colors, smells, sounds, and flavors are really ‘out there,’ not just inside our heads. How do we then explain the big questions that materialists claim to require an abstract reality fundamentally outside consciousness in order to be made sense of? This is the subject of essay 2.2. That essay shows that all questions that lead materialists astray can be logically and empirically made sense of under the rigorous and parsimonious view that all reality is a phenomenon of consciousness, in conscio
usness. Your intuition that the world you experience around you right now, with all its colors, sounds, smells, and textures, is the actual reality – as opposed to a kind of hallucinated reproduction inside your head – is entirely correct. The implication of that, however, is that your consciousness – your subjective experience of being – will not cease to exist upon your physical death. This is an inescapable conclusion derived from logic, clear thinking and empirical honesty. It so happens to also be a hopeful conclusion for many.

  2.5. The actual difference between living beings and inanimate objects

  In July of 2014, I gave a long and engaging interview to Rick Archer, host of Buddha at the Gas Pump, an Internet talk show.20 Rick pressed me on the distinction I make between monistic idealism and panpsychism; that is, between the notions that everything is in consciousness and that everything is conscious. As my readers know, I reject panpsychism: I reject the idea that everything, like a rock or your home thermostat, is conscious. But I strongly endorse the notion that everything is in consciousness and exists only insofar as it is in consciousness. To Rick, such a distinction wasn’t clear. Therefore, I’d like now to clarify this point with some more structure and rigor.

  As discussed in my earlier book Why Materialism Is Baloney, summarized in essay 2.1, I acknowledge a fundamental distinction between inanimate objects and living beings. It is true that the distinction may be difficult to recognize at microscopic levels – are viruses alive? – but that doesn’t change the fact that a teddy bear and a polar bear are very different bears.