Pure awareness: beyond subjective and objective?

This morning I picked up "The Mystical Mind," a book I've read several times. With every re-reading I get something more out of it. It's a terrific blend of neuroscience, philosophy, and mysticism.

I was planning to write something new about stimulating ideas I came across in the Consciousness and Reality chapter. Then I decided to check blog posts about the book that I'd shared back in 2007.

(See here, here, here, here, and here.)

Reading them over, I saw that just about everything I was planning to say, I'd already said. So if you're looking for some non-religious "spiritual" inspiration which harmonizes with modern science, click on those links.

That said... there's always more for me to say. And to quote what others say.

Today I was struck by how the authors, Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg (both are medical doctors), linked two Big Questions: how there is something rather than nothing, and the nature of subjective awareness.

It seems to us that if we start our philosophical analysis with the reality of matter and the external world, then there are fundamentally two great discontinuities in the universe.

The first discontinuity is the big bang, or more specifically, why there is something rather than nothing. This is, of course, the question that plagued Martin Heidegger and many philosophers since.

The second great discontinuity in the physical universe is the existence of subjective awareness. It simply represents an unexplainable jump from material organization to a level of reality of another order, analogous to the jump from nothing to something.

Again, we must keep in mind that all these statements are true only if we assume the primacy of material reality as our philosophical starting point.

By which they mean, stating their position in my own words and with my own mind, that these Big Questions are meaningful only within a worldview where "subjective awareness" and "objective world" are distinct realities.

Yet let's think about this.

Is there such a thing as objective awareness? Is there such a thing as subjective world? That is, do the adjectives "objective" and "subjective" add anything to our understanding of awareness and world?

For this to be true, there would have to be a difference between subjective and objective awareness, and there would have to be an objective and subjective world. Yet the authors correctly point out that everything we know about reality is the result of awareness.

Here we get into Zennish territory, koans about the nature of existence that can't be understood or explained logically, much like how quantum physics eludes either/or definitions.

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. Whether they have any other substantive reality is an open question, but what is certain is that they exist within awareness.

Furthermore, what also exists within subjective awareness is the vivid sense that the external is substantively real and that matter is something other than consciousness. But this vivid sense likewise exists within awareness or is an aspect of awareness.

So how can we decide who wins the Reality Contest, subjective awareness or the objective world? d'Aquili and Newberg persuasively argue that what is most really real has to be decided by a feeling of this is really real.

There's no objective criterion for reality, because subjective awareness is how everything we know about reality comes to be known. Seemingly this leaves us stuck in solipsism.

However, "The Mystical Mind" posits a neuroscientifically believable state of Absolute Unitary Being (AUB). People who claim to have experienced this state describe it as neither subjective or objective.

Intriguing.

This isn't any sort of other-worldly mystical state, according to the authors. They describe how, physioloogically, the brain can produce a feeling of oneness that transcends our usual feeling that there's a difference between subjective me and the objective world.

Our neurophysiological model of how this state is generated (i.e. by deafferation of areas of the parietal lobe) seems to be confirmed in our brain-imaging studies of mature contemplation in Tibetan Buddhist meditators.

Thus, there can be little doubt that AUB exists, even it is a relatively rare state. From the point of view of our concerns here, AUB has an interesting property. Neither during the experiencing of AUB nor upon subsequent recollection is this state ever perceived as subjective.

Although it is attained by going deeply within the subject, once it is attained, it is perceived as neither subjective nor objective. Indeed, from a phenomenological perspective, AUB or pure awareness seems to be anterior to either subject or object.

Of course, awareness of something is clearly perceived to be a subjective state. But as difficult as this notion may be to understand, pure awareness seems to be neither subject nor object when analyzed by the meditator after the fact. It seems to be the only state to which humans have access that eludes the categories of subjectivity and objectivity.

Comments

[Steven Sashen]

AAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!

Let's start here: Just because someone is a "doctor" doesn't mean whatever they say or think is correct, informed, smart, or even meaningful.

Secondly, just because our state of knowledge or the availability of language to define certain phenomenon is lacking, we don't have to fill in the gaps by saying "See, the mystics are right!"

To be more specific: There are NOT 2 great discontinuities in the universe. The two phenomenon cited are not well-understood, but they only SEEM like discontinuities based on our current understanding. There's an entire branch of physics dedicated to investigating the possibilities of "something" before the big bang.

