[Don Salmon]

Hi Zak,

Thanks for both videos.

Regarding Dennett, I think David Chalmers provided the clearest rebuttal to Dennett and the other extreme fundamaterialists. He said there’s not really a hard problem of consciousness, there’s a hard problem of matter.

And since we’ve known for 100 years that matter is not fundamental, here’s the real hard problem:

What does “physical” mean – and why should we eve believe in it, when there’s no possible way to provide even one bit of scientific evidence that such a concept has any connection with anything that exists?

All we know directly is consciousness – and no scientific experiment requires the postulate of some purely, mind-independent “stuff” that we abstractly conceive of as “physical.”

This to me eliminates about 95% of the theories of consciousness that exist today.

If anyone here can come up with a scientific experiment that shows that something purely material could possibly exist apart from any consciousness (I don’t mean human – I mean a consciousness that is co-extensive with AND transcendent to the physical universe), I’d love to hear the details.

By the way I just sent this challenge to Dennis Overbye, a long-time science writer for the NY Times. He wrote back a very pleasant response and concluded that whatever else there is, he is convinced there is something that exists outside his head – thereby equating consciousness, as Dennett does, with something produced by the brain.

But we only know of the brain, as with anything physical, via consciousness, so this is circular reasoning. So I again must caution – I’m speaking of consciousness that is co-extensive with and transcendent to the physical universe.

Thanks for any suggestions for a scientific experiment that would provide such evidence for anything purely “physical.” (I’d love a definition too, if you can!)

[Don Salmon]

Hi,

I thought of something much simpler.

“Science” as a discipline separate from philosophy didn’t even come into existence prior to the 1830s or so.

Yet the “assumption” of an orderly universe – one that continues to exist independent of human beings – was present from the start.

Materialism as an assumption underlying science didn’t come into prominence until the 1860s or so. Prior to that, it was assumed that an omnipresent Divine Reality (which is what “God” was always understood to be until in the modern age “He” was shrunk into this bigger psychopathic ego obsessed with smiting his enemies – we can have another theological discussion about the difference between popular views and mystic views of the ancients, but enough on that for now)

So for well over 2 centuries, physicists proceeded quite well without any assumption that something purely “physical” was the basis of hte universe.

As with all traditions around the world, if by “physical” you simply mean that which is substantial, hard to the senses – well of course that’s always been accepted, EVEN BY THE MOST EXTREME IDEALISTS!!! (unless someone is delusional, it’s the most obvious universe experience that we touch objects and they provide resistance).

So rather than being a requirement, for half the time modern science has been in existence, it simply never occurred to people to think that, unless they believed the world ultimately to be a dead, mechanical place ruled by non conscious ‘stuff” which noboyd has ever seen or for which there is no evidence, the philosophic belief in physicalism was not even entertained, much less required.

TWO FINAL POINTS

ONE: RELATION OF LH AND RH, or analysis and intuition

I’m going to use “analysis” in place of LH and “intuition of the whole” in place of RH. You and several others for some reason think I’m denying analysis in this. I have no idea what I’ve written that leads to this idea. In fact, ON THE BASIS of intuition, I’m making a very in-depth analysis of unexamined assumptions regarding the nature of scientific investigation and the nature of the universe, as well as the meaning of the word “physical” WHEN USED PHILOSOPHICALLY (not referring to sensory experience of tangible objects)

Taking Iain’s idea that intuition or lived experience should be the “master,” I’m doing a very detailed, in-depth analysis SECONDARY to lived experience. I think the reason you’re having difficulty with these words is you’re taking them primarily as analytic rather than as reflections on direct experience (and the awareness beyond yet containing all experience)

TWO: THE SIMPLEST WAY POSSIBLE TO GET THIS

1. What do we know, in direct experience? Forms in awareness (or, “awareness forming”

2. What is the essential procedure of scientific research? As I was taught it as a psychological researcher, it has just a few primary steps:

(a) examination of sensory experience

(b) “Operationalizing” of that experience – operationalize is a fancy word for “take measurements

(c) Drop all sensory experience and find relationships in those measurements which can be used to make predictions and control whatever aspects of sensory experience I can

No philosophy at all is needed for this.

Sir Arthur Eddington put it quite concretely. He described a test question: You have a 2 ton elephant that sides down a hill. Given a particular incline, what is the speed with which the elephant slides down the hill?

I love the elegance of Eddington’s response. He says any experienced student knows that the first thing you do is eliminate all reference to sensory experience. The “elephant” is gone and in its place, we have a series of mathematical statements representing weight, incline, speed, etc.

At the end you have measurements.

What happened in the mid to late 19th century is two things, which are reflected in your comments:

(1) these measurements led to such dizzying success in technology,it was COMPLETELY forgotten that all measurements began with experience of forms in awareness.

