QUESTIONS FROM READERS



Hi Peter, 

I've read with great interest your works The Qualia Revolution, Event Horizon, The Science Selusion,  The New Spanda Karikas, and other material available on your website the thenewyoga.org. I wanted to ask you about the process of reincarnation. How do you think reincarnation actually takes place? Specifically, how does the discarnate entity merge with an embryo? I'm also interested in whether you have read any Theravada Buddhist material, such as Abhidharma. And if you are aware of any of the metaphysics of Theravada Buddhism. For example, the concept of the "mind-made body".

Nicholas

Dear Nicholas,

Thank you for your interest in my works. A whole book would be needed to answer your question fully, but I will do my best here to summarise certain key aspects of my own viewpoint. You will find more on this in my book entitled ‘Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World’ – the relevant pages of which I attach, and which also draw their insights from the Seth books of Jane Roberts, very much worth reading in themselves. 

1. What you call “the discarnate entity” is in essence a larger consciousness or ‘oversoul’ i.e. one whose field of awareness simultaneously embraces all ‘our’ incarnations in its field of awareness (in much the same way that your current awareness embraces all the different selves you were at earlier ages in your life).
2. I put the word ‘our’ in inverted commas because in essence all incarnations are not so much re-incarnations of one another as parallel and simultaneous incarnations of this larger ‘supraself’,  ‘oversoul’ or ‘source self’, the Mahatman.
3. Seth’s compares incarnations which occur in different historical times and eras to members of the same same family sent out to live in different geographical continents or locations in space.
4. All our incarnations then, constitute something like a family of selves, each existing in its own present and giving expression to different aspects and potentials of a larger “source self”, “oversoul” or Mahatman.
The key point here is that each member of this family of incarnated selves exist simultaneously - concurrently and co-presently with all the others. It is only from within the perspective of any given incarnation that other incarnations or members of the same soul family appear as ‘past’ or ‘future’. Thus the earlier selves you are aware of continue to exist in their own present. Whilst from the perspective of your present self they may appear to be mere memories, for them it is you who is a sort of ‘future memory’ – a mere felt sense, anticipation or image of who they might become. 

These points challenge both conventional and traditional beliefs regarding the whole nature of ‘reincarnation’, which is represented only as a process occurring in linear time i.e. from the perspective of any given incarnation. Yet the life after death and between lives transcends linear time, and from its perspective all incarnations are essentially wholly new incarnations of the same 'source self' or 'oversoul' - and not ‘re-incarnations’ of one another. 

That is why, after death, we can also come to meet and merge with all ‘our’ other incarnations i.e. other members of our family of selves (Sanskrit kula) each of which, like members of our biological family, is in someway a part of us, as we are a part of them.  And just as we share biological genes with other members of our biological family, so do we also share psychic genes with members of our family of selves. 
Our pool of psychic genes however, can also be combined and recombined in countless ways – in this way preparing the bio-genetic basis for the creation of entirely new selves through the process of incarnation. That we can come to feel connections with other incarnations therefore is not surprising – for in the same way we share biological genes with others we share psychic genes or qualities and potentials of awareness with them. And yet again, this does not mean that we are simply re-incarnations of them in the conventional understood sense. Instead, each of us is a genuinely new and unique genetic combination and incarnation from the pool of psychic genes and potentialities of awareness dormant in our source self. Which and how many of these psychic genes are shared with other incarnations of that source self is what determines our degree of potential or actually felt connection with those other incarnations it.

With this wholly new conceptual overview of the very nature of ‘reincarnation’ in mind, we can begin to address your question regarding the process of incarnation and its relation to the embryo. Firstly some further metaphors – which are more than just metaphors. For the womb itself is a living biological symbol and image of the oversoul or source self. The latter does not so much ‘merge’ with the embryo as seed, shape and merge with the units of molecular and cellular awareness from which the embryo itself is essentially formed and of which it is the living biological expression.  Every such unit of awareness, as described also in some detail in Event Horizon, is of course essentially trans-physical. Moreover all such units are bounded by a soul body or ‘psychic membrane’ that Seth calls the ‘tissue capsule’ – like the rubber of a balloon, or - to come closer to the point  - like the fleshly tissue capsule which is called the amnion - containing the waters of the womb. Given your reading of Event Horizon you might also re-call or re-read the sections in which I describe this membrane, tissue capsule as an ‘event horizon’ bounding two realms – that of space-time on the one hand and time-space on the other – the latter being a “spacious present” embracing past, present and future – and represented also by the outer circumference of the circle within the Yantra or ‘Keyhole Diagram’ of The New Yoga. 