FWIW, though, are those really the ONLY "great discontinuities"? What about the start of life itself? Frankly, when someone starts an argument with such a clear disregard for current, and often common, knowledge, the rest of their argument is often suspect.

Next, this notion that there's no external reality without a subjective experiencer is solipsistic nonsense. That's like saying "There was no world before I was born, regardless of what my parents say!" or "The dark side of the moon doesn't exist because humans haven't seen it."

I wish people would learn to use the phrases "as if" and "from my perspective" in the correct context. As in, "It is AS IF there is no world, from my perspective, outside of my experience."

Onward... Just because we can have an experience that transcend's our language's ability to easily describe it, that does not mean we're describing anything other than our current experience. In other words, the "AUB" is OBVIOUSLY a subjective state, but one in which the feeling of subjectivity is different than in our more familiar state. And it's unusual enough that we haven't taken the time to give it a mutually agreed-upon label.

Pressed to describe the state with better language (and accurately describing unusual internal states is a rarer skill than cultivating those states), we would find that poetic language like "pure awareness" could be relegated to the spiritual dustbin where it, and other useless poetry, belongs. (I say "trash the poetry" because it in no way advances the useful discussion of these phenomenon.)

Personally, I'm tired of seeming scientists bending over backwards to prove their hypothesis that science is validating their mystical philosophy of choice (usually Buddhist or Hindu or Taoist).

Rant over.

[cc]

Now that science recognizes AUB the pharmaceutical companies can create a pill that induces it and...wait a minute, aren't they the ones behind the demonization and illegality of such substances?

[Blogger Brian]

Steven, I agree that the authors of "The Mystical Mind" end up going further into hypothetical spiritual/mystical territory than they should. For example, they suggest that the AUB unitary state could be the ground from which both subjective awareness and the objective world emerge -- sort of like Brahman, I guess.

But they're neuroscientists, and I like how they show that so called "mystical" experiences can be explained by brain states. Such and such happens in the brain, and such and such is experienced by the meditator, or whoever.

They aren't really saying the world doesn't exist outside of human consciousness. Rather, they make the reasonable, and obvious, point that everything we know about reality is through human awareness.

We can't know what it is like for bees, dolphins, dogs, and so on. We can't say what the universe would be like if there was no human consciousness to be aware of it. Even when we try to do this, that trying occurs through human consciousness.

Yet we have this intuitive feeling that there is (1) an objective external world, and (2) a subjective consciousness/awareness/soul or whatever you want to call it that is in touch with objective reality.

This feeling is hardwired into us, basically. Yet modern science tells us that this intuition isn't true, because awareness creates reality. One neuroscientist put it as "and then a world appears." Without consciousness, there is no world.

Here we get into tricky territory, which is why I called it koan-like. I agree with you that the universe would exist without consciousness being aware of it. But how would it exist? We can't say.

And our imagining of how it would exist has to occur within human awareness, so we can't get out of where we are: subjectively aware beings who believe in an objective world apart from ourselves.

[cc]

I seem to be a "subjectively aware being" experiencing "an objective world apart from" myself. Then someone tells me this is illusion - that there is no actual separation between me and my world; that all is one. I ask how he knows this and he says by revelation. I ask how I might have this revelation and he tells me it's a result of a practice, or of ingesting a substance, or that there's nothing to be done - it just happens.

So I try everything, nothing works, and AUB is as elusive as ever. I say as much and a thousand testifiers to the reality of AUB pipe up and I'm in the Hell that Sartre spoke of...all because someone spoke of AUB.

I think if someone actually has the experience, he or she ought to say nothing. If there's any truth to it, the way they live will do all the talking.

[George]

an interesting perspective from Brian but an excellent post from steven, which cuts right to the heart of it.

I often wonder how much the power of zen koans or transcendental experiences or poetry itself, merely highlight the inadequacy or limitations of human language, as opposed to supposedly revealing a deeper truth.

[George]

i've never really understood what the pantheist believes.

They appear to be believers, but not in a supernatural god, rather their god is the the universe itself, in its laws and supposed unity.

However, the nature of this unity appears to be the point at which pantheism can move from atheism to mysticism (or at least the more benign forms). Mystics seem to diverge from pantheists in the belief that answers can be found within, i.e. 'know thyself' and other vague epithets.

