Harris has to decide whether he thinks human consciousness requires a brain or not. If he thinks it does, he must be self-consistent and acknowledge the obvious fact that a few neurons firing somewhere deep inside the brain, even if they were there, could not possibly explain peak experiences like NDEs. And if he doesn’t think the brain is needed, then he has to bite the bullet and acknowledge the obvious implications. Harris and his materialism cannot have it both ways.
The more regrettable aspect of Harris’ criticism is an overt attempt to discredit Alexander’s capacity to judge whether his NDE could be explained by traditional neuroscience. This is embedded in a quote from his UCLA thesis advisor that Harris adds to his post:
Neurosurgeons, however, are rarely well-trained in brain function. Dr. Alexander cuts brains; he does not appear to study them.165
Pause for a moment and read this again. The claim here seems to be that Alexander, a then-practicing neurosurgeon and former professor at Harvard Medical School, does not understand what part of the brain does what, or what level of injury is sufficient to impair those brain regions. How plausible is this? What motivates this kind of argument?
I will grant to Harris that the Newsweek article is written in a rather sensationalist tone and with rather loose language. Personally, I also do not like that. But it is an article meant for lay people, not scientists or philosophers. Alexander is trying to reach people, which I do think is laudable. In the process of doing so, he inevitably has to sacrifice the more rigorous and cautious tone that is usual in science. I will go even further: scientism activists (see Chapter 4 of this book) casually take the liberty to throw all scientific caution to the wind when peddling the notion that consciousness is generated by the brain, even though nobody has the faintest idea how that can possibly be the case (see essay 3.1). Their activism flies in the face of reason, passing speculation and hypotheses for fact. It aims directly at convincing lay people of a particular agenda, rather like politicians do during electoral campaigns. In this context, I find it perfectly understandable that Alexander, in the Newsweek article, seemed to be attempting to do the exact same thing from the opposite perspective.
Harris continued his criticism in a subsequent blog post. Referring to Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), he said:
Unfortunately, these experiences vary across cultures, and no single feature is common to them all. One would think that if a nonphysical domain were truly being explored, some universal characteristics would stand out.166
Here Harris is projecting onto all conceivable realms of reality a particular aspect of one known realm: namely, the apparent objectivity of phenomena in ordinary consensus reality. But it is fallacious to infer, without further reasoning, this same characteristic for all conceivable realms. I discuss this extensively in essay 6.1, which I encourage you to read and which I make an integral part of this commentary. Moreover, as I also discussed in essay 6.1, there are indeed many commonalities across NDEs, regardless of the cultural background of the experiencer.
Harris’ thinking seems to be like this: ‘Since the reports of NDEs are such that I can eliminate all theoretical possibilities I can think of, then NDEs can only be delusions and confabulations, despite all evidence to the contrary.’ Well, this thinking doesn’t say much about NDEs; it speaks only to Harris’ ability to devise theoretical alternatives.
He goes on:
The very fact that Alexander remembers his NDE suggests that the cortical and subcortical structures necessary for memory formation were active at the time. How else could he recall the experience?167
Harris seems to be casually taking for granted that memories are encoded as physical traces in the brain, just like computer files are stored in a flash card. Yet, decades of research have failed to find these physical traces. Modest recent progress in that direction is seemingly contradictory. The fact that brain damage can impair recall only establishes that access to information is obstructed; it doesn’t establish where the information is. Upon his recovery, it’s not in dispute that Alexander’s brain function was largely restored. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that he could again access the information corresponding to his earlier NDE and tell his story. I discuss all this in detail in essay 3.3, which I also make an integral part of this commentary. Memory is a mystery. We just don’t know enough about it to use it to either dismiss or substantiate accounts of NDEs.
Now let’s see what I consider the most peculiar part of Harris’ criticism. Pay attention to this:
If the brain merely serves to limit human experience and understanding, one would expect most forms of brain damage to unmask extraordinary scientific, artistic, and spiritual insights … A few hammer blows or a well-placed bullet should render a person of even the shallowest intellect a spiritual genius. Is this the world we are living in?168
Yes, it is! Harris seems to ignore the literature on the so-called acquired savant phenomenon. It shows many cases of people who developed genius-level skills in arts, math and many other areas of intellectual activity as a direct consequence of bullet wounds to the head, stroke, concussion and even the progression of dementia. Nearly every conceivable source of brain injury can potentially trigger a savant.169
Harris asks why spiritual insight isn’t triggered as a result of brain damage. Well, it is! Let’s leave aside the wealth of anecdotal evidence and focus on controlled studies: a 2010 study published in the neuroscience journal Neuron shows precisely a correlation between surgery-induced brain damage and spiritual insight.170 Moreover, most, if not all, techniques for the attainment of spiritual insight seem to operate by causing a reduction of brain activity – think of ordeals, hyper-ventilation, sensory deprivation, psychedelics, meditation and even prayer – which is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that the brain is the image of a localization of experience.171
Harris’ quote above describes the facts precisely as we know them, even though he uses it rhetorically, as if it were all obviously untrue. The only part of the quote that I think is false is Harris’ statement that ‘most forms of brain damage’ should lead to new insights. We don’t know whether this should be the case for ‘most forms,’ for we do not yet understand all the correlations between brain function and localization of experience. All we can say is that, for at least some forms of brain damage, new insights should be triggered. And that is an empirical fact that Harris, as a neuroscientist, should have been aware of.
