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THESIS LIBRARY
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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CONCEPT
OF MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS IN WESTERN SCIENCE,
EASTERN MYSTICISM, AND AMERICAN INDIAN THOUGHT

presented by
MICO T. SLATTERY

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
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TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CONCEPT OF
MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS IN WESTERN SCIENCE, EASTERN MYSTICISM, AND
AMERICAN INDIAN THOUGHT
By

Mico T. Slattery

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
For the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
AMERICAN STUDIES

2008

ABSTRACT
TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CONCEPT OF
MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS IN WESTERN SCIENCE, EASTERN MYSTICISM
AND NATIVE AMERICAN THOUGHT
By
Mico T. Slattery

Despite all the sophisticated knowledge garnered by Western science over the last
few centuries, the answer to one question, essential to an enhanced understanding of the
human being, remains unresolved: the nature of consciousness or mind. Cognitive
science tells us that our minds are the result of the evolution of the brain, and our
subjective experience is nothing more than complex brain function. This view is an
extension of the model of reductive materialism. However, cognitive scientists have yet
to explain how the behavior of neurons gives rise to our subjective mental state.

Various religions have long posited the existence of soul or spirit to explain our
subjective experience. Eastern mystics have studied the mind/consciousness for
thousands of years. Since contact, Native Americans, across both North and South
America, have claimed spiritual experiences that have largely gone uninvesti gated.
Social scientists have reasoned that Native people are primitive, imaginative, easily
duped, or frauds. However, since these contentions are nearly universal across Native
America, they deserve a closer look. If we begin with the premise that Natives are not
imagining or deceiving us about these events, we arrive at the hypothesis that Native
mystical events actually happen. Out of the many that immediately arise, this paper will
address three signiﬁcant research questions:

1. Is there something unusual about the Native American or mystic’s
mind/consciousness that allows these events to happen?

2. Is there information or evidence already within the body of Western thought
and knowledge about mind/consciousness that will help us understand how
this hypothesis could be true?

3. If spirits exist as Natives insist, they must be, or must have, a form of
mind/consciousness since they act mindfully; thus, what does that tell us about
how the universe might operate?

To address these questions, we compare the notion of mind/consciousness in
cognitive sciences with that of classical Buddhism, Hinduism, and Native American
thought. To ﬂesh out the Western scientiﬁc view, we explore alternative scientiﬁc
observations and studies in the areas of bio-ﬁelds, coma studies, and brain damage, all of
which tend to refute the notion of mind out ofbrain. Going ﬁirther, new interpretations
of quantum mechanics ﬁ'om physicists David Bohm and Amit Goswami, describe a sub-
quantum realm where all matter dissolves into waves of energy, and where consciousness
is an irreducible element of the universe. Physicists describe this sub-quantum arena as
the “Ocean of Pure Potential,” a sort of primordial soup of inﬁnite potential.

An integral study by Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., further erodes the materialist
position by successfully relieving Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patients of their
symptoms through volitional Buddhist “mindfulness” techniques, causing neuronal
“rewiring” by mental force acting upon the brain; something long believed impossible.

A close comparison of the “mindful” training necessary to walk the ethical path of
Buddhism as a means of gaining a spiritual life, with that of traditional Native socializing
processes, yields some startling similarities. By bringing all these disparate views
together in order to answer the three research questions, we discover a remarkable

depiction of the nature of the human being, and the beginnings of an answer to the

mystery of mind/consciousness.

To Winnie, who never gave up and always believed;

and to my greatest fans, Hali and Myela.

Also in memoriam to the greatest Sit-down comedian ever,
Whose mind was a scintillating blend of power, passion, vast knowledge,
humility, and, most of all, humor,

Uncle Vine Deloria, Jr.

May you return to ﬁght the ﬁght again.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Doctors Bellfy, Dodson, Geffen, Poff, and Versluis, for their
support, analysis, critique, and belief in this project, twenty years in the making. It is an
understatement to say I would never have made it without them. Also, a nod of gratitude
to Doctors Valandra and Pakula who got me started, and Doctors Cajete and Gangadean
for urging me to continue. In Spite of everything that happened, without the many cups
of coffee, laughter and conversations with Doctor Gordon Henry, this project would
never have evolved. On these topics, he was the only one I knew who kept up, took the

lead, and enthusiastically let his mind go to places where we could meet.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER 1

A NATIVE PERSPECTIVE ................................................................................................ 4
Troubled Tradition ...................................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER 2

CONSCIOUSNESS, COGNITIVE SCIENCE, AND BRAIN DAMAGE ....................... 3O
Cognitive Science ....................................................................................................... 33
Deducting Mind/Consciousness ................................................................................. 39
Brain Damage and the Essential Human .................................................................... 43

CHAPTER 3

ALTERNATIVE ANSWERS FROM AURAS TO THE ABSTRACT ............................ 49
The Macro and Micro Levels of Physics ................................................................... 60
The Self-Aware Universe ........................................................................................... 76
David Bohm’s ImplicateOrder ................................................................................... 80

CHAPTER 4

NEUROPLASTICITY AND THE BRAIN ...................................................................... 89

CHAPTER 5

AN EASTERN PERSPECTIVE ...................................................................................... 110
Emotional Native Minds ......................................................................................... 117
Afﬂicted Minds ....................................................................................................... 128

CHAPTER 6

NATIVE PHILOSOPHY AND THE OCEAN OF PURE ABSTRACT '

POTENTIAL .......................... - ......................................................................................... l 39
Final Thoughts ......................................................................................................... 157

APPENDIX

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY ........................................................................................ 161

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................... . ...................... 167

vi

INTRODUCTION

As Western science continues to provide more details explaining the world, the
universe, and the nature of reality, a Si gniﬁcant piece of the puzzle remains unsolved:
human consciousness. The subjective experience, part of which is the feeling that our
conscious minds are somehow one with the body yet still separate, has resulted in much
speculation and a variety of theories attempting to explain that occurrence. Regardless of
the theory or idea to which one subscribes, subjective experience is the fundamental or
primary human experience that is antecedent to all other differences of perspective
generated by culture or worldview. In other words, without consciousness ﬁrst, we could
not conceive anything. The soul, mind, essence, psyche, spirit, life force, chi, brain,
subjectivity, and consciousness are all attempts to embody the subjective experience in a
word. Eminent disciplines within universities like psychiatry, biology, psychology,
neurology, cognitive science, and religious studies have all sprung from the desire to
deﬁne, and thus, ultimately know exactly what our conscious experience is. Yet, we still
do not know with any certainty.

To avoid confusion, in this paper I will use the term “min ” or “consciousness”
interchangeably when speaking generally about human consciousness (subjectivity), soul
or spirit when speaking about religious concepts that refer explicitly to notions like that
of eternal life combined with the spiritual nature of the human being, and “brain” when I
am Speaking of the organ itself. The latter is an important distinction because,
contemporarily, many people have accepted the notion that mind and brain is the same

thing. However, the jury is still out on that particular idea, so for now, it still makes

sense to compare ideas of what the mind might be.

Central to this study are the questions that surround claims by Native Americans
of Spiritual or mystical visitations. Traditionally, social scientists have negated those
declarations as imaginative fantasy or deception; consequently, few have ever given the
possible truth of these events serious consideration. If we begin with the premise that
Natives are not imagining or deceiving us about these events, we arrive at the hypothesis
that Native mystical events actually happen. Out of the many that immediately arise, we
will address three signiﬁcant research questions.

1. Is there something unusual about the Native American or mystic’s
mind/consciousness that allows these events to happen?

2. Is there information or evidence already within the body of Western
thought and knowledge about mind/consciousness that will help us
understand how this hypothesis could be true?

3. If spirits exist as Natives claim, they must be or have a form of
mind/consciousness since they act mindﬁilly, thus, what does that tell us
about how the universe might operate?

Ultimately, addressing these questions will give us insight into alternative views
of the nature of the human being. Consequently, we must emphasize ﬁom the beginning
that there are different ways of “knowing,” different ways of understanding who we are,
than solely through the vehicle of religion or that of science as some on either side would
have it.

In light of this inclusive notion, the explication of my research follows a path that
begins with envisioning the difference between the Western viewpoint embodied in a

world of objects, and that of the older, traditional Native view perceiving a world full of

subjects. In this View, all things are imbued with the Spirit of life, and hence,

consciousness.

Cognitive Science then presents the Western perspective and its strict materialist
interpretation of mind out of brain. A survey of lesser-known scientiﬁc studies
demonstrates alternative points of view with discussions of human ﬁelds of energy,
awareness during coma, and theoretical physics with its notion of the effects of conscious
intention on the quantum and sub-quantum realms. These studies coincide with research
question number one.

We resolve question number two with a seminal study on the neuroplasticity of
the brain and techniques drawn from Buddhism that helped patients overcome Obsessive
Compulsive Disorders. This analysis is the bridge between the mind/consciousness of
Eastern mysticism and Western science. Tied to this analysis is a comparison of mental
training between Buddhism and that of Native Americans that yields startling similarities.

Finally, we address question three by pulling the strands of Western science,
Eastern mysticism, and Native American philosophy together revealing different
perspectives ﬁnding their way to the same point; reinforcing the beneﬁt of inclusive cross

cultural connections.

CHAPTER ONE

A Native Perspective

Since ﬁrst contact, Native Americans and their Euro-American counterparts have
stood staring at each other ﬁ'om either side of a yawning chasm of misunderstanding,
because each perceives the world (or reality) in a completely different way. One sees an
equitable world rife with spirits and life, and the other a world of matter and qualitatively
and quantitatively lesser forms of life. People saturated in the Western scientiﬁc model
with its requirements for evidence and proof, ﬁnd it difﬁcult, if not impossible, to believe
Native spiritual accounts. On their side, Natives have always been appalled at what they
see as the careless disregard for the living natural world, Shown by those who derive their
view of the world from different cultural developments that led them to the perspective of
“inert matter,” and a material reality.

Inexorably, though, the processes of acculturation and assimilation have taken
their toll. As much as Native people have resisted the change, they are slowly being
absorbed into the macro-culture of the United States. Everywhere we look, commercial
elements of that larger conglomerate mass society are assaulting the minds of Native
children. Early on, Natives learned to appreciate iron kettles and knives, and now, Indian
communities are a collage of Starter jackets and Nike swooshes, with rap music in the
background booming from a car a half-mile away. Certainly, perspectives have changed
for many, but while the gap of difference between the two views is no longer so wide,
resistance to ﬁnal assimilation remains. Native people have many problems today

because of assimilation, but the most ominous is the steady erosion of their original

worldviews and their replacement by the Western commercial point of view. Many
Americans feel this is a good thing, an advance in thinking for Native people. However,
assimilation is a power relationship in which a dominating society imposes its social
structures upon vulnerable culture groups, with the express attitude that there is little of
useful substance that the defenseless group can offer. Vine Deloria, Jr. speaks directly to
this point:

Many thoughtful and useful systems of belief of ancient peoples have been Simply

rejected a priori by western religious thinkers. This attitude has intruded into

western science and then emerged as the intellectual criteria by which the world
of our experience is judged, condemned and too often sentenced to death.1

For Americans and American Indians, as for all humans, perspectives are formed
in the minds of the young ﬁ'om a set of cultural predispositions, dispensed within the
socializing process of the group that tell them who they are, where they came ﬁom, and
how the universe operates. While the process for all is essentially the same, across
cultures the content is always different. Consequently, and without favoring one over the
other, we can clearly see that there will be multiple ways of knowing, understanding, or
perceiving who we are and what our place in the universe is. Therefore, at the time of
contact, in their base assumptions about “reality,” Native Americans and Western people
were absolute polar opposites. Today, the distinction is no longer quite so clear.

I would ask for your forbearance over the next few minutes while I attempt to
recapture an earlier worldview, and thus, demonstrate the most fundamental conceptual
difference. At the risk of reducing the differences among the vast panoply of Native
beliefs, I will extract one element of belief that I think most Natives would agree is

universal: the equitable view of life, in all its forms, immanent with Spirit. Therefore,

 

' Deloria, Jr., Vine, God Is Red, 2"d Edition, North American Press, (Golden, CO: 1992) p. 284

because it is important that you grasp a sense of the Native viewpoint for the rest of this
paper, I offer you two images: the “room of objects,” and the “natural world in its pristine
state.”

For the ﬁrst image, the easiest and best would be wherever you are right now as
you read this. The second image should be a favorite place where you have been out of
doors. A natural place you have experienced, far removed ﬁ'om people and their
technology. Perhaps the Black Hills, the high Rocky Mountains, the Paciﬁc Coast, the
coast of Lake Michigan or Superior, an island, or the desert, as long as it is pretty much
free from the threat of intrusion; any compelling place where you had the feeling of
isolation from humanity while at peace within nature. As we proceed, these two simple
images will create a fundamental and integral link to your understanding of this
dissertation.

I will assume that right now you are either at home or in your ofﬁce, both places
with which you are very familiar. In most rooms that we are very familiar with, we have
usually ceased to notice the number and kinds of objects the room contains. Even if
something in the room is brand new or grossly out of place, we usually do not see the
entire room, the same way we do when the room is new to our experience and we are
attentive, and mentally engaged in setting it up and cataloguing it. We only see the new
piece and critically examine where it is and where it should ﬁt with the rest of the room,
or we try to put the old piece back where it “belongs.” In other words, familiarity
desensitizes us, and we walk right through or sit in the middle of it, and pay little
attention. As we will see, this is a metaphor for the culturally-centered operation of a

generic worldview that functions underneath and in the background, much like the

operating system of a computer.

It would be helpful if you could stop reading and take a minute or so to look about
the room and try to notice every object; do not just scan it. Truly try to see once again,
all the objects within the room in which you are sitting. Please humor me, and really do
it. The inspiration I received manifested itself when my eyes opened and I saw the room.

Everything that you just observed around you in the room, and the room itself, is
a product of the human mind. We can even make that case for the potted plants, for
instance. At one time, someone went to the jungle, the woods, or the desert, and brought
plants back to civilization or botanical gardens. Depending on the plant, it may even
have been Darwin. Long ago, someone conceived of how to propagate plants artiﬁcially.
Someone also recognized that some of those plants were viable interior houseplants
suitable for potting. Someone else envisioned and designed greenhouses, which
depended on other ideas and inventions like glass and metallurgy and what you can do
with them. Someone developed the idea of nurseries to propagate plants on a mass scale.
They or you may have started the plant from seed, cutting or cloning. Some individual
thought of the ﬂowerpot. Somebody developed the soil mixture, or dug the dirt.
Somebody saw the need for a moisture retainer in potting soil, so someone invented
vermiculite and someone else concocted perlite, and manufacturers designed machines to
gather it or chemicals to make it. Somebody bagged the soil or devised the machines that
bagged it, and someone watches the machines. Someone designed the labels on the bags,
and some chemist devised the compounds from which the bag is made, and someone else
the colors upon it, and so on. All this, and more, because someone somewhere once

thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a plant in the house?” In short, tangible products of

the mind constantly surround us for virtually every moment of our existence.

Unsurprisingly, you can easily put together a similar thought train for each of the
profusion of objects in your room. We may not know who made them, but we can easily
imagine most of the series of steps each object took ﬁ'om the idea itself, to its arrival in
the room, whether it is the linoleum on the ﬂoor or the art on the wall. Mr. Rogers made
a career out of linear explanations of these kinds to kids. We know innately how it all
works because we grow up saturated in the mechanics of our modern industrial society.
As you may plainly see now, in different ways your room can represent the functioning
of a generic worldview, as well as a speciﬁc (W estern/U .S.) worldview of objectiﬁcation,
while our innate knowledge of, yet desensitized detachment from, its familiar contents,

corresponds to how a worldview operates, in part, within any human individual.

New relax for a moment, maybe close your eyes, and put that place of natural
outdoor beauty in your mind. Look around in there and see what there is to see and hear.
Remember how it felt and smelled when you were there. Chances are you wish that you
were there now instead of in the room where you are Sitting. Because we all grew up, at
least in part, very familiar with a Westem-oriented point of view, we will understand

what follows.

What objects do we see around us that will give us a similar point of focus as our
room does, along with the innate knowledge of how it all operates? If we are far from the
beaten path, as I suggest, we will see nothing that is similar, nothing man-made. How,
then, does our innate American cultural knowledge, our object room worldview help us
to understand what lies before our eyes? We are not forcing a point by observing that we

see or are experiencing objects. In the English language, we deﬁne a noun (tree, rock,

buffalo, or human) as “a person, place, or thing.” In the US. and other Western
countries, only human beings satisfy the culturally induced criteria for personhood, all
else are “things.” Only human beings are truly important and only certain human beings
at that. A thing is an object. In this way, a prairie dog is classiﬁed the same as a stone or
a door, and often therefore, treated carelessly. English is a language of objects. Nouns
dominate, subjects always preceding the action as the most important element in a
sentence. In Anishinaabemowin, as in all Native languages according to linguist Dan
Moonhawk Alford, the action or process dominates, coming ﬁrst, and one cannot know
by grammatical structure alone whether the speaker is referring to humans or animals, or
males or females unless named at the end of the sentence.2 The language
Anishnaabemowin treats animals and humans, and men and women as equals.
Furthermore, there is a different speciﬁc declension for unmoving life forms like plants,
and then a ﬁnal one for inanimate things, usually man-made or synthetic.

Those of us who exist unmindﬁrlly in the world of objects accept the objectifying
view as reality, because the very language we use to think with never presents it any
other way. In the US, only human beings have culturally recognized inherent rights,
every other “thing” must have some ﬁinge group advocating for “it.” I must emphasize
culture here, because, as we must admit, other societies assign personhood and equity of
life to the long list of Westem-deﬁned “things,” and believe that many of those things
possess spirits. People in the mainstream United States consider this strange and
aberrant, because few have closely examined the cultural views imposed upon them that
form the set of assumptions they have concerning the world around them, and how that

creates differentiation, for instance, in the assignment of the status of “life. These

 

2 Alford, Dan Moonhawk, The Language of Spirituality, DVD Taos Communications, 2005

assumptions arise, in part, from the various branches of the physical sciences that give us
very sophisticated “Professor Mr. Rogers” linear explanations of how all those “things”
we see in front of us came to be, further reinforcing the initial material assumption of
physical reality in a constantly occurring feedback loop. Culturally speaking, at least in
educational institutions, there appears to be no alternative, for the intellectual elite have
long since abandoned non-physical or “spiritual” explanations, even though many other
people continue to believe in aspects of the spirit world.

If we simply reverse the process of the two images, we may understand cultural
disagreement from its source. If we take the natural view as our starting point, we must
try to shed our Western cultural conditioning. We must imagine living within that view,
where the artiﬁcial squares of rooms, buildings, towns, forts, or ﬁelds do not create the
boundaries of our world. In this place, we do not seek to subjugate nature to our will, or
remake it into a “better place” that matches the interior of our squares. The voices of
culture teach us that spiritual forces created the world perfectly to suit all life; therefore,
we believe it, and try to ﬁnd the place where we ﬁt.

Numerous people have experience of spirits, and because our initial assumption is
that of a spiritual origin, rather than solely physical, we do not question their experience,
we believe. What, then, do we as Native people, perceive when we look out upon the
vista before us? We see living beings with spirits similar to our own. We may even see
spiritual beings because our minds believe it when we see them, rather than questioning
or ignoring. We do not see inert objects anywhere. What do we see when the new
people come that treat everything as if it has no Spirit at all? We see strange and aberrant

beliefs and behavior; we see a form of insanity, people whose minds are not functioning

10

correctly according to our own nonwestern Native cultural standards. We have arrived at
the historical point of impasse. This is the point at which the power relationship of
assimilation comes into play. To my mind, this is also the point where Western academic
understanding and their solutions tend to fall apart.

As is true for almost everyone, most academics at US. universities come
complete with an unexamined and subconsciously operating worldview. Therefore,
everything automatically ﬁlters through their set of cultural assumptions. Western
methodologies create a logically pleasing "vegematic" perceptual grid used to slice and
dice, catalog, codify and index the natural world, out of which arrangement comes the
foundation of their particular knowledge. One of the drawbacks to such a schema,
however, is the objectiﬁcation of the "data," even when it is deeply profound human
experience.

In keeping with our image metaphor, cultural ﬁlters allow them/us to ﬁnd a place
for everything, including the beliefs of other groups, in the room full of objects where
they become familiar, but largely ignored, additions. In this room, the operating system
objectiﬁes and qualiﬁes as “cultur ” every other group’s beliefs, rarely recognizing that
their own beliefs incorporated within the operating system itself come from the same set.
Thus, in the same manner that we can use our innate knowledge (operating system) of the
source of our potted plants or the pen on the desk, we can create an academic linear
description of the steps between the origin of the belief in Spirits and American Indian
spiritual beliefs, objectify them, and categorize them as primitive “animism” or

“spiritism.”3 In this situation, the ideas and philosophy behind these religious beliefs

 

3 Both are considered rudimentary forms of superstitious pagan beliefs on the bottom of the evolutionary
ladder of religion, recognized by the superstitious worship of animals, and spirits which inhabit everything.

11

have no power to affect the operating system itself, and so can never help change the
view of the room. If this is a simplistic, yet reasonable description of the mechanics
involved, Western knowledge seems doomed to remain ethnocentric.

There is a maxim in this society regarding the maintenance of an open mind, but I
believe this to be a very difﬁcult proposition, especially when attempting to study other
people and their beliefs. We all like to think that our minds are open, but our beliefs
reside deeper than the rational intellectual level. For instance, I might perceive myself as
an individual with an open mind. If someone has better evidence for his or her Opinion
than mine, I can change my opinion. However, something critical happens when an
opinion hardens into a belief. It sits deeper in my mind, and I own it. I have become
emotionally attached to it. While we often may change our opinions, we very rarely
change our beliefs. Furthermore, it is the belief that we hold the “Truth” in our hands that
allows us to beat people over the head with it.

The very nature of scientiﬁc methodology makes it difﬁcult to learn ﬁom other
people, because the objectiﬁcation of that data means we learn about them, not ﬁ'om
them. How do you interact with a piece of data? If we are saturated with a particular
worldview complete with attendant beliefs in the superiority or inferiority of other
cultures, other races, and other beliefs, how can we then approach these cultures with
open minds? The ﬁrst step is to recognize and evaluate our own preconceptions. That is
the trick to scholarship with integrity; especially when it means dealing with people as
human beings, and not as data to place within a theory.

Indigenous people know well the result of traditional scholarship.

Anthropologists gathered the vast majority of sources available in the study of American

12

Indians, for example, in the mode of Indians as objects of study. If this were not the case,
if respect had been tendered them as every human being deserves, then surely the
research material would have been placed before the people themselves for input and
veriﬁcation. This has rarely, if ever, been the case.

However, we should not lose sight of the fact that the Western View is just one
example of how an unexamined worldview operates. Unless we, as individuals, culture
groups, or nations, thoroughly and objectively (as possible) examine our own underlying
beliefs, we will not recognize that the voices of our own particular social culture implant
many of the seemingly personal convictions and beliefs within our minds. In addition,
our ignorance will allow us to disregard as unimportant or unfounded, any information
that does not correspond with our own beliefs. Often we will be very intolerant of the
differences.

This situation also throws into stark relief the forces of assimilation that American
government has aimed directly at Native people, education being particularly destructive
to our previous mental image of the pristine natural world that Natives held, and are
trying to maintain. Students exposed to the notion that the Western world of objects is
the true description of reality, ﬁnd themselves forced to accept it because of the certainty
with which mandatory schooling teaches it, along with the curriculum requirements for
thinking in that direction. In our metaphorical terms, the operating system has been
updated to a newer version. Once a student fully accepts the new way of thinking and
being, their epistemological structure changes and then they pass on the new set of values
to their children. Since children acquire most of their beliefs from parents, family, and

authority ﬁgures they trust, and since most of us humans do not consciously examine our

13

beliefs, one can see that with wide-ranging cultural acceptance, one or two generations
would be enough to virtually extinguish that group as a viable culture.

Eminent religious studies scholar Charles Long sees the “locus of this problem”
as inherent in the notion of “civilization.”4 Hidden within that seemingly innocuous word
is more than ﬁve hundred years of grief and suffering, because “civilized” presupposes
that there are “uncivilized” or “primitives”; and the West places much value on its
conception of civilizations Referring to Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process, Charles
Long ﬁnds the term arbitrary and ethnocentric:

This concept expresses the self-consciousness of the West. One could even say: -

the national consciousness. It sums up everything in which Western society of the

last two or three centuries believes itself superior to earlier societies or “more
primitive” contemporary ones. By this term, Western society seeks to describe
what constitutes its special character and what it is proud of: the level of its
technology, the nature of its manners, the development of its scientiﬁc knowledge
or view of the world, and much more.6

This feeling of superiority translated into the “White Man’s Burden” and allowed
even well—meaning white philanthropists to feel that they were doing Indians a favor by
destroying their cultures.

In his seminal work, The Great Chain of Being, Arthur 0. Lovejoy describes the
development of certain ideas that become deep-seated socio/cultural assumptions.
According to Lovejoy, these ideas ultimately escape arenas of social and intellectual
discourse:

There are, ﬁrst, implicit or completely explicit assumptions, or more or less

unconscious mental habits, operating in the thought of an individual or a

generation. It is the beliefs which are so much a matter of course that they are

rather tacitly presupposed than formally expressed and argued for, the ways of
thinking which seem so natural and inevitable that they are not scrutinized with

 

: Long, Charles, See: Primitive/Civilized: The Locus of a Problem in Signiﬁcations, pp. 79-96
Ibid. p. 84
6 As quoted in Long, Signiﬁcations, p. 84. See also The Civilizing Process, p. 3

14

the eye of the logical self-consciousness, that often are the most decisive of a

philosopher's doctrine, and still oﬁener of the dominant tendencies of an age.7

Lovejoy is speaking speciﬁcally about the Western conception of the Great Chain
of Being, recognizable as the simple hierarchy of human, animals, plants, and minerals.
Western Europeans further divided the category of humans. Allowing for this, we can
further describe the hierarchy of humans that derives from Elias’s notion of Western
“self-consciousness.”

A hierarchy is a simple and useful ancient Western method of classiﬁcation. If
one wants to classify blue ﬂowers based on shade or tint of blue, one need only ﬁnd one
with which to begin. There are only three possibilities for the next blue ﬂower: bluer,
equally blue, or less blue. One may then proceed to classify all the blue ﬂowers in the
world accordingly.

There is no value inserted into this classiﬁcation, it is neutral. In other words, the
classiﬁer is not saying either more or less blue is better. However, when we consider
Elias’s summary of the Western notion of civilization, we can easily see that value plays
a large role in its conception. So, during the European voyages of discovery, just how
many civilizations did the Europeans ﬁnd to be equal to their own? How many of the
different “races” of humans did they ﬁnd to be equal to themselves in manners, religion,
technology, etc.? These are the easiest questions on the test. Consequently, all “others”
were primitive in comparison.

Europeans and their American descendents saw themselves as the pinnacle of
(civilized) humanity, and still do. To verify this, all we have to do is look at the

conceited marketing within American history books like The Rise of the West, or we can

 

7 Lovejoy, Arthur 0., The Great Chain of Being, (Cambridge, MA: 1961). p. 7

15

just look around with our eyes open. Assuredly, most history books written by a culture
or nation about that culture or nation will witness the same type of ethnocentrism.
However, we can still see the effects of Western rapaciousness masked by false altruism
today in our economic and foreign policies, as well as federal Indian policy; and in recent
history, no one else has had that power of imposition for as long a period of time.

Charles Long uses the phrase “Empirical Others” to deﬁne a cultural phenomenon
in which the extraordinariness and uniqueness of a person or culture is ﬁrst recognized
negatively.8 For instance, the remarkable positive qualities of generosity and paciﬁsm
demonstrated by the “Indians” and recorded by Columbus and his men during his ﬁrst
voyage, changed to a comparative negative in the light of European civilization, when he
determined that those qualities would make of them “good slaves.” As cognitively
dissonant as this may sound to those who believe we are well on our way to having
solved these issues, the comparative negative of the Empirical Other as primitive has
allowed the perceptual label of “sub” human to stick. While few people in America
would admit to prejudice, we may ﬁnd racism alive and well in the United States today.

In addition, because of the perpetually childlike nature of the primitive stereotype,
self-determination is a wraith that Native people can only seize with difficulty, partly
because colonized people eventually identify with the colonial perspective, and partly
because the stereotype continues to rule in governmental minds.9 For Indian people, self-
deterrnination and sovereignty is a cruel chimera as long as Congress holds plenary
power over all their affairs. We can see that the power of the primitive stereotype over

Native people continues today, because few take them seriously on any matter, including

 

8 Long, p. 80
9 See Albert Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized

l6

religion. Charles Long looks deeper into that aspect of the stereotype through the
dissection of the methods of founding religious studies scholars and their fascination with
primitive and prehistoric religions. Eliade, Soderblurn, and van der Leeuw all looked at
the history of religion through the lens of the prirrritive.lo While that is not necessarily
offensive, since even the likes of the famous French philosopher Diderot thought that
perhaps the ancient “nature religions” might be closer to original truth, scholars have
often grounded their approach in the scattergun social application of the theory of
evolution so popular amongst anthropologists. As such, scholars see primitive religions
as archaic and outmoded, “existing as modes of thought and imaginative speculation”
before evolving over time into their more sophisticated forms in the primitive/civilized
model, such as monotheism.ll In essence, then, Native religious beliefs have never been
remarkable for their social, philosophical, and spiritual efﬁcacy, but rather only as a

curiosity frozen in antiquity.

Troubled Traditions
For the purposes of this paper, we have to speak philosophically about traditional
Native religions, because by “tradition ” I refer to those customs and beliefs descended
from those that existed at the time of contact. Many Native people consider themselves
“traditionals” today, meaning that they follow the old ways; however, the concept
becomes muddy when put into the context of my deﬁnition. Few, if any, people live
entirely the way our ancestors of six hundred years ago did, and although we have

experienced a renaissance of sorts, in the last forty years or so, generally speaking,

 

'° Long, pp. 79-80
” Ibid. p. 80

17

traditional practices have been in steady decline in most parts of the country because of a
concerted attack by American government and churches for hundreds of years. ‘2 Unity
of belief within tribal environments is largely a thing of the past. Some cultures like the
Pueblos have had better success in holding off assimilation. Obviously, the further away
you are from “civilization” the better the chance that you may retain your traditional
culture. However, that is no guarantee either, because even the Hopi, isolated in the
desert, whom many have considered the most staunchly conservative of their religious
traditions, are troubled by the lack of interest shown by contemporary tribal youth. So
much so, that they are sponsoring a conference in the spring of 2009 in an effort of
revitalization.” As we can readily see, science, capitalism, technology, and education all
have played a role in the waning of the power of traditional religions.

Native beliefs and practices experienced a renaissance beginning in the 19603.
Some Native prophecies predicted this revitalization. For example, the Seven Prophecies
of the Ojibwa speak of the Sixth Fire wherein most of the people would turn away from
their traditional beliefs. The Seventh Fire would then witness a return of many people
back to the sacred ﬁres. The Anishinaabeg believe that is what we are experiencing
today. However, it is not as easy as it sounds, and I can speak from my own experience.

