What's wrong with change and concepts?

After I put up a post about Deepak Chopra's misunderstanding of quantum theory, Suzanne left a comment pointing me to Stanley Sobottka's website, "A Course in Consciousness."

Sobottka is an emeritus (retired) professor of physics. I enjoyed reading the short version of his course, a 75-slide Power Point presentation. I was curious to see whether his philosophical/spiritual take on quantum physics made more sense than Chopra's.

The jury inside my head is still out on that question. After I finished reading the slides, my impression was interesting, but not persuasive. Meaning, I didn't come across any grand insights that weren't already pretty familiar to me.

Sobottka is big into nondualism.

He regularly refers to sages like Ramana and Nisargadatta. Having read several books by these gurus, I wasn't surprised to find that parts of Sobottka's presentation produced the same question marks in my head as those books did.

Here's some examples.

Now, at first glance this slide elicited a "yes" from me. But on further reflection I agreed a lot more with the first two points than with the last two.

What is, is. It's difficult, if not impossible, to disagree with that.

If I stumble on the dance floor, or during my Tai Chi class, that's a fact. It's reality, what happened. But the next time I attempt the same move, I find nothing wrong in learning from my experience and changing what seemed to produce the stumble.

I don't feel separate from my "body sensation" when I try to change a bodily action. Nor do I feel separate from my thoughts when I decide to think about something different than what is currently in my mind.

Change happens. Change is part of life.

Heck, it's reasonable to say, change is life. A lifeless rock is much different from a living flower. Resisting change, including our natural desires and intentions, doesn't seem like a healthy or wise way to live.

This slide makes the same point. Again, I don't find that trying to change something -- whether inside or outside of me -- produces an increased sense of separation. As dishes pile up in our sink, there comes a point when I think, "I should put them in the dishwasher."

Doing so, I neither feel more or less separate from the world. I don't feel that something is wrong when dishes get dirty. That's what dishes are for: to put food on them, some of which sticks to the surface.

So I don't see how taking action to produce a change is a problem. This is the way of nature, including the laws of nature that Sobottka studied as a physicist.

Another part of the presentation that produced a "huh?" in my psyche concerned concepts. This slide makes some good points. We don't perceive reality as it is, but as our human perception makes it out to be.

The same holds true for dogs, cats, bats, goldfish, and every other conscious entity. We don't know what the cosmos is like from a detached "God's Eye" perspective. What would that perspective consist of? It'd just be another way of perceiving, not reality as it is absent perception.

Sobottka appears to accept an interpretation of quantum theory which posits that an act of observation leads to possibilities/probabilities becoming actualities. I guess this is what he means when he says "if there are no mental images, there are no objects."

This is questionable. I find it hard to believe that the 14 billion year old universe didn't exist until conscious beings with minds came along.

How is it that physicists and cosmologists have been able to trace the history of the universe so persuasively, including deep space images of galaxies that formed soon after the big bang, if there were no objects? (Since "mental images" weren't part of the cosmos until minds evolved.)

Along the same line, Sobottka says that objects are nothing but concepts. Well, I can sort of see what he is getting at. Physical reality, nature, doesn't come with labels attached.

Trees, stars, stones, water, grass, and what-not are defined and delimited by human cognition, even though ecologists, environmentalists, and systems theorists point out the interconnectedness of everything.

But to say that an object is nothing but a concept...hmmmmm. Maybe, maybe not. This seems to be a philosophical notion that could be debated endlessly, like so many other, well, concepts.

Yes, Sobottka uses lots of concepts in his "A Course of Consciousness." What else can he do? He is a human being with a mind/brain, who wants to communicate with other people.

What's wrong with that? What's wrong with concepts? Or, change?

Nondualism, as with most other mystical, religious, and spiritual teachings, sees big problems at the heart of life and living. We're screwed up, seeing things wrongly, enmeshed in illusion, deceived by the human psyche.

Well, as I so often say: maybe; maybe not. I now lean toward the latter. And in that regard, Sobottka agrees with me in the first part of the first slide I shared in this post. We feel things should be different from the way they are, but how could they be?