(2) it was ALSO forgotten that these were merely measurements, and first, the word “materialism” was coined, and about 50 years later, after quantum physics eliminated the idea that matter is a fundamental reality, AND that “energy” (which we also don’t know how to philosophically define – ‘”capacity to work” does not give any ontological insight at all) is ALSO not the fundamental reality, a new word was coined – “physicalism.”

So we start with the only thing we know as forms in awareness, or awareness forming.

And we end with the literally delusional idea that the fundamental reality of hte world is a set of measurements.

This has been compared to the famous 3 card monte trick of street hustlers. Imagine you have a little coin that stands for CONSCIOUSNESS. And you have 3 cards – the matter card, the energy card, and the physical card – and you show the mark the consciousness coin and then put it under the matter card.

Then you move the cards around real fast and ask the mark, “Ok, which card has the consciousness coin under it?”

And you know with absolute certainty, no matter what the mark says, they’ll lose, because you secretly removed the consciousness card while they weren’t looking.

This is what the materialists/physicalists/positivists/naturalists did between the 1860s and 1920s – they unconsciously removed the consciousness coin and then proclaimed, “See, no consciousness.”

It’s like looking for your glasses when they’re on your nose.

[Don Salmon]

I’ll try to respond to your comments in brackets:

• • You question whether a scientific experiment can demonstrate the reality of the physical? Do you have an example of a scientific experiment which does not presuppose that reality? [IF YOU CAN’T SAY WHAT “PHYSICAL” MEANS, TO PRESUPPOSE IT HAS NO MEANING. WHAT DOES “PHYSICAL” MEAN? I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE COME CLOSE TO DEFINING IT WHEN IT REFERS TO AN ONTOLOGICAL OR FUNDAMENTAL REALITY? AND WHEN YOU SAY “PRESUPPOSE THE REALITY OF THE PHYSICAL” YOUR EITHER CONSCIOUSLY OR IMPLICITLY REFRRING TO AN ONTOLOGICAL STUFF. OF COURSE IF YOU JUST MEAN THE ORDINARY DICTIONARY DEFINITION, THE HARD STUFF YOU EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU SLAP A TABLE, OBVIOUSLY THAT’S PHYSICAL AND THAT’S REAL. BUT THAT’S AN EXPERIENCE WITHIN AWARENESS.

    Presupposing the reality of the physical allows us to do science. [IT WOULDN’T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE OT THE PRACTICE OF SCIENCE IF YOU PRESUPPOSED THATTHE ONTOLOGICAL REALITY WAS MADE OF LIFE FORCE, MIND FORCE, CONSCIOUSNESS, OR WHATEVER – ALL THAT IS NEEDED IS THE ASUMPTION OF SOMETHING EXTERNAL TO HUMAN EXPERIENCE THAT IS CONSTANT. WHAT IT IS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PRACTICING SCIENCE. That science demonstrates high accuracy in predicting the outcomes of experiments which themselves presuppose the reality of the physical. WHAT A STRANGE ASSUMPTION – IF WE WERE IN A COLLECTIVE DREAM, THE OUTCOMES WOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME (there was a scientist ion the late 1800s, I can’t recall his name at the moment, who would set a machine working, then visualize the same machine, measure the friction that occurred in his mind and then measure the friction of the “physical” machine and the measurements were exactly the same]=

    If reality were merely a conscious dream, [WHY ‘MERELY”] and the physical unreal [NOBODY HAS EVER SAID THE “PHYSICAL” IN THE SENSE OF HARD PHYSICAL OBJECTS IS UNREAL; I’M SPEAKING OF “PHYSICAL” AS THE ULTIMATE, FUNDAMENTAL REALITY OF THE UNIERSE, WHICH IS WHAT ALL MATERIALISTS AND PHYSICALISTS MEAN BY IT] the repeatable accuracy of scientific results which presuppose the reality of the physical would be nearly impossible to explain [ONCE AGAIN, YOU ASSUME THAT IF THERE WAS A UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE REPEATABLE ACCURACY. THE OPPOSITE IS ACTUALLY TRUE – IF THE ULTIMATE “PHYSICAL” REALITY IS NON INTELLIGENT AND NON CONSCIUOS, HOW CAN THERE BE LAWS OF NATURE, AND HOW CAN THEY CONTINUE? ALL OF SCIENCE BECOMES AN UTTER INEXPLICABLE MYSTERY UNDER THIS ASSUMPTION . IT ONLY SEEMS EXPLICABLE IF YOU HAVEN’T TAKEN TIME TO EXAMINE THIS BASIC ONTOLOGIAL ASSUMPTION ABOUT PHYSICALISTY. After all, when we dream, everything in the our dreams is in flux, without the reliable consistency we find in the physical world. Clearly, the physical world is more than a dream. [THE DREAM WAS ONLY AN EXAMPLE TO HELP YOU GET A DIFFERENT SENSE OF THINGS. BUT ALSO, CLEARLY, YOU’RE USING YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE OF DREAMING IN TEH ASSUMPTION ALL DREAMS ARE LIKE THAT. BUT IT’S POSIBLE TO HAVE A COHERENT DREAM LIFE, WITH THE SAME STORY CONTINUING NIGHT AFTER NIGHT. IN FACT, IT’S BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN – NOT THAT SCIENCE IS NEEDED HERE ] THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE WHEN AND HOW AND WHERE YOU’LL DREAM, YOU CAN ENTER THE DREAM FROM WAKING CONSCIOUSLY ,YOU CAN MEET OTHER PEOPLE IN YOUR DREAMS AND UPON WAKING, SHARE THE SAME EXPERIENCES, AND YOU CAN GAIN INFORMATION ABOUT THE PHYSICAL WORLD, FROM PLACES YOU’VE NEVER BVEEN IN WAKING, IN DREAMS]