For a variety of reasons, most of them government policies, many Native people
neither live on traditional lands nor practice traditional customs. During and after the
boarding school experience, many people whom the government forced to attend chose
not to teach their children their language and customs. They themselves had been beaten

and ridiculed for attempting to maintain those elements of culture. They did not want

 

'2 Deloria, Jr., Vine, The World We Used to Live In, Fulcrum Publishing, (Golden, CO: 2006) p. xvii
'3 Seedheart: The Braiding Dialogue and Conﬂuence Gathering, Northern Arizona University, April 2009

18

their children or grandchildren to suffer the same fate. It was safer for them to go along
with the assimilation policies. Nevertheless, some reserves kept their language and
customs intact, but today these are far more difﬁcult to maintain.

For instance, twenty years ago, many considered Navajo (Dine’) language to be
the most resilient American Indian languages in modern US. history. Nearly all people
in the parent generation spoke ﬂuently, and the grandparent generation was almost
entirely monolingual Diné speakers. Almost all the children entering schools spoke only
Navajo. Today that is no longer the case. The tribe is at a crossroads. The number of
monolingual Diné speakers has decreased tremendously with the loss of the grandparent
generation, the subsequent generation (now the grandparent) is largely bilingual, and
most little children now enter schools as monolingual English speakers.14 The Dine’ are
witnessing language extinction in two generations. Mohawks face extinction in one.
Other tribes, such as the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, are in critical condition for
they can count less than a handful of ﬂuent original language speakers leﬁ today. If we
are in the middle of a pan-Indian cultural renaissance, what can account for these
numbers?

For one thing, we must acknowledge the loss of many elders. The other side of
the equation must be that children are not learning the language. If, as some say, that
culture is rooted in the language, what does that say about the culture of a tribe who has
lost or nearly lost their language? I have taken ﬁve semesters of Anishinaabernowin
(Ojibwa language), and have lost most of it now. However, at best, the most I will ever

be is a translator, translating everything back through English. Consequently, I have had

 

'4 Benally, AnCita, Dine’ Bizaad INavajo Iangu_age|at a Crossroads, Bilingual Research Journal, National
Association for Bilingual Education, Spring 2005

19

to work very hard to overcome the assumptions that come ﬁom being a member of the
larger society. The reality is that I can get along quite well without knowing the
language. For children it is the same thing. There are no televisions shows or video
games in Ojibwe, most of the parents and grandparents do not speak it; therefore, what
makes learning the language more than just a novelty for children?

The deterioration of language has another profound residual effect. Many Native
people speak of “Original Instructions” given by the Creative Spirit to the People in their
speciﬁc language. The Medicine People conducted ceremonies, of course, in that
language. The extinction of languages means the potential loss of the most vital aspect of
culture, ceremonies.

Historically speaking, we know that this has been happening steadily, in differing
degrees, all over Native America. Disturbingly though, the trend was very slow until
recently, and, as witnessed by the Dine’, now it seems to be accelerating. Today many
young Indian people, especially the English ﬁrst-language speakers like me, are primarily
Western in thought and beliefs, simply because that is the cultural environment in which
we grew up. Thus, the difference between the two ways of seeing the world (objects and
nature) in some ways no longer exists. My guess is that a statistical analysis would show
a direct correspondence of the rate of acceleration of westernization with the rise of
communication technologies on reservations.

Because these technologies are ubiquitous, television, for instance, has carried the
fatuous voice of mainstream American commercial culture directly into native living
rooms and has been for at least two generations. Commercials are mostly about objects

that we may own, or cultural ways that we should be. Cable, and then satellite TV, has

20

increased exposure to ideas alternative to Native concepts because of the number of
channels available. Telephones made contact nearly instantaneous, so we do not have to
travel to talk to someone “live.” Cell phones have made it more so, and have increased
the familiarity to new ideas and information (most of it from a Western perspective)
because now Indians can access the intemet.

In the old days, Native people lived outside, and only went inside for inclement
weather or to eat and sleep, and not always then. Now we live inside of the room of man-
made objects. Sometimes a person can walk onto the concrete of the garage, get into our
“mobile object room” and drive to work, get out on a paved parking lot, walk up a
concrete sidewalk, and go into a building. After walking around in the building all day,
he or she can reverse the process, and never once touch the natural earth during a
workweek.

O Indigenous people (and everybody prior to the invention of the clock) marked
time by the rhythms of nature, the sun making its way up and down the horizon, the
phases of the moon, the seasons, the weather, and the constellations. Because we lived
outside in the pristine natural metaphor, our bodies and our minds resonated with those
rhythms, and everyone learned through actual experience exactly what these rhythms
were.

Clocks, calendars, and TV weatherrnen now tell us everything we need to know
about time and natural weather. Today, the vast majority of my native students cannot
tell whether the moon is in the waning or waxing state when they look at it. Clocks, in
particular have helped to destroy our union with the natural world, because not only do

we no longer have to go outside to know how the day or night has progressed, but now

21

clocks rule our lives with timetables and deadlines. Even a sundial forced someone to go
out and read the sun.

If we follow this line of thought just a little further, it would follow that fewer
Native people attend traditional ceremonies, because the deeper we adopt a different
mindset, the further we are away from the mental space where ceremonies make sense.
Not many Natives on the reserve where I teach attend traditional ceremonies. For
instance, few of my students have ever been inside a sweat lodge, and I was well into my
forties before I was ever in a lodge myself. Nevertheless, while many students seem
embarrassed by their lack of traditional knowledge, they are still hesitant to attend. There
are several reasons for this state of affairs. The level of assimilation is very high, so the
level of belief in the old ways is low; they simply do not care; they are afraid of making a
mistake, especially since they are Indians and should know all about it; or they are
Christian, or come from Christian families. When considering the list of factors affecting
traditional ways, we must add the effects of missions on the Indian tribes.

Vine Deloria, Jr., realized, "It is not simply enough for Indian people to claim a
validity for their religions as against Christianity and other religions. Rather they must
always be on their guard to ensure that their religion is taken seriously as a religion by
others, with a conception of the world that is different than other conceptions, but which
has a high degree of potential validity. "15 Here Deloria addresses differences of
worldview that can prevent credibility of one, when standing (thinking) in the other. The
predominant world-view is the principal impediment to religious respectability for

Indigenous peoples. The controlling society in this country is saturated with a view of

 

'5 Deloria, Vine, Jr. God is Red, North American Press, (Golden, CO: 1992) p.268

22

reality that has little tolerance for opposing convictions. Furthermore, while the modern
tribal councils have been effective in promoting economics and the physical aspect of
modern life on a survival level, you would have to look very far to ﬁnd a contemporary
sitting tribal council that promotes traditional religion. Most council members are
western-educated “progressive” people, and often the “traditional” people avoid council
politics because they do not recognize the constitutional council as true government.

For this predicament of American Indians to improve, that situation must change,
somehow; but another problem arises, for the burden of proof always seems to fall on
those whose rights are being trampled. Rather than a benevolent federal government as a
watchdog for the rights of the people, it is the government that tramples and the people
who must prove their injury. So, then, how does one go about proving, using the rules set
up by the disbelieving party, that not only are other beliefs acceptable, but that they have
an equal amount of legitimacy? Religious adherents tend to believe in the pre-eminence
of their particular beliefs and scorn others’, sometimes going so far as to “demonize”
other deities.

It is not solely a Christian tactic to demonify the gods of the conquered. For
instance, the Israelites changed the beneﬁcent harvest god of the Philistines Ba’al Zebub
into Beelzebub, the satanic adversary of Yahweh. An example of a more modern
demonization would be the naming of a lake in North Dakota. The Lakota called the
lake, Mini Wakan or “Sacred Waters;” the missionaries renamed it Devil’s Lake.
Furthermore, it is not a stretch to consider missionaries the forward arm of conquest,
since their main message was preaching surrender to the will of God, objectiﬁed in the

personage of Europeans.

23

Even more recently, ministers used such strategies designed to attack traditional
beliefs directly. I went to a meeting at a house on the reserve to discuss aspects of the
Old Testament with a local minister and a house full of believers. At one point, I made
reference to Gitchirnnidoo (Great Mystery) and an indignant older woman stopped me
and asked why I spoke of the Devil during this conversation. It dawned on me quickly
that she had been indoctrinated when she was young into believing that traditional ways
were a form of “devil worship.” Essentially, her Christian teachers took the Anishinaabe
name of “God” and turned it into the name of the Devil. Probably nothing I said in my
subsequent explanation changed anything about the deep belief she held. I knew
intellectually that missionaries used these methods, but it was the ﬁrst time I had run into
it personally. I have heard similar tales since then, and there are many Native Christians.

All of that notwithstanding, we must recognize that ceremonies were the glue that
held the culture together. From birth to death for millennia, traditional ceremonies I
named the children; marked their growth through time; gave thanks to the Earth, the
plants, and animals for their food; sacriﬁced in gratitude and reciprocation; sanctiﬁed
pipes and other spiritual accoutrements; fed the spirits of the ancestors through the year;
sang the sun up; sent the deceased out the western door; and much more. In effect, the
old Indians lived within a sacred mindset that we modems can scarcely imagine, and it
was a rare European or American that recognized that Native peoples held deep religious
beliefs. ‘6 Again, though this statement is a generalization in which the large variety of
tribes ﬁts individually, some few tribes remain fairly strong within tradition, most others
are largely assimilated, and still others are somewhere in between. Unfortunately, those

are the facts. Therefore, there can be no doubt that the unity of culture and language is

 

'6 See Vine Deloria, jr. God is Red

24

eroding, and ceremonies are poorly attended compared to the total Native population, or
there would be no need for revitalization movements. Thus, the culture is coming
unglued, metaphorically and realistically. The difference between the two worldviews
has almost disappeared in some cases. Any effort at revitalization of language and
culture must take all these changes of mindset into consideration, because if we just learn
a language in translation with English, it is unlikely that will provide the proper
worldview to transform the mind. F urtherrnore, if we are comfortable within the
American way of life and nothing else changes except that we have learned a language,
then that language is not transforrnative, it is just another school subject to put in our
backpacks along with the math and science textbooks.

We often point to the turn of the twentieth century as the nadir of American
Indian existence. Population numbers were at their lowest, and illnesses brought on by
malnutrition and starvation were the number one killers at that time. Since then, Native
population has increased, rights have increased, ﬁnancial security has increased, and
some would say that Natives are better off then they have been since the Allotment era of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, I believe that the
American Indian way of life is closer to extinction than at any other time in history.

Of course, throughout history there have been individuals who believed that
Western imposition brought cultural extinction to Native cultures. In 1680, three spirits
visited a religious leader from San Juan Pueblo named Popé, and told him to wash the
baptism from their bodies, destroy all religious artifacts, cast off their Christian names,
burn the Spanish seeds and revert back to traditional diets and agriculture. The Spaniards

had destroyed the kivas and suppressed the ceremonies of the Pueblo people, forcing

25

them to build the new Spanish towns and work like slaves in the ﬁelds. Pope
subsequently led the Great Pueblo Revolt against the Spaniards, killing over 400 soldiers
and civilians (including two-thirds of the Catholic priests in the region), sacked the city
of Santa Fe, burned the colonial headquarters, and sent the Spanish ﬂeeing back to El
Paso; but only for about ten years. 17

The Red Stick (Baton Rouge) cultural revival and resistance movement amongst
the Muscogee in the early 18003 is another example. Originally, an internal political and
spiritual movement, the calculated murder of a small family group of Red Sticks by
Georgia patriots culminated in the killing of over ﬁve hundred whites and mixed bloods
during the Fort Mims Massacre, and precipitated the Creek War of 1813. Spiritual
fundamentalists, the Red Sticks resisted all forms of invasive white culture, aggressively
burning cloth and clothing, and destroying pots, pans, and other European commercial
trappings. The movement ended with Andrew Jackson’s massacre of eight hundred Red
Stick men, women, and children at the “Battle” of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.

Two hundred years ago, the Shawnee Lalawethika, fell down in what people
thought was a drunken stupor, and woke up as “The Prophet” Tenskwatawa, the “Open
Door.” His family was preparing him for the flmeral when he suddenly awoke and told
of a vision he had experienced that was similar to, but more extraordinary than death. He
was to bring the message of the “Master of Life” to his people.‘8 His brother Tecumseh

utilized the information found in Tenskwatawa’s vision to attract allies from the Great

Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

'7 Document NO. AJ-OO9B Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermin’s Attempted
Reconquest, 1680-82, Wisconsin Historical Society, Digital Library and Archives, pp. 232-257

 

'8 Gilbert, Bil, God Gave Us This Country. Doubleday, (New York: 1989), pp. 215-13

26

The Prophet’s message included a lengthy list of taboos, chief among them was
alcohol. In essence, the message told them to avoid all the inﬂuences of the whites.
They were to eat traditional diet, make clothing from hides and ﬁbers rather than the
Whiteman’s cloth, and dress in the old ways without the decorations from the traders.
They could use guns to ﬁght the whites, but they must use bows for hunting. They
should make ﬁres with bow drills, and keep a sacred ﬁre burning in each lodge.19

There were other spiritual movements involving Pontiac and Wovoka, for
instance, but they all had several factors in common. Each movement had distinctive
visionary spiritual elements and speciﬁc requirements for behavior and revitalization of
culture. They recognized that their way of life was threatened and their cultures were on
the verge of extinction. Simply, they found the commercial elements of Western culture
destructive to their ways of life, and they decided to get rid of them. Armed revolution
was no long—term solution in 1680, and certainly is not an option today. The gadgetry
and widgets of modern American techno-culture are pervasive and widely accepted by
contemporary young Natives. Therefore, it is unlikely that we might convince people to
abandon them.

However, we cannot pretend that Europeans imposed all of the cultural
destruction we have witnessed. Native people have also been willing participants in this
dynamic. For instance, before contact, Natives had built-in strictures against the wasteful
destruction of life, a reciprocal covenant with the animals and all other life forms from
time immemorial. European traders brought goods that Indians had never seen; steel
knives, axes, and guns, ﬂint and steel to start ﬁre, cloth, and virtually indestructible iron

kettles within which one could boil water directly on the ﬁre rather than dropping heated

 

”Ibid, p. 217

27

stones in them. One could try to make the case that, in and of themselves, material goods
are beneﬁcial, if not merely neutral (if he or she ignored the environmental aspects of
their manufacture), because, after all, their purpose is to make lives a little easier, and
nobody forced Natives to take them. Nevertheless, who would not want to give up the
arduous task of making clothing from leather, chopping wood with rocks, constantly
having to replace birchbark pots, or being able to drop a deer from one hundred yards
instead of having to do it from ﬁfteen with a bow? However, there was a price for these
goods: many different kinds of fur. To participate in the commercial seduction of trade
“goods,” one only needed to kill a few more beaver or mink than usual. What changed
for Native people when the ﬁrst Native killed the ﬁrst surplus animal for a commercial
reason? Everything changed for some people. They broke the covenant, stepped off the
ethical path, and, consequently, their minds began to change. Instead of celebrating life,
in a sense, they began to celebrate death because of the trade goods the animal’s demise
would bring.

Finally, along with a change of consciousness has come the requisite change of
perception. I mark it by a shift ﬁom Earth Consciousness to Rez Consciousness. Rather
than perceiving the Earth as a living breathing sentient being, some see it as plots of
reservation land based in the concept of ownership. In other words, our perceptive focus
has declined from a living spiritual global view to a materialist local one. For those of us
who live fully or even partially in the Western way, the cultural perspective of our minds
has changed. As we saw in the ﬁrst section, Native people saw the world in an entirely
different way than that of Europeans. That perspective, more than any aspect of material

culture, is what separated us from Western people. When we have come to think in the

28

same way, believe the same things, and desire the same things, wherein is that difference

today?

29

CHAPTER TWO

Consciousness, Cognitive Science, and Brain Damage

For Native people, consciousness is spirit or, as the average person might
understand it, soul. At one time, it was the same thing in the West, but not any longer in
the scientiﬁc world of knowing. However, that change in belief has created many
problems of deﬁnition. Assuming spirit is relatively easy because it is a belief, but there
is no acceptable scientiﬁc evidence for the existence of spirits or soul. Therefore the
sciences must ﬁnd a different way of explaining our subjective experience.

The word “conscious” comes from the translation of the Latin meaning “knowing
things together.” John Locke deﬁned it as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own
mind.”20 Other deﬁnitions include: awareness; awake; able to feel and think; aware of
oneself as a thinking being; the totality of one’s thoughts feelings, and impressions; and
mind.

Deﬁnitions of “mind” add a little more: memory; that which thinks, perceives,
feels, wills, etc.; seat of consciousness; the thinking and perceiving part of consciousness;
intellect or intelligence; and all of an individual’s consciousexperiences. What is it, who
and what are we when we subtract all the ﬁller and ﬂuff that constantly runs through our
heads, and experience what Franklin Merrell-Wolff designates “consciousness without an
object?” If I may put aside the sum total of my experience through mental and spiritual
discipline as Buddhists say, who or what experiences sunyata? Ifl have a soul and it

lives beyond the death of my body, what is that experience like? Can we even call it

 

2° Marsh, Caryl, A Framework for Describing Subjective States of Consciousness, IN Alternate
States of Consciousness, Free Press (New York: 1977) p. 121

30

experience? When I die, will I have awareness, memory, intellect, or. . .? Who knows?
That is the question. However, for now we will accept the combined deﬁnitions of mind
above, while keeping in mind that we are looking for something deeper, more meaningful
than the “totality of one’s thoughts, feelings, and impressions,” even at the risk of
offending the anti-essentialists.

People often deﬁned early psychology as the “science of consciousness,” which
comprised all the contents of awareness: sensations, mental images, thoughts, desires,
emotions, etc. Consciousness was seen as “mental stuff,” different from the material
substances of which physical objects consisted. Consciousness was also an attribute that
differentiated humans from the “mindless” things of the earth. It also described the
awareness that comprised the state of being fully awake, with other drowsy or somnolent
states categorized as different levels of consciousness.21

Before the turn of the twentieth century, William J arnes described consciousness
as a “continual stream” and established techniques of introspection and experimentation
for psychological study. By the ﬁrst decade of the twentieth century, there were several
laboratories in Europe and the United States exploring the contents of subjects’
awareness using introspective techniques, but the results were vague and consciousness
remained elusive.

Then, in 1913, J .8. Watson published his book on behaviorism in which he
proclaimed: “The time has come when psychology must discard all reference to
consciousness. . .its sole task is the prediction and control of behavior; and introspection

can play no part of its method.”22 Many psychologists followed Watson and abandoned

 

2' Ibid. p. 122
22 Ibid. p. 122

31

the study of the human mind while attempting to relate phenomena of consciousness to
neurophysiological operations within the brain.

Research into consciousness gave way to stimulus-response theory. Freud arrived
on the scene decreeing that a major part of the stream of mental activity was unconscious.
Since then, psychologists have largely concerned themselves with the unconscious as an
explanatory concept, while neuroscientists have sought consciousness in the
electrochemical activity of the brain.

However, there is at least one order of animals that the materialist should give
their due, though they never have, the cetaceans. Toothed whales from dolphins to killer
whales have shOwn off their intelligence for years at the local Sea Worlds. Obviously,
observing them in their natural habitat for any length of time is difﬁcult. If complexity is
the base comparison with human beings, the great whales have it:

This is undoubtedly an animal with a cortex of complex structure corresponding

to complex psychic manifestations. The sperm whale brain must possess an

extreme plasticity in the functional respect and practically inexhaustible
possibilities for establishing links between stimuli and the form of reaction.23

However, does all that mean a whale has consciousness?

Moreover, due to the complex structure of its cortex, for a vast number of nerve
cells the sperm whale brain must ensure not only the accumulation of a colossal
number of ﬁxed and predetermined reactions to stimuli from the environment
elaborated during the course of evolution, but also the accumulation of individual
forms of reaction which are arbitrary (volitional or conscious), elaborated and
accumulated by the animal during its life. 24

The sperm whale’s brain structure is such that this can be said to be a “thinking”
animal capable of displaying high “intellectual” abilities. . . [the brain] is highly
developed; this is expressed in the complex structure of the cortex. . .which
indicates the possibility of acquiring and accumulating life experiences and

 

23 Yablokov, A.V., The Sperm Whale, Paciﬁc Scientiﬁc Research Institute of Fisheries and
Oceanography, (Moscow: 1972) p. 147
24 Ibid. p. 147

32

realizing associational functions of the highest psychic order.25

If we compare the mass of the brain (size matters), whale’s brains have signiﬁcantly
more mass, allowing for more neurons, dendrites, etc. than humans have. The size is
greater, the complexity is comparable—if not greater because of volume—all the
structures we point to with pride in our own brains are there. Can we reasonably say that
whales have limited consciousness compared to us? This may be the line between merely
killing an animal, and murdering a conscious sentient being; if cognitive science cannot
ﬁnd consciousness in humans; it certainly will not attribute it to animals. Yet, it seems
that Native cultures did exactly that, not recognizing this stark line between humans and

“others” that Western science imposes.

Cognitive Science

What capacities, and what potential capacities do our minds have? That is the
underlying question in all of this, but as mentioned, there is no consensus as to what
consciousness is. I mean, we intuitively know what it is because consciousness is
subjective and ﬁrst person, but I only experience the cave of my own mind, while having
to assume that others see, think, feel, etc. the way I do. We seem to recognize
consciousness when we see it. Our pets seem to have it, but could trees or rocks have it
like Native Americans seem to claim, and, if so, what would that be like? We can “lose”
consciousness, for a period, and then somehow ﬁnd it again and “reawaken.” We must
admit that there are different states of consciousness, because, presumably, we have all

had dreams, and the images of vivid dreams sometimes lodge themselves in our long-

 

” Ibid. p. 151

33

term memory just like any waking experience. I can recall dreams from my childhood.
Some who meditate relate experiences that differ from our normal waking state, and
some even talk of pure-consciousness events wherein object and even subject awareness
disappears. What is a trance state? Can science substantiate astral projection? What is a
mystical experience? What about psi and psychics, do they really exist or is it all an
elaborate hoax as the self-appointed science skeptics claim? Skeptics tell us that there is
no evidence of mind over matter. Yet, I have seen a ﬁlm of a scientiﬁc experiment
wherein a yogi reduced his heartbeat to a very few beats a minute, and his respiration to a
couple of breaths per minute, allowing him to survive in an airtight box for an hour after
his oxygen should have run out. Does the brain actually produce consciousness or does it
ﬁlter and transmit it? Does death extinguish consciousness, or does it live on? What is
déjci vu, and why does gooseﬂesh often accompany it when we have that experience?
What is precognition? Where does prophecy come ﬁom? What is ESP, and do some
people really have that ability? What is memory? What are ideas, and where do they
come ﬁ'om? What is a ﬂash of insight? What is intuition? What is really happening
during a “near death” experience? What are the “spirits” that Native Americans still
claim to experience, and are there ways to explain them scientiﬁcally, rather than explain
them away? These are just some of the questions surrounding this one abstract concept.
Many rational explanations purport to solve these questions; however, they are often
unsatisfying conclusions made of logical assertions based upon assumptions about how
the world “truly” operates. Despite rational explanations, many of these questions
remain saturated with intrigue and mystery.

Historically, Western theories about the mind run the gamut from the soul to

34

Idealism, in which there is no way to know that anything exists outside the mind, to
Behaviorisrn, in which all our behavior is the result of conditioned response to the
environment, and wherein it is not coherent to even speak of “mind.” The latter theory
rose up out of the frustration of not being able to provide acceptable material scientiﬁc
data of consciousness or mind outside of reﬂection, introspection, and language analysis.
In order to ﬁnd acceptance as a science, psychology needed to ﬁnd a way to quantify the
mind. Cognitive Science arose as an interdisciplinary area of study that included
linguistics, neuroscience, pharmacology, clinical psychology, and the nascent work
surrounding artiﬁcial intelligence. Still, Cognitive Science studied observable
phenomena like those that the behaviorists did, although the range of phenomena taken
into consideration vastly increased.26

In an article published in 1980, molecular biophysicist Harold Morowitz
described the then current situation of mind/consciousness in Western thought.
Originally, biologists thought that the mind occupied a special place in the scheme of
things. Inﬂuenced by the success of Newtonian mechanics, by 1900, biology, the life
sciences, and ﬂedgling psychology all shifted towards a mechanistic and materialist
interpretation of the world. At the very same time, physics changed direction in response
to quantum and relativity theories. Morowitz likens this lack of communication to two
trains on different tracks, running at high speed in different directions.27 Therefore, for
the past 100 years or so, biological and psychological sciences have become more

reductionist; that is to say, they explain complex phenomena by the actions of phenomena

 

26 Thompson, op. cit. passim pp. 48-85
27Morowitz, Harold J. Rediscovering the Mind, Psychology Today, August 1980, p. 12

35

occurring at a lower level.28

Certainly, this method has been of great beneﬁt in the life sciences, for example,
with many advances in medicine and agriculture. However, taken to its extreme,
Morowitz is speaking of reductive materialism, the notion that matter is the base of all
existence. This is a critical point in the study of the mind where strict materialists rule
cognitive sciences. In their view, consciousness arises out of the evolved brain, even
though there is no extant proof for this assertion, and the whales are ignored.
Nevertheless, scientiﬁc materialism is the ruling paradigm in the sciences.

As deeply embedded as the idea of material reality is in Western modes of
thought, especially cognitive sciences, it would be shocking to ﬁnd another alternative
within the cognitive sciences today, and of course, we do not. Cognitive scientists have
found it extremely difﬁcult to pinpoint consciousness, and consequently, it is often
impossible to ﬁnd the term in the index of work done under the tutelage of Cognitive
Science. With only the paradigm of a material reality with which to work, consciousness
must be found somewhere within the bits of matter available, requiring the discovery of
the “consciousness particle,” if you will, or some manner in which it may be related to
matter, which leaves us with the brain.

There are many iterations of theory within Cognitive Science, but the work
focuses less upon what consciousness is, than what consciousness does. “Cognitive”
implies related to “thought” and thus focuses on a by-product rather than the meat. At
the risk of oversimplifying an incredibly complex body of work, I believe a single
example will serve to convey the pervasive starting point of the direction of thought

within these disciplines.

 

28 Friedman, Norman, Bridging Science and Spirit, Living Lake Books, (St. Louis: 1994) p. 24

36

Respected philosopher and noted cognitive science apologist John Searle, in Mind
Language, and Society, begins his exploration of consciousness by providing two
propositions of general science that he states “are not negotiable at this time: the atomic
theory of matter, and the evolutionary theory of biology.”29 Thus, for Searle, “the
universe consists entirely of. . .”particles” in ﬁelds of force.”3‘0 Assuming the facility of
the two ruling paradigms of science, he thinks in those terms and those terms only.
Consequently, Searle sees the organization of particles into systems.

The systems, for our purposes carbon-based organic systems, evolve over time
and develop nervous systems, which eventually evolve minds. Consciousness is,
therefore, completely and utterly dependent on the matter of the brain, and the evolution
of simple organisms to complex ones. In this view, somewhere in the history of life on
this planet, mind or consciousness emerged. Minds and consciousness, then, arise out of
organic complexity. “Consciousness can no more lie around separate from my brain than
the liquidity of water can be separated from the water, or the solidity of the table from the
table.”3 '

Searle believes that it was always a mistake to separate phenomena into either
mental or physical states. The “brain causes certain “mental” phenomena, such as
conscious mental states, and those states are simply higher-level features of the
brain. . .the fact that a feature is mental does not imply that it is not physical; the fact that
a feature is physical does not imply that it is not mental.”32 This is an important point in

the history of the ongoing philosophical debate about the nature of the mind stretching

 

29 Searle, John, Mind, Language, and Society, Basic Books (New York: 1998) p. 40

3° Ibid. p. 40

3' Ibid. pp. 40-41

32 Searle, John, The Rediscovegg of the Mind, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 1992) p. 14

37

from the Greek view of psyche and through the various forms of dualism; however, we
must deduce that Searle’s thought is to “maintain the standard scientiﬁc way of looking at
the material world, alongside the indisputable fact of consciousness.”33

There is ample evidence that shows correlations between the anatomy, physiology
and biochemistry of the brain and consciousness. However, none of these ﬁndings
proves explicitly that the brain or biological complexity generates consciousness. “In the
entire history of science, nobody has ever offered a plausible explanation how
consciousness could be generated by material processes, or even suggested a viable
approach to the problem.”4

The evolutionary view of consciousness at least allows for limited levels of
consciousness in animals based upon their position in the evolutionary hierarchy.
However, one wonders if Searle and cognitive science could describe this type of
consciousness, or if they could explain it using their system of thought. To be fair, Searle
admits that, in the end, the two propositions of science may turn out to be false, but due
to overwhehning evidence for them, at this point they are not optional. By stating the
non-negotiable nature of the ruling paradigms ﬁrst, Searle, and Cognitive Science
generally, delineate the assumptions from which they begin their questions and the
parameters from within which the answers must come.

Now that we have recognized the pervasive quality and exclusive nature of the
assumption of material reality, we have an inkling of the reason for the most glaring

omission in the Western study of mind. Eastern philosophers and practitioners have

intimate knowledge of the levels of consciousness after centuries, if not millennia of

 

33 Thompson, op. cit. p. 81
34 Grof, op. cit. p. 241

38

investigative experience. The problem with accepting their conclusions rests upon the
fact that they begin with a different set of initial assumptions, namely that consciousness
is not matter-dependent. Native cultures also demonstrate a wealth of experience that
gave them different ideas about the nature of consciousness. Scientists ignore Mystics,
Natives, and the entire body of Eastern knowledge concerning the mind and
consciousness, and even Religious Studies often ignores the Perennial Philosophers.
However, to bring them together requires ﬁnding the “missing link” between them. We
must include what knowledge science has given us of the physical world that may reach
across that gap. Simply put, we must ﬁnd a different interpretation of the same data.
Over the last one hundred years or so, a movement towards a change in thinking and
perspective is slowly occurring in what might seem an unlikely area of hard science,
theoretical physics.

Thomas Kuhn infers that one of the necessary Causes for paradigmatic
change in science is the inability of the ruling paradigm to answer questions.
Scientists accept a paradigm initially because it answers questions sufficiently for
science to move forward. As new research finds more answers, more questions
automatically arise. Eventually the old paradigm leaves too many significant
questions unanswered causing scientists to search for a superior framework. As

we shall see later on, such is the case in contemporary quantum physics.

Deducing Mind/Consciousness
The materialist viewpoint leaves us with matter and complexity as an explanation

of consciousness, with evolutionary theory providing the mechanism for its

39

“appearance.” The only way to arrive at this conclusion is to start with the human brain
as a model, and assuming that, since we are the highest form of life and we have
consciousness, the speciﬁc material of our brains and their complexity in comparison to
other brains of rabbits or mice, for instance, explain the phenomenon of mind or
consciousness. As Gregory Bateson puts it: “No mental function shall be ascribed to an
organism for which the complexity of the nervous system of the organism is
insuffrcient.”35 The ancillary aspect of this reasoning has also neatly provided the view of
limited to no consciousness forall other forms of life. That is to say, plants or the sun,
for instance, cannot have consciousness because they lack the speciﬁc and requisite brain
material. As for rocks or other inert objects, we can forget about them, because the idea
is simply ridiculous.