Even if we can train our minds to enter other states of consciousness (for example through meditation), how can an examnation of one's inner subjective consciousness ever shed light on the external universe? It surely cannot. We might all be made from the same atoms, but a rock does not have consciousness. This is an emergent property at a level abstracted from the physical. Even if one were to undergo a spiritual voyage of disovery and find the self (whatever that is) was illusory or our true nature (whatever that is), this is psycholigical not physical. How in any way could discovering our inner nature be equated with discovering the nature of external reality. How does human nature become metaphysics?

It seems that all these nondual mystical branches (taoism, budhism, advaita) all rely on the premise that there is an underlying unity, but more then that, it is some sort of unifying essence that pervades or underlies all things. And this would seem to be a supernatural claim for which there is no evidence.

[cc]

"How in any way could discovering our inner nature be equated with discovering the nature of external reality."

By realizing the limitation of conceptual grasping we behold the ungraspable...or so it is said.

[Roger]

"Although it is attained by going deeply within the subject, once it is attained, it is perceived as neither subjective nor objective. Indeed, from a phenomenological perspective, AUB or pure awareness seems to be anterior to either subject or object."

---Is this state an attainment? You really have to go deep within a subject? But, it is anterior to subject and object.......

[Blogger Brian]

George, nicely said. Yes, the assumption is that the root of human consciousness somehow also is the root of ultimate reality.

Yet those who claim to have become one with ultimate reality don't know anything unique about the physical universe. This indeed seems to argue against the hypothesis that consciousness is the source of all things, including our universe.

[Blogger Brian]

cc, I like your AUB thoughts. Like you, I kind of feel like I'm also part of the unenlightened outgroup. The cool kids hang out with each other and talk about what a One time they had in meditation, while us losers are wondering what it takes to get an invite to the AUB party.

[Roger]

"Yes, the assumption is that the root of human consciousness somehow also is the root of ultimate reality."

--Brian, what is a root, as used above? And, what exactly is this 'ultimate' reality? So, who is making such a claim?

--How can anyone, honestly make a claim, regarding a supposed state of non-duality?

[cc]

"--How can anyone, honestly make a claim, regarding a supposed state of non-duality?"

One could announce or mention that it happened, but why would they? A profound change in the way the brain operates would be obvious; to speak of it, superfluous. Talk is cheap.

[Roger]

cc.....good point....."talk is cheap"

[Roger]

"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."

--Am I reading this correctly? So, the laws of science, all aspects of material reality have 'never' been resolved by the workings of 2 or more minds together? Or, objective awareness.

[Blogger Brian]

Roger, two or more minds working together still are operating within subjective awareness.

The only way we know about what scientists have found is through our awareness, and the only way scientists can collaborate on rigorous investigations into the "objective" nature of reality is through their individual awarenesses.

Yes, it's reasonable to speak of objective reality. But this speaking occurs in subjective awareness, as does the understanding of what constitutes the objective outside world.

[Mike Williams]

PURE awareness ?

If awareness was PURE,
could you be aware at all ?

[cc]

"...it's reasonable to speak of objective reality. But this speaking occurs in subjective awareness, as does the understanding of what constitutes the objective outside world."

We are either hopelessly subjective or objectivity is the suspension of the subjectivity we are.

[Blogger Brian]

Mike, I can't figure that out either. I like the notion of pure awareness because, well, it sounds so PURE. (My life is anything but, so I guess purity appeals to my yin/yang admiration of opposites).

But I've never been aware of nothing but awareness. Or maybe I have, but I wasn't aware of it -- like looking through absolutely clear glass and thinking "There's nothing there."

Regardless, it sure seems like every time awareness springs into action, it becomes aware of something, not of itself.

[Mike Williams]

"it sure seems like every time awareness
springs into action, it becomes aware of something, not of itself."
quote Brian

Both awareness and consciousness are words
for something that does not exist. Duality
and non duality, inside ... outside, subjective and objective.

On and on people spin these words which have
no reality. They debate meaningless words
trying to find reality.

People are on the pogo sticks of life,
People chase their tails like dogs.

People don't want reality, they simply
sublimate their desire to run from
reality. But, sublimation is as
childish as the primative beliefs they thought they were
dropping.

People slip into the trap of sophistication.

But, they still wear the dunce cap of life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0yhHHPc7IU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZuG2wMZu6I&NR=1

[Mike Williams]

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of
history is the most important of all the lessons that
History has to teach.”
-Aldous Huxley

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”
-Aldous Huxley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm73wOuPL60&NR=1