For many years, about 37, I was deeply attracted to mysticism. One of the reasons was that I loved how mystic teachings taught the self was an illusion and our sense of free will masked God's overarching control over all things, including human actions.
But gradually I realized the downsides of mysticism. There was no demonstrable evidence that God or anything supernatural existed. And my love of science eventually led me to embrace reality, rather than religion -- of which mysticism is an offshoot.
Now, though, I've come to a pleasing conclusion: modern science actually is more mystical than ancient mysticism, so scientific reality contains a big part of what I found so appealing in supernaturalism.
I've started re-reading Paul Singh's fascinating book, "The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self." I was drawn to do this after seeing a mention of the book in a recent comment on one of my posts, which caused me to order a copy from Amazon.
When the book arrived, it looked familiar.
Indeed, it didn't take me long to find a highly highlighted copy on a bookshelf. So I'm going to give the new Amazon copy to my wife for sharing with members of an atheist/freethinkers discussion group she's organized here in Salem, Oregon.
I decided to re-read the book even though I'd written several blog posts about it in 2016:
No dragon in the garage. Also, no God in heaven.
Free will exists. Freedom of the will doesn't.
I've found that because my views on science, the world, and reality keep evolving (good thing!), often I'll get fresh insights from a book I've enjoyed even if I read it fairly recently.
Such is happening already with The Great Illusion after re-reading only the Preface and the first chapter, Only God's Will. What struck me today is how modern science is able to dispel illusions (maya, if you like) in a much more powerful and convincing way than mysticism.
Here's how Paul Singh describes himself:
Paul Singh is a biochemist, mathematician, surgeon-physician, and a urogynecologist. He is a scholar of eastern and western intellectual traditions. He is a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the College of Medicine at the University of Science, Arts and Technology at Montserrat, British West Indies.
And here's some excerpts from his book about how us humans are deceived about the true nature of free will and the self:
My lifelong research has confirmed what modern science has shown -- that free will, consciousness, and the self are illusions... Consciousness is any qualitative first-person experience. The feelings that you get when you pinch yourself, drink a glass of water, or feel bored are examples of consciousness.
Consciousness is certainly a fact (you who are reading this sentence are obviously conscious at this moment), but modern brain research suggests very strongly that consciousness cannot exist without a brain.
...Although it is correct to say that we have barely touched upon the perplexing complexity of the human brain, we have come far enough in our understanding that we can declare with confidence that these three entities -- free will, consciousness, and the self -- do not have any independent existence of their own independent of the human brain.
Their illusory existence is dependent upon the brain just like a mirage is dependent upon the brain and possesses no independent reality of its own.
Singh then talks about how evolution has given rise to our sense of individual identity, which includes the false notion of "souls" or "spirits" that supposedly enable our identity to live on even after the death of the physical body. Of course, religious and mystical beliefs also are products of the brain. So the brain generates the illusion that consciousness can exist without the brain.
It's impossible to escape from this hall of mirrors by any means other than modern science. Singh writes:
First, the beliefs, that have been found to be illusions by science, are essential for human survival. Since we cannot think any other way than to believe that we are, somehow, independent of our bodies, such a belief must have played an important role in our evolutionary past.
We don't know where the "I" or "self" resides, but we all feel there is such a self. That is what led philosophers for thousands of years to think there is a "ghost in the machine." Ancient Hindus wrote thousands of treatises on this subject and they are still writing them today. But science has demonstrated that these philosophers and religious thinkers were all wrong.
What scientists discover through the scientific method is often counter-intuitive. In the absence of science, we often draw unwarranted conclusions, based on simple observations, frequently mixing our emotions with our observations... The brain determines subjective experience in exactly the same way it determines all other bodily functions.
...We like to think of ourselves as being something other than our bodies, but actually, as modern science has shown, we are our bodies, You are your body; you wouldn't be you without your body wired together with your brain. Without your brain, you wouldn't be you.
Everything about you as a person can be explained by what goes on in your brain. Who you are and what you are like, all of your emotions and every one of your ideas, how you think and what you think about, and our own personal story, come from your brain. You would have no idea of your own existence without your brain.
The body you will leave behind when you die will carry your name, because it was your body, and not someone else's. The very possibility of imagining that you can float free of your body is conceivable only because it is your brain that thinks these things.