There are several sticky points here. While it is readily apparent that change is an
integral component of the world around us, and even the universe itself, and while
possibly true, or even partially true, it is by no means certain that the theory of evolution
and its attendant philosophies provide an adequate explanation of our subjective
experience. Also, in the same manner that we can do no more than hypothesize about the
mental processes of another human being without the beneﬁt of communication, we can
only guess, from within our historical proclivity to anthropocentrism, about the mentality
of other life forms like whales. Our best guesses, though, arise ﬁ'om our perspective of
the world around us, which means they are culturally speciﬁc, and often far ﬁom reliable.
A cogent example is, thanks largely to the mechanical worldview of Descartes and
Skinner, that less than thirty years ago national guidelines for the veterinary sciences still

refused to acknowledge there was any “proof” that animals experienced pain in much the

 

35 Bateson, Gregory, Mind and Nature, Bantam Books (New York: 1979) pp. 99-100

40

same way we do, when any child that ever stepped on a dog’s tail knew that much.
Consequently, veterinary teaching hospitals performed routine “wake-up” operations on
animals in which students removed vital parts, allowed the animals to wake-up, observed
them and put them under again to remove more parts, repeating this process up to ﬁve
times. This method allowed students to get more mileage out of each animal. The
guidelines did not require anesthesia for any operation, but veterinarians used it, not
because the animal felt pain, but to keep it from ﬂopping around due to reﬂex “stimulus
response.”36

Furthermore, the idea that human beings have an unequaled level of
consciousness among all forms of life, while possibly true, seems more like the assumed
starting point than a deduction. In other words, did cognitive scientists arrive at that
conclusion after long study in the required scientiﬁc manner, or did they start there? If in
the latter case, as I suspect to be true, they are simply “begging the question,” and
committing a logical fallacy of relevance. Is it very different from saying, “ethical
monotheism is the highest form of religion humanity has ever conceived,” and then
ranking the others from primitive animism through pantheism until we “arrive” once
again at ethical monotheism? These are statements of belief rather than deduction. As
mentioned in chapter one, the ﬁrst step in cultural understanding is the recognition of
one’s own preconceptions. That includes the Western cultural assumptions behind the
perspective that sees “lesser” forms of life compared to that of the human being.

Therefore, with what cognitive science can tell us about mind/consciousness, can

we say beyond doubt that a plant has no consciousness? I do not think so, because we

have not yet determined what “consciousness” is. Since, consciousness is ambiguous at

 

36 See Rollins, Bernard, Anim_al Rights and Human Morality, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992

41

9, 6‘

best—unless we are speaking specifically of “awareness, sensations,” or another
aspect—we cannot make exclusions based upon a vague and amorphous idea without

also venturing into a fallacy of equivocation or ambiguity. The same holds true for
anyone trying to “prove” consciousness in plants, for instance, without clearly deﬁning
what consciousness means.

That, of course, is the crux of the problem, because determining the nature of
consciousness is so elusive and fraught with assumption and difﬁculty, scholars have
written some hefty texts about the human being without once mentioning the term, while
others pepper their work with it and never deﬁne it, or, loosely deﬁne it.
“Consciousness” is one of those abstract terms like “knowledge,” “freedom,” and
“justice,” that we often throw around as if everyone knows exactly what we mean when
we use them. However, they seem to be relative terms, often ﬂuid and discursive.

Some examples of terminology surrounding the concept of “consciousness”
include: mind; mental states; altered states of; discrete states of; stream of; non-ordinary
states of; holotropic states of; spectrum of; holographic; awareness; intentionality;
intelligence; cognition; memory; instinct; intuition; creativity; trance; subconscious; ego,
id, superego; behaviorism; collective; cosmic; Freudian; Jungian; mystical; sensation;
transpersonal; mental processes; mental imaging; and experience. There are many more.

As we can see, deﬁning consciousness is an extremely complex problem to which
it appears that Western science has applied Occam ’s Razor rule of simplicity to deﬁne the
answer: the brain. From the view of those that accept materialism as a ruling paradigm,
any other answer would create too many inelegant complications. However, to those for

whom materialism does very little to explain their experiences (Native Americans and

42

religious mystics, for instance), the materialist viewpoint is already grossly inelegant and

inadequate. Therefore, we must search outside the mainstream for different ideas.

Brain Damage and the Essential Human

At this point it seems necessary to address, at least brieﬂy, the many instances of
brain damage that seem‘to provide the strongest evidence for a materialist view of
mind/consciousness. It is true that a vast amount of evidence exists that shows damage to
the brain from either disease or trauma impairs its function, affecting motor control,
speech, etc., even the way one thinks. However, we must ask: are those abilities what
consciousness is, or are they even the sum total of humanness? Alternatively, could it be
that those abilities are only the tools of consciousness? DO we know if consciousness
lurks behind the damaged brain screaming soundlessly for release, or should we assume
that reduced function means reduced consciousness, which means reduced human?
Should we continue to speak of such unfortunates in terms of “unfortunates,” “defect,”
“deﬁcit,” and “deﬁciency” in the manner our current mental health paradigm continually
suggests? That is not how famed neurologist Oliver Sacks has come to think about
consciousness, based upon his experience with the rather bizarre afﬂictions of the brain’s
right hemisphere.

In The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Sacks describes two- dozen cases of
congenital birth defects, trauma-induced, and disease-induced maladies of the brain. He
takes issue with the sterility of traditional case histories, as they tell nothing about the

individual (e. g. “a trisomic albino female of 21”), nothing of the person as they face and

43

struggle with disease. There is no “subject” in these histories and “could as well apply to
a rat as to a human being.” To restore the “suffering, afﬂicted, ﬁghting human subject”
to the center of the situation, rather than the disease, he resorts to narrative or tale, so that
“we have a “who” as well as a “what,” a real person, a patient, in relation to disease—in
relation to the physical.”37 Sacks makes no claims one way or the other about the nature
of consciousness, but it would seem that he perceives a reason for the age old problem of
the mind and brain:
The patient’s essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology,
and in psychology; for here the patient’s personhood is essentially involved, and
the study of disease and of identity cannot be disjoined. . .It is possible that there
must, of necessity, be a gulf, a gulf of category, between the psychical and the
physical. . .but studies and stories pertaining simultaneously and inseparably to

both may nonetheless serve to bring them nearer, to bring us to the very
intersection of mechanism and life. . ”38

Sacks goes on to say that it is particularly difﬁcult for even the most sensitive observer to
picture the inner state of the patient, to understand what it is like within their minds, since
it is so “unimaginably remote from anything he himself has ever known.”3’9 Therefore, he
tells us their stories. However, he states at the outset ‘that' “there is always a reaction, on
the part of the affected organism or individual, to restore, to replace, to compensate for
and preserve its identity, however strange the means may be.”40 A few short examples
will serve here.

Rebecca was born with a cleft palate, short stumpy ﬁngers, and degenerative
myopia. She could not ﬁnd her way around the block, open a door with a key, and was

clumsy and ill coordinated in her movements. She had “gross perceptual and spatio-

 

37 Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Harper Perennial (NewYork: 1990)
p. Viii

”nupvm

39 Ibid. p. 5

”maps

temporal problems, and gross impairment in every schematic capacity—she could not
count change, she could never learn to read or write and averaged 60 or less on the IQ
tests. In short, she was a motor “moron, and had so appeared, and so been called all her
life, but one with an unexpected, strangely moving, poetic power.”41 She could dance
gracefully to music, and in a theater group, she “became a complete person, poised,
ﬂuent, with style in each role.”42 However, beyond these abilities she had a perception
of herself that deﬁed her appearance and her dysfunctions.

Superﬁcially she was a mass of handicaps and incapacities, with the intense

frustrations and anxieties attendant on these; at this level she was, and felt herself

to be a mental cripple—beneath the effortless skills, the happy capacities of

others; but at some deeper level there was no sense of handicap or incapacity, but

a feeling of calm and completeness, of being fully alive, of being a soul, deep and

high, and equal to all others. Intellectually, then, Rebecca felt a cripple;

spiritually she felt herself a full and complete being43

Surely, this is Sack’s subjective account based upon his observations; but that is
an integral part of the nature of scientiﬁc study. William James said that the deﬁnition of
“data” is “direct experience,” and the only genuinely direct experience each of us has is
his or her own immediate interior experience. As we saw earlier, scientists must interpret
the facts, but a fact is nothing without context. Our ruling intellectually organizational
paradigms help to provide that context. Instead, Sacks sees deﬁcit in the ruling paradigm
of mental health. He sees diﬂerence in the way the “essential being” of the patient
struggles to emerge.

How are we to understand idiots savant? Dr. Sacks sees something deeper than a

“mechanical knack” with no intelligence or understanding of his or her gift. Rather, he

sees a deep and creative intelligence struggling to break through physical limitations. He

 

4' Ibid. p. 179
‘2 Ibid. p. 185
‘3 Ibid. pp. 179-80

45

tells the story of a man stricken with nearly fatal meningitis as a child, resulting in
“retardation, impulsiveness, and spasticity.” His father was a well-known opera singer
who passed on his love of music to his son. This patient, Martin A., had an eidetic
memory and had profound knowledge of more than two thousand operas in his head. He
knew all the Singers who had ever taken the roles in countless performances, as well as
all the details of set, scenery, staging and décor. He knew by heart, every detail within
the immense nine volume Grove ’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which his father
read to him only once. After the death of his parents, his life had been nasty, petty and
dark. People teased him unmercifully, and contemptuously ﬁred him from the menial
jobs he could not maintain. His world outside of music was one in which he was
someone “who had rarely felt himself, or felt regarded as, a proper child or man.”44 His
whole world was music, and in this very real world of Martin A., when he was in
communion with music, “a man in his wholeness, wholly attending. . .all that was
defective or pathological fell away, and one saw only absorption and animation,
wholeness and health.”45 Martin A. ﬁnally found peace only when Sacks, sensitive to
his needs, took him to a church not far from the home, where they valued his knowledge
of all Bach’s choral music, and all 202 of the liturgical cantatas, and where he became the
brains, advisor, and participant in the choir.46

Sacks found out about the large literature on the subject, only after he wrote
Martin A.’s story. At ﬁrst, submissive to the paradigm, Sacks saw mechanism and no
intelligence or understanding shining through Martin’s eidetic gift. Martin loved the

music of Bach. Sacks found that curious, and he could not see how Martin, with all his

 

‘4 Ibid. pp. 189-90
‘5 Ibid. p. 192
‘6 Ibid. p. 191

46

severe intellectual limitations, could truly appreciate the technical complexity and depth
of Bach’s work. After all, “Bach was so intelligent, and Martin was a simpleton.”47 It
was only after bringing him tapes of the cantatas and the Magniﬁcat that he saw that
Martin’s musical intelligence was fully up to the task. In other words, he had to truly
look to see it. At ﬁrst, he simply assumed it was not there.

If we have such a difﬁcult time seeing conscious intelligence still existing and
attempting to break out from within elements of humanity despite suffering from internal
structural differences, would it'be reasonable to expect to ﬁnd different levels or different
kinds of consciousness in other life forms whose morphology is so divergent from our
own, even if we looked? It is not likely. At least there is hope of communication with
other human beings, even those with severely damaged brains, as Sacks demonstrates.

Cognitive Science reduces our mind to molecular biochemical processes of the
brain. Because of the brain’s complexity, it is a reasonable starting point. Thinking and
researching within the parameters of Scientiﬁc materialism also makes it the ending
point. Yet, Sacks’ observations and experiences challenge one of the strongest arguments
for the theory of mind out of brain, brain damage. Oliver Sacks is one of the most well-
known neuroscientists in the world since the experimental treatment that resulted in the
movie Awakening. At One time, Sacks was an avowed materialist, he is no longer. While
he is silent on the issue of soul or spirit, for Sacks, the patient’s “essential being” or
“patient’s personhood” seems to lurk behind the damaged brain waiting for a means of
expression.

In the next chapter, we will ﬁnd another crack in the foundation of mind out of

brain when we see the conclusions of the coma studies by Penﬁeld, and Eccles. The work

 

‘7 Ibid. p. 191

47

of Valerie Hunt and her bio-energy ﬁelds will also open lines of questions that point
directly at the quantum realm of physics, as we further explore the quandary of

mind/consciousness.

48

CHAPTER THREE

Alternative Answers from Auras to the Abstract

Cognitive Science gives us one answer to the question of mind/consciousness, the
brain. Materialism is their base assumption. While possibly true, its proponents have
failed to produce compelling evidence that rules out the possibility of spirit or soul. For
now, they remain immersed in the structures and biochemical processes of the brain.
Therefore, we will wander a little farther aﬁeld in search of alternative scientiﬁc studies

with different ideas.

Bio-energy, Higher Minds, and Beings of Pure Energy

In the book Inﬁnite Mind, neurophysiologist Dr. Valerie Hunt describes a career
in neuromuscular research. Almost by accident, she veered off into the study of bio-
energy ﬁelds. In 1965, Hunt encountered a dancer named Emilie Conrad who had lived
and danced in Haiti. Conrad asked Dr. Hunt to record and explain a healing process
during a Shamanic treatment she wished to give a twenty-three year old polio victim.
Hunt was very familiar with the effects of polio having trained at Columbia University in
physical therapy, and she worked at a major New York hospital that handled the most
acute polio cases in the 19403. Tests on polio patient’s legs showed that the muscles
were degenerative bands of connective tissue, which could no longer contract. Hunt was
certain the woman could never recover. Conrad held her hands above the patient’s legs
and Hunt observed a rippling motion in the patient’s legs as Conrad moved her hands.

Over several years, Hunt’s measurements conﬁrmed neuromuscular regeneration until the

49

patient’s legs had regained muscular contour and she could walk without crutches. Hunt
made the measurements, but she could never explain the results.48

That same year, Conrad asked Hunt to record another treatment for a congenitally
disturbed mental patient receiving treatment at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Hunt’s measurements showed abnormal brain waves that the physicians believed were
responsible for the man’s behavior. This time, Hunt invited professors ﬁom the Nursing
Department, School of Medicine, and the Neuropsychiatric Institute, to observe the
proceedings. Conrad brought Rosalyn Bruyere with her, to read the patient’s energy ﬁeld
during treatment. Bruyere was an aura reader. Bruyere explained the nature and location
of the body’s chakras, of which Hunt was completely ignorant.49 Consequently, Hunt
decided to use bipolar surface sensors on the skin over the chakras just to see if any
electrical activity occurred. 50

The treatment consisted of shaking rattles and bells, complex movements, and
waving crystals around the body. However, Conrad never touched the patient during the
three-hour session. Hunt acquired reams of data and tapes that she could not review until
after the semester. When she ﬁnally analyzed the data, there was only one ﬁrm
relationship, and that was the close correlation between the aura reader’s running
commentary, and the electrical activity of the man’s auric ﬁeld. For instance, when
Bruyere reported energy entering into the man’s feet and progressing up his legs to the

kundalini (abdomen) and “getting balled up in the heart chakra,” the electronic data

 

‘3 Hunt, Valerie. Inﬁnite Mind, Malibu Publishing (Malibu, CA.: 1989) pp. 13-14

‘9 Eastern religious traditions have long recognized the seven major Chakras as vortices of energy
associated with the etheric body, though they correspond to physical organs as well. Thus, they are centers
of energy, the ﬁ'ee ﬂow of which is vital to the health of the human being. Hunt found that they connect to
the meridians of acupuncture points, and numerous researchers have shown elevated electronic recordings
at these locations (15).

5° Hunt op. cit. p. 15

50

showed “sudden energy ﬂowing up both legs with an increased amplitude in the lower
abdomen... and a two-fold increase in the amplitude of contraction [of the heart] with no
change in the rate.5 ' When Bruyere described that Conrad had released the energy ﬁ'om
the heart and let it “spurt out the crown chakra on top of the head in bursts of white
light,” the spurts were “in sync with the sudden energy bursts which came from the
crown electrodes, and the ﬁequency of those data were the highest recorded during that

session.”52

The physicians reported that after the treatment, the patient’s brain waves
were normal and his behavior had improved.

Some years later, Hunt attended the First International Acupuncture Conference at
Stanford, which followed Nixon’s visit to China. She became interested in acupuncture
techniques, and traveled to Asia to observe them. She witnessed events at the Kyoto Pain
Control Clinic that were almost unbelievable to a trained western scientiﬁc mind, but
rather than being dismissive, she decided to integrate western scientiﬁc method into the
study of acupuncture, auras, sharnanic healing, and consciousness. Since, she has
studied native ritualistic movements all over the world. In her lab at UCLA, she was the
ﬁrst to study extremely high biological frequency (EHF) electrical currents, which are
associated with mind phenomena and human consciousness.53

Hunt’s research determined a number of things about the human body. She
believes her results show that life, itself, is electromagnetic and we cannot explain it by
mechanical or biochemical means alone. She found that all living systems beyond

unicellular organisms produce an electric current in the millivolt (0.001v) range. In the

human body, electrical activity is essential for life. Stimulated brain nerve cells create

 

5' Ibid. pp. 15-16
52 Ibid. p. 16
53 Ibid. p. 22

51

electrical energy, which activate the nerves. We read this activity as brain waves on an
electroencephalograph (EEG). Nerve activities cause muscles to contract to move the
body, and to stimulate the heart, lungs, intestines, etc. We may read muscle activity
recorded on an electromyogram (EMG), while an electrocardiogram (EKG) records the
heart activity. The recordings of these three instruments differ by frequency and strength.
Brain waves have a characteristic slow waveform of between 0-20 cycles per second.
The heart cycles at a much faster rate, up to 225 cps. Muscles, on the other hand, have a
range from 0-250 cps. 5"

Dr. Hunt discovered a new (EHF) electrical system in the human body that she
thought was probably emanating from the electromagnetic system at the atomic level.5 5
Hunt believes this system is the source of auras, which she prefers to call energy ﬁelds.
She likens this ﬁeld to chi, prana, or life force. This energy ﬁeld is a unique element of
the body’s electrical system, as it is a continuous signal, while all the other of the body’s
electrical recordings are “on and oﬁ” systems. In other words, the heart beats and rests
brieﬂy, a muscle contracts and then relaxes, reduced action follows a brain wave. The
auric field was present in every telemetry recording of the body. Hunt determined that
there is a void of electrical activity from 250 cps to around SOOCps. After that, the
frequency is continuous up to the limits of the instrument, at 20,000 cps. This extremely
high ﬁequency (EHF) is 8-10 times faster than other biological electricity sampled from
the body’s surface.56

Hunt discovered that every individual shows a unique pattern of amplitude and

 

5‘ Ibid. pp. 18-20
55 Ibid. pp. 21-36
’6 Ibid. pp. 18-20

52

frequencies in their chakras and in the synchrony between chakras.57 She also observed
by recording brain waves, blood pressure, heart rate, galvanic skin responses, and muscle
contraction simultaneously with auric changes, that when stimulated, the ﬁeld had
already responded before any of the other systems changed. Light ﬂashes caused
instantaneous response in the ﬁeld, the brain lagging behind. Sometimes the ﬁeld reacted
when the brain never did, as when she stroked the ﬁeld with a feather that was not in
contact with the body.58

She was also able to affect the ﬁeld itself in a unique room in the Physics
Department at UCLA called the “Mu Room.” This was a shielded room at UCLA, where
researchers could manipulate the natural electromagnetic energy of the air without
changing the gravitational force or the oxygen contents9 When technicians withdrew the
electrical aspect of the atmosphere in the room, the auric ﬁelds became thin, randomly
disorganized and incoherent. Impaired sensory feedback resulted in the subjects being
totally unaware of their body’s location in space. In the absence of an atmospheric
source of electromagnetism, the subjects’ ﬁelds began to interact with the ﬁelds of others
in the room. At this point general disorganization of the ﬁelds occurred, and the subjects
broke down and sobbed, while readings showed the body responding as if threatened.60

The atomic realm is an electromagrretically charged interactive system in constant
dynamic equilibrium. Since all matter in the physical world is composed of atoms, all

matter contains subtle “ﬁeld components with organized energy patterns, boundaries and

 

’7 Ibid. p. 23
”wmpe3
59 Ibid. p. 30
6" Ibid. p. 30

53

”6' The body qualiﬁes as such a system. It was not until acupuncture and

deﬁnitions.
Eastern medicine became culturally acceptable that anyone gave serious attention to
human energy ﬁelds. Consequently, Hunt ﬁnds the human being to be a “ﬂowing,
interactive electrodynarnic energy [or vibratory] ﬁeld,” and what interferes with that ﬂow
will have a detrimental effect. She makes the point that researchers have studied cosmic
and ionic ﬁelds for some time, but there are few involved in the study of bio-energy.
Theoretically, all ﬁ'equency vibrations exist somewhere in the universe—from
subhertzian to as high as modern instruments can measure them—billions and trillions of
cycles per second. Hunt takes issue with the idea that the brain is the primary point of
interaction between the vibrations (frequencies) of the universe and that of the human
being, because biologists fail to understand the source of the body’s energy ﬁeld. The
frequencies of brain wave vibrations extend from zero to 24 cps. Therefore, such a
limited spectrum of resonance cannot possibly process the extensive information ﬁ'om the
universe, because the scale is not “grand enough.”62
Hunt believes, along with noted neurophysiologist Nobel Prize laureate Karl
Pribrarn, Wilder Penﬁeld, and John Eccles, that there is nothing in the brain tissue to
account for the high levels of experiences and capabilities of the mind. They list these
higher capacities as intuition, insight, creativity, imagination, understanding, thought,
reason, decision, knowing, will, spirit, or soul.63 These capacities do not lend themselves
well to scientiﬁc study. Based upon their research, for this group, the higher levels of the

mind must be separate from the brain.

Penﬁeld was a famous neurosurgeon who studied with the pioneer

 

6' Ibid. 64-65
62 Ibid. pp. 62-3
63 Ibid. pp. 83-4

54

neurophysiologist Carl Sherrington early in the Twentieth century. At the end of his
career, aﬁer numerous observations, he still claimed the mind was “an entity within
itself,” although he did not know where it existed or where the energy of the mind came
ﬁ'om, and that was the balancing point upon which his observations rested. Although he
accepted that “the active brain neurons supplied the mind with energy when the brain was
awake,” upon that basis, the mind should have no energy and be inoperative when the
brain was inactive either during sleep or under anesthesia. That is not what he
observed—far from it. He sensed that, “the mind operated as though it was endowed
with its own energy.”64 Penﬁeld came to believe that the mind experienced, and the brain
recorded.

Penﬁeld found out that the mind continues to work during anesthesia, in spite of
the brain’s inactivity. In other words, brain waves were nearly absent while the mind was
as active as in normal states. Some patients recalled details of the surgery while
unconscious. Even more surprising, he discovered total and acute awareness in comatose
patients; both elements have since been borne out by numerous other researchers.“ For
instance, a researcher at the University Of California Medical School at Davis played a
tape during surgery requesting that patients rub their ears upon gaining consciousness.
Nine of eleven did so, though none recalled the instruction.66

The studies of Sir John Eccles convinced him that the brain was not the location
of consciousness. His observations of tumors in certain areas of the brain persuaded him
that higher levels of consciousness remained unaffected, while only those dealing with

the experiences of the material world suffered. He also found that poor circulation in the

 

6‘ Ibid. pp. 83-4
65 Ibid. pp. 84-5
66 Ibid. p. 125

55

brain would cause a change in consciousness, but, once again, only material
consciousness or awareness. It was his opinion that evolutionary processes could account
for the brain, but only something transcendent could explain consciousness and thought.67
Much like Detroit produces newer and more technologically sophisticated cars, while the
driver remains separate.

During her own coma studies, Hunt came to accept that coma is a state of
ungrounded consciousness, rather than a state of unconsciousness. The individual can
obtain and decipher information “but there is insufﬁcient emotional energy to stimulate
the will to act or to communicate by ordinary means.”68 In one case, she verbally
berated a comatose young man she personally knew who had fasted himself into coma,
and got him to the hospital. Following several weeks of hospitalization and intensive
treatment, he came out of the coma calling out Hunt’s name in a rage at her earlier
criticism.69 As a sidebar, this brings up interesting questions about time, or rather, the
timelessness of the mind when not engaged with the brain in processing the physical
world, because time is a function of the physical state while spirit is not. In other words,
if a soul existed in eternity (no time) would that entity experience the passing of time?

As one may easily deduce from her background, Hunt’s solution to the mind
problem is a “mind ﬁeld,” a tricky place to walk. She points to evidence like that of
Candace Pert in Opiate Receptor: Demonstrations in Nervous Tissue. In this study, Pert
and Snyder found that when brain neuropeptides were stimulated, body cell
neuropeptides in remote areas responded with immediate activation, far too fast for

chemical or neural signal transmission. According to Hunt, “this could only happen in a

 

6’ Ibid. pp. 89-90
68 Ibid. p. 119
69 Ibid. p. 122

56

ﬁeld transaction where there is no material resistance to create a time delay, or loss of
power or information.”70
She discovered that when a person’s bio-ﬁeld reached “highervibrational states,
he no longer experienced material things such as bodies and ego states, or the physical
world. He experienced knowing, higher information, transcendental ideas, insight about
ultimate sources of reality, and creativity in its highest form.”71 Unfortunately, she gives
sparse details about these particular experiments, but she attributes these experiences to
the higher mind, because they were “not available at lower ﬁeld vibrational levels.”72 It
is interesting to note that mystics and “seers” had the consistently highest vibrational
levels of all people she recorded, which she ascribes to the fact that their perceptions
occur at the “cosmic level.” Furthermore, she found:
When a person’s energy ﬁeld reached the highest, most complex vibrations, ﬁ'om
imaging or meditation, that person had spiritual experiences, regardless of their
beliefs. Even though the imagery was culturally linked, each person identiﬁed his
experience with a divine essence that was beyond any speciﬁc religious belief
system. 73
This scientiﬁc observation leaves us with another interesting materialist question:
does the increase of the ﬁeld vibration merely impose the feeling of a spiritual experience
on the brain and lower levels of consciousness, or are we actually resonating with another
even higher frequency that allows us to experience something approaching the Absolute
(whatever that may be)?

We can easily ﬁnd an example for the ﬁrst part of the question. Several people

have studied the effect of clinical death, in which the patient dies, and is then

 

7° Ibid. p. 93
7‘ Ibid. p. 93
72 Ibid. p. 93
73 Ibid. p. 285, emphasis mine

57

resuscitated. However, even though many consider it lightweight scientiﬁcally,
Raymond Moody MD. and his Life After Life may be the most recognizable. In about
150 case studies, he recorded a remarkably similar set of experiences. We are now all
familiar with subjects’ descriptions of awareness of self while rising out of the body and
seeing everything in the room, even recalling conversations that occurred after the point
of death. We have all heard of the tunnel, and the bright light, and the feeling of warmth
and well being emanating from it. These experiences are neither rare nor restricted to
those of particular religious beliefs. Many respondents claim it as a life-changing
experience that altered them forever.

For the second part of the question, the clues are in Hunt’s previously stated
results. Hunt pinpoints the mechanism for achievement of these spiritual states:
meditation. Her studies of chakras and auras show that the human energy ﬁeld changes
as a subject practices meditation. Eventually one might attain the level where he or she
“no longer experienced material things such as bodies and ego states, or the physical
world.” Here she is speaking of the “higher levels” of consciousness that have little to do
with awareness brought to us by the ﬁve senses. It seems she is speaking of the “pure
consciousness event” (PCE); perhaps even what Franklin Merrell-Wolff called
“consciousness without an object.” This state of being deserves closer examination and
we will discuss it at length in the next chapter. However, sufﬁce it to say, that we rarely
see this human ability, capacity, or potential in the West.

There is nothing, with the exception of contemplative Christian religious orders,
within Western culture and education, or modern religion, that could generate a similar

state of being, pharmaceuticals included. Furthermore, there is no sense that Western

58

culture recognizes the PCB as something valuable to which any human being might
aspire. How could it when Western methods of understanding the phenomenon of mind
have gone so far as to claim, that mind itself does not even exist? What a strange state of
affairs that is. In effect, those that denied the existence of consciousness used their
consciousness to deny the existence of consciousness. Thus, individual seekers can ﬁnd
the value of inner contemplative states only when they look outside of mainstream
Western norms.

Hunt’s description of the human being as a “ﬂowing, interactive electrodynarnic
energy ﬁeld” makes sense, at least as a starting point. Since, as Searle tells us, the atomic
theory of matter is nonnegotiable at this point, we must accept it into our viewpoint.
Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2 tells us that matter is energy and energy is matter
moving very fast. Therefore, if we are solely material beings, then, at some level, we are
also solely energy beings. It appears that the materialist viewpoint forgot the other side
of the equation.

Appropriately, then, we must ask these questions: If mind is a ﬁeld of energy,
and matter is energy, then does that solve the problem of dualism? If all matter is energy,
is there a frequency of resonance between the energy ﬁeld of mind/consciousness and the
vibratory energy patterns of brain matter that allows melding on a quantum or sub
quantum level? If we accept Hunt’s research as scientiﬁcally descriptive of the human
being within material reality, does this indicate that consciousness, as an energy ﬁeld,

may exist without the body?

59

The Macro and Micro Levels of Physics

Western methodologies depend upon ernpiricism and the objective observer,
making it very difﬁcult to employ Western methods when the object of study is the
subjective nature of experience. In other words, how can the mind study itself
objectively? As noted above, a cultural trend towards positivistic philosophy and
scientiﬁc materialism forced psychologists to create an acceptable methodological
formula that would satisfactorily uphold these standards. In other words, they had to ﬁnd
solid scientiﬁc data within the prevailing theories that we could apprehend with our
senses or instruments designed for them, which provided evidence for the mind. Because
of the problems inherent in the approach, they failed to do so, and consequently jumped
on the behavioral horse in midstream.

It is a point of continuing fascination to me that an entire academic discipline, and
both professional careers and commercial businesses, all widely accepted as scientiﬁc,
have sprouted and ﬂourished from the study of something they can, seemingly, neither
deﬁne, measure nor observe; all necessary requirements of empirical science.

In attempting to determine or deﬁne mind/consciousness, much of the difﬁculty,
for psychologists or anyone else, lies in the primary assumption of Western thought: that
reality consists of determinate bits of matter with quantiﬁable attributes. However, that
assumption rests upon a rarely challenged hidden premise: there exists, outside of our
mind/consciousness, a “real” objective reality. In Westem—derived cultures, the physical
sciences have taken it upon themselves to describe and deﬁne that reality. We will revisit
the latter shortly.

In response to a question posed about these two assumptions, an insightful

60

physicist responded to me “everyone starts their beliefs from one set of assumptions or
another, these are simply ours.” In many ways, it does not matter at all if these
assumptions are correct or not. It is unlikely that our wives will suddenly disappear, or
that our cars will sink through the pavement on their way to the center of the earth, all
because we begin to perceive reality differently. As far as we know, everything in the
material realm will remain the same in the same way that everything remained the same
after Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo destroyed the geocentric theory of the universe.
The only thing that changed was our perspective. The atomic theory of the material
universe and evolution are theories, and theories are interpretations that lead to
understanding. They are educated guesses that survive the tests of time, until, as Kuhn
observed, they are no longer adequate. However, as Holmes Rolston describes in Science
and Religion, if too much becomes invested within a theory, the goal for proponents
shifts to protecting the theory itself (as in the geocentric interpretation and Galileo) and it
becomes a Blik that skews data and impedes the quest for knowledge. All Bliks are
assumptions, but not all assumptions become Bliks.