    That science works so well as it does in so many areas, given that it starts by presupposing the reality of the physical, means that every useful result of science is evidence towards proving the reality of the physical. YOU’RE REALLY SAYING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITHOUT ANY BASIS IN FACT. THERE’S NOTHING ABOUT THE ABSTRACT CONCEPT OF “PHYSICAL” -= WHICH IS REALLIYI NOTHING BUT MEASUREMENTS – THAT GIVES US EVEN THE REMOTEST CLUE AS TO WHY THINGS REPEAT IN PATTERNS. IT WOULD IN FACT BE IMPOSSIBLE, IF THE WORLD WAS AS MATEIRALISTS AND PHYSICALISTS CLAIM, FOR THERE TO BE ANYTHING BUT CHAOS. ORDER ITSELF IS CLEARLY A REFELCTION OF CONSCIOUSENSS, AND IT IS FAR MORE LOGICAL TO ASSUME A UNIVERSAL WORLD OF CONSCIOUSNESS THAN ONE OF ‘MEASUREMENTS” – IF THAT EVEN MAKES SENSE. This does not show there’s nothing in reality beyond the physical, nor that entities with a physical aspect may also have a non-physical aspect, as in dual-aspect monist theories. AS LONG AS YOU HAVEN’T DEFINED PHYSICAL THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

    But to deny the reality of the physical is to deny the very possibility of science. Yet, we have science. McGilchrist’s books have more pages devoted to science than to more RH claims which point beyond it. YOU’RE ASSUMING THAT HIS PAGES DEVOTED TO SCIENCE IN ANY WAY PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF, MUCH LESS PROOF OF, THE EXISTENCE OF SOMETHING THAT STANDS ALONE AND IS COMPETELY NONCONSCIOUS AND ON ITNELLIGENT! I very much share his conviction that those RH claims are “substantial.” Yet, he also states repeatedly that the LH does real and valuable work, including especially large parts of science. His goal for us would seem to be to bring the LH back into harmony with the RH’s larger perspective, not to exile the LH, nor science, nor science’s appreciation of physicality. [THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC “APPRECIATION” OF PHYSICALITY IN THE ONTOLOGICAL SENSE SINCE NOBODY HAS DEFINED WHAT THAT MEANS AND UNTIL THEY DO SO, IT’S IMPOSSOIBLE TO EVEN CONCEIVE OF HOW SOMETHING THAT IS REALLY NO MORE THAN A COLLECTION OF MEASUREMENTS COULD EXIST ON ITS OWN

[Don Salmon]

Thanks Mike. There’s a lot of VERY smart people in this group. Most of them talk way over my head. Now, i’ve been mistaken for a philosophy professor online, but that’s I think because I’ve only written short comments.

here’s my personal interest in philosophy:

I think a purely analytic approach is fantastic when it comes to deconstructing the nonsense of materialism.

Beyond that, I have no interest, in fact, negative interest. I was a member of Bernardo Kastrup’s online forum starting in 2013, and I along with a number of other meditators LOVED his takedown of materialism and we BEGGED him, “please Bernardo, do NOT try and construct your own philosophy. It’s been done, beautifully (at least as far back as 3000 years) and we don’t need a new one.

Once you give up materialism, contemplative and meditation are the only way to contact reality. Philosophy – IMHO – just holds you back. I personally like Iain’s works because he hints at practice but he doesn’t really understand it at all. This whole idea he talks about a lot that any suggestion at practice is LH is ITSELF a LH confusion.