So there's the big contradiction I see in my admittedly brief foray into "A Course of Consciousness." It teaches that on the one hand, reality is what it is. On the other hand, we humans need to overcome our inability to comprehend reality as it really is. 

This presumes that some person knows what reality really is, that nondualism, or monotheism, or materialism, or idealism, or some other "ism" can capture the essence of the cosmos. Or at least point us toward our own experience of that essence.

Maybe. Maybe not. Again, I lean toward "not." And I also lean toward accepting human experience for what it is, not for what some sage, guru, or philosopher says it might be. 

Change happens. Concepts happen. What's wrong with that?

Comments

[Steven Sashen]

One big mistake made by the "quantum consciousness" proponents is the implication that the observer is somehow separate from all the rest of the universe. After all, the observer is required for all the objects in the universe to come into being.

But where did the observer come from? How does it come into being?

"Oh," they'll say, in a bit of rhetorical nonsense, "it observes itself." Can you say "origination problem?"

If they addressed that point, they would have to concede that the observer is not actually separate from the universe and, therefore, is just another quantum non-thing that can't act independently and, therefore, it can't bring other objects into being because it's not actually and actively "observing". So, then, ultimately, NOTHING ever exists (according to their faulty logic).

BTW, I can only assume you were quoting Sobottka when you referred to Ramana and Nisagardatta as "sages." ;-)

[Brian Hines]

Steven, your comment has some good points. Personally, it makes sense to me that the universe can observe itself, if that truly is needed for quantum phenomena to come into being. Since the big bang occurred with no one around to observe it into action, it sure seems this is the case.

Some theorists (can't remember who) claim that humans, or conscious entities, brought the cosmos into being when consciousness was able to observe the universe. This seems to be the question, though, of how conscious beings were able to evolve when the universe didn't exist before a conscious act of observation.

Regarding the "sages," this was partly a holdover from my old respectful guru-devotion days, and partly a semi-ironic use of the word. I enjoy reading Ramana and Nis; They're clever, for sure, and raise some interesting points. But I agree with you that their brand of spirituality is just about as unbelievable as traditional religions are.

[Suzanne]

Hey Brian, glad you touched on Prof. Sobottka's course. It's extremely interesting, a lot of food for thought.

A lot of people would label me a "nondualist" (is that even a word?) but my own little mind and ego, interpreting away at reality like everyone else's, doesn't think there's anything wrong that needs changing...even the impulse to change what is perceived as wrong. It's all much of a muchness.

And another "nondual" thingy (to use the technical term) is the mind's realisation that it's never going to figure reality out, completely; and that the mind is the tool for interpreting, rather than seeing some ultimate, elusive, absolute TRUTH.

We are what we are, and it is as you see it. Hurray! Nothing to do but watch FlashForward and pop some popcorn. Or, chuck out the TV and join an ashram. There's not much difference between the two!

Enjoying the blog extremely much by the way.

[George]

if all is one, why do we perceive separateness?

even if our perception is faulty as the nondualists have it, there is still no explanation as to why we errenously experience the multiplicity of forms.

why do animals, who have no intellectual mind to speak of, differentiate between different kinds of animals that are prey and others that are threat?

if our actual bodies are merely an illusion, why dont the nondualists stop eating other lifeforms, even vegetarian ones, and get on with the business of living in their nondualistic eternity now, rather than keeping themselves alive in this illusion by eating others?

If we are indeed, one, how do these mystics distinguish between higher and lower lifeforms, between plant life and animal life?

[George]

And i also disagree with the statement 'an object is nothing more than a concept'.

There might be a blind person who has no idea he is going to run into a brickwall, but he is going to hit that wall regardless of whether his mind or sense recognise it as existing or not.

The problem with the nondualistist position is they get so caught up with the mind, that they refuse to admit that there is a physical universe, or a plurality of objects that exist, independent of our perception thereof.

Whether we can experience something or not, does not make it unreal, only invisible to the person whose senses cannot detect it.

hell most of modern science is concerned with phenomena which our senses cannot detect and have to be observed through complex indirect experiment or technological progress that eventually enables us to confirm these assumptions.