Earlier, we cited Harold Morowitz, whose metaphor of the turn of the Twentieth
Century compared the material assumptions of the biological sciences and psychology
with that of physics as being two fast moving trains going in different directions, each
unaware of the activity of the other. Thus, Carl Sagan falls in line with Searle and the
biological and cognitive sciences in The Dragons of Eden when he states: “my
fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings—what we sometimes call the
mind—ware a consequence of its anatomy and physiology and nothing more.”74 In The

Cosmic Blueprint, Paul Davies writes: “It is often said that physicists invented the

 

7’ Sagan, Carl, The Dragons of Edm Ballantine Books, (New York: 1977) p. 7

6l

mechanistic-reductionist philosophy, taught it to the biologists, and then abandoned it
themselves.”75 If that is so, where did the physicists’ train take them? First, though, we
should look brieﬂy up the track and see where it came ﬁom.

The ideal of the objective universe dates back to determinism (and the modern
principle of cause and effect), within the philosophy of reality based entirely upon
scientiﬁc principles veriﬁed by observation, which was an interpretive offshoot of
Newtonian Mechanics. “Objectivity” is the idea that the world has a “deﬁnite state of
existence independent of our observing it.”76 In addition, for a scientist or anyone else to
be objective means to be without a preformed opinion. However, as we discussed earlier,
that is impossible. Since an opinion is a point of view, the idea that we can be without a
point of view is also a point of view. Researchers subjectively decide what they will
study. Socio-cultural norms determine worldview, and worldview is a subjective
conglomeration of cultural opinions that determine perceptions of reality.

Newton gave us a predictable universal order on all levels ﬁ'om the largest
motions of planets and stars, to the smallest. Humankind could predict all with the
utmost accuracy. Newton saw the universe as a large clock put into motion by God, and
then left to run. Newton’s personal beliefs placed God in the middle of the works, but
ironically, his mathematics led to a view of complete determinism in which the inert
billiard balls of the universe existed and acted independently of God, human will, and
purpose. Ultimately, deterministic interpretations of Newtonian Mechanics subtracted

God from the equation, and told us that the human mind can know all aspects of the

 

75 Davies, Paul, The Cosmic Blueprint. Simon & Schuster (New York: 1988) p. 165
76 Pagels, Heinz, The Cosmic Code. Simon & Schuster (New York: 1982) p. 136

62

natural world.77 The mathematics demonstrated that the world consisted of discrete inert
objects, and that we may predict their movement, eliminating the idea that some
impulsive spirit or god possessed them. Taken to its extreme, eventually there was no
place for mind, consciousness, soul, will or God. Thus, when Napoleon asked LaPlace
where God was in his theory of nature, LaPlace was perfectly comfortable in replying:
“Sir, we have no need of that hypothesis.”

Such was the response of the intelligentsia of a Europe ﬂushed with the triumph
of the discovery of the “Rosetta Stone” of physics. To understand that this was not pure
frivolity or mere capriciousness, we would have to imagine the world as we know it,
except we must subtract virtually everything we know now about its physical nature and
how to manipulate it, almost all machinery and technology, and virtually all of the
science that we now take for granted. Could we even imagine such a world?

Science was in its infancy, which makes Newton’s accomplishments even more
amazing, especially when we remember that he formulated the mathematical principles of
the universal law of gravitation and the nature of light in 1666, though he did not publish
them until 1687 (Pincipia Mathematica) and 1704 (Opticks) respectively. He invented
the calculus, and as an example of the far-reaching efﬁcacy of his mathematical formulas,
Newton’s “Drag Law” is still in use today calculating the aerodynamic drag on the
surface of hypersonic aircraft. Long before the practical conception of manned ﬂight was
a reality, Newton’s equations of drag force and his laws of motion were available to
describe exactly how any aircraft could ﬂy.78

Newton seemed to ﬁgure out things he should not have possibly known

 

7’ Pagels, pp. 18-19; Walker, Evan, The Physics of Consciousness, Perseus Pub. (Cambridge, MA: 2000),

63

considering the era in which he lived, and the primitive nature of his contemporary
science. Not only did he observe that light was “corpuscular” (particles) in nature, but,
incredibly, that the corpuscles of violet light were smaller than those of red light. We
speak now in terms of wavelengths of light, and we know that the wavelength of violet
light (0.0004 mm) is about half that of red light (0.0007 mm).79 Furthermore, Newton
also determined that the corpuscles of light emanating ﬁom luminous bodies traveled as
though guided by a wave or ﬁeld. Subsequent generations of scientists discarded
Newton’s corpuscle theory in favor of light as a wave, and it was not until the Twentieth
Century that Quantum Mechanics revealed that light does exist as particles (photons),
which do behave as if guided by waves.80

Newton speciﬁed a universe in which every effect had a cause, and each cause
had a speciﬁc effect. Every student probably recognizes, at least vaguely, Newton’s
Laws of Motion: while undisturbed, every object at rest tends to stay at rest, and any
object in motion tends to stay in motion, absent of any force acting upon it. A force
applied to an object in motion alters the motion of the object. Lastly, for every action
there is an equal or opposite reaction. These are the basic speciﬁcations of classical
physics. With the addition of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Newton’s laws
could reach down into the molecular and atomic worlds. By the turn of the Nineteenth
Century, physicists could boast that the future of physics lay only in the movement of
decimal points ﬁom one place to another within already known quantities.8|

Thus, Newton demystiﬁed the movement of the heavens, and mathematics and

physics became the tools that described the new vision of deterministic reality. This view

 

’9 Ibid. p. 20
8" Ibid. p. 20
8' Ibid. p. 20-25

has become the modern world picture of what we believe reality is. “Newton’s
understanding either has been the basis of, or has strongly colored, all modern scientiﬁc,
philosophical, and even theological efforts to represent reality.”82 Bringing us, almost, to
the junction where the two trains of physics and that of biological and psychological
sciences diverge. Just two more stops along the way.

What is it philosophers and scientists mean when they speak of reality? Of
course, as already mentioned, they mean the objective reality independent of humans; and
we have already shown that the Newtonian view (minus God) has given us much of the
modern worldview we possess. What does “reality” truly mean, though? We have a
name for it, therefore, some etymologist has deﬁned it, and thus made it clear,
consequently, we must know. That is not exactly the case.

If we look up “reality,” we see “that which is real or actual,” or the “state or
quality of being real.” If we look up “real,” we ﬁnd that which “exists in fact” or what is
“true or actual.” If we look up “fact,” we ﬁnd “reality, truth, actuality” and “the state of
things as they are.” “Truth” gives us, “that which conforms to fact or reality.” Finally,
“actuality” sends us back to “real or true.” Once again, we have run smack into that wall
of the abstract term deﬁned synonymously by other equally amorphous abstract terms. In
other words, we have concepts rather than concrete evidentiary explanations. Similarly, a
“concept” is a generalized idea, a thought, or a general notion. Therefore, “reality” must
be that which conforms to an accepted generalized idea of what it is. What we have,
then, is perspective, and perspective is very much relative, and not universally true,
actual, factual, or real as our usage of “reality” implies.

If we attempt to stand outside of the Western perspective, (that is, an objective

 

82 Ibid. p. 22

65

stance, as difﬁcult or impossible as that may be) we see that a strict deterministic
viewpoint requires that the facts that comprise reality be veriﬁable. Now we are getting
somewhere, we think. However, Positivism, intimately tied to materialism, required
exactly that. Positivists are essentially negativists, as in they would negate everything
outside of the data of sense experience. The only acceptable facts or truths are those
based solely on scientiﬁc facts, and thus, they reject any speculation outside of this arena.

This approach has a certain sandy boldness to it. However, when one considers
how undependable our senses are and that we receive information from them in only a
very narrow band of the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum, we may also detect a certain
ostrich-like absurdity hidden within the sand. Just because we refuse to recognize or talk
about the pink elephant in the middle of the room does not make it disappear or cease to
exist. More to the point, just because our senses are too limited at this time to be aware
of, or observe unknown forms of energy, force, or ﬁelds, or our instruments too limited to
measure them, or, perhaps, our perspectives too limited to comprehend, or theorize about,
the nature of insubstantial immeasurable kinds of power, does not necessarily mean they
cannot or do not exist.

We can easily see that the modern empirical view of objective reality is still
essentially positivistic. The human mind would seem a fact of our individual existence;
however, the positivist viewpoint has rejected the notion as meaningless based on lack of
scientiﬁc proof. Consequently, Cognitive Science stubbornly Sifts the clods of language,
behavior, neuro-chemicals, and gray matter in order to identify the mechanical apparati of
consciousness. Therefore, if we ask what constitutes veriﬁcation (or veriﬁability) of facts

leading to the notion of “objective reality,” it seems the only direction we may go is

66

around the circle with the empirical physical and psychological sciences, because they
are, after all, the recognized authorities. Because we chose to open that little cylinder of
nematodes, we might ask: Who determines what counts as evidence? Who determines
what counts as proof? Who determines what counts as a fact? Who determines what
counts as truth? It seems obvious by now that there is neither a universality of answer
nor method.

While we may trace the trend of ernpiricism through the English philosophers
Locke and Hume, and on through Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, continental

philosophers from Kant through Derrida and Foucault had other ideas.

The allegedly simple “empirical” and “objective” world is not simply lying

around “out there” waiting for all and sundry to see. Rather the “objective” world

is actually set in subjective and intersubj ective contexts and backgrounds that in

many ways govern what is seen, and what can be seen, in that “empirical”

world.83

Many of the continental philosophers saw a focus on the empirical as being rather
naive and shallow. They saw our view of the empirical world not as a perception, but as
an interpretation. For them, therefore, a genuine philosophical outlook of reality is not
solely about “making pictures” of the objective world, but rather of “investigating the
structures within the subject that allow [for] the making of the pictures in the ﬁrst
place.”84 In other words, the mapmaker’s ﬁngerprints are all over the maps he makes,
and, therefore, the answers are not only in the objective maps, but also in the mapmaker

himself. According to Wilber, since both the objective (exterior) and the subjective

(interior) approaches have stubbornly persisted in virtually all ﬁelds of human

 

:: Wilber, Ken, The Eve of the Spirit. (ES) Shambhala Publications (Boston: 1997), p. 8
Ibid. p. 8

67

knowledge, there must be something signiﬁcant in each approach.85

We have ﬁnally arrived at the junction ﬁom which the two trains took divergent
tracks. We may very well ask: What may be so startlingly different? After all, we are
still talking physics, and physics must work with the empirical world. A single example
will show just how radical is the nature of modern theoretical physics.

Most of us would agree with the statement: “Very few sane people would argue
with the notion that there is a real world (objective reality) out there independent of
human beings.” Therefore, most of us are not physicists, because otherwise we would
know that Quantum Mechanics (QM) clearly tells us that it is impossible to observe
reality without changing it.86 This conception of reality is drastically different from that
of the classical macrocosnric physics of Newton, which, essentially, still explains reality
at our level to a “T,” and which legacy leads us to believe in an independent objective
reality.

The main difference between the reality of quantum theory and that of classical
physics is we can neither see nor feel the world of QM. We detect the quantum world
instrumentally and describe it mathematically, thus, we may only perceive it
intellectually. Newtonian physics is still applicable in the macrocosm, but it does not
function in the sub-atomic realm. Nevertheless, the quantum realm forms the universe
and everything around us; as such, it is the physical foundation of our observable
macrocosmic world. We cannot pretend that it is separate from the world we know, and

ignore the implications, as some physicists would have it.

 

*5 Ibid. pp. 8-9

86 Pagels, Heinz, p. 92. See also: Zukov, Gary, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Perennial Classics (New
York: 1979; 2001) p. 33; Walker, Evan, The Physics of Consciousness, Perseus Pub. (Cambridge,
MA: 2000) p. 95

68

Physicists tell us to check our preconceived notions of reality in the cloakroom at
the entrance to the quantum world. However, being what we are we must have some
analogy to help us understand, and we will provide examples as we go. A “quantum” is a
quantity of something, and “mechanics” is the study of motion. Therefore, because of its
relationship to the atomic theory of matter, “Quantum Mechanics” is the study of the
motion of small bits and pieces, often termed “particles.”

When we move from our everyday macrocosmic world to that of the microcosm,
we are passing through two levels: the atomic and the subatomic. The smallest thing we
can see under a microscope contains millions of atoms. The difference between the
atomic level and the subatomic level is as great as the distance between the atomic level
and the world of trees, rocks, and human beings. Thus, the microcosmic world of quanta
is not just extremely small it is unimaginably small.

If one was to describe an atom and its attendant electrons as tiny solar systems (as
Neils Bohr envisioned in a dream), the relative distances between the nucleus and the
electrons is enormously greater than that between the sun and the planets. Just as comets,
meteors and the like pass unnoticed through the vast distances between planets, so do
neutrinos pass right through the presumed rock-solid earth every day. At the tiny scale in
which neutrinos exist, the spaces between the atoms that compose the structure of rock
are so vast we might imagine trying to notice a grain of sand passing through the 93
million miles separating the earth and sun. As a result, quantum theory tells us that the
solidity of the objects surrounding us in this moment, our bodies, the paper, the desk, the

chair, the ﬂoor, and the earth itself, is mostly illusion as they contain more space than

69

matter. 87

The last point is difﬁcult to grasp, especially if you retain a mental picture of high
school chemistry texts with their diagrams of tightly packed atoms, like the seeds of a
pomegranate or a tight cluster of grapes, creating the structure of cesium, sodium, or
whatever. However, the appearance of solidity in those diagrams is false. Each one of
those “grapes” is really a probability cloud designating the potential location of electrons.
In other words, it is a nucleus surrounded by mostly empty space. If we took one of those
grapes and attempted to locate the nucleus with the naked eye, we could not see it. We
would have to increase the grape (atom) to the size of a fourteen-story building in order
to see a nucleus that would then appear to be about the size of a grain of salt. The rest of
that fourteen-story area contains the “probability shells” of the electrons. Subatomic
particles that make up the nucleus have more than 2,000 times the mass of an electron,
meaning the electrons in our imaginary atom are less than the size of a dust mote in
relationship to the grain of salt nucleus. If we imagine a grain of salt, in the middle of the
cathedral of St. Peter’s in Rome, with a few motes of dust ﬂoating around way up by the
top of the dome, we can have a mental picture of the size or volume of an individual
atom. 88

However, a dust particle is an object, a thing, and an electron is not. It, like all
subatomic “particles,” is a “tendency to exist, or a tendency to happen.”89 For instance,
sometimes a cloud of an inﬁnite number of possible electrons resolves into an individual
particle, which “appears” when someone observes it. When it is not a single particle, it is

“an undulating wavelike cloud capable of moving at speeds in excess of the speed of

 

87 Zukov
88 Zukov, pp. 34-5
39 Ibid. p. 34

70

light.” 90 Many physicists think it is not even meaningful to ask what subatomic particles
are, since at the subatomic level “mass and energy change unceasingly into each other,”
and all manifestations are only probabilities")l Furthermore, some particles appear to
have no mass at all—no measurable physical quantitative qualities—fudging the
boundary between reality and idea; and causing one to wonder how far we have to follow
these statistical events before we question the practical difference between these
“particles” that scientists say exist, and spirits which they say do not exist.

In a sense, the quantum world has deconstructed the Newtonian viewpoint. The
primary characteristics of the Newtonian worldview were determinism, the clockwork
(common sense) nature of the universe, and its objectivity—the idea that stars, planets,
stones, or trees exist even when we are not observing them. Turn your back on them and
they are still theref”2 In the quantum universe, however, all matter is waves of energy in
motion, whether it is a human, a star, planet, stone, or tree. Neither space nor time has
meaning. There are not any physical laws that will tell us when an electron will jump;
the events seem hopelessly random. The “smallest wheels of the great clockwork
universe, the atoms, do not obey deterministic laws.”93

In terms of the human being at the quantum level, we cannot remove ourselves
from the universe to study it. We are matter, too. At an essential or base level, we are
waves of energy indistinguishable from the rest of the ﬂow, our consciousness

somewhere within it. Because, according to mathematical interpretations of Quantum

Mechanics using a reductive approach, our bodies exist at this macro level, but there is

 

9° Goswami, Amit, The Self-Aware Universe, Tarcher/Putnam (New York: 1993) p. xv
91 .
Ibid. p. 35
92 Pagels, p. 64
93 Ibid. p. 64

71

also a cellular level of which we became aware with the advent of microscopes. There is
also a molecular level, an atomic level, and a subatomic level, below which all matter
resolves into waves of energy. The distinction between organic and inorganic becomes a
conceptual prejudice. “Life” as we have deﬁned it has no conspicuous qualities that
differentiate it from all the rest. Quantum theory tells us that if we could collect sub-
atomic bits ﬁom a human being, a plant, an animal, and a rock, and mix them up, we
would never be able to determine which came from where. They are all the same.
...One point of view is that quantum mechanics allows us to idealize a photon
from the fundamental unbroken unity so that we may study it. In fact, a photon
seems to become isolated from the fundamental unbroken unity because we are
studying it. Photons do not exist by themselves. All that exists by itself is an
unbroken wholeness that presents itself to us as webs (more patterns) of relations.
Individual entities are idealizations which are correlations made by us.94
Consciousness—as intention or will—seems to exert inﬂuence at the microcosmic
level negating the concept of objective reality. Some physicists, though certainly not all,
believe that the only time quanta manifest as particles, rather than waves, is when
someone is observing them. Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation of QM postulates
an “observer-created reality.” In short, no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is
observed. This is a radical departure from Newtonian physics and a rejection of
determinism.” Bohr’s interpretation of QM is predominant; however, it is worth noting
that Einstein never agreed that QM was a complete description of quantum reality as
Bohr claimed. Another luminary, David Bohm, also found the Copenhagen
Interpretation insufﬁcient, and proposed another interpretation with signiﬁcant

differences, but, as we will see, both contain interesting ideas about mind/consciousness.

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg published his famous Uncertainty Principle, sparking

 

9’ Zukov, p. 79 Emphasis mine
95 Pagels, p. 64-5

72

a debate not yet resolved. Essentially, Heisenberg stated that the observer alters the
observed by the act of observation. Originally, he meant that because of the incredible
smallness of the scale, any act of observation could seriously affect the outcome. For
instance, the light we need to see would shoot photons at the particle we wish to observe
which then would knock things about. The indeterminacy inherent at the quantum level
also means that it may be impossible to predict the outcome of an experiment regardless
of how much we know about it. Furthermore, in Newtonian Mechanics, causality, a
dominant factor for predicting future events from the eight ball in the corner pocket to the
total eclipse of 2372, does not seem to exist at the quantum level. 96 It is probability that
is causally and precisely determined into the future, not individual events.97 In the
quantum world, randomness is its foundation, and the future is indeterminate.

In order to grasp how physicists currently determine consciousness comes into
play at the subatomic level we have to expand a little further into the technical aspect of
QM. Without going too deeply into this, QM, as noted earlier, is a mathematical or
statistical intellectualization of reality, as different as night and day from Newtonian
Mechanics.

When one performs the famous Double Slit Experiment with photons, for
instance, Schrodinger’s wave equation governs the potential possibilities of where those
photons will go. The mathematics can never say with certainty which possible outcome
will occur, but it presents a set of probabilities. Physicists call the curious mathematical
entity that represents all the possibilities that can occur between the area of preparation

and the “observing system” (measuring device) a “wave function,” because it looks like a

 

96 Talbot, Michael, Mysticism and the New Physics, (MNP) Arkana (London: 1993) pp. 15-17
97 Pagels, p. 82

73

”9

“development of waves that constantly change and proliferate. 8 Experimenters then

perform a simple mathematical operation—like squaring the amplitude of the wave—and
produce another mathematical entity called a “probability function.”99

Thus, the “wave flmction” gives us a mathematical catalogue or physical
description of all the things that could happen in the observed system. The probability
ﬁmction gives us the odds of those events actually occurring in the future. Until we
interfere with the development of an isolated observed system, the Schrodinger wave
equation continues to generate possibilities. As soon as we look to see what is happening
by making a measurement (interference), the probability of all the possibilities, except
one, becomes zero, and the probability of that one becomes one, which means that it
happens. Physicists call this result “state vector collapse,” and “reduction of the wave
function.” In other words, the catalog of potential pictures given by the wave function
turns into a single state, one of the permitted potential conditions of the system.100

The strangest part of this scenario is that, quantum mechanically speaking, all the
other potential situations in some way exist until the conscious intention of the observer
causes the collapse of the wave function and the chosen possibility actualizes.101 As I
stated earlier, there are other interpretations. Physicists refer to this event as the
“Problem of Measurement,” or the “Theory of Measurement.” Some physicists say that
it is the measuring apparatus causing the collapse, however, the measuring apparatus is

but one more piece of physical matter interacting with the measured system, and the

equation may easily accommodate another variable. However, Nobel Laureates Einstein,

 

9“ Zukov, pp. 80-1

99 Ibid, p. 81

'00 Walker, pp. 94-5

'0' Zukov, p. 87; Walker, p. 95; Talbot, pp. 25-7; Goswami, pp. 81-2

74

Von Neumann, and Wigner all concluded that QM is saying that it is not the measuring
apparatus, but our conscious intention, or mind that brings about the change.102
Although the microcosm is a weird place compared to our normal level, it still
seems strange to think that we may be actualizing the universe. That is the conclusion
drawn by many. However, the Copenhagen Interpretation does not specify human
consciousness; it assumes that to be the case, because, after all, who or what else has it?
The real question here just may be: Who (or what) is looking at the universe? Who
caused the collapse of the wave function to actualize this particular reality? Are we to
believe that we did it? If so, where along the evolutionary trail did we gain enough
complexity to attain consciousness enough to actualize the universe? What existed
before we reached that evolutionary state of consciousness? When we begin to pull all

the materialist pieces together, it still looks as if we are quite a few pieces short of a

complete puzzle.

The Self-Aware Universe
Physicist Amit Goswami believes he has the answer to this dilemma. He
proposes the primacy of consciousness rather than matter, and he believes he can do
physics or any science just as easily with that point of view. He calls his theory Ideal
Monism. Idealism posits “a transcendent, archetypal realm of ideas as the source of
material and mental phenomena.”103 Monism is the philosophy that there is only one
ultimate substance or principle. Thus, for Goswami, consciousness creates the physical

universe, and that universe, therefore, is self-aware; and consciousness is the ground of

 

'02 Walker, p. 102
'03 Goswami, p. 48

75

all being.

Goswami takes rssue ﬁrst with Searle’s “non—negotiable proposition” of the
atomic theory of matter as an “unproven assumption.” Instead of positing that everything
(including consciousness) is made of matter, he asserts that all things are made of
consciousness (including matter). He regards the principles of material realism as
metaphysical postulates; “assumptions about the nature of being, not conclusions arrived
at by experiment. '04

Goswami refers to the ancient wisdom traditions and his use of “consciousness”
as the ground of all being is unitive. His goal is the integration of science and mysticism.

The integration of science and mysticism should not be too disconcerting. After

all, they share an important similarity: both grew out of empirical data interpreted

in the light of theoretical explanatory principles. In science, theory serves both as
explanation of data and as the instrument of prediction and guidance for future
experiments. The idealist philosophy, too, can be viewed as a creative theory that

acts as an explanation of empirical observations of the mystics as well as .

guidance for other researchers of truth. '05
Essentially, Goswami, with Ken Wilber, sees speciﬁc domains wherein a researcher
might do “spiritual science” and not be antagonistic at all towards the physical sciences.
Therefore, Ideal Monism science must be at least compatible with science, if not essential
to its interpretation.106

Earlier, we discussed the Copenhagen Interpretation of consciousness and the
state vector collapse as a point of contention. Goswami points out the philosophical

conundrum of epiphenomenalism of the mind within material realism. As a theory of

mind, philosophers discarded epiphenomenalism a long time ago, so it is strange to see it

 

'0‘ Ibid, p. 17
"’5 Ibid. p. 54
'°" Ibid, p. 57

76

alive and well in Cognitive Science with not even a nod towards its problematic nature.
As discussed, in Cognitive Science, the mind arises out of, or is caused by the electrical
impulses of brain ﬁlnction. In effect, if mind is produced by the physical system rather
than interacting with it, then it is impotent. It cannot make a difference, because brain
impulses would always precede mind. This goes absolutely counter to our experience. If
I want to raise my arm to ask a question in class, there is a mental impulse of deciding to
raise my arm. However, in an epiphenomenal system, that impulse cannot predate the
process that leads to raising my arm. All you have to do is watch a cat preparing to
pounce or a kid playing a Game Boy to see that there is a complex set of relationships
that requires prior mental initiative. As Goswami says, “It seems impossible that an
epiphenomenon of matter could act on the very fabric of which it is built—in effect
causing itself.”107
Consequently, in addressing the “Problem of Measurement,” Goswarrri explains:
“coherent superpositions [where all possibilities exist before state vector collapse] are
transcendent objects. They are brought into immanence only when consciousness, by the
process of observation, chooses one of the many facets of the coherent superposition,
though its choice is constrained by the probabilities allowed by the quantum calculus.” '08
ln Goswami’s Ideal Monism, objects are already in consciousness as “primordial,
transcendent, archetypal possibility forms.”109
I carmot pretend to understand all the nuances of QM; however, it seems that this

idea highlights an unanswered set of problems concerning the nature of material objects.

If Consciousness is the ground of all being, then the archetypal possibility forms of, say,

 

'07 Ibid. p. 84
'03 Ibid. p. 84
'09 Ibid. p. 84

77

rocks, trees, steel bars, etc., have Consciousness as their base—as they have matter at
their base in the current worldview—is Goswami prepared to say that all things, then, are
conscious? Alternatively, is Consciousness a euphemism for God?

I ﬁnd Goswami’s ultimate idea compelling, but the structure of his argument is
less so. His hidden assumption, synchronized with that of the primacy of consciousness,
is the acceptance of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM as being correct, except for the
primacy of matter. That very well may be the case, but as Wilber makes clear, it is not a
good idea to hitch a theory of mysticism with one of science, as scientiﬁc theories have a
habit of becoming defunct. What happens, then, to your theory of mysticism?

I think the weakest portion of Goswami’s argument is his inability to maintain
consistently, the connection between Consciousness as the ground of all Being, and the
consciousness of the human observer as being one (yet not one). He has a tendency to
disengage the two as if human consciousness was separable and independent of the
whole. If transcendent Consciousness is the ground of all existence, then Consciousness
is. He never quite gets at the meat of the unity of Consciousness. Why do we need to
postulate the consciousness of human beings reaching into the transcendent realm to
actualize the universe? The universe, meaning transcendent whole, would not be merely
self-aware, but self-actualizing or actualization itself, because all is Consciousness. He is
like a receiver who “short-arms” a football. He might as well stretch out and go for it.
Though he expanded his view, his vision seems to fall short. As big as he is thinking, he
may not be thinking large enough. I mean no personal criticism or disrespect, but he
reveals himself as what he is: a physicist, one who is struggling to overcome training in a

limited viewpoint. Goswami also invokes the Anthropic Principle, but not to good effect.

78

Meaning arises in the universe when sentient beings observe it, choosing causal
pathways from among the myriad transcendent possibilities. If this sounds as if
we are re-establishing an anthropocentric view of the universe, so be it. The time
and context for a strong antlrropic principle has come—the idea that “observers
are nelcoessary to bring the universe into being”. . .The cosmos was created for our
sake.

We are the center of the universe because we are its meaning.1 '1
For someone pushing monism, his terminology is sometimes rife with dualism, or at least
fragmentation or separation into parts. If there is transcendent Consciousness, “we,” as
human beings, is a meaningless concept; and “center” as “most important” is
counterintuitive to his argument and follows a long tradition of such thoughts.

Historically, the Western worldview has used consciousness as a deﬁning
characteristic of earthly superiority. The Greeks used reason to separate themselves from
the animals. Jews and Christians used the soul as “image and likeness of God” to
become the highest form of life on earth, even though Adam was not the sharpest knife in
the drawer. Evolution reunites us with the animals, but only until the complexity of our
random development gives birth to the dawning of self-awareness, and puts us at the top
of the evolutionary tree. Goswami would negate the necessity of humility to bring us
back into focus as the sole reason for all of existence. Gary Zukov unwittingly refutes
Goswami on this exact point:

...the philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that all of the things in

our universe (including us) that appear to exist independently are actually parts of

an all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever
really separate from it or each other.1 12

 

”OIbid. p. 141
'1' Ibid. p. 14] (Author’s emphasis)
”2 Zukov, p. 52

79

David Bohm’s Implicate Order

Many physicists see David Bohm as a maverick. I have seen the label “heretic”
next to his name, which may be a good sign, however. Bohm was a holdover of the
Einsteinian critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM. Bohr and his circle
believed that quantum theory was complete and it was not possible to come to a clearer
understanding of what was going on at the quantum level. Einstein resisted this notion
until the end, and both Bohm and Einstein were dissatisﬁed with major assumptions of
the Copenhagen Interpretation, and the notion that there was no deeper reality beyond the
subatomic realm, and that beyond tinkering with QM there was nothing further to be
found there. Bohm criticized this widely held assumption by pointing out that the
universe may be inﬁnite, in which case it is impossible for quantum theory or any theory

113

to explain completely something inﬁnite. The central underlying theme for Bohm’s

work became the “wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided ﬂowing
movement without borders.”1 '4
Bohm established his reputation working with plasma (gas with a high density of
electrons and positive ions). He observed that individual electrons appeared to move
randomly, but when they were in a plasma, they began to act as if they were part of a well
organized interconnected whole. The plasma “constantly regenerated itself, and enclosed
all impurities within a wall in the same way a biological organism might encase a foreign

substance within a cyst.” Bohm later remarked that he frequently had the impression the

sea of electrons was alive.”5

 

”3 Talbot, Michael, The Holographic Universe. (HUT Harper Perennial (New York: 1991)

pp. 38-40
”4 Bohm, David, Wholer§s_s and the Implicate Order, Ark Paperbacks (New York: 1983) p. 172
”5 Talbot, (HU) p. 38

80

After accepting a position at Princeton, he began to study electrons in metals.
Again, he found that the seemingly random movement of individual electrons produced
“highly organized overall effects.” These were “entire oceans of particles, each behaving
as if it knew what untold trillions of others were doing.” These observations spurred
Bohm to begin the study of interconnectedness, not only at the quantum level, but at the
macrocosmic level as well.1 '6

Bohm’s view of consciousness seems fully in the macrocosm. He begins his book
with irrefutable observations of the widespread ﬁ'agmentation existing in the modern
world. We ﬁnd human society broken into different nations, religions, political and
economic systems, racial and ethnic groups, etc. Universities divide themselves into
disciplines, specializations, and focuses each considered distinct and separate from the
others. We divide the environment and its resources into separate parts. We separate the
animal kingdom into pests, varrnints, food sources, and protected species. Trees, rocks,
and water are different exploitable resources and not part of the whole ecosystem.
Society fragments human beings into “a large number of separate and conﬂicting
compartments, according to his different desires, aims, ambitions, loyalties,
psychological characteristics, etc., to such an extent that it is generally accepted that some
degree of neurosis is inevitable. ...”' 17 Even our solutions to social and environmental ills
are piecemeal and fragmentary. We think we can address drug addiction without looking
at society as a whole, or crime and poverty, without looking at capitalism and inequities
of wealth and resources.