It’s like, “Really??? You don’t think St John of the Cross, Rumi, all the Zen masters of Japan and Chan masters of China (the latter being specialists in seeming to criticize practice, yet their ranks, as with the Taoists, are FILLED with thousands of practices), Rabbi Nachman (great Hasidic master) and yes, even Nisargadatta and Ramana Maharshi (who recommended breathing, chanting, devotional practices and rituals, all kinds of inquiry besides “who am I”), you think they didn’t deal with this paradox of effort vs Grace (which in Japan is called “self effort” vs “other effort” _ the Amida buddha chanters)

I myself very early on got stuck with Krishnamurti who seemed to always counsel against ANY practice – until about 4 years into it, I found a little booklet where he teaches David E S Young basic Vipassana. After 4 years reading every book of his I could get my hands on, that was it. 46 years and I’ve never read anything else by him.

Swami Sarvapriyananda tells a great story about this. His favorite Vedantic text is “Ashtavakra Gita.” There’s a McGilchrist-sounding line in it where it says “Your problem is you meditate.” And it keeps saying, “All you need to know is you ARE the Self, the Atman, right now.”

So a young monk finds that his guru has this book and says, “Well that’s it, I’m not going to practice any more. No meditation, no prayers, no reading, no rituals.

So Sarvapriyananda says to him, “you said your guru has this book?”

The monk: “Yes.”

Swami: “And does your guru meditate?”

Monk: “yes”

Swami: “Does he say prayers?”

Monk: “yes”

Swami: “Does he perform rituals?”

Monk, now duly chastened: “Yes, all of that.”

Swami: “Well, if you hold your teacher in such high regard, I would suggest following his example.

Moderners have all kinds of silly ideas about contemplative life. Another favorite of mine – some Americans went to visit a renowned Zen master in Japan. When they got to his meditation hall, they saw him bowing before a statue of the Buddha. They were, typically American, horrified.

“What!!!” they exclaimed. “Bowing to a buddha!! Didn’t the Buddha say if you meet the Buddha on the road, you should kill him? Wouldn’t it be better to spit on the Buddha/”

The Zen teacher was totally unfazed. he simply looked up for a moment and said, “If you like to spit, then spit. I prefer to bow.”

[Don Salmon]

I just thought of one more possible objection.

people often think that the Indian view is one of idealism (which is ironic, since modern idealist philosophy resulted from the misunderstanding of Indian philosophy among 18th century German idealist philosophers!)

It is not. So the common objection to idealism (Iain refers to this a lot in his book) that it does not take sufficient account of the reality of matter, does not apply.

Nowadays, when someone defines panpsychism as an interaction of mind and matter, they’re unconsciously referring to the scientific idea of matter, which as we just saw, is nothing but measurements. Once you see that, you see that Jung and other panpsychists or dual aspect monists are talking nonsense.

Now, in Indian philosophy, particularly the Tantric, matter is often referred to as sacred. But by “matter” they’re not talking about measurements. Matter is related to mattre – the Mother – the Divine Mother, and all of perceivable matter is considered the Divine Mother, as mind and consciousness are the Father. Awareness is beyond both. (and there are many many levels to this; one may also refer to Siva – pure awareness; and Shakti – pure Divine energy, but that gets into complex realms so I’ll leave it at that.

[Don Salmon]

HI Mike, great to have a fellow meditator here. You gave a clue to the resolution of this confusion with the phrase “pure awareness.”

Here’s a meditators take on it:

What do we know, absolutely, in a self evident way?

awareness and contents of awareness (I’m using “awareness’ since consciousness is a word which has a great deal of confusion associated with it)

That’s it. Is there a single reason to assume anything exists outside awareness?

This gets confusing for people because they think “awareness” is ‘my” awareness and don’t realize “mind” or “consciousness” is different from awareness.

The phrase PURE awareness makes it a bit clearer:

Are the contents of Mike’s mind and Don’s mind different?

Yes.

Is the AWARENESS within which the contents of MIke’s mind and Don’s mind different?

Well, let’s not assume anything.

Now, are there purely material forms if we abstract away awareness altogether?

THere’s no evidence of such. There can never be, by definition, any evidence of it (because all evidence will appear in awareness)

So why make the assumption?

It’s perfectly possible to conduct all scientific experiments with the assumption that the whole universe of experience exists in awareness.

So actually, neither consciousness nor awareness has to be explained. It’s self evident.

Now, what about matter and energy? I just looked at a child’s book on physics, and it defined physics as “the study of the interaction of matter and energy.”

But do scientists actually study some PROCESS called “matter” or “energy”?

What do scientists study?

Galileo talked about the distinction of primary and secondary qualities, but nowadays we simply refer to quantities (his “primary qualities) and qualities.

