Shockingly, it is illusions that maintain our mental balance. We need ghosts to chase, because once we see through the game and realize what is really going on, we question the sense of it all and may succumb to apathy and depression. Therefore, instead of surrendering to, and trusting, our intuition, we raise the stakes. Not only do we chase ghosts, the ghosts began to chase us. Competition – so we tell ourselves – does not allow us to relax. We have to one-up the others, work even harder and more aggressively, or risk losing the precious illusions we’ve managed to accumulate at great cost to our families and ourselves. The more we accumulate, the more we have to lose, so the net result of achieving ‘success’ is the opposite of what we would have hoped: we become even more paranoid and stressed out. Life quickly turns into an appalling nightmare; a self-created horror show where we play both victim and perpetrator. And since we don’t know of any other option, all we can do is engender some new ghosts to chase. This goes on and on until the cycle repeats itself enough times that the illusion can no longer be sustained. We are then left mentally broken and defeated. Many a celebrity or wealthy person has come to this sad juncture, where addictive drugs or suicide become real options.
You see, the illusion only works for as long as it lies in the future, just out of reach. Like the proverbial carrot hanging in front of the horse, the entire allure of wealth and status lies largely in not having them. By not having them, mental space remains open for our psyches to fill with fantasies onto which we project numinous meaning. It is the achievement of success – the catching of the ghosts – that gives away the game. As desirable material goods become commoditized and more available, it actually becomes harder to keep up the illusion. It is the very economic success of materialism that carries with it the seed of its own destruction. When purchasing a television set was a magical, nearly untenable consumer dream rich in projected meaning, its appeal was huge. Now, other things have to be invented that can serve as receptacles for our projections, from smart phones to cars, to porn-style commercial sex, to major promotions at work. As with any addiction, it gets increasingly harder to achieve the same high. Eventually, we will no longer be able to keep up as far as engendering sufficiently numinous material aspirations.
Might we be close to this point in the wealthy West? For a paradigm shift to take place, there is no need for the majority of the world’s population to join in. Most people are so focused on survival that this entire discussion is utterly irrelevant to them. If only the economically successful and intellectually influential elite – a small minority of the people – is no longer able to derive fulfillment under the auspices of materialism, then that will already be enough to change the paradigm. I dare to see signs that exactly this is beginning to happen.
Most of us are pretty good at keeping appearances. We hide from even our most intimate friends – and often from ourselves – what is truly going on in our psyches. We fear being perceived as different, odd. Social animals that we are, we have an innate need to fit in and belong. Therefore, even if massive numbers of human beings were intuitively beginning to see the ghosts for what they are, it would still be hard to tell it from just watching the news or chatting with colleagues at work. Yet, from personal experience, I dare say that people are indeed beginning to see through the game. I see this process happening everywhere, though its manifestations are very subtle. Something is stirring up in the collective human psyche. Critical mass is building up and we may not be too far from what Malcolm Gladwell called the ‘tipping point.’155
Again, the only reason we insist on the old, failed game – inventing new ghosts to chase after catching previous ghosts and discovering that they were illusions – is that we don’t know any better. We were just never told what else to do; not by our parents, not by our schoolteachers, not by anyone. Hence, we desperately try to avoid depression and other forms of mental stress by the only means we know: replacing old projections with new ones. Nonetheless, the only sustainable solution lies in seeing through the projections. Material things only have numinous power insofar as we lend them this power. We are the source of what we desperately seek and it has been so all along. But given the current cultural climate, we are woefully equipped to pursue a path of self-exploration. Long ago have we dispensed with elders, with archaic traditions and myths, and many of the metaphors that could now illuminate our way. So we will have to face the inevitable breakdown of the illusion of meaning-inthings, whether it happens shortly or in many years, without much in the way of guidance.
Materialism will be replaced as a paradigm, I believe, within my lifetime. It has run its course and can no longer nurture the human psyche. We cannot survive in a vacuum of meaning. Thus, it is our own innate need for meaning that will kick the status quo out of the local minimum. It is our need for a new way to relate to life that will, at first, make things worse so we can find a new path forward. Our challenge will be to collectively find a way to bump the system strongly enough to dislodge it from its current equilibrium point, but gently enough not to destroy the economy. Are we capable of doing it smoothly? Honestly, I am skeptical. For the same reason that I don’t believe human beings are capable of organizing themselves into huge secret conspiracies, I also find it difficult to imagine that we can organize ourselves for an orderly paradigm transition. It will be a bumpy road, but a road we need to travel regardless. We just don’t have any alternative.
6. On the strange and mysterious
In the previous chapter, we discussed the interplay between contemporary cultural dynamics and the intrinsic human recognition of, and need for, transcendence. It is only natural, thus, that we now look at empirical phenomena that seem to validate our intuitions about transcendence. The essays here, due to the very subjects they address, tend to be more speculative and less rigorous than those in other chapters.