Bohm sees that the process of division is also a way of thinking about ﬁrings, and

 

"6 Ibid. p. 38
”7 Bohm, p. l

81

is “convenient and useful mainly in the domain of practical, technical and functional
activities.” The long-range problem arises when humans begin to experience themselves
and the world as actually constituent of separately existing fragments.118 Eventually
humans believe themselves to be individually separate and will tend to defend the needs
of his ego against the rest. Even if he identiﬁes with a group, he will defend the group in
the same way, and if he thinks of humankind, he will do so as separate from nature.

Bohm saw the same mode of thinking involved in the Copenhagen Interpretation
of QM. In classic atomic theory, the ultimate constituents of the universe are small
individual and indivisible “building blocks.” Bohm called for a different view altogether,
“a new instrument of thought.” Bohm began with a different assumption than Bohr. He
assumed that particles do exist in the absence of observers, and he assumed that there was
a deeper reality, a sub-quantum level, waiting behind the boundary wall of the quantum
level.119 He reasoned that Descartes had attempted to resolve the dueling dual substance
problem of matter and consciousness by the idea that God made it possible. Since
philosophers and scientists generally abandoned that idea, “it has not commonly been
noticed that thereby the possibility of comprehending the relationship between matter and
consciousness has collapsed.”120 Bohm found that by proposing a new kind of ﬁeld at the
sub-quantum level, he could explain the ﬁndings of QM as well as Bohr could.121

Bohm called his new ﬁeld quantum potential, and he hypothesized that it
pervaded all of space like Einstein’s gravitational ﬁelds. Unlike gravitational ﬁelds,

though, its inﬂuence did not diminish with distance, but was equally powerful

 

“8 Ibid. p. 2

“9 Talbot, (HU) p. 39
'20 Bohm, p. 197

'2‘ Ibid. p. 78

82

everywhere. He thought that both relativity and quantum theory agree that we should
perceive the universe as a whole in which all parts merge into one totality. He called this
Undivided Whole in Flowing Movement, implying that the ﬂow is prior to the objects that
we see forming and dissolving within it. To Bohm, all matter was of this nature, that is:
“a universal ﬂux that cannot be deﬁned explicitly but which can be known only
implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly deﬁnable forms and shapes, some stable and
some unstable, that can be extracted from the universal ﬂux.” In this view, mind and
matter are not different substances, but “different aspects of one whole and unbroken
movement.”122
Here, Bohm has proposed his view of reality. The universe is similar to a
hologram in that the total order (the structure of reality on all levels) is “enfolded” in
some implicit sense, in each region of space and time.”123 This is the implicate order.
The example he uses is an ink drop in a jar of glycerin, stirred in one direction until it
dissipates and ﬁnally disappears. However, when stirred in the opposite direction after
disappearance, the ink drop will reconstitute itself. In other words, the ink appeared
distributed in a random way; nevertheless, it retained some sense of order. The explicate
order is the manifestations of the implicate order to our perception.
Matter is a form of the implicate order as a vortex is a form of the water. Like
“matter” and everything else, particles are forms of the implicate order. If this is
difficult to grasp, it is because our minds demand to know, “What is the

‘implicate order’ the implicate order of?” ...Description is totally incompatible
with what we want to say.‘24

The principle feature of the current mechanistic view is that “the world is

 

”2 Ibid. p. 11
'23 Ibid. p. 149
124 Bohm quoted in Zukov, p. 341

83

regarded as constituted of entities which are outside of each other, in the sense that they
exist independently in different regions of space (and time) and interact through forces
that do not bring about changes in their essential natures.”125 Bohm’s theory sees
everything that exists in the universe (reality) as a single continuum (a holomovement), a
ﬁeld in which there are no separate parts, and all things are not just connected, but are the
same thing. This holomovement is indeﬁnable and immeasurable.126 Bohm’s theory
seems to have departed from the language of physics and moved directly into that of
mysticism. From there, he explains that physics, ultimately, will never reach its goal of
describing reality since it can only work with the shadows of the explicate order.

To give primary signiﬁcance to the indeﬁnable and immeasurable holomovement

implies that it has no meaning to talk of a ﬁtndamental theory, on which all of

physics could ﬁnd a permanent basis, or to which all the phenomena of physics

could ultimately be reduced. Rather each theory will abstract a certain aspect that

is relevant only in some limited context, which is indicated by some appropriate

measure. '27

If we now ask: What is consciousness in Bohm’s View? For Bohm, consciousness
is thought, feeling, desire, etc., (the thinking—mental—substance of Descartes). He says,
like matter, consciousness is of the implicate order (intersecting waves of energy in the
sub-quantum realm: the holomovement) manifesting in the explicate (what we might call
objective reality), implying that there is no “it” (because the holomovement is an
unbroken whole), so to speak, because consciousness would be enfolded in every region
of reality. Like matter, consciousness is of the unbroken wholeness of the implicate

order. Therefore, at least he dissolves the problem of Cartesian dualism.

On the surface, he does not seem to see consciousness as having a higher level. In

 

"5 Bohm, p. 173
'26 Ibid. p. 151
mlbid. p. 151

84

fact, he collapses mind, matter and thought into one realm. For Bohm, thought is a
“material substance of the brain,” and consciousness is another form of matter.128
However, in conversations with Krishnamurti carried out over the course of nearly a
decade and one-half after publication of Wholeness and the Implicate Order, he qualiﬁes
that position. He recognizes insight, the “Ah-hah! Moment” as being “independent of the
material process,” and entertained the thought of the “universal mind.”129 However, it is
obvious that he struggled with Krishnarnurti’s attempts to get him to conceive of
something beyond his proposed ﬁelds of energy. Krishnamurti: “. . .Grasp in the

sense. . .can your nrind go beyond theories. . .? What I am trying to say is, can you move
into it? Not move in the sense of time and all that. Can you enter it? No, those are all
words. What is beyond emptiness? Is it silence?”130

Bohm originally saw three levels of reality, explicate, implicate and something
behind the holomovement. Probably because of Krishnarnurti’s inﬂuence, he postulated
a few more. Ken Wilber believes that had he kept going, he would have ended up
describing the Great Chain of Being.

Whether Bohm ultimately got beyond thought and theories, conception and ideas
to that place of silence and stillness where Krishnamurti tried to lead him is unknown.
Two things are certain; open as he was to different possibilities beyond those of the
accepted and mainstream, the narrowness of physics eventually led him to step ﬁ'om
science into religion and philosophy to make sense of his insights. Taking it a step

further, until his death, Bohm dedicated himself to fostering a radical change in

awareness and the process of thought.

 

‘28 Krishnamurti and Bohm, The Ending of Time, HarperCollins (New York: 1985) p. 118; p. 243
'291bid. p. 119
W Ibid. p. 41

85

In this chapter, we saw some remarkable studies related to alternative Western
views of the mind. It seems clearer that mind/consciousness (and consequently, the
human being) is not something we can understand by describing it in terms of a
materialist, epiphenomenal, or evolutionary view. We have followed it down to the
limits of materialist science and we still come up empty. We found that some physicists
believe it to be something even more fundamental than subatomic particles. We now
know that according to all schools of thought in theoretical physics “objective reality”
does not exist. The physical world around us is a shadow, an illusion; and not just
metaphysically, metaphorically, and philosophically, but physically. In terms of
“substance,” there is none. All matter is energy. All energy is matter moving (ﬂowing)
very fast. If one needs constituent “building block” parts, we have them, yet we cannot
continue to claim we have a material universe, unless we qualify it according to level;
and only then with the caveat that matter ultimately disappears.

We found that contrary to “mind as brain” notion, when the brain is not
functioning under anesthesia or coma, the mind still functions. We have heard several
scientists speak of the “higher” mind, the part of the mind beyond basic appetites and
cognition. We have heard Nobel laureates say they do not believe we will ﬁnd
consciousness in brain matter. We know that despite severe brain trauma, some
neurologists believe the essential human still struggles to get past the damage, as if the
brain is a receiver for consciousness, and not the generator of consciousness itself.

If matter is energy, than human beings are energy beings. We listened to a well-
respected pioneer of bio-energy research, who studied auras and electromagnetic life

frequencies. She interpreted her ﬁndings to deﬁne human beings as a “ﬂowing

86

interactive electrodynarnic energy or vibratory ﬁeld.” We heard a quantum physicist in
an unrelated discipline describe the underlying reality of which human beings consist, as
a ﬁeld of “undivided whole in ﬂowing movement.” We heard Dr. Hunt say her recorded
data showed when someone raised their personal energy ﬁeld to higher levels through
meditation, they inevitably had a spiritual experience regardless of beliefs and
background. The dominant school of thought in quantum physics believes their
mathematics and experiments say humans affect the universe with their conscious
intention. One attempted to make the case that consciousness, not matter, is primary
because of that human effect. Regardless of what side we are on in the materialist debate,
it is certain that what physicists are ﬁnding out about the quantum realm must challenge
cognitive scientists to look, at least eventually, beyond the meat of the brain for
mind/consciousness. It is also interesting to note that the man who wrote the book on
quantum mechanics, David Bohm, went outside the dominion of science when he found
the limits of scientiﬁc conceptual language in discussing his ﬁndings. Bohm conversed
with the Hindu Krishnamurti for over twenty years.

In the next chapter, we will begin to make the transition into the Eastern
perspective of mind. The connective bridge between science and Eastern mysticism will
be joined in the work of Jeffrey Schwartz from his pioneering use of “mental force” in his
work with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patients. All of which will help to close the
circle and bring us back to the Native mind/consciousness in a comparison between the
ethical path of Buddhist “right mindfulness,” and the traditional Native socializing

process.

87

CHAPTER FOUR

Neuroplasticity and the Brain

A dawning of consciousness, if you will, arrived recently in the Western world
under the term neuroplasticity. “Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of neurons to form
new connections, to blaze new paths through the cortex, even to assume new roles. In
short, neuroplasticity means the rewiring of the brain.”131 Until very recently, the
consensus of the scientiﬁc community insisted that that could not happen in the adult
brain. They assumed that once past a certain phase of developing childhood, the brain
became “hardwired.”

Obviously, the brain is an incredibly complex organ. Materialists and their notion
of mind after brain, have chosen what looks like the reasonable assumption based on
physiology. However, even the science of genetics has a hard time explaining how the
brain makes its connections. The Human Genome Project determined that humans have
approximately 20,000 to 25,000 genes, far below initial expectations, as researchers
expected a one to one correspondence regarding function.132 Basing their expectations
upon the complexity of the “human animal,” many researchers were shocked to ﬁnd that
round worms, ﬁ'uit ﬂies, and corn, for instance all have twice as many genes. However,
all that this demonstrates is that human genes must work in concert, and according to
recent studies, so do the neurons of the brain.

It seems apparent that the genes account for the structure, or the “hardware” of the

 

‘3 ' Schwartz, M.D., Jeffrey M., and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain. Regan Books, (New York:
2002) p. 15
'32 Ibid. passim pp. 111-1 18

88

brain and the human response to the environment accounts for the wiring of the neuronal
connections. At birth, humans have about 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) nerve
cells or neurons. Apparently, that is “most of the neurons a brain will ever have.”133
According to Jeffrey Schwartz, MD. in his book The Mind and the Brain, although this
is an impressive nrunber, it alone cannot explain the complexity of the organ that allows
us to see, hear, think, feel, and remember. The complexity of the brain that sets it apart
from other organs is the connections made by the neuron’s axons and dendrites.

The structure of the nerve cell consists of the cell body that contains the nucleus,
and all the biomechanical parts that all cells have to allow them to fulﬁll their function.
From the cell body sprouts a large number of “multibranched tentacles,” which we call
dendrites. Their function is to bring all the incoming electrochemical messages from
other neurons to their original cell. Like the branches of a tree, these tentacles are
relatively thick where they branch off ﬁom the cell, but become thin and wispy as they
divide into “dozens, if not hundreds” of branches.134

Also budding off the cell bodies is a single axon that consists of a long sheathed
ﬁber that extends away like a “string from a balloon,” whose ﬁmction is to carry
information in the form of electrical currents across the space known as the synapse to
another neuron’s dendrites. Therefore, dendrites receive and axons send. Schwartz
likens this gap, one millionth of a centimeter wide, as reminiscent of the “almost touch”
between the ﬁngers of God and Adam in Michaelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling

of the Sistine Chapel.”5

Each of the brain’s 100 billion neurons wires to anywhere from a few thousand up

 

‘33 Ibid. p.111
‘3‘ Ibid. p. 103
'35 Ibid. pp. 103-105

89

to one hundred thousand other neurons. A conservative estimate places the average
number of these connections at about 100 trillion per brain. Other estimates range as
high as 1,000 trillion connections. These connections, and the brain’s ability to change
them because of response to experience, are what scientists refer to as plasticity. '36
Neurologists have generally accepted for some time, however, that the brain’s
plasticity was limited to childhood, and once one reached adulthood the brain was
hardwired. This notion ultimately became a key tenet of neuroscience that morphed into
assumption or even belief.137 (As we saw earlier, Holmes Ralston might recognize the
academic resistance to the toppling of this belief as a potential Blik). Dr. Schwartz, a
research professor of psychiatry, thinks differently since his landmark successes with
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients.
...the time has come for science to confront the serious implications of the fact
that directed, willed mental activity can clearly and systematically alter brain
ﬁmction; that the exertion of willful effort generates a physical force that has the
power to change how the brain works and even its physical structure. The result
is directed neuroplasticity [in adults]. The cause is what I call directed mental
force. '38
As a young man, and because of a friend who was deeply involved in Buddhist
meditation, Schwartz had developed a curiosity of the practical aspect of Buddhist
philosophy. That is, the systematic development and application of a clear-minded

observational power, known in the Buddhist lexicon as Mindfulness.”9 Mindfulness

requires “directed willful effort,” while “Right Mindﬁrlness” is the heart of the Buddha’s

 

”6 Ibid, pp. 111
'37 Ibid., passim pp. 15-387
138 .
Ibid., p. 18
'39 Ibid., pp. 9-10

90

'40 We will look closely at this philosophy later, but for HOW, SUfﬁCC it to say,

teachings.
that mindfulness is the vehicle of transformation and healing of the mind within
Buddhism, and that everything else follows from this concept.

Mindfulness or mindful awareness is the capacity to observe one’s inner
experience in a “ﬁllly aware and non-clinging” way. Schwartz Quotes Nyanaponika
Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation coining the term “Bare Attention” to describe
“the clear and single minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the
successive moments of perception. It is called “bare” because it attends to the bare facts
of perception as presented either through the ﬁve physical senses or through the mind
without reacting to them.”'41 In other words, when someone beholds a tree, a rock, a
ﬂower or the ocean, the human inclination is to engage the mind to “think” about the
color or the shape, about drawing it or composing a poem about it. Instead, if we practice
the way of mindfulness, we see only the tree, the rock, etc. without the running
commentary of the mental committee.

Through deliberate mental effort, mindfulness allows a person to “observe their
sensations and thoughts with the calm clarity of an external witness: [where] you can
stand outside your own mind as if you are watching what is happening to another rather
than experiencing it yourself.”142 Essentially, Schwartz and many Eastern philosophers
and practitioners see this experience as an empirical exercise, because one might track .

thoughts and sensations over time in the same manner as a scientist observes

experimental data as “phenomena to be noted, investigated, reﬂected on, and learned

 

”0 Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Parallax Press, (Berkley: 1998) p. 59
I“ Schwartz, p. 10
'“wmpu

91

from 99143

This particular activity was crucial in the work of psychologist and philosopher
William James in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and as mentioned
before, the inability to derive hard objective data from his “subjective” method drove the
science of psychology into the peculiar absurdity of the extremes of behaviorism or
determinism. James acknowledged the complicated nature of subjective investigations
though, when he stated, “introspection is difficult and fallible; and. . .the difﬁculty is

d.”144 That is to say, some “thing” is doing

simply that of all observations of whatever kin
the observing, and within the Western viewpoint, the deﬁnition of what that thing is, is
very unclear. Many years after James’ observation, we ﬁnd that is still the case.
Furthermore, we must admit that regardless of the subject matter, observations are
subjective, despite how much one tries for objectivity; and subjectivity is problematic
because the methodology of Western science, going all the way back to Francis Bacon,
has declared our experiences unreliable.

Behaviorism also declared that we have no truly conscious free will, because we
are at the mercy of our response to external stimuli, like mere drooling relatives of
Pavlov’s puppies. Now, having reﬁned Skinnerian ideas into a more sophisticated
molecular dance of electrochernicals and neuroreceptors, modern scientists of cognition
and philosophers of mind would have that our subjective experience of awareness or

consciousness is only easily manipulated brain, if one but knows the correct triggers.

Thus, in the West, an intellectually aware person should know that he has no real

 

143 .
Ibid. p. 11

”4 James, William, The Principles of Psychology. (Cambridge, MA: 1983) pp. 191-192. Quoted in:

Wallace, B. Alan, Contemplative Science, Columbia University Press, (New York: 2007) p. 15

92

consciousness, human essence, or mind independent of the brain. Antiquated notions of
“Soul” or “Spirit,” of course, are not even on the table. Schwartz’s work puts a crack in
the foundation of that opinion.

Schwartz resolved to identify a psychiatric ailment that would test the effects of
mindfulness on brain function. On the brain/body side, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
with its pathological, mechanical brain processes ﬁt the bill. OCD presented “clear and
discrete presentation of symptoms and reasonably well-understood pathophysiology.”I45
On the mind side, “although the cardinal symptom of OCD is the persistent, exhausting
intrusion of unwanted thought and unwanted urge to act on that thought,” one marks the
disease by what psychiatrists call an “ego-dystonic character.”146 For instance, if
someone with the disease experienced a typical OCD thought,

some part of his mind knows quite clearly that his hands are not really dirty, for
instance, or that the door is not really unlocked. . .some part of his mind is
standing outside and apart from the OCD symptoms, observing and reﬂecting
insightfully on their sheer bizarreness. The disease’s intrinsic pathology is, in
effect replicating an aspect of meditation, affording the patient an impartial,
detached perspective on his own thoughts.147
Since the afflicted was a passive observer or spectator, Schwartz wondered if it was
possible to use mindﬁrlness training to “become more than an effete observer.” He
thought that maybe they could learn to strengthen the healthy parts of the brain in order to
resist the compulsive behavior, and quiet the fears and anxieties that come with it.
Schwartz collaborated informally with physicist Henry Stapp—quoted in the

earlier chapter on physics—ﬁnding a causal basis in quantum physics for the

effectiveness of will and attention within the mind’s power to physically shape the brain.

 

”5 Schwartz, p. 12
"6 Ibid. p. 55
”7 Ibid. p. 13

93

As noted in that chapter, there is a school of thought within the discipline that believes
that conscious intention or volition play a “causal role in the world, including inﬂuencing
the activity of the brain. Mind and matter, in other words, can interact.”148 Once again,
we ﬁnd Western scholars who slam into the limitations of methodology and ideology,
and who look elsewhere in order to solve problems and ﬁnd answers from outside the
parameters of Western thinking.

In Western history, the idea of consciousness arising from the stuff of the brain
goes back some twenty-ﬁve hundred years to Alcmaeon of Croton. Even though
Aristotle rejected that hypothesis, scientists today “know” that our mentality rises out of
the neuronal processes of the brain. Brain-mapping is one of the great accomplishments
of neuroscience. Most neurologists and cognitive scientists believe that once you can
trace any speciﬁc mental activity or feeling to a certain cluster of neurons, then you have
solved the origin of that particular event, whether it is depression, happiness, tactile
feelings, or smelling barbecued ribs. Their success was so intoxicating that it moved
Nobel laureate David Hubel in 1984 to state, “The word mind is obsolete.”149 This
statement is also curiously reminiscent of the earlier quote of LaPlace’s famous reply to
Napoleon.

Schwartz takes exception to the idea that consciousness arises solely from brain
function. He questions why it is that no other neurons but those in the brain are capable
of giving a person a “qualitative subjective sensation—an inner awareness.” After all,

the neurons in our ﬁngertips are no different.

What is it about the brain that has granted to its own neurons the almost

 

'“mmpn
'“wmpas

94

magical power to create a felt, subjective experience ﬁ'om bursts of
electrochemical activity little different from that transpiring downstream, back in
the ﬁngertips. This is one of the central mysteries of how matter (meat) generates
mrnd.
Thus, consciousness is more than perceiving and knowing, it is knowing that you
know.'5'

Going ﬁrrther, Schwartz questions a mystery upon which science is quite silent,
that of qualia. Qualia is the term philosophers use to describe the qualitative subjective
feel that we get from an experience or sensation. Every conscious state has a certain feel
to it such as the aforementioned red corvette, the ﬁrst croaking of frogs in the spring, an
Eric Clapton guitar solo in Crossroads, the smell of Thanksgiving turkey, or a child’s (or
adult’s) anticipation of Christmas morning. “Not even the most detailed ﬁnri gives us
more than the physical basis of perception or awareness; it doesn’t come close to
explaining what it feels like on the inside. It doesn’t explain the ﬁrst person feeling of
red.”152 In other words, how does a mechanical study of the brain, even down to the
molecular, chemical, or even atomic level begin to address this topic? As Colin McGinn
puts it, “The problem with materialism is that it tries to construct the mind out of
properties that refuse to add up to mentality?”53

It seems strikingly peculiar that highly educated scientists and philosophers
believe that after following a causal chain between molecular and mental events that they

have explained those events, and the mind, sufﬁciently. “If nothing else, there is a

serious danger of falling into a category error here, ascribing to particular clusters of

 

'50 Schwartz, p. 26

'5' Ibid. p. 26

'52 Ibid. pp. 26-7

'53 McGirm, Colin, The Problem with Materialism, Basic Books, (New York: 1999) p. 28

95

neurons properties that they do not possess—in this case, consciousness.”154 Therefore,
while it is true that scientists have come very far in their correlation of mental and
physical events, even they must admit that neither neuroscientists, cognitive scientists nor
philosophers have “adequately explained how the behavior of neurons can give rise to
subjectively felt mental states.”155 With such an “explanatory gap” within a materialist
perspective, if one wonders why it is that cognitive science continues to ignore this
particular little problem; Geneticist Richard Lewontin again has an answer: “One restricts
one’s questions to the domain where materialism is unchallenged.”

Schwartz, however, is not content with questioning the efﬁcacy of materialism, he
sees a deeper signiﬁcance often bypassed or ignored by its proponents, the notion of
moral agency.

The rise of modern science in the seventeenth century—with the attendant attempt to
analyze all observable phenomena in terms of mechanical chains of causation—was a
knife in the heart of moral philosophy, for it reduced human beings to automatons. If
all of the body and brain can be completely described without invoking anything so
empyreal as a mind, let alone a consciousness, then the notion that a person is morally

responsible for his actions appears quaint, if not scientiﬁcally naive. A machine
cannot be held responsible for its actions. ‘56

Schwartz begins with a different set of assumptions from those of materialists.
His are more in line with the aforementioned Oliver Sacks, Wilder Penﬁeld, and,
ultimately, William J arnes. Penﬁeld, mentioned earlier, was a pioneer neurosurgeon
specializing in the surgical methods that brought relief from epilepsy. After a career
dedicated to a materialist explanation of the mind, he came to believe that deﬁnition to be

insufﬁcient. “Although the content of consciousness depends in large measure on

 

'54 Schwartz, p. 27
”Smup28
'“wmpsz

96

neuronal activity, awareness does not. . .To me, it seems more and more reasonable to
suggest that the mind may be a distinct and different essence.”157 Dr. Schwartz has
demonstrated the potential truth of this statement by giving us a “scientiﬁc basis for
asserting that the exercise of the will, [and] the effort of attention can systematically
change the way the brain works.”158 Volition, our conscious intention, seems to be the
ﬁrndamental key.

William James, the dean of early psychological studies of the mind, said,
“volition is nothing but attention?”9 For J arnes then, it is not the ability or freedom to
initiate thoughts that deﬁnes our will or volition, but it is the ability to focus our attention
on some thoughts while blocking others. James called this conscious facility “spiritual
force.” I will speak more of this at length later'on; however, a couple of examples will
show the way.

Normally, we seem to have no control over the thoughts that pop into our minds,
they just appear there. As if our thoughts were horses racing by, the only control we have
is which horse we will choose to ride, and how far we will ride it. Anyone who has ever
attempted to meditate understands this, because when someone begins the discipline of
meditation he or she recognizes immediately the trivial nature of the barrage of thoughts
that constantly occupy our minds. A beginner would be an unusual individual if he could
keep his mind blank for ﬁve seconds. Our conscious attention to the quieting of these
thoughts is the “gatekeeper” to a calm and silent mind.

Because of its ego-dystonic character, someone suffering from OCD might ﬁnd

the notion of determinism quite reasonable since the patient’s mind seems to be

 

157 Penﬁeld, Wilder, The Mysteﬂ of the Mind, Princeton University Press, (Princeton: 1975) p. 55, 62
'58 Schwartz, p. 369
'59 James, Op. Cit. (1983) p. 424

97

observing from outside of the obsessive thoughts like an “impartial spectator,” and he or
she is ashamed and embarrassed by compulsive behavior that they can neither control nor
stop. Schwartz set out to ﬁnd the physical cause of the affliction with hopes of applying
a “mindful” system of therapy that could overcome it.

In his previous book, Brian Lock, Schwartz describes this search in detail. Work
done by behaviorists upon monkeys led them to identify several key structures in the
brain that have since come to be known as the OCD Circuit. These are the Orbital
Frontal Cortex and the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus both part of the Preﬁontal Cortex; and
the Striatum, which includes the Caudate Nucleus and the Putamen, all of which, when
hyperactive, generates a feeling that something is always amiss, even when nothing is.160
During his research, Schwartz recognized that the Striatum receives so many signals from
other parts of the brain that it “rivals, for sheer complexity, the central switching station
for the busiest telecom center imaginable. . .all areas of the cortex send neural projections
into the Striatum; so do parts of the thalamus and the brainstem.”'61

It was the neural projections, however, that caught his attention. Neurologists call
small clusters of these projections matrisomes. If we think back to the structure of
neurons, we ﬁnd matrisomes to be axon terminals usually found near microscopic
patches on the striaturn called striosomes. In between, we ﬁnd tonically active neurons,
or TANs, associated by scientists at MIT with behavioral responses to auditory or visual
stimuli giving a hint of an upcoming reward. A behavioral pattern of responses is

nothing more than a habit, which means that the striaturn is closely linked to the

development or formation of habitual behavior. Meanwhile the TANs may serve as the

 

'60 Ibid. passim pp. 56-95
'6' Ibid. p. 67

98

gatekeeper to the development of new patterns of activity in the striatum, as the TANs
direct the information from the matrisomes to the landing zone of the striosomes.162
One set of matrisomes comes ﬁom the prefrontal cortex, which is usually
associated with “planning and executing such complex behaviors as the manipulation of
mental images.”163 However, the striosomes also receive information from areas of the
prefrontal cortex called the Orbital Frontal Cortex and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex,
which are closely associated with emotional expression. Furthermore, “the primary
inputs to these striosomes are the polar opposites of the thoughtful, rational preﬁ'ontal
cortex,” they come from the limbic system, which plays a “critical role in the brain’s
emotional responses, particularly fear and dread,” and it is the limbic systems’ core
structure, the amygdala that seems to generate these feelings. Most importantly, it is “the
amygdala that projects most robustly into the striosomes’ distinctive patches.”164 Thus, it
seems that the striatum, and all the related structures, is “conducive to interactions
between emotions and thought.”165
When all of these structures are working properly, it is a ﬁnely tuned biochemical
mechanism, but when the modulation is faulty, as with OCD, these structures become
overactive and locked in a cycle of repetitive ﬁring, which triggers an error message
manifested as an overpowering feeling that something is terribly wrong. Having become
cognizant of the various studies in this area, Schwartz began to think in terms of

“mindful” behavior modiﬁcation with the intent of changing the modulation of the OCD

Circuit. In effect, he believed that through focused mental activity one could rewire the

 

"’2 Ibid. passim pp. 68-70
'63 Ibid. p. 67

'64 Ibid, passim pp. 67-9
'65 Ibid. p.68

99

brain.

Recent development of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans showed
beyond any doubt that the striatum of OCD patients is not functioning anywhere near
normality. It is necessary to note here, that these physical aberrations leave the higher
cognitive flmctions of the cerebral cortex virtually untouched. Thus, it is consistent with
the ego-dystonic aspect of OCD wherein the patient’s uncontrollable urges and disturbing
thoughts “are experienced as alien to the patient’s sense of who [he or] she is, and apart
from [his or] her stream of consciousness.”166

Traditional behaviorist therapies for treating OCD involved “exposure and
response” techniques. For instance, behavioral therapists took people with a hand-
washing “fetish” to public bathrooms, made them rub their hands all over the toilet bowl,
and did not allow them to wash. Sometimes the psychotherapist forced them to touch
urine and feces and rub it on themselves. While these therapies had some success,
Schwartz resisted them not only because of their offensive nature, but also because of the
passive aspect of the treatment. Essentially, behaviorists adopted only methods used on
animals, and they trained patients the same way. Identifying the hyperactivity of the
prefrontal cortex became the ﬁrst bullet Schwartz could put in his therapeutic gun aimed
directly at the heart of the OCD afﬂiction.167

Schwartz began his novel approach by showing PET scans to his patients to drive
home the notion of a physical cause rather than only a mental one. Initially, this idea

caused some consternation since brain damage or brain abnormalities, in this society,

often makes one feel they are less than human, they are often treated that way (as seen by

 

'66 Ibid. p. 74
'67 Ibid. passim pp. 71-6

100

the current ruling paradigm in psychiatry a la Oliver Sacks), and has connotations of
crazy or insane. In addition, because of the ego-dystonic nature of OCD, many patients
believed they were crazy. '68 However, through therapy they came to believe that they
were more than just their gray matter. When one woman exclaimed, “It’s not me, it’s my
OCD!” he began a working hypothesis that making mental notes could be an effective
way to begin. This notion became the ﬁrst step in what would become the Four Step
method: Relabeling. I 69

He had patients begin to describe their symptoms and the situations within which
they arose. His emphasis became “the importance of identifying as clearly and quickly as
possible the onset of an OCD symptom. . .recognizing exactly what each of these feelings
was.”170 For instance, if someone had the thought that his hands were dirty and needed
washing, he was to use mindfulness" 171to enhance his awareness of the fact that he did
not truly believe that his hands were dirty. He would say to himself, “That’s not an urge
to wash; that’s a bothersome thought and an unpleasant feeling caused by a brain wiring
problem.” In other words, he taught his patients to make mental notes, a sort of running
commentary on what they were experiencing. Relabeling helped patients stop the
unpleasant feelings from being unpleasant by understanding their true nature, and giving
them a feeling of control over urges that had been uncontrollable. '72 Mindfulness kept

them ﬁom being caught up in sets of compulsive rituals.

 

'68 See Oliver Sacks, The NLan Who Mistoo_k his Wife for a Hat. See also concepts like Ships of Fools and
early insane asylums such as Bedlam.

'69 Ibid. pp. 78-9

"0 Ibid. p. 79

171 * Mindﬁtlness- Through deliberate mental effort, mindfulness allows a person to “observe their
sensations and thoughts with the calm clarity of an external witness: [where] you can stand outside your

pvzvn mind as if you are watching what is happening to another rather than experiencing it yourself.”
7 .
Ibid. p. 80

101

Only one week after patients started Relabeling their symptoms as pathological
brain processes, they reported that they were getting better. The second of the Four
Steps, Reattribute was directly related to the PET scans. Once patients had solid
evidence of a brain disorder in the form of a picture, it reinforced through mindfulness
that the brain glitch was not his “true self.” Furthermore, Relabeling through
Reattributing ampliﬁed their ability for mindful awareness. They were able to put
distance between their will and their compulsive behaviors.173

Refocusing was the third step and the most important one because as Schwartz
recognized, it involved truly mindful action.