Harris goes on to correctly refute the so-called ‘transmission hypothesis,’ according to which consciousness is a kind of radio signal received by the brain. He argues that, if the hypothesis were correct, it would imply that we are the signal, not the radio. So the fact that the radio captures only a small part of the signal should not lead to a narrowing of what we experience. I concur entirely with this. But the notion that the brain is the image of a localization of experience is not the same as the transmission hypothesis. In fact, the transmission hypothesis is dualist: it states that brain and consciousness are two fundamentally different media. My view, on the other hand, is monistic: I assert that there is only consciousness. The brain is merely an outside image of a process by means of which consciousness localizes itself, like a whirlpool in water. Notice how this answers Harris’ question: instead of being an external signal, consciousness folds in on itself in the form of a vortex, limiting its own breadth. The image of that vortex is our body-brain system. The brain is simply what our thoughts and emotions look like from the outside. We are consciousness, and yet consciousness self-limits. To say that electrochemical processes in the brain are the cause of consciousness is as illogical as to say that a whirlpool is the cause of water. For an extensive elaboration on this view, see essays 2.1 and 2.2.
In conclusion, whether Eben Alexander’s ‘trip to heaven’ was a valid experience or not, Sam Harris’ arguments against it simply don’t hold up to reason, empirical honesty and clear thinking.
6.3. UFOs: even more mysterious than you’d think
Reports of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have fascinated me since early childhood. I’ve spent many a night lying on the deck of my childhood home, staring at the sky and waiting – no, hoping – for something ‘strange’ to happen. As Jung wrote, UFOs are symbols of powerful processes in our obfuscated psyche, which explains people’s fascination with them.172
Later in life, what was a childhood fascination became a more serious, scholarly interest. I’ve read much of the literature on UFOs just to become highly disillusioned with what people make of the phenomenon and the evidence. Today, I am very critical – even cynical – of much of what takes place within ‘UFOlogy.’ I hold the opinion that the field is riddled with fantasies, delusions and outright deception aimed at commercial gain or personal fame. So much so that, if not for the work of one man – a voice of reason and integrity in a morass of hysteria – I would have dismissed the whole affair once and for all. This man is French UFO investigator Jacques Vallée.
What I find refreshing in Vallée’s work is his readiness to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Most ‘UFOlogists’ today seem to hold the opinion that UFOs are material spacecraft from another star system. This is the so-called ‘Extraterrestrial Hypothesis’ (ETH) and its motivations are clear: in a field already characterized by weirdness, the last thing investigators want is to compound the weirdness by proposing a hypothesis that doesn’t fit neatly into our mainstream materialist worldview. But the evidence doesn’t support the ETH at all. In Vallée’s own words:
The accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of ‘space visitors.’ Five specific arguments…contradict the ETH: (1) unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth; (2) the humanoid body structure of the alleged ‘aliens’ is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel; (3) the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race; (4) the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and (5) the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.173
So if the ETH doesn’t hold up in view of the evidence, how else can we make sense of UFOs? I have extensively elaborated upon it in my earlier book Meaning in Absurdity. In this essay, I’d like to offer a different spin on my hypothesis.
Before I can do that, however, I need to share with you my view of the fundamental nature of reality: I believe all reality – including our bodies – is in consciousness, not consciousness in our bodies. As such, consensus reality is an imagined story emerging from obfuscated, collective parts of our psyches, like a shared dream. Our individual psyches are thus dissociated ‘alters’ of a single consciousness – which I call ‘mind-at-large’ – underlying all known and unknown reality. Consensus reality is a particular ‘dream’ of mind-at-large. I am well aware that this view sounds peculiar at first sight, but essays 2.1 and 2.2 of this book substantiate it in depth. Here, all I ask is that you temporarily suspend your disbelief and entertain this view for the sake of argument.
If mind-at-large can dream an entire reality and also has the potential to split itself into dissociated alters, then nothing precludes the possibility that multiple dreams may be unfolding concurrently in mind-at-large. Allow me to unpack this: as mentioned above, each person is a dissociated alter of mind-at-large, partaking in a collective dream that we call consensus reality. Our individual psyches unite at a deep, obfuscated level, and the dream of consensus reality is imagined at that unified level. That’s why we are able to share the dream. But perhaps there are multiple, hierarchical, nested and parallel levels of dissociation and alter formation. Perhaps our individual psyches unite not at the ground level of mind-at-large, but at an intermediary level that is itself dissociated from other intermediary levels. We human beings may be alters of a meta-alter, and there may be multiple, parallel metaalters in mind-at-large. As a matter of fact, there may be meta-meta-alters, and meta-meta-meta-alters, etc.