Essay 6.1 discusses the possible validity of the phenomenon of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) from empirical and logical perspectives, exploring its implications as far as the existence of an afterlife. Essay 6.2 delves more specifically into the subject, offering a critical deconstruction of Sam Harris’ attack on a particular, well-known NDE report. Essay 6.3 then switches gears and addresses the phenomenon of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), offering a perhaps unique and startling perspective on what it may represent. Staying close to the theme, essay 6.4 discusses something striking but curiously left untouched by the mainstream media and the spokespeople of science: the implications that the discovery of (microbial) life in our solar system would logically have as far as contradicting key axioms of the materialist paradigm.
6.1. Near-Death Experiences and the afterlife
Throughout the ages, people have reported amazing experiences of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Although the underlying themes of these stories seem very consistent – as argued, for instance, by Dr. Richard Bucke156 and Aldous Huxley157 – the metaphors used tend to be enormously varied, culture-bound and even contradictory across reports.158 The stories of people who underwent Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) – that is, the experience of being conscious while one’s body is clinically dead159 – are no exception to this: while there is unquestionable consistency in the underlying themes, the metaphors and details vary wildly. For instance, some report to have met the Buddha, while others were in the arms of the Christ. Such discrepancies motivate skeptics to claim that NDE reports are mere hallucinations or confabulations. After all, if these people had witnessed a true afterlife realm, one would expect their reports to be consistent across the board and not bound to one’s particular beliefs and culture. But is this expectation really logical and reasonable?
Before answering this question, let me first emphasize that there are surprising similarities of themes underlying NDE reports. Having read and listened to many recent testimonials, I’ve come up with the following list of what seems to consistently happen during a typical NDE:
• Association between a source of light and feelings of unconditional love
, acceptance, bliss and peace.
• The feeling of returning ‘home,’ whence one’s primordial self originates.
• Interactions with what are perceived as entities of some sort, variously described as angels, dead relatives or undefined presences.
• The sensation of knowing – or rather, remembering – the true nature of reality and of one’s identity, even though one cannot articulate that knowledge later in words. This often includes the notion that life is a kind of dream.
• A life review and other experiences that transcend linear time or space constraints, as if everything happened ‘here and now.’
• Transcendence of all dichotomies such as good/evil, positive/negative, past/future, I/you, subject/object, etc.
• The feeling that there is an important purpose to life.
NDE researcher Raymond Moody compiled a similar list decades ago from older case reports, which confirms the surprising consistency of themes.160 Such consistency is indicative of a core reality underlying the otherwise contradictory reports. Yet, we do have to explain the circus of incongruous metaphors often used to ‘dress’ these underlying themes in an effort to describe them. Indeed, some people experience the presence of an abstract, impersonal white light, while others report an encounter with a bright bearded man, both of which are described as God. Some people report being welcomed by dead relatives, while others describe winged angels at the doors of heaven. The religious symbolism behind different reports tends to be tied to the particular beliefs and culture of the individual in question. If the events witnessed during an NDE are real, how can we explain this variety of incongruous descriptions?
The first line of explanation is simply to notice that there is likely a difference between what people report and what the experience in itself looks like. Even in our ordinary realm of reality, when different people witness exactly the same events they often describe the events in widely different ways.
But there is another, more powerful explanation for the discrepancies: because most of us have only ever experienced our own ordinary realm of reality – at least insofar as we can remember – we instinctively assume that all conceivable realms must share the core characteristics of our own. After all, we know nothing else. This way, since our ordinary realm seems to be completely independent of our beliefs and expectations, we instinctively extrapolate the same independence to a hypothetical afterlife realm as well. Let me illustrate this with an example: our ordinary realm is such that, even if a person truly believes that she can fly, she will surely fall if she jumps off a bridge. Our ordinary realm doesn’t seem to care about what we believe or expect; it appears to be entirely separate from our inner subjectivity. So we instinctively imagine that all realms must be equally autonomous and separate from subjectivity. Notice, however, that this no more than an assumption. If the afterlife is another realm – presumably operating under different rules and constraints – there is simply no a priori requirement for it to be as independent of our beliefs and expectations as our ordinary realm is. As such, that a Christian meets Jesus and a Buddhist meets the Buddha in the afterlife doesn’t refute its potential reality.
Here is my hypothesis: the afterlife realm comprises a core layer consisting of the recurring underlying themes listed earlier. This core layer reflects the intrinsic, essential, invariant properties of the afterlife and is independent of the cultural background of the witness. But surrounding the core layer there is a symbolic layer, which is malleable and acquiescent to one’s particular beliefs and expectations. This symbolic layer is a kind of bridge: it presents the core themes according to whatever imagery is most evocative to each personality. Different witnesses ‘dress’ a core theme with the symbolic ‘clothes’ that render it most recognizable and evocative to them. For a Christian, little could be more evocative of the core theme of unconditional love than Jesus; so it is through the Christ image that the core theme is symbolically presented to a Christian. For a sincere atheist, perhaps a dead relative is the most evocative alternative, which then determines the atheist’s particular experience of the same core theme. And so on.