It evolved to become the core step in the whole therapy because this is where

patients actually implement the willful change of behavior. The essence of

applying mindful awareness during a bout of OCD is thus to recognize obsessive
thoughts and urges as soon as they arise and willfully Refocus attention onto

some adaptive behavior. 17"

The goal of this step was to initiate an action completely unrelated to the
compulsive thought, while the urge is present. Just because one was mindful of the
symptoms and attributing them to the physical cause did not mean the compulsion was
less than it was before, it was very much a part of their inner experience along with its
attendant anxiety and dread. The idea was to substitute a good habit for a bad one. So,
when the urge to wash or check the locks or count the cans in the pantry came upon the
patient he or she was taught to Relabel, Reattribute, and then turn one’s attention to a

different activity like gardening, walking, cooking, playing video games, or whatever

worked, to absorb their attention. Refocusing worked to break the chain of attention that

 

”3 Ibid. pp. 81-2
'7‘ Ibid. p. 83

102

had always accompanied the onset of OCD.I75

Schwartz gave them the “ﬁfteen minute rule” which required an “active delay” of
ﬁfteen minutes before they engaged in any compulsive behavior. Schwartz understood
that setting a time limit somehow made it easier for patients to resist their urge
(recovering alcoholics and addicts would recognize this method contained in slogans like
“one day at a time;” which can be reﬁned, according to need, into “one moment at a
time” if necessary). However, within those ﬁfteen minutes, patients must actively pursue
some “mindﬁrl adaptive behavior intended to activate new brain circuitry with the goal of
pursuing the alternative activity for a minimum of another ﬁfteen minutes.”176

The brain lock Schwartz had discovered in the OCD Circuit was undoubtedly the
culprit for the unrelenting error-detection signal that made the patient feel that something
was terribly wrong.'77 Schwartz thought that by actively changing behaviors, Refocusing
would then change which brain circuits would become active. When patients changed
the focus of their attention, therefore, the brain might change, too. He thought that if he
could somehow induce the patient to initiate virtually any adaptive behavior other than
whatever the compulsion was

...this process would activate neuronal circuitry different from the pathways that

were pathologically overactive. Then I could exploit the brain’s tendency to pick

up on repetitive behaviors and make them automatic—that is, to form new

habits. . .when patients change their focus from “I have to wash again” to I’m

going to garden,” I suspected, the circuit in the brain that underlies gardening

becomes activated. If done regularly, that would produce a habitual association:

the urge to wash would be followed automatically by the impulse to go work in

the garden.'78

Schwartz called the Fourth Step “Revalue. ” “Revaluing is a deeper form of

 

”5 Ibid. passim pp. 83-6
”6 Ibid. p. 84
”7 Ibid. p. 85
'73 Ibid. p. 85

103

Relabeling.”179 His insight rose ﬁom a reading of Ludwig Von Mises, an Austrian
economist, who deﬁned value as “man’s emotional reaction to the various states of his
environment, both that of the external world and that of the physical conditions of his
own body.” To Schwartz, this was exactly what his OCD therapy seemed to be
changing.'80

Relabeling, in and of itself, is superﬁcial and does not lead to any reduction in
symptoms or the ability to cope with them. As with anyone struggling with alcoholism,
for instance, being told you have a disease does not change any of the symptoms. One
might be able to relieve themselves of the criticisms of moral irresponsibility or weak
character, but the condition remains the same unless the addict takes active additional
steps to gain control. Revaluing is rooted in the Buddhist philosophy of “wise attention,”
which means seeing things as they truly are. An OCD patient must recognize the
troubling thoughts “as senseless, as false, as errant brain signals not even worth the gray
matter they rode in on, let alone worth acting on.”181

There are many parallels amongst the various wisdom traditions. One, which I
include in this list, is American Indian philosophy. In a small book entitled The Sacred
Tree, “values” are deﬁned as “the way human beings pattern and use their energy?”82 In
other words, we can easily recognize the things we value by paying attention to how
much energy we expend on them. An alcoholic or drug addict obviously values a

drunken or altered state more than anything else, since he spends nearly all his energy

trying to achieve it. We might see that certain academics value research above all else if

 

”9 Ibid. p. 87

'80 Ibid. p. 87

'8' Ibid. p. 88

'82 Bopp, Bopp, Brown, and Lane, The Sacred Tree, Four Worlds Development Press,
(Alberta, Canada: 1985) p. 18

104

he or she willingly gives most of their time to it. Accordingly, Schwartz can call
attention to the amount of time OCD patients are spending engaged in their obsessive
habits, and ultimately lead them to believe that there is great value in extinguishing the
compulsion despite their intense desire to surrender to it.

Subsequent group studies proved not only that more than 80 percent of patients
were able to overcome their obsessive behavior without the use of drugs, but brain scans
also showed that the that the brain rewired itself as a result of willful effort. The
hyperactivity within the brain structures of the OCD Circuit decreased signiﬁcantly and
as time went by, Refocusing became habitually associated with the onset of symptoms
until the “brain lock” was broken.183

However, Schwartz was not completely satisﬁed, because his study raised some
rather profound questions about the mind and brain. He was convinced that there was
some “force” that was responsible for the changing of the brain circuitry. Harkening
back to William James’ “spiritual force,” Schwartz decided upon “mental force.” The
willful effort that patients made seemed the logical way to account for the generation of
this power. The results he had achieved with his OCD patients lent much weight to the
argument that “the conscious and willful mind differs from the brain and cannot be
explained solely and completely by the matter, by the material substance, of the brain.”184
After all what could be harder science than the PET scan evidence, he had in hand?

Anticipating the materialist stance that the brain is changing other parts of the

brain, Schwartz reasoned that training OCD patients required tapping into their belief in

the effectiveness of their own willful actions. In other words, “conscious, volitional

 

'83 Ibid. passim pp. 88-95
'8‘ Ibid. p. 93

105

decisions and changes in behavior alter the brain.”185 As a scientist, he struggles to
explain this concept within the Western scientiﬁc worldview.
Mental force needs the brain to express itself. But it is more than brain, and not
reducible to brainstuff. In the ﬁactions of a second when the brain might activate
either the pathological circuit underlying a dash to the sink or the healthy circuit
underlying a stroll to the garden to prune, mental force ampliﬁes activity in the
healthy circuit. You can generate a mental force that activates one circuit rather
than another. In a more innocent age, we called that will. ‘86
However, the very idea that the brain can change at all, much less, that it can change in
response to mind ﬁrst had to overcome a century-old dogma, the accepted notion that the
brain is hard-wired in adults and cannot change.187
Since the early nineties when Schwartz began his mindfulness-based cognitive
therapy, many studies with stroke victims and amputees began to show that cortical
reorganization or neuroplasticity had occurred in adult brains. While most of these
studies only showed that brain functions and elements of the existing neural network
could be co-opted by new patterns of use in competition for available cortical space,
several researchers concluded that “passive, unattended, or little-attended exercises are of
little value for driving neuroplasticity. Plastic changes in brain representations are
generated only when behaviors are speciﬁcally attended.“88 As Schwartz calls it,
“attention matters.” Physical changes in the brain depend upon “a mental state in the
mind—the state called attention?‘89

Research followed that soon showed that mindfulness-based programs had the

ability to change the brain in victims of stroke, Tourette’s, and depression. In 1990, the

 

'35 Ibid. p. 94-5

'86 Ibid. p. 95

'87 Ibid. p. 95

'88 Ibid. passim pp. 132-224. Quote speciﬁc Mezernich and Jenkins, p. 224
'89 Ibid. p. 224

106

scientiﬁc establishment either ridiculed proponents of neuroplasticity or relegated it to a
faintly interesting topic. By the middle of the decade, it was the hottest ﬁeld in
neuroscience. Today there is no question that the brain

...remodels itself throughout life and that it retains the capacity to change itself as

the result of passively experienced factors such as enriched environments, but also

changes in the way we behave (taking up the violin) and the ways we think

(“That’s just my OCD acting up”). Nor is there any question that every treatment

that exploits the power of the mind to change the brain involves an arduous

effort. . .to improve both their ftmctional capacity and their brain function.190
So, it seems that successfully breaking apart a major piece of accepted scientiﬁc dogma
has opened the door to alternative explanations for what the mind or consciousness is. As
signiﬁcant as this information is for our purposes since it drove right straight to the heart
(or brain) of the matter, we still have no credible scientiﬁc explanation for mind,
consciousness, or spirit. Schwartz, however, is a very shrewd and careful individual. As
a scientist, Schwartz continues to follow method and training attempting to isolate what
his Buddhist training assumes is already there. By shying away from James’ “Spiritual
Force” and applying the term “Mental Force instead, he can keep the discussion within
scientiﬁc boundaries. By looking for the connection between volition and brain matter
Within quantum physics, he can bridge the divide between science and religion by
focusing on physiology and human behavior. By keeping the conversation fully in the
camp of Theravada Buddhism, he can avoid the kinds of religious beliefs that incorporate
spirits, souls, a transcendent creator, and other nonscientiﬁc hot buttons, which ultimately
might lead to having his conclusions rejected out of hand as “mumbo jumbo” by the
scientiﬁc community.

Schwartz provided a great service to this project by being the bridge between

 

'90 Ibid. p. 253-4

107

science and eastern mysticism. The fact that he scientiﬁcally documented mind over
matter will certainly expand other minds. Our notion of mind/consciousness has gotten
much richer, just in time to close the circle. The bridge back to Native America comes

from Asia, curiously enough.

108

CHAPTER FIVE

An Eastern Perspective of the Mind

When we left Native America in “Troubled Traditions” of chapter one, I had
made the case that forces of assimilation had affected Native minds. I know it through
personal experience. As we saw in the last chapter, what we call the “normal” mind,
Buddhists call the dysfunctional or untrained mind. I believe that the assimilated or
partially assimilated Native now qualiﬁes as having a “normal” dysfunctional mind.
However, I do not believe that was the case in the past. In this chapter, we will explore
this concept further, and see some very compatible parallels between Buddhist training
and the training of young Indians prior to assimilation. Furthermore, as a direction for
further study, we will look at these Buddhist training techniques with one eye on the idea
that working to achieve a ftmctional rrrind is also a viable path to revitalization of culture,
and could play a part in the resolution of the problem with troubled traditions.

When Schwartz extracted mindfulness ﬁom the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, he
transplanted the heart of the Buddha’s teachings into a fully secularized body of therapy,
and his patients obtained beneﬁcial results. However, we would have to admit that just
because a patient utilized mindfulness to prevent the insatiable inﬂuence of compulsion,
he or she is not necessarily a better, more ethical human being as a result. That was not
Schwartz’s intention. Certainly, a patient would be calmer and more relaxed, perhaps
even more compassionate as a result. However, Schwartz trained the mind of OCD
patients in the techniques of attentive awareness, but not the full application. I am not

denigrating Schwartz’s success, but the underlying objective of the Eightfold Path, after

109

all, is a spiritual life. As we shall see, that also happens to be the same objective of
American Indian societies of the old days; and while there are many Natives who still
ﬁnd that goal compelling, there are many who are attracted to the American commercial
way of life.

The mental (or spiritual) force combined with mindﬁrlness is also the transitional
step that brings us closer to understanding human beings, in general, by trying to
understand what the mind’s potential is, as well as opening the door to the mysteries of
Native spirituality. Mindful attention is the key.

Because this project focuses upon mind/consciousness, Buddhism is a perfect ﬁt.
Buddhist and Hindu practitioners have studied the mind empirically for thousands of
years. By this, I mean that through mindful attention one may chart his or her progress
simply by paying attention. For example, when one starts to meditate, he or she will
notice how difﬁcult it is to keep the mind clear of intruding thoughts for more than a few
seconds. Over time, he or she will be able to notice the change as they get more
proﬁcient. This subjective method is the same that William J arnes used. In comparison
to the length of time that Western scientists have been studying the mind, by that standard
I am giving the nod of expert witness to Buddhism.

While Buddhism is a rich and complex tradition, like Schwartz, I will streamline
our exposure to the complexity of tradition, to focus on the process of mindful attention.
However, unlike Schwartz I will spotlight the ethical path, because Buddha says that an
ethical way of life is a necessary prerequisite to a spiritual life. Consequently, that is the
bridge that brings us back to Native America, and will provide a clear-cut connection to

Native traditional ways and philosophy, while allowing a comparative weaving of both

110

traditions. In addition, since Buddhism arose out of Hinduism, some Hindu mystical
concepts that are germane to this study will intersect smoothly with the comparative
narrative. Furthermore, Buddhism has a historical connection to Western science that
dovetails nicely into this comparative study, and will allow us to link all parties together
in our ﬁnal chapter.

Like most other religions, there are many different sects of Buddhism. As often
happens as religions spread, when Buddhism entered disparate cultures, it took on a hue
speciﬁc to that culture. Unlike Tibetan and classical Theravada Buddhism, for instance,
the Mahayana school worships Buddha as a deity. However, classical monastic
Buddhism as a method of inquiry is uniquely suited to conversation with Western
scientists for several reasons. Though always considered a religion, classical Buddhism
has no concept of a personal God, no divine creation story, and no soul to muddy
scientiﬁc conversations. Therefore, in religious studies, it is difﬁcult to put the square
peg of Buddhism into the round hole of religious categories. Like Western science,
Buddhists advocate a causal understanding of all events in the universe. The Dalai Lama
has often stated “If science proves facts that conﬂict with Buddhist understanding,
Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with
the facts.”191 Thus, some Western thinkers believe Buddha was the ﬁrst positivist,
anticipating “important details of a scientiﬁc worldview.”192 Scientists of the late
Nineteenth century and early twentieth century found areas of compatibility in classical
Buddhism with evolutionary theory, atomic theory and psychotherapy. In those days of

William James and subjective research, the latter seemed a perfect ﬁt because “Buddhism

 

'9' From Paul Carus, Ed., Buddhism and the Religion of Science, (1896); as quoted in Harrington and
Zajonc, p. 6
'92 Harrington and Zajonc, p. 4

111

uses the human mind, reﬁned through meditative practice, as its primary instrument of
investigation into the nature of reality.”193

The ongoing question arises here: What is the mind for Buddhists, trained or
otherwise? Unlike cognitive scientists, Buddhists do not have to avoid speaking of
consciousness and subjectivity because they are not handicapped by assumed theories
that leave no place for their explanation. They started ﬁ'om a scientiﬁc premise, and
worked from there. It was an empirical observation. Consciousness is. It exists; it is as
simple as that. Over time, and with much individual and group effort, they made certain
determinations. As far as an inherently real, localized, ego-centered mind goes, the
answer is they ﬁnd no evidence for it. Instead, they posit consciousness in three layers,
much like layers in a deep body of water where you have a layer of relative warmth, then
a little deeper you ﬁnd a layer of coolness, and even deeper it is cold, but it is still one
body of water.

Emotions ﬁll the gross level of consciousness, and correspond to the functioning
of the brain, and interaction with the body in its environment. The subtle level (also
known as the substrate consciousness) is the “mind stream” that carries onward
tendencies and habitual patterns. In addition, the mind may examine its own nature by
the introspective faculty of the substrate consciousness. The very subtle (also known as
primordial consciousness) is the fundamental aspect of consciousness, the sheer aspect of
awareness without any particular objects upon which consciousness focuses. Following

the water analogy, afflictive emotions on the gross level are like waves upon the ocean, in

that they do not disturb the waters below.194

 

'93 Ibid. p. 4
'94 Goleman, pp. 79-80

112

This layered consciousness provides the reasoning behind the Buddhist denial of
the ego-centered self. They have arrived at this knowledge through contemplative study
of the practices of mindful meditations. Thus, an untrained individual is ignorant or
unaware that his afﬂictive mental state of warring emotions is not what his true nature is,
yet, these mental states trap him for lack of knowledge of how to overcome them;
therefore, our untrained minds are dysfunctional. However, they are not inherently
dysfunctional.

'95 brings about cessation of the

The training one undergoes towards Nirvana
negative aspects of the gross level, and may be seen as moving from ignorance, to
volition, and then unobstructed consciousness. Once an initiate makes the decision for
mental training, they begin to make the journey towards that subtle level, Where through
intensive meditative work of sustained, hi gh-resolution attention called Samadhi, he or
she will experience the substrate consciousness, which will eventually lead to the
awareness or experience of the very subtle aspect of consciousness called Samatha, or
“meditative quiescence.”196 This mental state is often referred to as being “achieved,” as
if it was something that you made happen in your mind. However, the Dalai Lama, who
is a master teacher, of course, states “This luminous nature of the mind is not
some high state, nor something you accomplish, but something that is primordial,

fundamental, and essential.”197

The key observation that they found through meditation that tells them the

 

'95 Due to translation of this term as “to blow out, as a ﬂame is extinguished,” some scholars imposed
theories of total annihilation or nihilism upon this concept, because that is the logical conclusion of
materialist science. A closer deﬁnition is “emptiness.” In other words, the boundaries of the ﬁnite self are
extinguished. This is the highest destiny of the human spirit.

'96 Wallace, op. cit. pp. 135-47

‘97 Goleman, p. 95

113

dysfunctional mind is not our true state, is that we do not carry with us all of the
emotional garbage that afflicts us on the gross level of consciousness, it is left behind as
we acquire awareness of the clarity of the subtle state. The very subtle state of emptiness
relieves one of any struggles to control the mental afﬂictions, because that phenomenal
self does not exist there. Because of Buddhist empirical methods of inquiry, therefore,
we can recognize this state as the ontological status of consciousness. In other words, for
Buddhists, it is the true nature of the human mind.

As we now understand, Mindfulness is an attention-focusing method that
Buddhists developed for a variety of mental disabilities. However, its primary use is as
the keystone of an ethical path to personal growth and development. The purpose of
Buddhist mindfulnesstechniques is the healing of the dysfunctional untrained human
mind, with the intention of producing better, spiritually oriented human beings. As such,
suffering engendered by emotions, inclinations, predilections, and negative aspects of
character can no longer control these Buddhist “patients,” as long as he or she stays
aware of thoughts, words and deeds, with the conscious intention of enhancing one’s
character.

Attention is the key to awareness. We can understand this easily if we think about
our own experience. I might be walking across campus With much on my mind. Maybe I
am on my way to a dissertation defense, and all I can think of is my preparation. I can be
so self-involved that I barely pay attention to those around me. The sun is out, the wind
is blowing, birds are chirping, and certain smells are in the air. I can remain unaware, or
only peripherally aware of my surroundings. My brain is picking up the sound stimuli of

the bird sounds, but am I actually “hearing” them? I know that I can walk through entire

114

days without being aware of the birds. Only if we willfully direct our attention to the
birdsong, do the sounds come forward out of the background noise of our thoughts. The
same holds true for any negative aspect of character, we must ﬁrst attend to the fact that it

exists before we can proceed to address it.

As we can see, Buddhism, as would any religion, brings something to the table of
this discussion that science never can: an ethical component. While one may argue that
ethics is integral to the scientiﬁc process, we can see the difference in that religions are
meant to be systems of ethics, and science deﬁnitely is not. Furthermore, there is no
evidence that the advances in science, powerﬁrl technologies, and market forces have
brought with them a commensurate growth of ethics or morality anywhere, much less in
the center of the world’s commercial culture where we live. However, it is important to
realize that Buddhism requires much more practical application than someone sitting
quietly and attending to his or her thoughts. Notably, it is a practice (praxis) in ethics,

“without which there can be no viable spiritual practice at all.”198

If we think about that statement, it is very clear. For instance, gossiping and
backstabbing is not only unethical, it is mean-spirited and harmful. If one is attempting
to become more spiritual, one must be aware of negative habits such as this one, and

since they retard spiritual growth, we must work to overcome them.

An ethical way of life—a way of life that is oriented towards not injuring others
and to being of service where one can—is a life based on empathy, compassion,
and altruism, and, pragmatically, such a life turns out to be a foundation for
achieving mental health and balance. '99

Buddhism is a religion of intense self-effort. According to Buddhists, one must

 

'98 Harrington and Zajonc, p. 38
'”wups9

115

start to live ethically before he or she can develop a spiritual way of life. However, a
spiritual life is the ultimate goal. Therefore, an ethical lifestyle is a prerequisite to
spirituality. Mindfulness is the attentive practice that helps us keep our mind’s eye on the
prize. An immediate question arises ﬁ'om these thoughts: Do we achieve spirituality
simply by walking an ethical path, whether Native or Buddhist, or is there another step

that we must take?

Functional Native Minds

Native people have the same answer to this question that Buddhists have. One
must seek the spiritual life. Their means of achieving this was by mindfully walking an
ethical path, and actively seeking spiritual information. The initial question is: How were

Native minds trained to be ﬁmctional?

The formation of the Indian mind began before birth. Keeping in mind what we
have seen concerning the effect of conscious intention on the quantum level, the concept
of mental or spiritual force, and its effect on the wiring of the brain, the following
provides interesting possibilities:

A pregnant Indian woman would often choose one of the greatest characters of

her family and tribe as a model for her child. This hero was daily called to mind.

She would gather from tradition all of his noted deeds and daring exploits,

rehearsing them to herself when alone. In order that the impression he more

distinct, she avoided company. She isolated herself as much as possible, and
wandered in solitude, not thoughtlessly.200

Eastman describes a woman mindfully concentrating on desired human qualities

from the time that she knew she was pregnant, until birth. I suspect that he was not privy

 

20° Eastman, Charles, Indian Boyhood, McClure Phillips & Co., (New York: 1902) pp. 49-50

116

to knowledge that only the women held, and that there may have been deeper reasons for
this practice, perhaps not. However, we do know that the Lakota had a strong belief in
the existence of the soul,“ and because of other entries, there is evidence to suggest that
it was not an uncommon occurrence at birth, to examine the baby for evidence of its
being an old soul that has returned. If souls can return, perhaps what the woman is doing
is calling back a speciﬁc one. Perhaps she is not merely focusing on the qualities of the
departed hero, she is praying for his/her return, as Stanley Redbird suggests in Lakota
Star Knowledge.

The education of young Indians was of a far different brand than what we know
today. Education began early, and since society was communally oriented, and people
did not go off to work a 9-5 job everyday, a child was never alone. Standing Bear tells us
that after birth, the mother and grandmother raised the child for at least the ﬁrst six years
of its life, passing on information and wisdom. In addition to that, as the child developed
he or she had undivided family attention:

As the Lakota child continued to develop, it had the constant companionship of an

elder; if not father or mother, then aunt, uncle, or one of the numerous cousins of

the band. Children were always welcome charges of all who were older. Every
child not only belonged to a certain family, but also belonged to the band, and no
matter where it strayed when it was able to walk, it was at home, for everyone in
the band claimed relationship.202

Not surprisingly, the anthropologists that came to study the people unfortunately
misunderstood the role of women in the society. American society perceives their
women as less than the men. Therefore, when the anthropologists came (almost all white

males), they walked right past the women as if they were not important. This was a

projection of how they viewed their own women onto Indian society. The stories of

 

20' See “Introduction” for usage of the word “soul.”
202 Standing Bear, p. 5

117

“squaws” as mere drudges, and being forced to walk ten paces behind, are constructs of
non-Indian society; as if to say, "Look how much better we treat our women then these
savages.” Standing Bear gives a reasonable explanation forthis charge, when he explains
that women stayed behind the man simply for safety and protection. If we think for a
moment, we can see the truth here. The Western Lakota was an egalitarian when it came
to recognizing the spirit of life in all things. Why, then, if he recognized even a
grasshopper as qualitatively equal, would he then view his loved one as less than that?
He would not. Because of this anthropological attitude, ignoring the women has
probably lost a great deal of information. On the other hand, women have kept their
knowledge undisturbed in many cases.

At any rate, the women had much to do with the shaping of the young Lakota
mind. The small one's initial perceptions of the world were almost entirely in the hands
of the mother and grandmother, even more so the grandmother. One cannot help but
wonder what kinds of knowledge a respected elder woman possessed. Almost certainly,
she contained a store of knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants, as well as
their personal power, and the prayers and songs that were necessary to maintain the
relationships with those plants.

There were exercises that sharpened the memory of young Lakota, and required
the kind of mindful attention a Buddhist would understand:

Very early, the Indian boy assumed the task of preserving and transmitting

the legends of his ancestors and his race. Almost every evening a myth, or

a true story of some deed done in the past, was narrated by one of the

parents or grandparents...On the following evening, he was usually

required to repeat it. If he was not an apt scholar, he struggled long with

his task; but, as a rule, the Indian boy is a good listener, and has a good
memory, so that the stories were tolerably well mastered...this sort of

118

teaching at once enlightens the boy's mind and stimulates his ambition.203

Standing Bear speaks of youngsters that became so adept at this that they only

1.204 We should never doubt

need hear the story one time, and they could remember it al
this. They say that Mozart was able to listen to an entire piece of music once, and then be
able to play it. Obviously, it is a human ability, but in the West, most consider such a
person gifted. Perhaps, but this is one of the major differences between oral and literal
cultures. The invention of written language is an enormous boon for the spreading of
ideas; being able to put things down on paper frees the mind up to focus on other things.
On the other hand, there is a loss suffered as a result. In an oral culture, one has to learn
to concentrate with an attention to detail that must far exceed that of a literal student.

The old exercise of lining up ten people and whispering a story to the ﬁrst one,
and then he or she passes it on down the line until it comes out unrecognizable at the end,
does not ﬁt here. The people in the exercise were not from oral cultures. Members of
oral cultures could pass the test. We can prove this by looking at Jewish religion around
the time of Jesus. While the Hebrews, indeed, had writing, they passed on by word of
mouth, exactly as it had been passed to them, the whole body of Oral Torah, including
commentaries from each generation (Talmud). Rabbis ran special schools, oversaw the
content, and constantly checked it. This is a formidable piece of work. They began to
write it down, because the bellicosity of the Jewish Zealots put the entire country at risk.

The Rabbis realized that if the Romans wiped out just one school, there would be a huge

hole in the tradition. Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara comprise a shelf full of volumes now

 

203 Eastman, Boyhood, p. 51
20’ Standing Bear, pp.52-3

119

that scholars have written it down.205 I believe Indians could pass the test, too.

As Robert and Michele Root-Bemstein declare, “All knowledge begins in

observation. We must be able to perceive our world accurately to be able to discern

patterns of action, abstract their principles, make analogies between properties of things,

create models of behavior, and innovate fruitfully.”206 This was as true for Indians of the

old days, as it is for science today. Buddhists require the vehicle of mindful attention to

relieve the mind of its afﬂictions. Native teachers required mindfulness in other ways,

designed to make the student an astute observer of the natural world:

When I left the tipi in the morning he would say, "Look closely to everything you
see," and at evening, on my return, he used often to catechise me for an hour or
so. "On which side of the trees is the lighter colored bark? On which side do they
have the most regular branches?” It was his custom to let me name all the new
birds that I had seen during the day. I would name them according to the color or
the shape of the bill or their song or the appearance and locality of the nest...He
went much deeper into this science when I was a little older..."What do you think
of the little pebbles grouped together under the shallow water? and what made
the pretty curved marks in the sandy bottom and the little sand banks? Have the
inlet and outlet of the lake anything to do with the question?207

I do not think anyone could deny that Indian people had a vast empirical

knowledge of local nature. However, the mechanics of nature is where Western people

stopped. The education of the Indian, in regards to nature, had a qualitatively different

focus:

Slowly and naturally the faculties of observation and memory became
highly trained...This process of learning went on all the time. There was
no period in the life of the Lakota child ...when the child is growing in
body size and not in mind. Body and mind grew together. No one would
be able to say how much can be learned through great keenness of sight
and hearing unless, having possessed them, they were suddenly deprived

 

205 Trepp, Leo, Judaism: Development and Life, Wadsworth Publishing CO., (Belmont, CA: 1982) See

Chapter Two: pp. 14-38

206 Root —Bernstein, Robert and Michele, Sparks of Genius, Houghton Mifﬂin, (Boston: 1999), p. 30
207 Eastman, Boyhood, pp. 52-3

120

of them.208
As noted earlier in the chapter on Neuroplasticity and the Brain, with the

work of Merzenich, “plastic changes in brain representations are generated only

when behaviors are speciﬁcally attended? “The difference between passively

looking and actively observing continues to yield surprises. . .Still—in nobody

sees a ﬂower—really—it is so small—we haven’t the time——and to see takes

time, like to have a ﬁiend takes time. . .but in most cases the eye [has] to be

trained.”209 The Root-Bemsteins are speaking about mindfulness whether they

are mindful of the term or not, but so are Standing Bear and Eastman.
But very early in life the child began to realize that wisdom was all about, and
everywhere and that there were many things to know. There was no such thing as
emptiness in the world. Even in the sky there were no vacant places. Everywhere
there was life, visible and invisible, and every object possessed something that
would be good for us to have also-even to the very stones. This gave a great
interest to life. Even without human companionship, one was never alone. The
world teemed with life and wisdom...the way in which children were trained
caused them to regard with admiration all those of wisdom and experience. All
yearned for wisdom and looked for experience.210
Anyone can gain knowledge, but wisdom, apparently, comes to only a few with

untrained minds. Some might even say that certain sciences such as chemistry show

much knowledge, but an appalling lack of wisdom in the commercial spread of toxicity

throughout the environment. The training was largely of character, beginning with birth

and continuing on through life."2” However, Native education is learning on an

experiential level. One might say that a scientist also experiences nature when he is

 

208 Standing Bear, p. 13

209 Root-Bemstein, p. 32
2'0 Standing Bear, pp. 13-14
2“ Ibid. p. 15

121

observing it, but again, this is a qualitatively different kind of experience. Although a
scientist would say that he was observing life, in most cases, the perception would be life
of a rudimentary nature in comparison to his.

The cornerstone of Native American philos0phy is the interconnectedness of all
things, which encompasses the important concept of relationships. There is still a very
complex kinship system among Native communities. Even further than that, Native
people see relationships everywhere. The spirit of life ties everything together, and,
therefore, everything is related. For instance, there is no word in Lakota for “animal,”
they are all people of one type or another, the sage people, the grass people, or the prairie
dog people. The key is to ﬁnd a peaceful way to coexist, not to exterminate them if they
are in our way.

Some years ago, I lived in Boulder, Colorado while I was ﬁnishing my Master’s
Degree in traditional Native religions. We rented a basement apartment. One day I
noticed a busy line of ants coming through a crack in the foundation into our pantry. I
followed the line until I found an opened pack of Fig Newtons that had fallen from a
shelf down behind the jars of grain on the ﬂoor. I took the rest of the cakes outside where
I found the anthill. I put the cookies there, and by the afternoon, all the ants were out of
the house. Weeks later, I saw ants inside again, checked their nest, and sure enough, the
cookies were gone. I purchased some more Newtons, and laid them out. It cost next to
nothing to throw a few cookies out every few weeks, and I did not have to destroy the ant
people.

