Reality is more than the human mind

Roger asked some good questions in his comment on a recent blog post. He started off by agreeing with my oh-so-agreeable statement about the ineffable can't-know'ness of someone else's subjective experiences.

Correct,

"Everybody has their own subjective experiences. It isn't possible to know what those subjective experiences are like, unless you're the person having the experiences."

---However, what is a RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] meditation experience? Why is there a need for RSSB initation into a meditation process? Is the RSSB meditations nothing more than one's subjective personal experiences?

---So, these RSSB meditation experiences of the various astral planes or regions are nothing more than one's personal subjective experiences?

---How would a honest and sincere RSSB devotee know that their subjective experience didn't just come from their brain? Surely, the human brain can generate various experiences, without the need of a GIHF [God in Human Form, the RSSB guru].

---Finally, why is there a problem with sharing one's subjective experience with another person? The other person is listening to what is being described, nothing more.

I found the middle two questions particularly interesting, because they're related to a central philosophical issue. What is the nature of reality as known to us humans?

Some people take a realist perspective.

What's real is our perception of a cosmos open to being known. There's really no difference between the objective outside world and our subjective internal experience of it. What we experience is what there is.

Now, it's pretty clear that absolute realism can't be true.

Illusions are common. Hallucinations are experiences of what isn't really there. Different people understand things in different ways. Animals (and likely space aliens, if they exist) have sensory/cognitive abilities at variance with ours.

On the other hand, some people take an idealist perspective. 

What's real is our individual understanding. There's no such thing as objective reality. How we subjectively perceive things is how the world is. Conscious experience essentially creates the cosmos through awareness of it. No way of looking at the world is more true than any other.

Well, it's also pretty clear that absolute idealism can't be true.

Most people agree about what exists and doesn't exist. Sensory perception is generally accurate, or we couldn't function in a world that had no reliable foundation. Laws of nature operate whether or not human consciousness is present.

So a middle way appears to be the correct path: there is an objective world, but it isn't transparent to our understanding. Knowledge of the universe steadily progresses, but a realm of mystery always lies beyond the horizon of what humans are capable of knowing.

Which brings me back to Roger's questions about internal meditative experiences. I say "internal," because meditation with eyes closed and one's attention diverted from the senses often is termed going inside. 

The Big Question is: inside what? One's own brain, or some transcendent supernatural realm of existence?

Answering this question isn't easy. Especially if the person who goes inside and experiences something seemingly divine doesn't compare notes with other meditators, or share his/her experience with other people.

After all, how do we confirm that what we perceive in the outside world is really there? We ask other people. Do you see that bird in the tree? Do you smell smoke? Doesn't it seem like the room is colder than usual? We also may gather some demonstrable evidence of our perception: a photograph, chemical analysis, thermometer reading.

We can't blindly trust our subjective experience unless we take an extreme idealist position in which reality is however it seems to us. If we accept the presence of objective reality, there has to be some demonstrable outside confirmation of what we experience "inside."

Mysticism is bullshit without this.

People are adept at deceiving themselves. The brain has many layers, many complex mechanisms, many hidden tunnels, many unconscious processes. Blindly accepting whatever pops into our awareness puts the human mind on an undeserved throne.

There is a lot more to reality than just the human mind. Worshipping our own mind by believing in the objective reality of our own thought-creations is a form of blasphemy. Not against God. Against what is true.

Comments

[Roger]

Thanks Brian,

In your beginnings with RSSB, did anyone with some sort of knowledge of the RSSB spiritual regions, explain the mechanism of how those regions were to be experienced?

Assuming, a particular spiritual region is outside the human brain/mind, and the experience of that supernatural(?) region is accomplished. What is it, that is accomplishing the experience, outside the workings of the brain/mind?

If this accomplishment is actually true, then how does the details of the outside experience, actually (truthfully) get transfered to the brain, so the particular RSSB devotee can record the experience?

Hopefully, I have explained this correctly. So, was there a knowledgeable person, available to you to give all the details of the meditatiion process? If not, then this is a flaw in the RSSB initiation process.

[Scott]

People meditate for many different reasons. I saw an article yesterday about the Marines being trained in mindfulness meditation; they are not undergoing this training to reach enlightenment or to have experiences of mystical quality: they are learning to keep their cool in battle. They are not the first to do this. It would appear to me to be humorously subject to unpredictable results, but for many it will work in the way that is intended. It will help them keep their calm under extreme circumstances.

The Buddhist training that I have seen identifies the search for mystical experiences as an obstacle. Not to say that such experiences are not available through meditation, just that these are not the point of Buddhist meditation. For me, meditation has had the effect of familiarizing me with the activity of my own mind -- rather than identifying myself with the half-crazy bouncing around of the associative mind, to see that process as not definitive of "me", to calm those thoughts and emotions. That is the intent, and it has worked for me. Not by confirming my belief in the reality of my mystical experiences, but by teaching me not to rely on those neurotic processes for self-definition.

What happens "inside" is not just thought, but emotion. Trying to relate a state of internal bliss to a transcendent realm is problematic to say the least. And even if such bliss were universally shared, I do not think that this would be evidence of any such realm as an objective place; it is merely common experience, and for all the confirmation of it that we may receive from others, it is still possible that such experiences are not transcendent of anything except objective reality. Just because we are all crazy doesn't change the basic fact of craziness. Sanity is not a democratic process -- obviously!