Scientists ALWAYS start with our qualitative experience (the contents of awareness) and from that, abstract quantities.

So when you’re asking if matter or energy have standalone existence, you’re asking if measurements have standalone existence.

Once you see that, you realize, of course not.

So again, there’s nothing to be explained.

What needs to be explained is why materialists like Dennett can’t see this!

If anyone wants to make a philosophic claim that in addition to the pure all pervading, ineffable awareness which takes in all experience, and the contents of awareness, there is something else, and it’s obvious that the assumption of something else is not needed for science (or for any other human endeavor) and the assumption that that something else is utterly unaware and non intelligent, and the introduction of this abstract concept of something else (which in science is nothing but pure measurement) makes it impossible to understand:

How laws of nature come into being and why they persist without descending into chaos

how life emerges

why evolution is an orderly process of increasing complexity BOTH of the organism AND of the consciousness associated with the organism

how conscious or mind or intelligence or emotion or self awareness emerge at all

Unless they can answer any of that (and nobody ever has or ever will) there’s no reason to even both with the materialists as they are really, basically, asserting that measurements have standalone existence.

And when you see it this clearly, you just have to laugh and ask, “How was it that we ever got so confused?

This is one more thing that might also be helpful:

Nowadays, in Indian Philosophy, the word “buddhi” refers to intellect, and “manas” to the sense mind or emotional mind,

But some 3000 years ago, in the Katha Upanishad, “Manas” referred to point like attention, associated with our desires, which takes the world of integrated whole experience and divides it up into objects, into “me” and a separate “world” “out there.”

“Buddhi” referred to an integrative intelligence which sees the world as a whole (This is roughly LH/manas and “RH/buddhi” but the Sanskrit terms are much richer and are directly related to the Brahman or “God”)

So our experience is the following;

senses (“indriyas” in Sanskrit)

manas (desire-driven point like attention centered on a separate “me” alienated from a world of standalone objects)

buddhi (integrative intelligence

And all of this is within – and ultimately, since this is non-dualist, “made of” – Atman, pure infinite awareness.

The modern materialist like Dennet, lost in Manas, isolates certain limited, measurable aspects of sensory experience, takes those measurements to be real, and then asks, “How do we explain Atman?”

But it is only by virtue of the Atman that he can ask the question.

The Kena Upanishad puts it beautifully:

What is it, that sees through Dennett’s eyes, but which Dennett cannot see?

What is it, which hears through his ears, but which he cannot hear?

What is it, which thinks through his mind, but his mind cannot think?

It is that, That pure Atman which encompasses, constitutes and transcends the entire universe of the contents of our experience.

[Don Salmon]

Thanks Paul, helpful and much appreciated.

[Don Salmon]

So far, though I’ve made use of the dream analogy many times, I find generally, if people havent spent time living in a contemplative way, it doesn’t help that much. The Tibetan Buddhists have incredibly powerful ways of using this.

It’s not really hard or confusing at all; I think personally it’s a natural emotional resistance. ALl this feels – it FEELS so real, that to even play with the idea of it as dream just seems to silly and maybe crazy that it’s almost unsettling to think of it seriously.

But if you want to get a clear sense of what I’m pointing to, try it.

Look at every object around you – and perhaps you don’t remember your dreams or have never had this kind of dream experience, but I can tell you, you can very very easily be in a dream where solid objects are infintiely more “real” than the objects of our ordinary waking state. You knock on them, they’re hard. Something falls on your hand, it hurts.

You look through a telescope and if you’re trained as an astronomer, you will observe every celestial phenomenon you observe in the so-called waking state.

Now this is the point where people usually bail, and i never understand why, except maybe the Dalai Lama has a clue. What you’re learning when you test whether you’re in a dream or not is what the Buddhists call “sunyata.” The Tibetans often say it’s the realization that nothing – neither the universe nor you – ‘exists from its own side” – meaning, has inherent self/separate existence.

Many people read McGIlchrist and think it means some kind of interdependence of physical and psychological phenomena.

But those phenomena ALSO have no self existence. Nothing does.

So the Dalai Lama says, if you hear about sunyata and you aren’t absolutely terrified, then you don’t really get what it means.

Now, you can glimpse that terror if you spend enough time examining why it is that it’s absolutely impossible to confirm whether you’re awake or dreaming.

The fear of engaging with this is exactly the root of the problems with AI, racism, sexism, vulture capitalism, war, aggression, addiction, education, health care, international finance, depression, trauma, psychosis, brain disease, all disease, etc.

[Don Salmon]

“Consciousness is the fundamental thing in the universe. All motion, all that exists, is nothing but the movement, the energizing of Consciousness.”