A ﬁiend of mine from Rosebud Reservation, Edward Valandra, told me of an

incident he witnessed back home. The tribe was farming hay in an area “infested” with

122

prairie dogs, the bane of hay farmers in the West. The Lakota farmers tried to poison
them, to asphyxiate them with hoses run ﬁ'om tractor exhaust, and other methods, but the
prairie dogs seem to spread out even further. At a loss for a solution, one day they asked
an elder what to do. He said, “Stop making war on them. The Earth is theirs, too. You
must allow them their place.” He told them to take a pipe and smoke with them,
apologize, and designate an area for their town. They set aside an acre or so, and the
prairie dogs seemed to limit their spread. Regardless of how they interpreted the
animals’ response, once the humans withdrew their selﬁsh attention, their obsession
disappeared from their minds, and such a small piece of land went unnoticed.212

The Indian and the white man sense things differently because the white man has

put distance between himself and nature; and assuming a lofty place in the

scheme of the order of things has lost for him both reverence and

understanding.213
Standing Bear is speaking about personal relationships with everything in nature. We
might understand this concept as the extension of ethical consideration to all life forms,
and not just the human. Believing, and understanding that even the very rocks are alive,
the Indian child walked with soft feet upon the Mother, experiencing, on an emotional
level, not his superiority over what he could observe, but his place within a grand
scheme; the Great Mystery. He related on a fundamental emotional level of love, awe,
respect, and wonder. He was with family. By contrast, his observation of the training of
white youths did not impress him:

I have often noticed white boys gathered in a city by-street or alley

jostling and pushing one another in a foolish manner. They spend much

time in this aimless fashion, their natural faculties nether seeing, hearing,
nor feeling the varied life that surrounds them. There is about them no

 

212 From a personal conversation with Dr. Edward Valandra
2‘3 Ibid. p. 196

123

awareness, no acuteness...In contrast, Indian boys who are naturally
reared, are alert to their surroundings; their senses are not narrowed to
observing only one another, and they cannot spend hours seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, and thinking nothing in particular. Observation was
certain in its rewards; interest, wonder, admiration grew, and the fact was
appreciated that life was more than mere human manifestation; that it was
expressed in a multitude of forms...Life was vivid and pulsing; nothing
was casual and commonplace.214

There were other lessons besides those of the observable world. A child cannot

truly learn about ethics only by command, as if it is an abstract mental exercise, and then

to leave it at that. Threatening, punishing, and rewarding according to their actions are

like training a dog’s mind. A child learns through observation of the people around him;

what psychologists like to call learned behavior. Ethical lessons must result in actions,

not intellectual dilemmas about what to do. What better way to do this, than consistent

examples of “practicing what you preach?”

One lesson to learn was to be strong in will. Little children were taught to give
and to give generously. A sparing giver was no giver at all. Possessions were
given away until the giver was poor in this world's goods and had nothing left but
the delight and joy of pure inner strength. It was a bounden duty to give to the
needy and the helpless. When mothers gave food to the weak and old they gave
portions to their children at the same time, so that children could perform the
service with their own hands. Little Lakota children often ran out and brought
into the tipi and an old and feeble person who chanced to be passing. If a child
did this, the mother must at once prepare food. To ignore the child's courtesy
would be unpardonable. But it is easy to touch the heart of pity in a child, so the
Lakota were taught to give at any and all times for the sake of becoming brave
and strong. The greatest brave was he who could part with his most cherished
belongings and at the same time sing songs of joy and praise.215

On the other hand, Standing Bear levies a scathing criticism of the White’s callow

disregard for the poor and hungry, compared to the Lakota way of equity for all.

Now, hunger is a hard thing to bear but not so hard when all are sharing
the same want to the same degree; but it is doubly hard to bear when all

 

2“ Ibid. p. 195
2'5 Ibid. pp. 14-15

124

about is plenty, which the hungry dare not touch. Sentences imposed upon

those who, through hunger, take for their starving bodies, are to me

inconceivably cruel, even to my now altered and accustomed viewpoint.

For one man with a full stomach to heap more misery upon one with an

empty stomach is savage beyond compare.2l6

In Black Elk’s account of “Crying for a Vision,” the Holy Man presiding
over the ceremony prays on behalf of the larnenter (seeker), after he returns with
the message from his vision. Here we see that the vision granted him was not
some grand romanticized Hollywood feature with the Carlos Nakai ﬂute music in
the background, and the crying of eagles in the wind. It is merely an
encouragement to be mindﬁll. Deloria says that in the accounts we have, this is
actually the norm, an affirmative recognition from the spirit and supportive

messages to live a good life.217

Grandfather, this young man who has offered the pipe to You, has heard a
voice which said to him, “Be attentive as you walk!” He wants to know
what this message means; it must now be explained to him. It means he
should always remember You, O Wakan Tanka, as he walks the sacred
path of life; and must be attentive to all the signs You have given to us. If
he does this always, he will become wise and a leader of his people. 0
Wakan T anka, help us all to be attentive.218
There are plenty of other examples of this, but these examples have been
included for a variety of reasons. This is ethics in action, not abstraction. This is
the old "Golden Rule" ﬁnely honed, because of a full and complete knowledge of
what it means to live the human experience. The theory behind it is beautifully

simple; it just did not remain on the level of theory. If everyone has been taught

to live in such a way that one's eye is always keenly turned towards the other

 

216 .
Ibid. p. 165

2” Deloria, Vine Jr., The World We Used to Live In, Fulcrum Publishing, (Golden, CO.: 2006) p. 17

2'8 Brown, Joseph Eppes, The Sacred Pipe. University of Oklahoma Press, (Norman, OK: 1953) p. 64

125

people of a community, in order to be always aware of what those people need,
and to then give the best of what one has to meet those needs, one would never
have to worry about himself. Everyone else in that community would be
watching you to see what you need, and then giving it at the ﬁrst opportunity.
This creates a kind of closed economy, in the sense that gifts and objects are
always changing hands. In addition, one would always enjoy the ﬁnest quality of
goods, since giving the best is a precondition. This is strength of character of a
type that the capitalistic West has little understood. The government, in
complicity with the missionaries, outlawed “Give-Aways” for the people's own
good. The “Friends of the Indian” and other philanthropic groups felt it necessary
to instill a love of private property, which is the same as introducing greed and
meanness. Calculated or not, this is an insidious way of breaking the bonds of a
society built on a relationship of kindness.

Because of this ethical lifestyle, there were no mendicants in Lakota villages.
That did not come about until the forts were established, the invaders had killed off the
game, and government had set up a dependency relationship. These kinds of
relationships have incredible power over the minds of any people. How much dignity
does a welfare recipient have in the face of others who look down on him because of it?
Most importantly though, because I believe that there was extremely sophisticated
philosophical thought behind all this, “Give-Aways” served to cut that extremely strong
tie to the material world of the senses. This I see as one of the primary lessons in training
the mind in order to allow a more easy access into that complex plane of existence from

which all life springs, including spirits. As Standing Bear said at the beginning this was

126

training in strength of will. For Native people then, Mindful attention to ethics fulﬁlled

the Buddha’s requirement. Therefore, a functional spiritual mind and life was the result.

Afﬂicted Minds

We obtain our social and environmental well being from cultivating ethical
behavior, which aids in the development of a healthy balanced mind. Without a doubt,
psychological well-being derives from mental balance also. However, there is a

difference between what we consider normal and what Buddhists adepts believe:

Achieving such balance requires the cultivation of attentional and emotional

balance as well as cognitive balance. . .Ethics and the exceptional mental health

embodied in a balanced mind form the basis for the cultivation of contemplative

insight, the cutting edge of Buddhist practice that is designed to heal the mind

irreversibly of its afﬂictions.”9

Buddhists say the untrained mind is dysfunctional and imbalanced, because of
attentional deﬁciencies and emotional afflictions. These imbalances retard our ability for
fulﬁllment of genuine happiness as the purpose of life. In the West, we might understand
“afflictions” of the mind as pathological mental illnesses. However, few people
recognize that while Western psychology has an “elaborate science of mental illness, it
has no science of mental health.”220

Accepting all this, we can now begin to make sense of the Four Noble Truths of
Buddhism: The truth of suffering (Dukkha); the cause or source of suffering; the

cessation of suffering (along with its source); and the path to cessation. The next step is

the hypothesis that imbalances of the mind are the essential cause of much suffering. The

 

2'9 Harrington and Zajonc p. 39
22° Wallace, p. 58

127

third step theorizes that these afflictive inclinations can be irreversibly dismissed ﬁ'om the
mind. The fourth step states that there is a way that this can be done through an
integrated path of ethical discipline, known as the Eightfold Path.221

Perhaps the term “suffering” is not adequate to describe Dukkha, since we often
equate the term to physical pain. For Buddhists, it also means frustration and
dissatisfaction. Buddhist psychology recognizes that mental instabilities exist because
the normal mind is “prone to alternating bouts of compulsive excitation and laxity.”222

Buddhists know the source of suffering as T anha. Translations being imprecise,
scholars usually deﬁne it as desire or ignorance, but also craving or attachment to private
fulﬁllment. It seems that we can subsume all of these under selﬁshness. That is to say,
selﬁshness in our usual way of understanding it, but also in the Buddhist conception of
ignorance within Dukkha, where humans believe themselves to be an egocentric self,
because one of the principle concepts of Buddhism is that of “no self‘(anatman). This
concept is a direct repudiation of Hinduism.

Remaining cognizant that Buddhism rose out of Hinduism, though in opposition
to that tradition, we should ﬁnd common areas of thought about consciousness that blur
the edges of any sharp division between the two. We see that Hindu beliefs posit a four
level self. First, there are bodies, then the conscious layers of our minds, and a
subconscious layer. There is no problem with Western or Buddhist beliefs at this point.
The underlying fourth level is that of Being Itself, or the inﬁnite source of all being, the

Absolute, or Brahman. The Atman is the divine (Brahman) within the human. Atman is

not separate ﬁ'om Being Itself. It is Being Itself. Not a part of it either, we are the whole

 

22' Wallace, p. 59
mwupnr

128

thing, Atman-Brahman. The focus of the Hindu path to enlightenment is to achieve
moksha or liberation. That means release from the ﬁnitude of our human existence by
recognizing that our true nature is Atman-Brahman. We are deluded into believing that
our egocentric self is our true nature, when, in fact, there is no self at all.223 All is
Brahman. Buddhism rejected the notion of our divinity for various reasons. For one,
because the Buddhist principle of interdependent origination does not allow for things
arising with neither causes nor conditions.

Following Hindu reasoning to a certain point, the Dalai Lama states that some
things belong to the subtle consciousness or subtle mind that are independent from the

body and the brain:

There is no assertion in Buddhism that there is a thing called a soul or a thing
called consciousness, some thing that exists independently of the brain. There is
no such thing existing independently of the brain or being dependent upon the
brain. But rather, consciousness is understood as a multifaceted matrix of events.
Some of them are utterly dependent on the brain, and, at the other end of the
spectrum, some of them are completely independent of the brain. There is no one
thing that is the mind or the soul.224

Hindu philosophy considers the world of sense experience to be maya, or illusion.
This is a perfect example of the difference between worldviews. For much of Western
science, everything that exists is matter. For the Hindu, discrete matter does not exist,
because all is Brahman. It does not exist for Buddhists either. According to B. Alan
Wallace, the “Middle Path” (Madhyamaka) adopted by Tibetan Buddhism, challenges the

assumption that any phenomena that comprise the world of our experience exist as things

in and of themselves. “Thus, not only does this view reject the notion that the mind is an
I

 

223 Smith, op. cit. pp.12-77
22’ Houshmand, Zara, Ed., Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain
Science and Buddhisjm, Snow Lion Publications (Ithaca, NY: 1999) P. 40

129

inherently existent substance, or thing, but it similarly denies that physical phenomena as
we experience them are things in themselves.”225 This is a radical departure from the
accepted consensus of science. However, if we refer once again to the strangeness of the
Quantum realm, some theories tell us that the discrete appearance of matter resolves into
waves of energy below the subatomic realm. Therefore, matter is an illusion, because as
we peer down into the universe of the extremely small, the largest part of any solid
material object (right before it dissolves into the level of energy) is the space between the
subatomic bits of the atoms, which is, of course, in direct opposition to our sensory
perceptions. “According to the Madhyarnaka view, mental and physical phenomena, as
we perceive and conceive them exist in relation to our perceptions and conceptions.”226
In other words, we have no direct knowledge of anything that exists independently ﬁ'om
our consciousness. As Werner Heisenberg said, “What we observe is not nature in itself,
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”227
Moreover, the concept of “no self“(anatman) does not mean lack of identity after
death. As previously mentioned, the principle of interdependent origination requires a
cause for everything that exists, Whether it is a stone or consciousness. Therefore,
consciousness must have had an initial cause, or else there are some very messy sorts of
inconsistencies. According to the Dalai Lama:
The initial cause must be an independent consciousness, and on that basis is
asserted the theory of continuation of life after death. It is during the interval
when one’s continuum of awareness departs from one’s body at death that the
subtle mind, the subtle consciousness, becomes manifest. That continuum
connects one life with the other. . .Even after all physical functions cease, we

believe that the “I,” or “self” still exists. Similarly, just at the beginning of life,
there must be a subtle form of consciousness to account for the emergence of

 

Zﬁwmpc4
mMMpM
mMMpM

130

consciousness in the individual.”228

Therefore, it is a form of the uncluttered consciousness of self that continues to
carry the distinct individuality (consisting of the Karma of previous actions) of each
person from life to life. It seems that with a little work and understanding we would ﬁnd
spirit/soul/mind/consciousness ﬁtting the description of subtle consciousness, as
perceived by Buddhists. When the Dalai Lama made the statement that “there is
no”thing” called the soul,” he was at a conference where all the scientists were dyed-in-
the- wool materialists. The paradigm of materialism limits the language of science and
philosophy, as well as the thoughts in the minds ﬁom which knowledge in the West must
ﬂow. Therefore, the conceptualization of consciousness, or mind, in the West, is very
fuzzy since, in the comparative length of time that Western scholars have studied it, we
simply do not have as much experience with the notion. Perhaps if we were more
proﬁcient in Eastern languages, we would understand more about this subject, because
they have had thousands of years to develop sophisticated vocabulary that draws delicate
lines around their nuanced conceptions.

Even so, while the Western worldview may make it difﬁcult to understand the
conceptual aspects of Buddhist philosophy, we can understand suffering, and whether we
realize it or not, we can understand the sources of suffering because we are immersed in
them. Identifying our suffering is the ﬁrst step to overcoming it, just as a physician must
diagnose an illness before treatment can begin. Becoming mindful of the part we play in
creating our own distress, as well as what we cause others, also works to dissolve our

ignorance.

 

228 Houshmand, p. 46

131

It is not difficult to see how craving and attachment, for instance, play out in the
industrialized nations. According to Buddhism, “attachment is an attraction to an object
on which one superimposes or exaggerates desirable qualities, while ﬁltering out
undesirable qualities.”229 For example, I stopped in at a garage sale a few years ago. I
found a brand new LL. Bean large canvas strap bag in which I now carry my clothes and
towels for sweats. The woman wanted three dollars for it, and I knew they sold for over
thirty, because I received their catalog in the mail. I asked her why she was selling it, and
she answered that it was a funny thing. She saw it in the catalog and became obsessed
with owning it. She could not wait until it arrived, and when it did, she tried to ﬁnd a use
for it, but never did. It remained in her room for some time, but after a while, she could
not stand to look at it, because she felt so dumb. Eventually it went into the closet for
years, and came out unused for the garage sale.

The Dalai Lama would put this example into the second level of suffering, the
suffering of change, which refers to experiences we normally identify as pleasurable.
However, while we remain in an unenlightened state, all the pleasure we ﬁnd in our
attachment to material objects becomes tainted, and ultimately brings suffering:

Their pleasurable status is only relative. If they were truly joyful states in

themselves, then just as painful experiences increase the more we indulge in the

causes that lead to pain, likewise, the more we engage in the causes that give rise
to pleasurable experience, our pleasure and joy should intensify; but this is not the
case. On an everyday level, for example, when you have good food, attractive
jewelry and so on, for a short time you feel really marvelous. Not only do you
enjoy a feeling of satisfaction, but when you show your things to others, they
share in it too. Then one day passes, one week passes, one month passes, and the

very Object that once gave you such pleasure might simply cause you frustration.
That is the nature of things—they change.”230

 

’29 Wallace, p. 119
23° Dalai Lama, pp. 55-6

132

However, we could take the deﬁnition of attachment ﬁrrther and extend it to our
affection for the body and the material world. Furthermore, in the West, we derive our
notion of human life from Christianity, where curiously, the body is the temple, not the
mind. Christianity posits a “one shot” only chance at life. The materialist’s view is that
our consciousness, what some call the soul, is the direct result of the meat of the brain.
When the body dies, the brain dies, and therefore, so will our consciousness.
Consequently, we must cram all living and all experience on the material plane of
existence into one lifetime, until we die, and are either judged worthy or damned, for one,
or “the one with most toys at the end wins” for the other.

Most of the goods produced in industrialized nations are redundant iterations of
unnecessary objects. For example, while researching a presentation on the effects of
globalization on Indigenous people, I went off on a tangential thought concerning
consumerism and natural resources. Speciﬁcally, I was wondering about how many
types and models of televisions were available. I found one website in China that offered
over nine hundred different models for sale, high deﬁnition, liquid crystal displays, ﬂat
screens, projection screens, etc., and all the different levels from luxury to economy.
Factor this excessive display into stereos, DVD players, kitchen appliances, cars,
computers, white bread and every other product you can think of, and what do we have?
We have an incredible waste of time, resources, money, and people, and only for a
portion of the population, not for everyone.

If we take this a step further, we might think about all the energy wasted in this
pursuit of proﬁt and the pursuit of acquisition, not just electricity and resources, but

human energy as well. Think of all the bright young minds wasted because of training

133

that focuses on trivial mental duties. Not just in the assembly lines of factories, but also
in the creative arenas, like designing televisions that have eight pictures in a screen
instead of two or four, or the designing of attractive packaging for a new product. What
could we do in one year if, instead of focusing on insigniﬁcant absurdities, we turned all
these minds all around the world towards the solving of poverty, or ﬁnding a way to
ensure that basic human needs are met for everyone?

Instead, we have an economic system where attachment to the material world and
subsequent greed has opportunity to rule. We have raised one of the most destructive
negative aspects of our humanity to the status of a virtue. Just like Michael Douglas
states in Wall Street, “Greed is good.” The voice of the multi-billion dollar industry of
marketing constantly whispers in our car advising self-indulgence, telling us that what we
want for ourselves is more important than what we need, or more important than making
sure that everyone else gets what he or she needs. If this were not true, then designing
displays of “impulse items” would never work. Thus, money trumps human life, and
shopping becomes a revered pastime. It is even a patriotic response to terror, as President
Bush advised us to “Go shopping” after the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, when opportunity
arises, when tragedy strikes like a tsunami or ﬂood, and despite all the conditioning that
Americans have undergone, we respond with an outpouring of human compassion
manifested in dollars. Something about our essential nature surfaces when given a
chance.

Thus, capitalists teach us craving as an acceptable way of life, as our main
aspiration in life. We learn reading, writing, science, and math; but who teaches us how

to live in a good way Where we are not grasping, selﬁsh, and fully attached to the

134

material world? For the most part, we teach children to share, but society trumps those
early lessons by teaching us that we should desire to have as many things as we want.
Marketing constantly cultivates our desire, and credit even allows us to obtain more than
we can afford so that debt enslaves us. We work most of our lives to obtain the material
items of comfort. Sometimes we neglect our children because of this pursuit. I
remember one FYI spot on television, with the actor that portrayed Niles Crane on
Frazier, where he promoted the idea that even though we are so busy, we should really
make it a point to sit down and eat supper with our children once a week. The constant
pursuit of material wealth is an obvious cause of suffering for many. However, desire for
material objects is just one aspect of the imbalance known as craving. Besides wealth,
people crave fame, sex, power, control, recognition, food, drink, etc., and craving is only
one of the mental instabilities that can cause suffering.

As mentioned above, the Buddhist goal of genuine happiness is dependent upon
an ethical way of life, and there is no such thing as viable spiritual practice without an
ethical way of living either. If that is true, then an economic system that gladly promotes
such unethical, selﬁsh, robotic proﬂigacy and waste can bring us neither genuine
happiness, nor a spiritual way of life. In addition, science provides no ethical path either;
therefore, it follows that, at least according to Buddhism, science with its attendant
technology and commercialism cannot bring true happiness to the human race. The most
that the laws of science can give us is a very constricted view of human existence with
accidental consciousness, no more really than an advanced existential beast. Meanwhile
Buddhism gives us the view of human beings in the process of achieving true happiness

by overcoming our mental dysfunction through the pursuit of mental health, and one in

135

which the mind or consciousness is the fundamental enduring aspect of humanity.
Whichever it is, the choice is ours on what we believe, and how we choose to live.

Speaking generally about Native North Americans, and not speciﬁcally about
individuals, our minds have changed, because our language has changed, and our
worldview has changed in varying degrees, while assimilation has picked up the pace. In
deference to our acknowledged experts on the mind, Buddhism believes that the
untrained mind is dysfunctional. My position is that the traditional Native way of life
trained minds that were functional. The training was ethical, and ultimately spiritual. As
we have seen, to a large degree, forced assimilation robbed us of our traditional training
in both ethics and spirituality and has left many of us, as well as most of the United
States, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually dysfunctional, according to Buddhist
standards.

If attention or mindﬁrl awareness is the key to relieving that dysfunction, then
everything about commercial consumerism is a distractive inﬂuence vying for our
attention. If we look back at the metaphor of the operating system running behind the
scenes of our two worldviews encapsulated in the images of the room of objects and that
of pristine nature, we can see that most Native people no longer live in a natural setting,
we live mostly in the room of objects just as mainstream America does. Accordingly,
many Natives today speak the objectifying tongue of English as their ﬁrst language.

Much of the focus on revitalization efforts are placed upon the retention of
language, and rightfully so. It is said that culture exists in the language. The language
amalgamated around the expression of a certain worldview that embodied a speciﬁc way

of life. Therefore, we are assuming that if we teach the language we are also teaching

136

culture. That is not necessarily the case. If we are still living the American dream and
learning the language, we are not embodying those words into a mind that thinks in the
manner where that language and its conceptual components made sense. Therefore, true
revitalization would require a mindﬁrl effort at recapturing that original worldview. Can
we actually have such a view, or learn to have such a view when we are looking out at it
from the window of an apartment or a suburban house? If not, how can we get it?
Perhaps, with mindfulness.

That is the thrust of a future study that began to bud during thoughts about this

project.

137

CHAPTER SIX

Native Philosophy and the Ocean of Pure Abstract Potential

The puzzle of spiritual visitations is a fascinating one. Many people have written
these stories off as myth created by the very active and superstitious imagination of
“primitive” minds. Yet, all over the world, people have similar stories. Can they all be
untrue? If not, then how can we explain them? What are spirits and where do they come
from? Why do some people (Natives) see them and most others do not? Without
differentiating between individual Native spiritual experiences, or speaking speciﬁcally
of one or the other, I think we can logically answer all of the above. We may also
demonstrate at the same time that Native people and some religions had somehow
understood the philosophical principles of Quantum physics, (but interpreted the
information through their own cultural belief ﬁlters) far in advance of Western science’s
discovery of them. In other words, the questions above are relatively easy to answer, but
the most mysterious and probably unanswerable question is: “How could they have
known?”

Obviously, much of what we have seen bears directly on these questions. How
we receive the information provided here, for instance, depends upon conceptual factors
such as scientism, materialism, prirrritivisrn, evolutionary thinking, and the fact that they
form beliefs and expectations within the mind. These are all especially relevant to our
perception of spirits and their existence. As I have stressed, attention is an integral aspect
of an ethical life, therefore, it must also be essential in accessing the spiritual realm as

well.

138

In The Mind and the Brain, Nancy Kanwisher’s studies showed “we are not
passive recipients, but active participants of our own processes of perception.” 23‘
. Attention is an active mode of being. To be passive is to be urrreceptive and inactive.
Merzenich showed that the very same stimuli that rewired an attentive brain would not
affect a non-attending brain. He spoke further about the expectations of our perceptions,
stating, “Every stimulus from the world outside impinges on a consciousness that is
predisposed to accept it or ignore it.”232 This seems to speak directly to the question of
why most people do not see spirits, While others do. Thinking back to the educational
aspects of the training of a Native youth, attention (active participation) to natural
surroundings was paramount, and the culture predisposed Native people to look for, or
notice spirits, when they appeared. However, physiologically, this activity is far more
complex.

According to Fred Alan Wolf, the brain processes about four hundred billion bits
of information per second, but we are only aware of two thousand of those. Our
awareness of those two thousand bits is just about the environment, our bodies, and time.
We can see then, that the world bombards us with huge amounts of information coming
into our body through our sense organs, and there is a process involved in culling out the
vast majority of that information. “We are processing it, it’s coming in, and it’s
percolating up and it’s coming up and up and at each step we are eliminating information,

but ﬁnally what is bubbling up to consciousness is what is most self-serving. “233 In other

words, we slough off most of the sensory data save for that to which we are attending. If

 

23' Schwartz, p. 336

23’ Ibid., p. 337

233 Wolf, Fred Alan, ﬂat the Bleep!?: Down the Rgbbit Hole, Quantum Edition, Lord of the Wind Films,
2004, Disc 2, Side A

139

the brain is taking in four hundred billion bits per second, and we are only taking in two
thousand, that means reality is happening in the brain all the time, it is receiving that
information, and yet, we have not integrated it. What the brain and mind leave out is a
pertinent issue, because the way our brain is wired up, we only see what we believe is
possible, we match patterns that already exist within ourselves through conditioning that
creates our preconceptions.234

In 1984, the Four Worlds Development Project produced a small book called The
Sacred Tree. The background rationale was the result of an increase in the level of
substance abuse and teen deaths. Elders, educators, and professionals from native
communities in North America came together at a conference in Lethbridge, Alberta in
1982 to discuss the source of the widespread problem. They determined that the
cognitive dissonance of culture clash had cast young Natives adrift. The education of
young people no longer followed the traditional path, and western educational beliefs and
attitudes towards Native people contradicted what they had learned from culture. In
effect, we are witnessing the destructive power of active disbelief, wielded uncaringly
against a viable way of life that had existed for thousands of years. Furthermore,
conference attendees concluded that because of assirnilative forces affecting native
communities everywhere, young Natives were no longer receiving the basic principles
that the elders thought were necessary for cultural identity, and a ﬁrlﬁlling life.
Therefore, they set down these principles in The Sacred Tree.

At ﬁrst glance, it is a children’s book ﬁlled with illustrations and simple language.

A mere eighty-two pages in length, how could it provide the necessary elements for life?

 

23‘ Ibid. See: What the Bleep, Disc 2, Side A

140

After all, the commercial industry of self-help books must run to millions of pages in
total. If one utilized it as a bathroom book, he or she could ﬁnish it in just a few sittings.
However, a closer look reveals the depth of the conceptual material. At the risk of
modifying the overall message, I will extract speciﬁc principles.

First, the authors state that the Sacred Tree provides enough meaning for a
lifetime of reﬂection. Paralleling Buddhist thought, at the center of the Medicine Wheel
we frnd volition or will, since “it is the primary force in developing all our human
potentialities.” We can learn to exercise our volition in ﬁve related steps. The ﬁrst is our

old friend “attention,” followed by goal setting, initiation, perseverance, and completing

the action.235

Within the Sacred Tree, the elders delineate twelve First Principles as a
metaphysical summary of the teachings of the Sacred Tree. This philosophy helps to
strengthen the belief that we are not stuck with who we are in this moment, that there is
always opportunity to change. Principles 2, 6 and 9 speak directly to this concept.

Change—all of creation is in a state of constant change. Nothing stays the same
except the presence of cycle upon cycle of change. One season falls upon the
other. Human beings are born, live their lives, die, and enter the spirit world. All
things change. There are two kinds of change. The coming together of things
(development) and the coming apart of things (disintegration). Both of these
kinds of change are necessary and are always connected to each other.

Human beings can always acquire new gifts, but they must struggle to do so. The
timid may become courageous, the weak may become bold and strong, the
insensitive may learn to care for the feelings of others, and the materialistic
person can acquire the capacity to look within and to listen to her inner voice.
The process human beings use to develop new qualities may be called “true
learning.”

Human Beings must be active participants in the unfolding of their own
potentialities.236

 

235 Sacred Tree, p. 15
’36 Ibid. pp. 27-30

141

If a man desires to address a weight issue, for instance, he must ﬁrst be aware or
attentive to the fact of his heaviness, and all the factors that come into play, such as large
portions, late night snacks, or whatever. Then he must set goals about what he should
and should not do. He must initiate the action, being attentive to his goals. Perseverance
is important, because statistics show that most people cannot maintain their resolution for
more than a few weeks. After overcoming the pitfalls of self, he will complete the action.
This model serves well for a large variety of personal problems, such as anger, jealousy,
and other destructive emotions, as well as the other side for increasing character
strengths. For our purposes, we can see its efﬁcacy for increasing an ethical and spiritual
way of life.

Harkening back to Schwartz we get a physiological explanation of the volitional
rewiring of the brain. Mindfulness can create who I am going to be and how I want it to
happen. Scientists have determined that nerve cells that ﬁre together wire together; if I
practice something repeatedly, certain neurons build a long-term relationship with other
neurons. For instance, if I get angry on a daily basis, feel sorry for myself, or I am
jealous or hateful of another human being on a daily basis, I am strengthening or
reintegrating that speciﬁc wired Neural net every day. Now that neural net has a long-
terrn relationship with all those other nerve cells that together we would call my identity.
The opposite is also true. If nerve cells do not ﬁre together, they no longer wire together,
they lose their long-term relationship, “because every time we interrupt a thought process
that produces a chemical response in the body, those nerve cells that are connected to
each other start breaking the long-term relationship. When we start interrupting and

observing, not by stimulus response and that automatic reaction, but by observing the

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effects it takes, then we are no longer the body-mind conscious emotional person that’s
responding to its environment as if it’s automatic.”237 Thus, we have the physiological
mechanism of building both good and bad habits by using our volition. Mindful attention
is the way to overcome destructive emotions, or strengthen the positive ones.

We are familiar with principles like mindfulness by now, but at this point, what
the mind is, and consequently what a human being is, is still a nebulous question,
although we have expanded the possibilities. As stated at the beginning of this project, I
believe the answer lies within a combination of the different ways of knowing, the
different human ways of obtaining information. It seems illogical to me that only one
method will work to get us there. In fact, it looks as though the different methods are
giving us the same results. That raises an interesting question about the source of the
information, which we will inspect later.

As I have come to see it, the trouble with the mind/body problem (or soul, spirit,
consciousness/body problem) is Western thinkers have been looking for its resolution
solely at this macro level of reality. AS in Dualism, trying to ﬁnd how two different
substances—spirit and matter—interact is futile, because modern Quantum physics tells
us that matter or substance, the way we understand it at this level, does not exist at its
most fundamental level. Westem-based societies have conditioned us to believe that the
external world is more real than the internal world; therefore, we privilege the one over
the other. However, the reason science deals with only half of the human experience, the
part they call “real,” is that they can objectively measure it. Furthermore, our subjective
experience is beyond current scientiﬁc concepts and, consequently, their designed

instrumentation. It is interesting that science can tell us so much about the physical

 

237 Dispenza, Joseph, D.C., quoted in What the Blegpl?

143

world, and so little about why we subjectively experience it, especially when the physical
world turns out to be ﬁlndamentally intangible.