I can think of many reasons not to share mystical experiences with others. Pearls before swine comes to mind; if you are simply going to trample on the shared experiences, then turn on and tear to pieces the person reporting them -- I wouldn't recommend anyone sharing them with you. I'm not saying you are a pig, it's just the language Jesus used for this situation.

Another more direct and simple reason: Who speaks does not know; who knows does not speak. Because there isn't anything to accomplish by sharing these experiences. I, for example, already know that I am crazy, and need no confirmation from my peers. Who are also crazy.

To me the interface between internal and external is magical. When I am going to build or make something, I create it in my mind first. Drawings and measurements of the objectively real sort are important, but most of all I go through the entire project mentally, identifying and solving three-dimensional problems of placement and fit, and construction problems related to materials and machining. This process results in the objective reality of my own thought-creations -- as long as I follow through with physical action. It is magic; a hammer is my magic wand. And I don't care what anyone else thinks of this; they can neither confirm nor deny its reality, only my interpretation of what is happening. It is as true as things have ever been in my experience, witness these things I have built.

[Brian Hines]

Scott, nicely said.

I sort of get what you're saying with the "he who speaks does not know" notion. However, this implies that he doesn't speak does know. Or that those who don't speak are more likely to know.

I don't believe that. Personally, I don't have a problem with people trying to describe the indescribable. That's what poetry, painting, and indeed every form of artistic expression is.

Heck, probably every form of every expression. I can't EXACTLY express to you right now what I want to say, what I feel inside me, what I intuitively cognize.

But I try. Why? Because I want to. Because I like to. Where's the problem in that?

My impression is that mystic/Zen/yogi types make this way too complex and self-centered with all their talk about how they can't talk about this or that.

Everybody finds it difficult to express outside what is experienced inside, in one's intimate individual consciousness. Everybody. Some people are better at it than others.

But for someone to feel all special because they consider that THEY have had a unique experience that can't be put into words... to them I say, hey, join the club.

The only difference between that person and everybody else is that most people aren't so egotistically attached to feeling like they've had a special experience.

All experience is special, ALL. Because only the person having the experience can directly experience it. Drinking a cup of coffee is as special as sitting on the right side of God, or in his freaking lap.

[Scott]

Yep, Brian, I like to quote that quote of Lao Tse's because anyone who is paying attention can take it as an admission that I don't know, and I'm proving it by talking about it.

But I also like the idea that a self-inflated person can be made to shut up with that quote, so as to prove to you that they "know"! As long as they will shut up about it. But that only applies to a few thoughtless fanatics. Mostly I like the conversation, as you do.

I completely agree with artistic expression being all about expressing the inexpressible. May we never completely succeed! May we never stop trying.

If I practiced mantra meditation, mine would be "Coffee" -- that creation being the best proof of God's existence and perhaps His Holy Nickname.

[cc]

"There is a lot more to reality than just the human mind. Worshipping our own mind by believing in the objective reality of our own thought-creations is a form of blasphemy. Not against God. Against what is true."

Yes, but who or what can say what is "true"? If we decree that science shall be the arbiter and we submit to the scientific method on principal, we dismiss the ineffable and inexplicable for the sake of expediency. So what're ya gonna do? You go with yer gut and draw yer conclusions...that's what bloggin's all about, innit?

[Brian Hines]

cc, it is. But with this difference: I don't claim that my ineffable realizations are anything more than my own subjective experience.

However, some people DO claim that their ineffable experience points to an objective reality that they've encountered, yet others haven't.

To me, ineffable connotes "can't say." So if someone can't say, I wish they wouldn't say "my ineffable experience is better than your ineffable experience."

We're all in ineffable land.

[Brian Hines]

Scott, absolutely. Coffee is holy. Check out this blog post I wrote about nine years ago regarding the holiness of combining coffee and meditation:
http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2004/04/kona_coffee_and.html

[cc]

Technology proves that relative objectivity is possible. Videotape, for instance, demonstrates that what we perceive idiosyncratically exists independently, enabling us to check our personalized perception against that of impersonal means. Before photography was invented, artists achieved a degree of photographic realism that is amazing even today, and they did this by applying the scientific principal of objective observation and examination.

We know we can't help but interpret, twist, if you will, what's "out there" according to our conditioning and peculiar nature, so we've devised means of compensating for this condition. Meditation can bring to conscious awareness our bias and prejudice, and this is good, but I wouldn't trust it to do much more. It isn't magic.

[George]

nope Realism, simply put, is what science is based on, which is that reality is mind-independent - that what happens in the cosmos does so without any need for consciousness or an observer. Matter before mind.

Idealism, is the opposite belief, that mind precedes matter and produces it, at the opposite end of the spectrum. What we perceive using the mind, is an echo of reality, a limited distorted subjective perception of it.

Science is based on realism, einstein was a realist.

The closest science comes to idealism, which the mystics go on about, is quantum theory in which things like the observer effect and superposition principle have been skewed to give idealism credence. Wheeler said it was like the universe was trying to look back at itself.

But quantum theory is far from understood and Einstein never liked it, nor thought the copenhagen interpretation was properly understood.