Sri Aurobindo, who received the highest marks ever attained in Latin and Greek at Cambridge U, is considered by many to be the greatest philosopher in the history of India, possibly the equal of Plato, Aristotle and just about any other philosopher anywhere.

It may be that he has a little idea about how to define a word.. The above sentence was taken from a letter written to a disciple, so it wasn’t the aim to give a precise definition. But we were so taken with it, we began over 6 chapters of our book on yogic psychology with it.

You say it’s meaningless and we should focus on whether AI is or is not “conscious.”

I notice so far neither you nor anyone else has responded to my posts on physicalism.

I honestly and truly don’t believe there has ever been a religious belief or sect – and I’m including the craziest fundamentalists like those who believe in the rapture – who ever came up with an idea so utterly and completely incoherent as physicalism (world religions scholar Huston Smith tells of a psychiatrist who noted that according to strict DSM standards, it qualifies as a psychotic disorder; as a psychologist who has conducted several thousand evaluations, I agree)

The problems with AI, as with climate change, war, famine, inequality, vulture capitalism, can never be addressed much less resolved as long as we have a psychotic view of the universe. Our minds have literally conjured up non-existent “things” like stars and planets etc that are made of some abstract stuff nobody can even define, and then we wonder why no matter what great inventions we come up with to save humanity, everything falls apart.

All contemplative traditions have said this – the original idea of “sin” had almost nothing to do with morality but living in this delusional state. The Asian traditions are more explicit – we live in Ignorance. Not intellectual ignorance, but an ignoring of the Divine Reality in which St Paul – quoting a Greek poet from the 3rd century BC – tells us “we live and move and have our being.”

Instead of Consciousness, you’re welcome to recognize God everywhere, omnipresent Her presence all pervading and all encompassing, or the all pervading Supreme Brahman, or – if you take a contemplative rather than scholastic view of it – the Tao, or Sunyata.

None of these words, as you rightly imply, are capable of being truly defined in the ordinary intellectual sense, but they can be KNOWN directly, by identity because “Tat Twam Asi,” Thou Art That.

[Don Salmon]

Hi Peter:

Rodney’s comments sparked some more thoughts and I decided to look up Walter Freeman. As I think I mentioned earlier, I”ve been intrigued by his theories for many years and when I just now looked him up, I remember why.

Here’s an excerpt from an NIH article on him:

“Olfactory system neurons sit at subthreshold levels most of the time but engage accelerating excitatory responses just above that level. This character is consistent with systems operating in a sensitive ‘edge of chaos’ regime and allows for quick burst or oscillation development with small increases in inputs. The second feature of the sigmoid non-linearity is the relationship between the slope and an animal’s conscious state (ibid.). When subjects are under anaesthesia, the slope of the sigmoid curve is very shallow; the slope increases with waking and increases still more with alertness.”

So it turns out Freeman was an engineering student at MIT before going to medical school. I remember when I first took statistics at the undergraduate level (I was auditing the class while teaching music for dance at a nearby college) I happened to have the good fortune of getting to know a mathematical genuis in the class who was also a long time student of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff. We used to have long conversations on the possibility that statistics could provide some profound insights into the process of karma.

I remember particularly noting that the way karma is described in many Tantric texts seems to resemble complexity and chaos theories regarding evolution (something that Freeman often commented on – I mean chaos theories in large scale evolution, not karma!:>))

I also remember seeing one Tantric text describing chakras as oscillating vortices of energy, that intensified in direct correlation with physiological activities in the nervous system and psychological development. At a crucial point of tension, there would be a sudden “leap” to a new level of consciousness or deveopment (similar to the one you all perhaps remember around age 10 or 11 when you truly became “self conscious” for the first time and the whole world began to change).

Notice in the above paragraph the reference to “the edge of chaos” and the quick burst of oscillation development. This reminds me of the way many.psychologists as well as historians like Jean Gebser and Aurobindo Ghose describes massive collective changes in consciousness. Gebser’ evocation of the new consciousness associated with the emergence of perspective in art and the modern tuning that Bach used in his Well Tempered Clavier seems to reflect on a global scale (pun intended) the dynamic activity of the brain that Freeman studied so profoundly.

But – let’s look at what Freeman and other neuroscientists say about perception (I had to learn how to model this when we learned a computer programming language in grad school for music composition – literally having to figure out the mathematics for each note – describing the precise waveform for each sound).

Some object in the so called “world” – which neuroscientists tell us we have no direct knowledge of – begins to vibrate, which in turn sets in motion a medium – air, earth, water, etc – wich in tunr sets in motion a diverse set of structures in the inner ear, which is translated to electrical vibrations in the auditory nerve, which is transmitted to various regions of the brain, and

at that point there is still silence, and of course, no “sound” in the phenomenological sense in the outer world, because sound is a quality – qualia- that only exists as a result of a brain of some kind.