There is nothing to matter; it is completely insubstantial. We think of it as hard,

but it is a little tiny point of dense matter surrounded by this ﬂuffy probability

cloud of electrons popping in and out of existence. But that is not even right. The
nucleus that we thought was so dense actually pops in and out of existence as
readily as the electrons do. The most solid thing you can say about all this matter

is that it is more like a thought, a concentrated bit of information. . .238

The objectifying Western worldview tells the story of humankind and nature to
the world now, and it is a bleak, disheartening story. Human beings and our minds are a
natural accident, and we are nothing but the material form of our bodies. Each one of us
is separate and alone. The commercial culture tells us the wonder of the natural world is
not vibrant life, but resources. The most important aspect of human existence is to rise to
the level where we can have all the objects that we desire. Nations of “Third World”
people are different, and mostly qualitatively, less than we are. However, we have seen
alternative views that can give us hope and purpose, that can bind us together again. It is
time, ﬁnally, to put it all together.

Buddhism gives us the notion that the untrained mind is dysﬁmctional, and while
in that state we are rooted in the material world. The focus of Buddhism is to clear the
mind (consciousness) by training in the mindful awareness of negative thoughts, words,
behavior, and the discipline of meditation, until we can see that what we are is not the
body at all, we are a clear unfettered consciousness. Nirvana is the state wherein our
minds are empty of negative thoughts and destructive emotions. Nirvana is the

awareness of pure consciousness without any objects.

Hinduism gives us a layered consciousness that includes a spark of Brahman in

 

238 Hagelin, John, quoted ﬁ'om What the Bleep Do We Know, Quantum Edition, Disc 2, Side A. Emphasis
mine.

 

144

every human (Atman), which is not separate ﬁom, but one with the Inﬁnite Source of All
Being (Brahman), described as Atman/Brahman when someone reaches liberation
(Moksha) from the illusion that we are a transient body and recognizes we are Brahman.
Some translators also identify Brahman as Primordial Consciousness. Therefore, in this
case, we may recognize that spark of Brahman in us (Atman) as being
mind/soul/spirit/consciousness. The illusion (maya) of our existence is the perception
that we are discrete and separate from Brahman, and a physical self.

Amit Goswarrri gave us a conscious universe derived ﬁ'om Hindu concepts
wherein Primordial Consciousness is the fundamental aspect of all existence.
Consciousness is an irreducible element of the universe, and our consciousness is directly
connected with that primary elemental Consciousness. Others, such as Ashok
Gangadean, see it as the Logos, which he deﬁnes as the “Idea of the Inﬁnite, Original,
Universal, and Univocal Principle that is the ground and source of all that exists, the
generative force of the universe, the foundation of all lifeworlds, the common ground of
all religions and cultures, the active rational principle of all thought and language, and
is. . .the single most important idea affecting the human condition.”239 Because it is also
relational, according to Gangadean, this very principle is the reason why different
concepts of the divine have always remained in the human mind/consciousness despite all
rational and ego-centered attempts to dislodge it.

Valerie Hunt gave us the conception of the measurable hmnan ﬁeld of energy,

that she described as “probably emanating from atoms. . .it interacts with and inﬂuences

 

239 Gangadean, Ashok, Between WorldszThe Emergenceof Global Reason, Peter Lang, (New York: 1998)
p. xvi

145

matter,” and she associated this human energy with chi, prana, and aura.240 Her
discoveries led her to hypothesize that the extremely high frequency (EHF) energy ﬁeld
that she discovered in the body, is the highest level of consciousness in the minds of
human beings. She differentiated the EHF from the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF)
patterns, which are directly involved with the biological life processes like the brain. She
found that the ELF vibrational pattern was similar for everyone, but the EHF had a
personal signature. Thus, She dubbed it the “mind ﬁeld.”

David Bohm gave us consciousness as one with the “undivided whole of ﬂowing
movement,” the holographic universe he called the “implicate order” of the sub-quantum
realm, manifesting in the “explicate order” of what we call the physical reality of the
macro-level universe that we experience.

Others like Oliver Sacks watched as the essence of human beings struggled to
express itself past the damaged receiver/transmitter that we call the brain. Wilder
Penﬁeld and others observed conscious minds at work even though brain function was
dormant. Finally, Raymond Moody gave us the tunnel and light of “near dea ”
experiences. The richness of these concepts contrasts starkly with the paltry notion of an
epiphenomenal process of the brain that Western cognitive science gives us for the
Simple reason that their methodology and basic assumptions have not allowed a
conception of some other way to measure consciousness or explain our subjective
experience.

To these concepts, we can add the Lakota notion of skan skan. In Lakota, skan
means movement. They have conceived it as the power of movement. When spoken as

skan skan, they consider it wakan (sacred) as the spirit force behind the movement we

 

24" Hunt, p. 20

146

see. In essence, this is their conception of the Great Spirit, T aku Skan Skan Wakan
T anka. Thus, it is not a person, but the energy principle of animation. It exists in
everything and is the source of all being.

Many of the above examples provide interesting evidence, and there are many
more that I could have used, but none is particularly substantive when standing alone.
However, when we combine them with modern Quantum physics, they take on strength.
When we accept the notion that our conscious intentions can have an effect on the
quantum realm, as some physicists tell us, then we may have something. However, it is
necessary to note, once again, that this interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) is not
the only interpretation. J effiey Satinover, the William James Lecturer in Psychology and
Religion at Harvard speaks to this divide:

If you put it that there’s an intangible world that affects the tangible world of our
experience, and if you then say that is what QM says, and that is a fair way of trying
to put into English something which is very very difﬁcult to grasp, but it then leads
quite naturally to the conclusion that QM says there is a spiritual world that makes
this choice. . .and really, while that statement might be true, QM absolutely does not
say that. That intangibility, however, is itself the bedrock of physical reality. It may
be intangible, (and we can’t really say what it is or why it is there) but it is in fact the
most ﬁmdamental feature of matter. So you can say, “well, if it’s a feature of matter,
it’s not intangible. Matter is the most tangible of things.” These are word games; the
fact of the matter is that, matter is not what we have long thought it to be. To the
scientist, matter has always been thought of as sort of the ultimate in that which is
static and predictable. And the more you understand the material aspect of something

the nzlﬁre perfectly predictable it is. What QM illustrates is that that is simply not
true.

How, then, does QM describe the “intangible world?” Some physicists have
deﬁned the sub-quantum plane as ﬂowing waves of energy. Professor of physics, John
Hagelin, late of Stanford, but now the director of the Institute of Science, Technology,

and Public Policy at Maharishi University, deﬁnes it as an “ocean of pure abstract

 

24' Jeffrey Satinover quoted in What the Ble§p!?

147

potentia ” (OPP). To understand the possibilities of this statement, we have to wring it
out until we get it all. If QM is correct—and physicists claim it is the most tested,
proven, and powerful theory of the physical world ever conceived—at the sub-quantum
level, matter no longer exists.

One easy way to understand OPP is to think of it as the primordial soup of
potential, from which everything that can be said to exist arises. Conceptually, therefore,
we may see this plane as that which is somehow giving rise to everything possible; as the
source of all matter in its inﬁnite variations from atoms and cells to water, trees, rocks,
human beings, stars, and the universe. If this OPP is the source of everything that exists,
there are no discrete entities, because, at their most fundamental level, everything is the
same and everything is interconnected, as Native people continue to insist, and as the
principle of nonlocality demonstrates. In addition, since personal consciousness exists,
then, consciousness also arises out of the OPP. If spirits exist as Native people have
always proclaimed, then spirits must also arise from the OPP, and by deﬁnition, they
must be interconnected with, and fundamentally the same as atoms, cells, water, trees,
human beings, stars, etc. Furthermore, since everything arises from the same source, is
fundamentally the same as everything else, and is interconnected with everything else, we
must rethink the scientiﬁc view of life. It cannot follow logically that some forms are
ﬁmdamentally different from others. The elders speak to this in the ﬁrst of the twelve

First Principles Sacred Tree:

Wholeness—all things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a
single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is
therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is
connected to everything else.242

 

2’2 Sacred Tree, p. 26

148

Obviously, this is exactly what some interpretations of QM are telling us. One of
the most recognizable and striking differences between the Western worldview and that
of Native philosophy is the equity with which the Native people have perceived the
natural world, the grass people, the elk people, etc. Always considered child-like and
laughable, this philosophical tenet now takes on a sophistication that far exceeds that of
the “civilized” West; but what we should appreciate from this conception is that QM is
giving us is the principle of unity, not separateness:

There’s the macroscopic world we see, the cell world, the atom world and the

subatomic world—not just smaller, each is totally different. But I am my nuclei,

atoms, cells, and macroscopic physiology. It’s all truth, just different levels of
truth. The deepest level of truth discovered by science and philosophy, is the

fundgpental truth of UNITY, at the deepest sublevel of my being we are all
one.

The question immediately raised is: “How is this level of pure potential and
energy giving rise to all matter and existence?” Or, rather, what is behind it that gives
rise to all existence? Hinduism answers, “The inﬁnite source of all being.” The Lakota
answer, “Skan Skan.” Goswami says it is Primordial Consciousness. Gangadean says it
is the Logos. Physicist John Hagelin agrees:

The tighter physics has tried to grasp onto physical reality to understand what it’s

really made of, what are the core building blocks of life at the base of it all, life,

the universe, [it all] slips through your ﬁngers. And you come up with something
that is increasingly abstract—increasingly abstract until they come to the realm of
pure abstraction. And that is what the uniﬁed ﬁeld is, pure abstract potential, pure
abstract being, pure abstract self-aware consciousness. Which rises in waves of
vibration, to give rise to the particles, the people, everything we see in the vast
universe.244

If Primordial Consciousness were the answer, then that would explain how our

conscious intention can affect the quantum realm, because our consciousness is

 

2‘3 Hagelin, What the Bleepi?
2“ Hagelin, Quoted in What the Bleep!?

149

intimately connected with (or is) that which exists in the OPP. It also explains why
science cannot ﬁnd consciousness, because the mind, our consciousness, is not of the
macro-physical reality where Western scholars have always assumed it to be, it is derived
ﬁom the sub-quantum ocean of pure potential. We have to remember that that level is
the most fundamental aspect of the human being, and everything else, even though we do
not see it, and are unaware of it; except Natives, Buddhists, and other spiritual people tell
us we can be aware of it if we are attentive.

Spiritual people who sit in meditation for hours each day, whether as a monk in a
monastery, an Indian in a sweat lodge, an ascetic in the desert, or a hippie on the top of a
mountain, all seem to experience something profound. Valerie Hunt discovered that
whenever someone raised the vibratory pattern of their level of consciousness past a
certain point, they had a religious or spiritual experience regardless of their beliefs.
Those experiences imply direct connection with primordial consciousness. In this fast
food nation of extremely short attention span and distractive entertainment everywhere,
What experiences do they ﬁnd that keeps them motivated to continue?

Very powerful mystical experiences are perceived to represent a truer form of

reality that makes this material world really not mean as much. The world just

does not have the quality of realness that these states have. The ultimate goal of
the mystic, then, once they have had the experience, is to keep trying to get back

to that experience, because that is what represents to them, the fundamental level
of reality?“

This idea is in keeping with the notion of maya (illusion). QM tells us, that
beyond doubt, the world that we call real is an illusion at its most basic level. Native
people believe that there is a thin veil between this reality and the spirit world, and that at

any time spirits could step into this reality, or the human could experience the other side.

 

245 Newburg, Andrew MD. Director of the Center for Spirituality and Neurosciences at University of
Pennsylvania. As quoted in What the Blegpl?

150

Remembering Black Elk’s account of a young man’s vision quest, it was a little red-
breasted bird that gave him the message, “Friend, be attentive as you walk.” Western
social scientists and observers did not ﬁnd these accounts compelling. To them, they
were highly imaginative, and after all, everyone knows that birds do not speak. However,
with Primordial Consciousness as the inﬁnite source of all being in the OPP, anything
that can be conceived is potentially possible in this reality. The information passed from
the OPP to Indians can manifest in any aspect of matter, because primordial
consciousness gives rise to every facet of matter within the natural world.

How do Native ceremonies factor into the equation of this new information? We
should think of ceremonies as a form of spiritual technology. We need to think of them
in the new context of information coming from the Primordial Consciousness. The whole
focus of Native religions is to become better human beings. All preparations and
protocol involved the creation of a sense of focus and purpose. The purpose was contact
with helpful spirits to gain knowledge of how to live a better life. Therefore, the mindset
was intention manifested by concentration, and as QM tells us, that intentional aspect of
the mental or spiritual force of the mind would affect the sub-quantum level as a direct
signal to the OPP.

If the OPP as pure or inﬁnite potential is the source of all being, we may think of
spirits and everything else as erupting out of the Consciousness existing in the OPP. As
mentioned in the earlier section on the “Functional Native Mind,” the training of the
young entailed intense focused attention upon the natural world. That may be why
Consciousness speaks through the denizens of nature to Natives in their conscious state,

because elders taught young Natives to appreciate and revere the aspects of the natural

151

world. That is why the information often came through animals. Animals knew their
place in the world and Native people respected them for the physical gifts they
demonstrated. Animals also taught the people important social and survival lessons like
cooperation from the ants and bees, and camouﬂage from birds, weasels and bugs. If an
animal came with the information, one would feel honored. If the animal talked to you, it
was not a surprise, because Native people almost universally believed that humans and
animals used to talk with each other in the past. With the OPP, anything is potentially
possible.

In addition, there are other ways of receiving information, such as dreams,
visions, ideals, spiritual teachings, etc. Vine Deloria’s last book, The World We Used To
Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men has some fantastic stories of eye
witness accounts, many hostile, of the manifestation of spiritual powers. Once again,
with our new paradigmatic way of perceiving the world, we may understand that
connection with Consciousness on the OPP level provides explanations of previously
inexplicable events.

As noted, Native people, as have ascetics throughout history, believe that there is
a thin veil separating us from the spirit world. Depriving ourselves of the necessities of
life (by fasting ﬁ'om food and water for four days) pushes uS closer to death, and thus,
brings transparency to that veil. In other words, we are trying to cut our ties to the
physical world, including our bodies. The most important aspect of the ordeal is
overcoming our physical challenges and remaining focused.

When attempting to access what we think of as the Spiritual world, our conscious

intention has an effect, on the OPP level, of triggering some kind of signal or afﬁnity.

152

When we pray with the pipe, fast for a vision, dance for four days at a Sun Dance or
Thirsty Dance, we are concentrating intently to give thanks, focus, and to pray, with the
purpose of gaining information on how we can become better human beings.

Reﬂecting back upon Hinduism and Buddhism, one cannot attain Enlightenment
or Nirvana when grounded in the physical realm. Distractions that retard the Native
focus are the same that Hinduism and Buddhism describe, they are those that keep us
grounded in the material world. Beliefs, emotions, the thoughts of the untrained mind,
etc., are the things that keep us grounded in this “reality.” Only when a person made the
conscious decision to take another path and look beyond his or her material self, and the
confused desires of the ego, did that person begin to change his direction to the ethical
path that led to spirituality.

If you have ever tried to overcome a personal character ﬂaw, for instance, then
you know that the concentration (attentiveness) involved is intensive; by necessity, we
must constantly monitor thoughts, words and behavior to overcome the challenge. As we
saw, the education of the young Native put him directly on that ethical path. The training
young Natives received helped to mitigate distraction. Attention was of paramount
importance because one never knew what form the spirit would take, anything from a
stone on the ground, a bird in the sky, and everything in-between. For Native people, the
desire for spiritual information became the leading focus of life.

It seems that often, but not always, “religious experiences” come when the
conscious intention is clear. We have to set aside the ego-centered self and open
ourselves up to the spiritual possibility. That would imply a connection with Primordial

Consciousness. Sometimes, information comes when a person is at his or her lowest ebb.

153

That means that ego-centered defenses have weakened enough so that the information
can pass through. Once again, that implies connection. It is necessary to be mindful
about our self-centeredness, because the mind is also the best self-defense mechanism
and enabler we can have.

An example of these ideas would be Alcoholics Anonymous. It is very easy to
observe that self-focus destroys one’s awareness of what is happening beyond the body.
An alcoholic lives in that self-wrapped world. Most have little use for religion or
anything related to it. The founders designed the program for chronic, hopeless
alcoholics. Yet, many people have completely recovered due to the spiritual principles
involved. The Eleventh Step states: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve
our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge
of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” For some people, this statement
makes wild claims. By saying, “improve our conscious contact with God,” AA is stating
two things. First, they are not implying that someday, somehow, maybe we might have
some kind of spiritual experience. No, they are stating a fact that we already have
conscious contact with a higher power before coming into AA; and second, we can
increase that contact through prayer and meditation. Furthermore, by using the phrase,
“as we understood Him,” they leave the door open to any personal conception of a higher
power, including Native spirits or Primordial Consciousness.

Through the years, I have spoken with many “Old Timers” with 15-20 years or
more of sobriety, about this particular issue. Every one of them was a throwaway,
chronic, hopeless drunk. In response to my question about conscious contact, every

single one of them said something along the lines of: “Absolutely; it’s real. I wouldn’t be

154

standing here alive if it wasn’t.” Not a one of these men or women had been Christian or
religious prior to joining AA. In addition, every one of them was now healthy, happy,
and a ﬁrm believer in a power that had personal interest in their lives.

AA had taught them to live an ethical life, and given them a strong sense of
Spirituality. The Twelfthstep states: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these
steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all
our affairs.” All of them maintain that they have conscious contact with a higher power,
which some named God and others simply called their Higher Power. Their description
of how it worked for them ran along the lines of: “I just concentrate and send my
thoughts out, and I get an answer immediately.” What these people are articulating is:
somehow, their consciousness is synchronous with the consciousness of some
disembodied voice within their own conscious minds, which they cannot explain; nor do
they try. None claimed a visual experience of their Higher Power, however, most
claimed long extended conversations whereby they were taught what to do to improve
themselves.

If we reﬂect upon the notion of Atman/Brahman in Hinduism, they say that our
Atman is a spark of Brahman. Not part of it, which would mean we are separated, but
fully, wholly Brahman. Enlightenment is about wading through all the human
distractions, and recognizing that fact. If we can understand Brahman as Primordial
Consciousness, then according to Hinduism, our Atman is Primordial Consciousness, too.
The only aspect of the human being that could possibly qualify as Atman is our
mind/consciousness. Conversely, Brahman must be all encompassing

mind/consciousness.

155

Thinking about David Bohm’s theory of being “one with the undivided whole of
ﬂowing movement” in the holographic universe of the implicate order (the OPP), we can
remember that even the smallest bits of a hologram hold the information of the entire
hologram. In other words, if you take a tiny comer of a hologram and shine a laser on it
the whole image is there. That sounds very similar to the idea of Atman and Brahman.
Therefore, our minds do not have to reach down into the OPP; they are there already. For
Natives attempting to contact the spirits, Buddhists reaching for Nirvana, Hindus trying
to attain moksha, or hippies looking for the ultimate mind trip, the preparation is more
akin to wiping the mud off the lens of our consciousness, so that with a clear mind, we

may be one with the source. Ironically, enough, that source just may be our true selves.

Final Thoughts
Principle number four ﬁom the Sacred Tree tells us about the difference between the
levels of reality.
The Seen pnd the Unseen—the physical world is real. The spiritual world is real.
These two are aspects of one reality. Yet, there are separate laws which govern
each of them. Violation of spiritual laws can affect the physical world, and
violations of physical laws can affect the Spiritual world. A balanced life is one
that honors the laws of both dimensions.24
In actuality, the Newtonian view of classical physics is still the ruling paradigm.
The only difference is, as Quantum Mechanics tells us, Newtonian Laws break down in

the quantum world. Speaking in terms of the spirit world is probably no longer useful.

Although spirits can arise out of the Ocean of Pure Potential, for scientists, “spirit world”

 

2"" Sacred Tree, p. 27

156

carries negative connotations of unscientiﬁc superstition. Nevertheless, according to
interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, all matter erupts from the Ocean of Pure
Potential. Spirits can exist as an eruption of pure potential guided by Primordial
Consciousness. While many physicists cannot accept that interpretation, some do. Until
those that disagree can prove otherwise, this interpretation will hang around, because
there is something about spiritual ideas that resonates with many people. Perhaps it will
spawn changes in cultural perspective much like the mechanistic movements following
Newton: the “clockwork universe,” and “man the machine.” Only this time we might
arrive at a healthier perspective of what the human being is. In addition, it is not likely
anyone can prove this interpretation wrong at this stage, not in the direction science has
chosen to go; and what is wrong with that? Does it change anything science has already
learned by having Primordial Consciousness as a ruling paradigm? Absolutely not. Real,
hard science focused on the phenomena of this macro level would remain the same.
What would change are the scientistic pronouncements of assumptions never proven.
This concept confronts scientiﬁc materialism, and QM has demolished it by showing that
matter does not exist the way we have believed that it did. Scientists that hold on to
materialism are ignoring the science of QM. Interestingly enough, both religion and
science coming ﬁ'om two opposite directions have come to the same place. Almost as
though scientists received the same hints and clues, but perhaps have misinterpreted
them. True or not, we need a new paradigm, because the ruling materialist commercial
view is destroying our Earth, and is allowing countless people to suffer needlessly while
a few prosper. We need a new way of perceiving all the life around us to help us protect

and nourish it. For Native people, human existence is all about becoming a better human

1.57

being today, than I was yesterday. All life, all existence is sacred. It is the most

important gift that Native people have to offer.

158

APPENDIX

159

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY

After surveying several attempts of physical scientists to describe reality and the
nature and place of mind/consciousness within it, philosophy and religion must have their
say. There is an ancient view of the human being, indeed for all things that exist, that we
cannot ignore in this study: the Perennial Philosophy (PP); so named because this
philosophy shows up across cultures and ages with many similar features. Some such as
Huston Smith, F ritlrjof Schuon, Ken Wilber, and Arthur 0. Lovejoy support the
perennially debated claim that PP forms the core of the world’s great wisdom traditions
from Christianity to Buddhism. According to Ken Wilber, the PP is so “overwhelmingly
widespread. . .tlrat it is either the single greatest intellectual error ever to appear in
mankind’s history—an error so colossally widespread as to literally stagger the mind—or
it is the single most accurate reﬂection of reality yet to appear.”247 Smith calls it the
“primordial tradition,” so common we may term it the “human unanimity.”248 However,
detractors of this supposition point out that the personal God of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, for instance, seems far removed from the impersonal, inﬁnite, absolute reality
of much of Buddhism and Hinduism.249

On the other hand, in the Forward to Wilber’s The Eye of the Spirit, Jack
Crittenden explains Wilber’s method as simply backing up “to a level of abstraction at
which the various conﬂicting approaches actually agree with one another.”

Take, for example, the world’s great religious traditions: Do they all agree that
Jesus is God? No. So we must jettison that. Do they all agree that there is a

 

2‘" Wilber, (ES) op. cit. pp. 38-9

248 Smith, Huston, Beyond the Post-Modem Mind, Crossroad Publishing Co. (New York: 1982)
p. 150

M Griffin, David Ray and Huston Smith, Pmordwmm grid Postmodern Theology. State
University of New York Press (Albaq501989) p. 41

God? That depends on the meaning of “God.” Do they all agree on God, if by

“God” we mean a Spirit that is in many ways unqualiﬁable, ﬁ'om the Buddhists’

Emptiness to the Jewish mystery of the Divine? Yes, that works as a

generalization—what Wilber calls an “orienting generalization” or “sturdy

conclusion.”25°ThuS, we may see, as Wilber states later, he is not trying “to
minimize the very real differences between these traditions,” he is “simply
pointing out that they share “certain deep structural similarities.”25 ‘

In perennial philosophy, the Great Chain of Being is the metaphor for the
structure of reality. In this schema, reality is not the “one dimensional” prospect of
uniform substance as in the atomic theory of matter; rather it encompasses “several
different but continuous dimensions.”252 Perhaps the best way to envision the GCB is as
a holarchy253 of ﬁve nested circles in which causation moves from higher to lower, as
opposed to the scientistic reductionist view of evolution say, in which causation moves
from the lowest levels of complexity to the highest. Each circle represents one level or
domain of reality, the lowest in the center. Each higher level, then, transcends but also
includes the lower levels. In other words, each higher domain contains functions,
capacities, or structures not found on or explainable by those of the lower level, in the
same way that a three dimensional sphere includes two dimensional circles, but not vice
versa.254

Wilber labels the circles from innermost (lowest) outwards to highest with

attendant academic disciplines as: domain #1 - matter (physics); #2 - life (biology); #3 -

 

25° Crittenden, Jack, In Wilber, ES, p. ix

25' Wilber, m, p. 48

252 Wilber, E_S, p. 39. Note: Some versions of the Great Chain of Being schema propose
anywhere from three to twenty or more levels. In the Atman Project, Wilber proposed seventeen
basic levels or structures of consciousness. Here we will use the simpliﬁed ﬁve level format
suggested by Wilber to avoid any unwieldiness and confusion that would require more lengthy
explanation than necessary for the purposes of this project.

2” Term coined by Arthur Koestler meaning: “increasing orders of wholeness.” In E_S, p. 42

25‘ Wilber (QQ) p. 13 161

mind (psychology); #4 - soul (theology); and #5 - spirit (mysticism). For clarity, we may
now see that life transcends matter, but includes matter. Matter comprises biological
organisms, while material objects, such as rocks, do not contain biological reproductive
components, for instance. That is why, in the study of life, biologists use physics, but
physicists do not use Biology.255 Thus, we may see that “life transcends but includes
matter; mind transcends but includes life and matter; soul transcends but includes mind,
life, and matter; and spirit transcends but includes soul, mind, life, and matter.”256 None
of this is yet neat and clean until we deﬁne these terms.

We ﬁnd these ﬁve aspects of the human being within Christianity after its
melding with neo-Platonic philosophy. The ﬁrst three domains are easily recognizable.
Within this schema, matter applies as that part of our physical bodies covered by the laws
of physics. Body (life) means the home of Plato’s basic appetites of sex, hunger, etc., the
vital life force, or those aspects studied by biology. Mind is the rational, linguistic, and
imaginative mind studied by psychology.

However, the last two levels are more obscure, and not so transparent. Because
we live in the United States, the common vernacular muddies the differences between
“soul” and “spirit,” where often the two have become interchangeable, as in “my sou ” or
“my spirit.” Additionally, “spirit” may also mean ghost or individual entities from the
realm of the supernatural.

In order to understand the domain #4 designated “soul,” one must accept that it

means more than a “higher self” or “higher identity.” It is the archetypal mind, the

 

2” Ibid. pp. 13-14
256 Ibid. p. 13 162

intuitive mind, and a “higher or subtler mind” which employs higher cognition. Like
Plato’s psyche, it is the indestructible essence of our being. It also has the meaning, in all
the higher mystical traditions, of being a “knot” or “contraction” which has to be untied
and dissolved before the soul can transcend it self. . .and thus ﬁnd a supreme identity,
with and as absolute Spirit.”257 Soul, then, is the “highest level of individual growth”
attainable, and is the “ﬁnal barrier. . .to complete enlightenment or supreme identity.”258
Thus, the soul is what communes with God, apprehends and unites in Godhead, or rather,
with absolute spirit.

Attempts to deﬁne spirit bring about another set of problems entirely, that of
paradox. Wilber differentiates between spirit (lower case “5”) to indicate the spiritual
realm of domain #5, and Spirit (upper case “S”) to indicate the pervasive and radically
immanent aspect of spirit, the “isness” or “thatness” of all possible realms. Spirit is
“beyond all categorization and qualiﬁcation whatsoever,” including this attempted
classiﬁcation.259 As such, spirit is neither one nor many, neither ﬁnite nor inﬁnite, and it
is not Unity. All these terms are dualistic, and have meaning in relation to their
opposites. Within the nested holarchy of the GCB, the domain of Spirit is transcendent; it
is the highest of all possible domains, the Being beyond all beings.260 Spirit (capital “8”)
is not the subset of any other domain, but since all other domains nest within it, it is not
apart from all other levels, but is the “Ground or Being of all realms, and is, thus,

perfectly transcendent, yet perfectly immanent?“

 

25’ Wilber, 5; p. 47

2” Ibid. p. 47

2” Wilber, QQ, p. 13

26° Wilber, QQ, pp. 15-18

2611bid. p. 15 163

Ultimately, the radical nature of this contradiction plagues the rational Western
mind, mine included. If one emphasizes only the transcendental nature of spirit, then
spirit becomes otherworldly with no ties to the physical aspects of the earth, science, or
ordinary affairs of humanity. Any subsequent attempt to bring it into this world brings
with it reductionaly charges of animism, pantheism, or idolatry. If one emphasizes the
immanent nature of spirit, then science and religion are essentially studying the same
realm, and any later attempt to include its transcendent aspect will result in the very
familiar questions of validation and corroboration, and consequent charges of naiveté,
foolishness, or dogrnatism. Wilber believes if we simply I) acknowledge the necessary
paradoxicality of verbal formulations of spirit, and 2) Simply indicate which aspect of
spirit—transcendental or immanent—we mean at any given time, we will neutralize the
conﬂict and dissolve the conﬁrsion.262 However, such a strategy does nothing to diminish
the resistance of those that see only the domain of matter and fail to accept the rest.

In order to demonstrate the structural similarities among different ancient
traditions, we may see that the ﬁve levels or domains of the Christian human being are
similar to those of Vedanta Hinduism in which the composition of the individual person
contains ﬁve “sheaths” or levels or spheres of being, the metaphor of an onion often used
for visual reference. The outermost layer, the lowest, is annamayakosha, “the sheath
made of food.” This is the physical realm of the body, the matter. The second layer is
pranamayakosha, the sheath made of prana, or the vital force of life—what Valerie Hunt
might call bioenergy—that includes emotional and sexual energy. The third is

manomayakosha or the sheath of mana or mind. The aspect of mind that is rational,

 

262 Ibid. p. 15 I64

abstract and linguistic. The fourth level is vijnanamayakosha, the sheath of intuition,
which refers to the higher or subtle mind. Finally, we ﬁnd anandamayakosha, the sheath
of ananda or spiritual and transcendent bliss.263

Going further, Vedanta groups the ﬁve sheaths into three major realms: gross,
subtle and causal. The gross level corresponds with the lowest level of annarnayakosha;
the subtle with the three intermediate levels of prana, mana, and vijnana; and causal
correlates to ananda. Vedanta relates these realms with the three major states of
consciousness. Beyond all three is absolute Spirit, which is beyond, but integrates the
three states.264

Mahayana Buddhism contains the model of the eight vijnanas, or the eight states
of consciousness. The ﬁrst ﬁve are the ﬁve senses. The next is manovzjnana, the mind
that operates on sensory experience corresponding with manomayakosha in Vedanta and
“rrrind” in the Christian formula, or domain #3 in the GCB holarchy. Then comes
manasvzjnana, corresponding with the higher mind of vijnanarnayakosha in Vedanta,
“soul” in Christianity, and domain #4. This level is also the center of illusion in which
the manas looks at the next higher level of alayavijnana (supra individual consciousness)
and mistakes it for a separate self. Beyond these levels, “as both their source and ground,
is the pure alaya or pure empty Spirit,” corresponding to anandamayakosha, spirit, and

domain #5.”265

 

2‘” Ibid. p. 46
26" Ibid. pp. 46-7
265 Ibid. p. 47-8 165

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172

173