I realise the picture of the reincarnation process I have presented here is a very new one which may raise a whole host of new question. For example, if is not the case that ‘we’ reincarnate at all, but rather that each of us is a new incarnation of our oversoul, then in what way is the process of reincarnation – or rather of the creation of a fresh and unique incarnation – actually experienced by an any incarnate that has died?  
In answer to this question we need first of all to remember that after death we change – expanding our very identity through an expanded awareness that embraces many more identities and aspects of ourselves than before - some incarnate in other lives and others belonging to our source self, yet to find incarnate expression). We need also remember that the processes of incarnation and reincarnation go on within any given life – and give us an important clue to how they are experienced after death and in the process of birth.
Each of us is not exactly the same person in different setting or situation, or with different people.  So just to give a trite example – when a husband (or wife, or son or daughter) leaves his or her family to go to school, college or work in the morning or engage in some job or professional work he or she engages in a process of leaving one identity behind (that of family father or mother, husband or wife, son or daughter) and re-identifying with – ‘reincarnating’ – another (for example that of a student, working employee, businessman, academic or professional of some sort). Conversely, on returning home, he or she once again lets go of this identity and re-identifies with – ‘reincarnates’ - those aspects of themselves connected with their domestic role and setting. 

Yet on one level the individual retains an awareness of all the aspects of themselves they re-incarnate in the course of a single day. But what if someone changes their life in some way – leaving a given life setting,  job or relationship and then - sooner or later - moving into and coming to inhabit an entirely new setting, job or relationship – one involving an entirely new set of roles and identities. This is like the process of dying and then, sooner or later, creating or incarnating a wholly new identity. That new identity and its setting is not a ‘re-incarnation’ of the old one. Instead the old identity is literally left behind – as it is also in the ‘life between lives’ – where, before birth, a process begins - not a process of reincarnation but of creating a new incarnation. As this new identity and incarnation is forged however, the old identity not only remains in the life between lives and continues its existence there - but also changes. Indeed it is this very change in the old identity that leads to the new one – just as in any given life, we have already begun to change inwardly before we have fully enacted big changes in our outer lives. 

We do so (change inwardly) through a growing awareness of values and potentialities that cannot be fulfilled in a given setting, or set of role or relationships – and with this a growing desire to find settings, roles and relationships that will allow for their fulfilment.  That awareness and desire is what links us both to our oversoul or source self – which is a larger field or womb of awareness embracing countless, as yet unfulfilled values and potentialities – each yearning for fulfilment.  

Awareness as such both embraces and transcends all actual and potential identities, selves and incarnations. It is also the womb and source of them all – and that which realises new potentialities of existence and experiencing by identification with them – identification being the very activity of ‘incarnation’ and therefore also occurring in all planes of awareness - not just the physical.  

For The New Yoga also challenges the idea that leaving the reincarnational cycle for good marks some final and ultimate end-state of ‘enlightenment’, rather than constituting a whole new beginning –  one which permits us, having learned some basic lessons, to leave the nursery school of human existence and take our first steps on an eternal journey of the soul – one that allows us to explore those countless non-physical planes and dimensions of experiencing that constitute the multidimensional universe or multiverse of awareness. 

Our vehicle on this journey is the soul’s own eternal body – our miraculous ‘body of awareness’, one capable of taking on infinite forms. This is no ‘mind-made’ body, for both ‘mind’ and ‘body’ as they are conventionally understood and experienced are but manifestations of the soul and its body - which is nothing the ‘mind’ needs to ‘make’!
 
I hope all this goes some way to answering your questions.

Peter Wilberg

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply. I am reminded by your description of the reincarnation process, of the teaching attributed to the Buddha in the Pali canon that consciousness is a requisite condition for the body and mind to take shape in the mother's womb. Reading your ideas about the oversoul seeding, shaping and merging with the units of cellular and molecular awareness helps me to see what the nature of this relationship could be. I am interested though in the implications of different incarnations being simultaneous to one and other. Does this mean you subscribe to the B theory of time? Causality and Karma in Buddhism (the perspective I'm coming from which is why I'm bringing it up so much) is described as something that is more complex then simple linearity, and more like a web. Perhaps this concept of a transphysical self or oversoul of many selves is getting at the sense of this doctrine, although with Karma in place of an Atman.
There are some things about the Seth material which I find hard to accept, like the discussions about ancient civilisations and technology, "pre-atlantean" civilisations and so on. What are your thoughts on this aspect of the  Seth material? Do you use the Seth material as a reference for your metaphysics because you agree with it intellectually, or do you find that it agrees with your experiences with consciousness? Did you come to the same metaphysical conclusions as the Seth material before or after reading it?
One example of the Seth material in the Qualia revolution is the concept of "EE units", or Qualia inergy (Qi) units as you describe them. Seth is quoted as describing them leaving objects, and then returning to them "in a motion so swift it would appear simultaneous". This implies that it is not in fact instantaneous, that there is velocity and time involved. Does this not mean that they are physical?
Nicholas

Dear Nicholas

You present a number of questions, each with many dimensions to consider, so let me take them one by one, if not in the exact order presented:

