Getting down to rock-bottom reality

When we feel like somebody is putting us on, "Get real!" is an appropriate response. But what the heck is real? Most of us think we know. However, are we really right about reality?

I'm a sucker for big questions like this. So when I see a chapter called "Consciousness and Reality" in a book, my philosophical spine starts to tingle.

That chapter is in Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg's The Mystical Mind, which I praised in my previous post. It reduces a whole lot of scientific, philosophical, and religious speculation, thousands of years of it, down to a single question.

Which is primary, external reality or subjective awareness?

Scientists say "external reality." They argue that conscious awareness arises from the brain, which is part of material reality. Most mystics and religious types say "subjective awareness." They argue that consciousness – whether personalized as God or impersonalized as a cosmic force – creates and maintains materiality.

Most people's everyday experience is a blend (or you could say, mish-mash) of these perspectives. Newberg and d'Aquili write:

To the naïve observer, there is an absolutely certain sense that there is a reality external to the self that appears to be characterized by a heavy, substantive reality often termed matter or material reality.

The naïve observer also has the absolutely certain sense of a conscious self that seems to have a light, changeable, and ethereal quality often termed mind, spirit, or sometimes soul. The naïve terminology is anything but exact.

That's for sure. Because they point out that everything known about the seemingly objective external world, whether by scientists or anyone else, exists within subjective awareness. Knowing requires a knower.

What is known may indeed exist even if no one is aware of it. I find it difficult to believe that the universe was non-existent for the billions of years it took for conscious beings to evolve after the primordial Big Bang. And yet:

From the point of view of any careful examiner of the world, the only thing that is certain is that all aspects of material reality, including the laws of science and the mind/brain itself, exist within subjective awareness.

OK. So what if instead of assuming that subjective awareness arises out of material reality, we assume that material reality in some sense arises out of subjective awareness?

Solipsism immediately rears its self-centered head. It's pretty clear that my subjective awareness doesn't create material reality, because if it did a convertible Mini Cooper S would be sitting in our carport rather than a Prius. And my bald spot wouldn't be, well, bald.

So whose subjective awareness do the laws of nature really reside in? Beats me. And everyone else, since there's no proof that an entity called "God" exists. On the other hand, d'Aquili and Newberg correctly point out that we also have no way of knowing that the universe as we know it exists outside of our way of knowing.

Since all of material reality exists at least in the mind of the analyzing knower, and since one would have to step outside of subjective awareness to ascertain whether any reality other than subjective awareness exists (a patently impossible situation), then one is constrained to see material reality (its past and future), the laws of nature, and science itself as aspects of present subjective awareness.

As disagreeable as such an epistemological position might be to those of us trained in Western science, it is the only possible rigorous stance unless one wishes to make a complete act of faith that the vivid sense of the otherness of external reality, which certainly exists in subjective awareness, reflects an isomorphic referent outside of subjective awareness.

But anybody who has taken a dog for a walk, as I do just about every day, knows that this isn't the case. I'm strolling along, immersed in sights and sounds of the Oregon countryside, and Serena (the family pet) is off in another world of scent . With her nose to the ground, she is transfixed by another perspective on reality, knowing things about passing deer and coyotes that I'm completely clueless about.

So neither dog nor human can say, "The external world objectively is as I perceive it, even if none of my species existed to be subjectively aware of those perceptions."

In the end, d'Aquili and Newberg argue for an integrated approach to the problem of subjective awareness and material reality. Instead of either/or, they point to the possibility of both/and. Nice and Taoistic.

The cultures of the Far East tend to favor consciousness or subjective awareness as prior. The cultures of the West tend to ascribe priority to external reality. But, in principle, there is no way to choose except by cultural prejudice or personal aesthetics.

…But there is a strange theological conclusion to be drawn from the fact that individuals and cultures have an irreducible choice whether "external" reality or "subjective" consciousness is primary.

In the first case, one can conclude with certainty that the concept and experience of God, and all religious phenomenology, are generated by the brain and nervous system. In the second case, one can conclude with equal certainty, from a rigorous phenomenological reflection on experience, that God (absolute unitary being or pure consciousness) generates the world (including the brain) and subjective experience itself.

Since it is in principle impossible to determine which starting point is more "fundamental," external reality or the awareness of the knower, one is forced to conclude that both conclusions about God (AUB) [absolute unitary being] are in a profound and fundamental sense true – namely that God is created by the world (the brain and the rest of the central nervous system) and that the world is created by God.