...Your inner self, your soul, and the god you worship are nothing else but your own brain interconnected with the rest of your body.
So what's the way out of this brain maze, which sometimes leads us to a correct understanding of reality, yet also leads us astray when it comes to believing in God, soul, spirit, free will, life after death, and the nature of consciousness? Science!
The brain doesn't have the job of "speaking up" and revealing what it does, and the conscious awareness that the brain does produce cannot automatically seem organic or even physical. Only through studying the brain scientifically can we explain why we aren't normally alerted to innumerable details about what our brains are doing as we go about living our lives.
In a way, projecting what is sensed and thought into an alternative sort of reality was something that the human brain had to do as intelligence grew.
...Because science arrived late to the human scene, non-scientific explanations had plenty of time to get entrenched in so many stories that humans have been telling themselves, and the concepts in these stories got embedded in the languages we all learn to speak as children,
...For people, "mind" has most of the same meanings that "spirit' had millennia ago, and most people today expect mind to share in the same destiny as spirit.
But what seems like undeniable common sense, confirmed by our intuitions and assumed by the ordinary words we speak, is really just a built-up web of imaginative notions that developed over the long course of ordinary human events, hardened by regular use as people lived out their mundane paths in life.
Those notions and fabulous stories conveying them have made many people feel extremely special, perhaps so special that it can seem as if the whole of creation is really about them.
Your brain is quite real. What the brain is busily doing in so many special ways must be largely hidden from awareness. Our innate curiosity can raise good questions about what is going on. After that, however, only science can responsibly investigate what the brain actually does and how it accomplishes all the special things it can do.
The true story of the human brain is more amazing than anything imagined before.
Nicely said, Dr. Singh.
What Singh talks about in his book isn't all that different from what I've read in many other books about neuroscience, the illusion of free will, and how consciousness arises in the brain.
But reading the excerpts I've shared led to a more solid realization in my own brain that all of mysticism, all of meditation, all of religion, all of everything, is the product of nerve cells firing in the marvelously complex cranium of us Homo sapiens.
Our clear understanding of reality, along with the illusions that confuse us -- all this arises from a single source: the human brain. There is no way a brain can understand itself, since most of what transpires in the brain occurs outside of conscious awareness.
So modern science is the only way to reveal the secrets that lie hidden within us. Not mysticism, because mystics are subject to the same illusions regarding free will, consciousness, and the self that everyone else is. Yes, meditation can result in different brain states.
But so can drugs, extreme sports, a walk under the night sky, loving someone deeply, and so much else. There's no way out of the maze of the brain except through the collaboration of many brains working together to cut through illusion and reveal reality.
Which is a damn good description of modern science.
My English is not that fantastic.
But are you telling that ''there is nothing outside the brain?''
Or is there ''everything outside the brain?''
Only not the feeling of ''I"?
The brain makes us feel an apart ''I",but in fact there is Oness?
What does this tell actually??Are we only flesh and without that there is nothing?
Am I stupid?I do'nt understand ..!
Who was/is the creater of all the things??
Posted by: s* | October 24, 2018 at 02:10 AM
Brian,
This is too materialistic in my vieuw.
How did you become so??
Posted by: s* | October 24, 2018 at 04:50 AM
SIngh beautifully describes some current research on the brain.
However, when he discusses the concepts of God, afterlife and Consciousness, he is speaking in conjecture about things there is no hard objective evidence of either way.
Why would he do it?
A belief in Atheism!
(My conjecture).
Posted by: Spence Tepper | October 24, 2018 at 06:27 AM
Why would he do it?
Got sikh of religion?
Posted by: Dungeness | October 24, 2018 at 07:45 AM
Singh writes, "We don't know where the "I" or "self" resides."
This makes sense because we don't know where the conscious region of the brain is located (the region correlated with or analogous to that condition). We haven't found this either and currently represents the holy grail of neuroscience. The symbols "I" and "self" ultimately refer to nothing other than that operational function and I still maintain that the condition of being conscious is consequential simply by virtue if its very occurrence.
The brain is what experiences, and that region of the brain that experiences is the referent of "I". When experiential function reaches a certain complexity, the awareness that experience is occurring becomes part of the same experience. Experience (including being cognizant that experience is occuring) is consequential.
The brain acts on itself, and if the function of being conscious is identical to the brain (as it must be), then being-conscious is one of the ways that the brain acts on itself for itself (for its experience).