The expectation that NDE reports should be consistent at the level of descriptive symbols and metaphors – even when they are reported as literal – reflects merely a prejudice. That a hypothetical, different realm of reality is more responsive to one’s beliefs and expectations than our ordinary realm is no reason to deny the validity of the former.
6.2. Why Sam Harris is wrong about Eben Alexander’s visit to ‘heaven’
In the week of 8 to 15 October 2012, Newsweek magazine’s cover article was Dr. Eben Alexander’s report and analysis of his own Near-Death Experience (NDE).161 Alexander is a neurosurgeon and former professor at Harvard School of Medicine. In the fall of 2008, he underwent an unfathomable NDE while suffering from acute bacterial meningitis, which allegedly shut down his neocortex. Alexander’s story is rich and nuanced, with many Christian undertones. One might wonder how seriously we can take a report so colored by cultural idiosyncrasies but, as argued in essay 6.1, I do not see this as reason to refute the validity of an NDE. As a matter of fact, my hunch is that Alexander’s experience is authentic. Well-known atheism activist Sam Harris, however, disagrees. It is his criticism of Alexander’s case that I want to comment on here.
I believe there to be a couple of faulty assumptions in Harris’ argument. The most glaring one is reflected in this segment of his post:
His experience sounds so much like a DMT trip that we are not only in the right ballpark, we are talking about the stitching on the same ball.162
The implicit suggestion is that, because of similarities between a psychedelic experience – DMT is psychedelic compound that occurs naturally in the human body – and Alexander’s NDE, the latter was likely generated by brain chemistry and, therefore, mere hallucination. Underlying this suggestion is the completely unsubstantiated assumption that no valid transcendent experience can be initiated by physical means, like alterations of brain chemistry.
You see, it is a fact that there are correlations between brain states and subjective experiences. This is not in dispute by any serious commentator on NDEs. The question is: what is the nature of these correlations? This is what is in dispute. So Harris’ assumption that a physical trigger cannot lead to a perfectly valid NDE seems to completely miss the point in contention. After all, most NDEs are initiated by physical events anyway: trauma, cardiac arrest, infections, etc. Yes, Alexander’s NDE bears similarities with psychedelic trances – at least as far as descriptions go – but the latter can also be, and probably are, entirely valid transcendent experiences not generated by the brain. See the discussion about it in essay 3.5. Therefore, Harris’ comparison does not at all refute the validity of Alexander’s NDE.
As I argued in Chapter 2 of my earlier book Why Materialism Is Baloney, there is a broad and striking pattern correlating transcendent, non-local experiences with reduction or even cessation of brain activity: G-force induced loss of consciousness, psychedelics, hyper-ventilation practices, strangulation, ordeals, certain forms of meditation, brain damage, cardiac arrest, etc., all lead to similar transcendent experiences. This strongly suggests that the brain is associated with a localization of consciousness, restricting it in space-time, but without generating it. See essays 2.1 and 2.2 of this book for an extensive elaboration of this hypothesis. Reduction or cessation of the right aspects of brain function should, as such, lead to a de-clenching or de-localization of consciousness, which thus expands and gains access to aspects of reality otherwise unavailable to ordinary awareness. Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) once described the process of death as ‘removing a tight shoe,’ which illustrates the point rather evocatively. This, in my view, is precisely what happened to Alexander. The potential similarities of his experience with a psychedelic trance rather corroborate the reality of Alexander’s NDE, since the mechanisms involved should indeed be analogous. After all, both Alexander’s meningitis and psychedelics reduce
brain activity.
Much of Harris criticism rests on an old materialist argument against NDEs: it cannot be shown that all of Alexander’s brain functions were off, so it is conceivable that there was enough brain function left to confabulate an unfathomable dream. This is as promissory as it is unfalsifiable, for there might indeed always be a neuron firing somewhere. But that’s not a relevant point, is it? The point is whether the kind of brain function that ordinarily correlates with complex dreams can be realistically expected to have been present in Alexander’s case. If chaotic, impaired, residual cortical function could explain the confabulation of a complex and coherent ‘trip to heaven,’ then such residual cortical function should suffice for our nightly dreams too, shouldn’t it? But we know it doesn’t. Harris’ argument is analogous to claiming that a car should drive better and faster when everything in it is broken, except for the spark plugs.
Studies of the neural correlates of consciousness have shown that significant, coherent neocortical activity is required for the kind of conscious experiences described by Alexander.163 To claim that such rich, vivid experiences could happen with a highly impaired neocortex raises a deeper question: what the heck do we need a healthy neocortex for? Even when we dream of something as trivial as the clenching of a hand, we see clear correlations with neocortical activity.164 So how come we can supposedly confabulate entire alternative realities, rich in landscapes, entities and emotional significance, with a highly impaired neocortex?
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