And where and how that becomes the experience of sound, neither Freeman nor any neuroscientist has yet figured it out

Barrister and poet Owen Barfield gave what i think is one of the most beautiful illustrations of the strange mysteriousness of this physicalist view of the brain and the world:

Imagine, he says, a rainbow. Is a rainbow”real” – real nowadays meaning, does it exist “objectively” – if there was no conscious observer.

Almost everyone agrees, “No.”. You may have light and water vapor of some kind, but without perception, no rainbow. And for all of Walter Freeman’s beautiful mathematical analysis of the neurological basis of perception, the existence of the rainbow – the experience of it – remains, in the physicalist world view – an utter mystery.

Then Barfield goes on to say, if we take a tree and ask, is it real, everyone will initially say, “Of course it’s real. A tree doesn’t depend on my perception of it.”. This was Dennis Overbye’s objection to my question whether a world exists apart from consciousness.

But Barfield asks us to look a bit more closely, and use the same analysis we did for the rainbow. What is the “tree” apart from perception?

If we say the color brown, or white – well, we know that the materialists tell us that brown or white color, or gray or whatever it is, only exists AFTER that complex process of light waves, retinal activity, optical nerve, occipital lobe analysis and transmission of that analysis to other areas of the brain, after which regions of the brain remain “on the edge of chaos” until somehow, miraculously, the perception of color or sound or whatever arises.

But what about the solid FEELING of the bark ot the tree?

Same analysis. Whatever percept you describe in the universe, meaning anything any scientist has described in the past several centuries – from subatomic particles to galaxies – if we apply the same neurological analysis, we end up with an utter mystery at the end of these complex brain processe.

This is insane!

To end on a lighter note, regarding the insanity of trapping ourselves in a solipsistic view, there’s a story that one time a professor was speaking to an audience about his views of the nature of reality.

Upon announcing that he was a solipsist, a woman leapt to her feet and proclaimed, “Thank God! I thought I was the only one!!”

[Don Salmon]

Just to be clear – when it is said the brain, body and mind are an inviolable unity, I agree with that completely. I’m only taking issue with the idea of some kind of physical stuff existing wholly independent of any kind of mind, awareness or consciousness.

Nobody has ever come up with a single thought experiment or empirical experiment that could detect the existence of such stuff, and there’s no conceptual need to posit such stuff. Reject the idea entirely and the unity of mind, brain and body becomes the most obvious, self evident thing imaginable.

The unity of all things is then self evident as well.

[Don Salmon]

Hi Rodney:

All beautiful thoughts. Of course, you’re coming at this from a very different “place” (non-place, if you like) than Peter. It will be interesting to see how he and others see this.

When talking with people who accept the idea of a purely physical reality – over 50+ years – I find initially taking a very logical/analytic view can be very helpful (I personally think it’s a very LH way to look at things to talk to much of a LH way and RH way – paradox intended – so I tend to steer away from that as well).

But I’ll just add – I think you may separate the intuitive and analytic a bit too rigidly. I’ve been particularly intrigued by the effort/Grace conundrum you find in all traditions. I think Culadasa (neuroscience professor and Buddhist meditation teacher) gave the simplest integration – “awakening is like an accident. You can’t make it happen but you can make yourself accident-prone.”

Hence, in Vedanta, we have sravana (listening), manana (thinking, yes – thinking!) and niddhyasana (where thinking stops and intuition begins). Swami Sarvapriyananda has a nice down home way of saying it: “STEP 1: did you HEAR me” (like kids say, “I heard you man”) STEP 2: did you GET IT’ and STEP 3: is it REAL to you?

But in the Jesuit contemplative tradition, in much of the Kabbalah, even in Zen, most people don’t know it but there are centuries of awakened Zen masters who have written extensive commentaries on Dogen’s writings.

“Practice” of course is paradoxical. You can’t practice to be what you already are. If you approach this through intellect you’ll end up like the centipede trying to count its legs. But if you let go and go into the heart, you can meditate, pray, do rituals, study, create meditation gardens and all the rest and it’s not a problem at all.

Finally, I’m REALLY interested in hearing Peter or anyone else’s attempt to describe a scientific experiment that could provide evidence for the existence of something purely physical. Rodney, I think you gave the answer as to why this is impossible, but I think there’s a profound experiential effect – perhaps paradoxically – when you patiently work through it logically.

I remember SEEING this intuitively all in one moment, when I was 17, and just SAW there was nothing but God. But I kept getting tripped up when I read materialist philosophers.