So the hypothesis is that, as our consensus reality is the dream of a meta-alter in mind-at-large, other meta-alters are having other dreams in parallel to ours. Each of those dissociated dreams is a reality in its own merit. Multiple, perhaps countless dreams are unfolding in the hierarchy of dissociation of mind-at-large, somewhat analogously to the parallel universes that physicists like to talk about. Each of these dreams has its own storyline: its own internal logic, physics, history and living inhabitants.
And here is where UFOs and ‘aliens’ come into the picture. Have you ever had a dream in which an event in the waking world penetrated the dream without waking you up immediately? For instance, I once went to sleep with the window of my hotel room open while on holidays abroad. In the middle of the night, while I lay asleep, there was a storm and some drops of rain began landing on my bare feet. The wind was also moving the curtains about, which caused some noise in the room. I was dreaming whilst this was happening. At some point in my dream, I found myself walking on a beach with my feet in the surf. The feeling of wetness on my real-life feet morphed seamlessly into the feeling of dragging my feet in the seawater. The sound of the wind and moving curtains inside my hotel room morphed seamlessly into the sound of waves breaking on the beach. I realized all this because I woke up in the middle of it and, for a few brief seconds, could simultaneously feel the surf and the raindrops landing on my feet; I could simultaneously hear the wind in the room and the waves on the beach. During those brief moments, I knew that these experiences, while different, were in a way also the same. The ‘dream’ of waking life had penetrated my nightly dream.
This is the key: dissociated dreams can perhaps – under exceptional, delicate circumstances – penetrate each other. Separate storylines can momentarily overlap and cross-influence one another. When that happens, the protruding element from a source storyline – say, the raindrops in my hotel room – gets ‘dressed up’ in an image that is amenable to integration into the destination storyline – that is, the surf in my dream. Indeed, there were no raindrops in my dream; just surf. There was no perceptible wind in my dream; just waves. The protruding element isn’t perceived as it appears in its source storyline, but in an alternative form characteristic of the storyline it penetrates. In a sense, the protruding element gets ‘hijacked,’ co-opted by the narrative it penetrates so to become an integral part of it. Yet, the underlying, intrinsic attributes of the protruding element remain the same and are accommodated by the form it acquires in the destination storyline: the wetness of the raindrops was preserved in the form of surf; the oscillating, flowing sound of the wind and curtains was preserved in the form of waves. Although the form these protruding elements acquired inside my dream was very different than their original form, their intrinsic, fundamental attributes were preserved.
By now, I’m sure you’ve already guessed where I am going with this: what if UFOs and aliens are protruding elements of parallel ‘dreams’ unfolding in mind-at-large, which penetrate our consensus reality and acquire a form amenable to integration within it? It isn’t then surprising that this acquired form should resemble advanced versions of concepts we are familiar with and can place within our storyline: spaceships, anthropoid life forms, medical procedures, computer technology, etc. These acquired forms often look internally inconsistent, cartoonish or even absurd simply because they aren’t the original forms of the protruding elements; instead, they reflect a rather precarious accommodation, in our own storyline, of the intrinsic attributes of something that fundamentally transcends our logic and physics. Here, I suggest, lies the reason for the ‘high strangeness’ of UFO and so-called ‘alien abduction’ phenomena.
If even a very small percentage of reported UFO and ‘alien abductio
n’ cases are valid and accurate, we have no alternative but to envision rather unusual, speculative hypotheses for making sense of it. The high-strangeness character of the phenomenon demands no less and this is what I attempted to offer here. Alternatively, we can simply deem all the evidence to be invalid and sleep more easily at night.
6.4. Extraterrestrial life: implications for the materialist paradigm
There has been growing expectation among scientists that extraterrestrial microbial life will be discovered in our solar system within the next few decades, perhaps in one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. I’ve asked people close to me whether they thought this would be a paradigm-breaking event, and the response has been mostly in the ‘no’ camp. Such a reaction is completely understandable: scientists have been acknowledging for years that life may be common and widespread in the universe, so why would its discovery in a neighboring celestial body break any paradigms? Nonetheless, I think we are overlooking something crucially important here, which has vast implications for how we look upon ourselves and reality at large.
Our culture’s mainstream view is that life is a mechanistic process explainable entirely by the known laws of physics. In other words, life is merely an epiphenomenon of dead matter. There is supposedly nothing to life but the same movements of subatomic particles behind erosion, crystallization, combustion, the weather, etc. As such, life is allegedly no different than erosion or crystallization, except in that metabolism operates faster. Biological organisms are mere ‘robots,’ entirely analogous to a computer. Life is believed to have arisen by mere chance, through the random collisions of atoms and molecules in a primordial chemical soup on primitive Earth. So the question is: if biology were discovered in a celestial body next door, would that raise new and difficult questions for such a mechanistic view of life? I think it would.
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