Posted by: JB | October 24, 2018 at 09:11 AM
I bet you Singh goes to the temple to pray!
Lol. Nah just another somebody bumping his lips together or writing...
As soon as man landed - the portal was there! Some call it the third eye.
Anything that man did afterwards - Ie - science cane later!
Nah not buying it- sorry!
Posted by: Arjuna | October 24, 2018 at 09:59 AM
Hi JB
You wrote
"The brain acts on itself, and if the function of being conscious is identical to the brain (as it must be),..."
This apriori assumption makes the argument circular.
Actually the brain is only part of a larger organism that effects it. And which it also effects. And within the brain are a series of smaller" brains " each acting somewhat on its own but in coordination with the rest of the brain and body. Even the organs have a level of intelligence and autonomous functioning.
But no organ is independent. And the whole body is effected by the environment, and acts upon the environment.
Our neurons are even triggered by subtle radio waves.
So, while it is convenient for scientific study to think of the brain as a completely isolated entity, from a scientific perspective, it isn't.
Therefore neither can be this concept of consciousness.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | October 24, 2018 at 10:09 AM
@ Spencer - scientists know what you wrote but they gonna share it with the hoi pilloi!
You would have mass worshipping going on - what pisses me off too many people have read books on neuroscience and now think they are experts in the brain or mind.
I speak to consultants on immunology and the like and a few (honest ones) have said that there is something about mediation that focuses everything into one area of the 🧠 brain!
The brain is just a device that activated by another being to operate on this shitty rock (sport God - it’s not shitty only as shitty as out karma made it).
Over and out 😀
Posted by: Arjuna | October 24, 2018 at 10:16 AM
Posted by: Spence Tepper | October 24, 2018 at 10:37 AM
What about people living off on Sunlight and water [Sungazers], according to his neuroscience their brain should not survive starvation but they do?? Now some atheist will give some lame argument to score brownie points
Posted by: vinny | October 24, 2018 at 11:05 AM
@ vinny - well said!!!
Posted by: Arjuna | October 24, 2018 at 11:13 AM
"Actually the brain is only part of a larger organism that effects it. And which it also effects."
Of course, no where did I say that the brain is the onlything that affects the brain.
Posted by: JB | October 24, 2018 at 01:37 PM
Spence and Vinny, what you say is wrong. The brain doesn't emit radio waves. And going without food and water will kill you. Next time, educate yourself before leaving an obviously false comment. See:
https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2018/10/commenters-please-dont-lie-and-dont-preach.html
Posted by: Brian Hines | October 24, 2018 at 03:12 PM
Singh reveals his agenda so transparently, it dwarfs
the metaphorical "elephant in the living room". Look
at his dismissive verbiage: "false notion of souls",
"unwarranted conclusions, "fabulous stories",
"imaginative notions". Then he drifts off into
psycho-babble that we concoct fairy tales to
"feel special".
Singh moves briskly on to conjecture: "it's illusion
that consciousness can exist outside the brain".
He posits the proximate and only explanation of
consciousness is the physical brain. It's all the brain.
The brain giveth and the brain taketh away. Only
"Science" will pry secrets from this dark maze we
call the brain and escape only at death.
Of course, Science's anointed priests are as fallible
as any poor schmuck saddled with a brain naturally.
But fear not, advances will be made via an aggregate
"Group Brain". Again only the priests of science can say
anything definitive..
As so often reported, ithe endless, uncanny reports of
reincarnation are an compelling counterpoint. A
separable consciousness is arguably far more probable
than contrivances of brain particles wafting in the wind.
But this is all swept under the scientific carpet.
One interesting study by researcher Dr. Banerjee cites
the case of a young girl in Russia who suddenly begins
to relate precise details, in fluent Japanese, of places
and events occurring in Japan although she had never been
there. She was accompanied by Russian researchers to the
actual site and details of her story were confirmed.
There are literally hundreds of similar cases. Were they all
fake news? Machinations of publicity seekers? Children
coached by parents? Pure coincidence on the order of
the Big Bang?
Or looking scientifically, was a damaged/diseased brain to
blame? Did some unknown force permute molecular reside
in the brain to create a new memory? The odds have been
compared to that of a gale wind blowing through a junkyard
and fabricating a fully assembled 747.
