New book on Consciousness broadens the definition and ruffles some feathers

Clearly, no one agrees on a single definition of consciousness. All sorts of so-called experts have weighed in on the topic, only to meet with endless debate, derision, applause, appreciation, and/or total rejection. Ultimately, to know consciousness is the result of persistent introspection. Otherwise, all that you can know is secondhand information learned from teachers, books, or other media. And if you try to deeply grasp the reality of consciousness through science, then most likely you will come away with theories based on correlates but not causes.

In his new book, Consciousness: The Potentiality of Existence, NY Times bestselling author Vic Shayne seems to cover all the bases, giving the reader a wide range of ideas about consciousness from a multiplicity of disciplines.

This is no easy task, because there are a lot of strong feelings about what consciousness is, and there seems to be an uncrossable bridge between materialist belief and the belief of those who live and think on the other side. In the end, though, it is apparent that belief is not knowing, otherwise it wouldn’t be called “belief.” Thus, even ardent materialist scientists are as much believers as the religious or “spiritual” people whom they deride.

Materialists do not take kindly to the fact that they base their rejection of a nonphysical conscious on a belief. They claim that their beliefs are well-founded, while the beliefs of everyone else are not. Quite often materialists are given to straw man arguments, conflating belief in a universal consciousness with the Easter Bunny, spoon-bending, and unicorns. Remember when Ghostbuster’s Peter Venkman arrogantly exclaimed, “Back off man, I’m a scientist!”? It’s a good example of the way a great many materialists do business — you need to take their word for things based only on their self-proclaimed authority.

When it comes to defining and proving anything about consciousness, too many materialists really don’t have a leg to stand on; and they just want people to accept their authority as the final word. It seems that admitting “I don’t know” is a foreign concept that threatens the ego.

Everyone weighs in
Nevertheless, Consciousness: The potentiality of all existence explores ideas from neuroscientists, out-of-body experiencers, quantum physicists, theoretical physicists, near-death experiencers, medical doctors, biologists, psychologists, and the sages of India. Of particular interest are the teachings of these sages of the Vedic tradition who seem to have obtained the ability to move beyond the egoic mind to perceive the world as consciousness itself.

But there’s just no proof, if that’s what you’re looking for
If you’re looking for proof that consciousness is more than an artifact of the brain, forget about it, because here’s the rub: Science is too limited to answer its own theory. It lacks the tools to measure, define, or “see” consciousness. Similarly, science cannot measure or record a thought, an idea, an interest, love, creativity, deep sorrow, or even the most basic feeling of what it is to know you exist. The closest science can come, in some cases anyway, is to find correlates in the brain and body associated with such emotions and mental states. For instance, one part of the brain my light up sensors when a person feels fear, etc., but the actual sensation of fear, hope, curiosity, or similar feelings are not measurable by science. We can see what some of these things do to us, but not what they are in an experiential sense. There is no proof of most of what we find most important to us. So, does this mean that feelings, emotions, ideas, and the love of bunnies and puppies do not exist? Of course not, regardless that science cannot prove they exist.

Publishing on consciousness
A number of books have been written about consciousness over the years, and more keep coming out. Just recently, the intelligent and gifted wife of Sam Harris, Annaka Harris, published Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. And several years ago, Sam Harris published Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Another celebrated neuroscientist, Christhof Koch, wrote Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. We can add to this books by the Dalai Lama and a host of spiritual teachers, including the great mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti.

But what is different from most books on consciousness and Shayne’s new book is simple: The latter has followed the school of thought known as “self-enquiry” and therefore he explains consciousness not as something or some state that we have or hope to attain, but rather something that we inherently are.

The materialist dilemma
It seems that those who wrestle the most with the idea of consciousness are materialists — people who believe that all of existence can be reduced to chemicals and chemical reactions and actions. The word “reduced” is key here, because science is mostly colored by reductionist thinking — looking so closely at something to find the key ingredient or cause that the big picture disappears from consideration. Reductionism is embodied in the cliché that one “cannot see the forest for the trees.” On the other hand, those who can take in the “whole” and appreciate all the expressions of one movement of life are more apt to appreciate consciousness as a totality that is not caused by the human brain. To suggest that it is is the kind of ethnocentrism to which materialists are heir.

Eastern philosophy intersects with leading edge science
For millennia, sages of the East (India, China, etc.) have been teaching that life is a wholeness and that the persons we think we are are no more than conditioned beliefs. We are consciousness as ourselves who witness existence, yet the bodies of people, nature, animals, and objects are expressions of consciousness. This is often a confusing idea to grasp: The core of who we are is the totality that creates and comprises all of life in all of its expressions. But the sense of a self, the “I,” is illusory, because there is really no independent being who exists apart from the whole. To absolutely realize this has been known as “enlightenment.”

Fundamentally unified and superficially diversified
Over the past hundred years quantum physics has been picking up steam. There are a number from this branch of science, including John Hagelin who teach that consciousness is the field of all potentiality and existence (creation, destruction, action, thought) to which Einstein referred when he used the term “unified field.” Hagelin said that “the universe is fundamentally unified and superficially diversified.” In other words, we see ourselves as separate, but we are really one single network along with every other object and form of life.

There is nothing that is not “of consciousness” within this field, whether atomically or whether pertaining to thought or action. Hagelin noted that the “unified field is an ocean of pure existence, an ocean of pure abstract intelligence at the basis of the universe.” Due to the quantum principle, he noted, it is teeming with unmanifest energy.

But what is even behind, or prior to, this field of existence? The 20th century Indian sage Ramana Maharshi suggested that ultimately we are like a movie screen whereupon the metaphorical movie of life is played. All of the good, bad and indifferent appears to happen, but nothing really happens to us at the core. The body ages and sickens, but the awareness — the one who witnesses —never changes. What happens happens to the expression we call the body, but nothing actually happens to the awareness. Ramana said that, metaphorically, consciousness is the screen on which all the moving pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it. The “pictures” in this analogy are the expressions of consciousness itself — phenomena, forms, people, animals, objects, and so on. All sorts of events may happen on the screen, but the screen itself remains forever unaffected.

There is much more to say about this, but it requires following a whole other path of thought explored in Vic Shayne’s book. For now though, we can leave it at this: There is a totality of existence, and quantum physicists are coming up with the mathematical equations to mirror what sages have been saying for thousands of years — that life is a complete network of sorts and not a disconnected bunch of parts called people, nature, animals, objects, and brains.

Written for you as a therapist or patient
Consciousness: The potentiality of all existence was primarily written for people in the healing and therapy professions, and those interested in natural health and psychology, because it helps explain that our problems and solutions are part of a greater reality that needs to be considered in order to make sense. However, anyone interested in who they are at the deepest levels, and perhaps those who question the greater meaning of life, may find the book more than interesting and thought-provoking.

Vic Shayne ©2019