Then one day, 17 years later, in 1987, I was reading a book which calmly pointed out that there really are no “laws of nature” – it’s an abstract concept we impose upon the infinite variety of experience. It just hit like a ton of bricks. The whole facade of science as an explanatory mechanism completely fell apart and never came back together. I spent 8 years with 600 world class philosophers, scientists, and other intellectuals on the online Journal of Consciousnss Studies Forum, and despite all I know as a psychologist about defense mechanisms, I just never got over how something that COULD be so simple and SO obvious was completely invisible to such otherwise brilliant people.

I just wrote a note to a NY Times science writer, Peter Overbye (I think that’s how you spell his name). He just published an essay musing on how satisfying it was to contemplate the end of the universe, when all life has passed and there is a purely physical reality.

I wrote him a note, first praising his essay, then noting that about 95% of neuroscientists believe all we know of the “universe” is a construction of the brain, yet the same 95% are convinced that whatever the universe is apart from our own consciousness, nobody knows – except we KNOW it’s purely physical, no mind, no consciousness. I added in a postscript after challenging this, that when I suggest perhaps the entire universe exists within consciousness, this does NOT mean it only exists in our own brain!

And of course – and I’ve seen this hundreds, maybe thousands of times, after explicitly writing this – he writes back and says, “Well, I have to believe the universe exists outside my brain.”

Fantastic! This is like the story Iain tells of the patient he had with a right hemisphere stroke, who lost the use of his left arm. Iain came to see him in the hospital one day, and saw in him bed, his left arm limp. He said, “How’s the arm doing?”. The patient cheerily responded, “Oh, fine.”. Iain talked with him a bit, trying to see if there was some way he could convey the true condition of the arm to him. Finally, Iain walks over to the patient, lifts the arm and says, “Ok, try to hold it there after I let go.”

Of course, Iain lets go and the arm drops back with a thud back to the bed. Upon which the patient exclaims, “Oh, THAT arm. That arm belongs to the guy in the bed next to me.”

[Don Salmon]

Hi Peter:

Since Freeman is also a physicalist, I don’t quite see how anything he says about the relationship of mind and brain could be substantially more worthwhile than Dennett’s. It still leaves untouched the mystery of how a world of appearances comes into being, how it is in any way orderly, how sentience, feeling,intelligence and awareness arise, why there should any kind of complexification of consciousness as even Stephen J Gould admits occurs in evolution.

It leaves untouched the biggest question of all, what I referred to earlier in my reference to Chalmer’s idea of “the hard problem of matter.”

Since at present, science has no explanation (in the philosophic sense) for anything, and has no evidence that some kind of purely physical stuff exists, and all the mysteries I referred to above, as well as the mystery as to why it is that mental health and treatments for mental health remain almost a complete mystery for the purely physicalist approach, why don’t we simply discard our ungrounded, irrational faith in the existence of some purely physical stuff?

What is the reason for our stubborn attachment to something that we could never even comprehend as existing, and which seems to make virtually everything impossible to understand?

[Don Salmon]

Hi Rodney:

Very nice, sweet and at times, deeply poetic. I feel more of your deep pastoral self coming through:

“What is ‘given up’ of our life is, however, restored in full, nothing is lost.” (we have to lose our life to save it)

Yes, I have gotten much from McGilchrist’s writings, and more important to me, it feels like he is playing a crucial role in the shift in consciousness structure occurring now.

Thank you! (might be time to shift this to a different discussion thread:>))

[Don Salmon]

Ah, getting close to my favorite topic of the moment.

You write: But I find it obvious there are… things in the world which are not in consciousness (e.g. unobserved quantum fluctuations in ’empty’ space).”

If you don’t mind a bit more on this topic

I fully understand, given our modern assumptions, why this ‘seems” obvious.

But just assume for the moment (this is not just Chopra and McGilchrist but virtually all contemplative traditions. You can quibble over whether Tao has any relation to “Consciousness” but I don’t think you can find any writings of Taoist contemplatives that say otherwise. Similarly with arguments about Sunyata. Meanwhile, Chit- the Sanskrit for Consciousness, is infinitely beyond what almost all modern scientists and philosopher mean by “consciousness” as some sort of brain function.

So, assume for the moment that the contemplative traditions understand something about the universe that scientists don’t, and what we call the “universe” exists within consciousness.

Can you conceive of ANY scientific experiment that would provide any evidence for what you think of as obvious, that would contradict the Taoist, neo-Confucian, Vedantic, etc sages?

Please don’t immediately dismiss this as word games. I’d like you to really contemplate this deeply (using both hemispheres, if you need a neurological reference:>)).

Think about it, and think about if there is no such experiment, what it says about our modern mentality that something so profoundly at odds with the entire world contemplative tradition seems so “obvious” (and by the way, any contemplative could tell you why it seems to obvious – this is not entirely a modern phenomenon)