Or did some long-deceased Japanese's brain particles
traveling via upper atmosphere winds make their way to
Russia and waft down targeting this particular child's brain.
The Russian Academy of Science actually examined the girl's
case and theorized that exact scenario.
The "hall of mirrors" may be a fun-house we refuse to leave.
Posted by: Dungeness | October 24, 2018 at 04:18 PM
Oh boy... I love Dr. Seuss and Alice in Wonderland so here we go—let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole just for fun!
http://www.innerworkingsresources.com/node/20
Here is and excerpt from the link above to the article ‘Challenging the Consensus Reality’:
“People in the New-Age community see Bleep as confirmation of the reality they know, or would like to know. For the materialists, the film is obviously mistaken and promotes a dangerous illusion threatening the very basis of reality. Both these conclusions support and arise out of pre-existing ideas.
Knowing our minds are very good at fitting the world into the patterns we expect is where a grounding in scientific thinking can be helpful. We can form an idea, observe and experience, then decide if our knowledge and experience fits the idea. Scientific thinking requires that we test our ideas against our actual experience, not our preferences. The problem is, we can’t agree on what constitutes valid experience. The realness of an experience shifts in different CROs (Consensus Reality Orientations). Materialistic science says only what can be objectively studied is real and falls short when determining the reality of intangibles like gravity, love, or consciousness. Yet, scientists have just as much faith in the existence of gravity, as the religious have in their GOD. The spiritual traditions say it’s only consciousness, the ‘I am’ inside every experience, that is the ultimate truth. Both views may be correct as observed within the limitations of the each CRO. Quantum Physics brings the scientist and the spiritualist closer together.”
—The White Rabbit 🐇
Posted by: Sarah | October 25, 2018 at 12:13 AM
Atheists and educated fools have agenda , sinister agenda of preventing people from accessing Unified field of consciousness , they are paid trolls feeding off each other to be- fool innocent public . In Sufism the term for these kind of people is " Aaalim o jahil " / educated fools . They are Kaafirs who have no fear of God in their heart. Their days are numbered
Posted by: vinny | October 25, 2018 at 02:08 AM
I have read Paul Singh's book several times. What I appreciate about it is how it is really talking about the amazing story of the nature of life. I enjoy reading books on the subject of nature and the natural life which includes science and philosophy and also books from the Zen, Taoist and Sufi approach. I see much in such readings that reflects the world I inhabit and it is always interesting to see how they explore and communicate the wonders of life.
I admit that (by temperament and through everyday experience) I do not feel the need to add any thing of a supernatural nature to explain the 'everyday sublime' (which is how S. Batchelor ably describes it). In this sense it is a linguistic and conceptual pity that we separate the 'spiritual' from the 'physical'. I see no difference in this natural world, in this world we inhabit.
The only thing that sometimes comes between me and the natural state of my body experiencing life is thought. Instead of thought functioning as a natural response to a challenge it attempts to interpret all experiences in terms of its cultural conditioning thus missing what is actually happening through being distracted by, what is often irrelevant thinking.
Sorry if this sounds a bit Zen like, but when on occasion, as I am presented with life as it is, and with thought still rumbling away somewhere in the background, everything becomes clear, peaceful and simple. The 'hubbub' drops away, it is quite natural, a sort of natural, unsought meditation. There is a tendency to want to chase after it, to repeat it, to name it and make it something special – but for me, it is just how things are.
Posted by: Turan | October 25, 2018 at 02:27 AM
Hey, Vinny, regarding your comment below I'd much rather be an "educated fool" that an ignorant fool like you. You believe that people can survive on light and water. That idea could only come from someone totally ignorant about science. Also, about common sense. So when are you going to start your sunlight and water diet, Vinny? Let us know. And broadcast it live on You Tube so we can watch how you fare.
Remember, your days also are numbered. Do you think you're never going to die? News alert: you are. We all are. You're just going to die sooner if you try to survive on sunlight and water.
---------------
Atheists and educated fools have agenda , sinister agenda of preventing people from accessing Unified field of consciousness , they are paid trolls feeding off each other to be- fool innocent public . In Sufism the term for these kind of people is " Aaalim o jahil " / educated fools . They are Kaafirs who have no fear of God in their heart. Their days are numbered
Posted by: Brian Hines | October 25, 2018 at 10:31 AM