More about absolute unitary being in my next post.

Comments

[Tucson]

Subject is forever an object to whatever perceives it. What we are can't be known because if we say we are subject, this subject is thereby an object of another subject and this goes on ad infinitum. You could say, "I am consciousness", but who, what, where is this 'I' that perceives itself as consciousness? Can that endless reflection of an idea be what we are? So what we are isn't. At least it can't be known by any 'one' as an object. Yet this doesn't make any sense to most people because obviously, to them, we are. Anyone can say "Iam". But this "I" can never be found outside of subject-object conceptuality.

I have no way of explaining further what we are because in doing so I am only describing what we aren't, because only an object, which we aren't, can be described. It can't be resolved to anyone's intellectual satisfaction. If I say, "We are, but we are not.", the only person that statement will have any meaning to is someone who experiences that for themselves.

Nisargadatta said:

"You see yourself in the world while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears."

Do the beings we perceive have any experiential self awareness independent of our perceiving of them and what they say or do? Is it all a dream of the One that isn't?

[the elephant]

Tucson: Do the beings we perceive have any experiential self awareness independent of our perceiving of them and what they say or do?

Do 'you' have any experiential self awareness independent of how 'you' are perceived by the beings? :)
( I am not sure what I am try to get at here but I like the reversal ...)

[Tucson]

"Do 'you' have any experiential self awareness independent of how 'you' are perceived by the beings? :)"

Yes, I have self awareness as perceived by the object I perceive as me, but that object is conceptual only, as are 'others'. As what I really am, I am not except as what is reflected in mind as phenomena (the universe of universes).

[Stuart]

"Which is primary, external reality or subjective awareness?"

Thinking creates all sorts of distinctions. This is good, that's bad. This is beautiful, that's ugly. This is object, that's subject. This is external reality, that's subjective awareness.

After the distinction has been made by thinking, we can ponder infinitely which is primary, because in fact, both sides of the duality arise together, being dependent on each other.

That one thing that's truly primary is what's already appeared in this moment, BEFORE thinking makes these distinctions. What are you doing right now?

Stuart
New blog! See:
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/

[the elephant]

But Stuart, is the distinction you make between thinking and non-thinking itself produced by thinking?
How can you dissociate thinking from the moment? Is thinking constitutive of the moment as well as anything else (abstractly speaking): one and whole reality. The way you express yourself gives the impression that thinking is 'outside' reality, or the moment. Knowing, thinking, matter, the blue sky, the green grass, etc are essentially and fundamentally one and without real distinction. Why do make one? Why you do isolate thinking from the moment as it unfolds - 'thinking' is intregally constitutive of experience as everything else. Unless you 'think' that is not ... Again I am not sure why you feel compel to isolate and reject 'thinking' from reality unfolding (abstractly speaking) as 'moments'?
A thought, or any knowing, is itself being whether it knows itself as such or not - why do you reject it as such. Moreover, thinking and knowing do not necessary entail seperation or duality - you may yourself believe so but this is only you ...

[albert]

Hello. Since the "answers" to the questions posed cannot be reduced to words, please let me say this: An honest and deep search in the writings of the Saints all describe higher levels of being and reality. Amazingly, these renditions in words are, for the most part, in harmony - that is, they match! I believe we can have complete access to these regions and that we are, indeed, perfect replicas of the macrocosm. I, for one, am very interested in the highest and most adventurous journey known. It is also the most difficult. "Anything rare is as good as it is difficult." Thoreau

[Stuart]

albert wrote:
> please let me say this: An honest and deep
> search in the writings of the Saints all
> describe higher levels of being and
> reality.

Imbedded in such a statement are a number of ideas and opinions, which may be fine if that's what you like, but it's hardly necessary to create the type of complications you're making here.

First of all, why make "Saints"? That requires all sorts of needless judgments and distinctions. Why not just relate to whomever appears in front of you each moment, rather than clinging to ideas like "He's a saint, but she's a non-saint"?

Similarly, why in the world would I want to believe in "higher levels of being and reality"?? Why not just attend to my just-now situation, without fogging it up with these ideas of higher and lower?

> Amazingly, these renditions in words are,
> for the most part, in harmony - that is,
> they match!

Hardly! When Zen Master Un Mun was asked about the supreme reality, he replied, "Dry shit on a stick." Is that really in harmony with what your "saints" say?

Stuart
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/