1.       Causality

One thing that makes any questions around ‘causality’ difficult to answer from a  philosophical or phenomenological perspective is that  causa is a Latin term derived from the Greek arche – itself a word closer in essence to the German word Grund (meaning ‘ground’ and/or ‘reason’) than the modern concept of ‘cause’. I would refer you to Heidegger’s profound lecture series on ‘The Principle or Reason’ for a further exploration of the inner relation between the concepts of ‘ground’, ‘reason’ and ‘principal’ – not least since from both a philosophical and linguistic-etymological perspective these three words are closely inter-related. Consequently, to speak of a ‘principle of causality’ is in some ways a tautology – meaning ‘a ground principle or reason of their being a ground principle or reason’!!! It would also be very helpful for me to know how exactly you yourself understand the term ‘causality’ in a Buddhist context (as well as your understanding of the terms karma and atman).  If, by a Buddhist concept of ‘causality’, you mean something like what is called the principle of ‘dependent origination’, then I would also refer you to my essay on this  http://www.thenewyoga.org/mahamudra.pdf and on Mahamudra.  I make these points not to nit-pick but the very opposite – to call attention to the fundamental importance – rarely given sufficient attention - of not casually assuming an identity between Latin-derived concepts and the Greek words from which they derive – not to mention assuming an identity between any Western concepts expressed in European languages and those stemming from and couched in Eastern languages.
With these initial but important qualifications to anything I might write here in mind, let me re-iterate my basic phenomenological critique of the concept of causality per se. As you will already know from my writings the perspective I come from and that I call The Awareness Principle can also be called ‘field dynamic phenomenology’, its basis being a field theory of awareness according to which all phenomena arise or emerge from potentials (dynamis) latent within fields of awareness. From the perspective of this principle however, no phenomenon can be said to be ‘caused’ by any other phenomenon emerging from or present within the same field of awareness. Instead all phenomena (past, present and future) have their ground in a common source field of emergence. The analogy I use in this context is dreaming – for no one would dream of saying that a given phenomenon experienced in the field of our dreaming awareness is ‘caused’ by another phenomenon present or emergent in that field i.e. that one thing we dream of is caused by some other thing we dream of rather than all things we dream of having a common ground (arche) in the field of our dreaming awareness. That is not to say that different things we dream of are not profoundly inter-related, only that this inter-relation does not have the character of a ‘causal’ relation in the usual sense. Indeed I argue that not just phenomena but patterns or ‘webs’ of interrelatedness between also have their fundamental ground in a source field of emergence. 

2.       Time

Do I subscribe to a B-Theory of time? Though this question brings us into highly complex but also very interesting areas of time-theoretics, I think my essential answer would have be no. To begin with I deny the claim that it is contradictory to assert that any time, t, is past, present, and future. Instead of a threefold division of time into past, present and future I would posit a ninefold matrix of multiple, parallel or simultaneous realities including different past, present and future presents / past, present and future pasts / past, present and future futures. Yet whether in  A-, B- or C-theories, I see only a theoretical focus on the relation between sets of  phenomena or events  – one  ignoring the possibility of all experienced phenomena and events having their source and ultimate ‘ground’ in a common source field of awareness. And if there is any parallel that can be suggested between my thinking and ancient thinking on this score it would be to the pre-Buddhist notion that ‘everything exists’. In other words there are no potentials for the emergence or manifestation of phenomena that are not constantly being fulfilled, whether or not we think of them as occurring in past, present or future. If there is any relation here to the time-theoretic concept that all events – past, present and future - are constantly occurring then so be it, although, following Seth, I would add that they are constantly occurring in all possible or ‘probable’ variations. ‘Time’ from this point of view, is, as Seth suggests, merely a dimension of ‘probability’ – an experienced linear sequence of probable or alternate events occurring within a far larger field of events all occurring simultaneously. In this context, see again the section (p 104-5) in Event Horizon on the ‘The Event Horizon of our Lives’ – the diagram in which is modelled on one used by Jane Roberts in her book ‘Adventures in Consciousness’.
Also of course the notion of all phenomena and events emerging from a common field does not exhaust the question of the nature of time, since the term ‘emergence’ itself could be said to have a temporal connotation, not least if we are talking of a successive emergence of different phenomena, as is experienced in the field of our dreaming awareness too, with one part of a dream experienced as following another. Nevertheless, as other thinkers have argued, the fact that we experience phenomena or events as emerging successively - and therefore as potentially capable of bracketing as ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ - does not mean either that they are causally related or that they actually occur successively ‘in time’, only that we experience them successively in what we take as the ‘present’. But perhaps the whole question of whether or in what way ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ events are related can be cast in a new light by understanding both space and time as such purely and solely in terms of ‘presence’ and ‘presencing’, i.e. 

·         Understanding ‘space’ as simultaneous presence or co-presence within a field of awareness.
·         Understanding ‘time’ as presencing or ‘coming into presence’ within a field of awareness.
·         Understanding ‘space-time’ as an experience of successive emergence or presencing.
·         Understanding ‘time-space’ as something quite distinct from ‘space-time’, i.e. the simultaneous co-presencing of all phenomena and events (‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’) within a field of awareness. 
  
3.       Atman 

First let us return to your words :  “Causality and Karma in Buddhism (the perspective I'm coming from which is why I'm bringing it up so much) is described as something that is more complex then simple linearity, and more like a web. Perhaps this concept of a transphysical self or oversoul of many selves is getting at the sense of this doctrine, although with Karma in place of an Atman.” 
Again, it would be good have some further explication from you as to what you mean by ‘Karma’ when you write ‘with Karma in place of an Atman’. On the other hand, the phrase ‘in place of an Atman’ I think points to an possible misunderstanding of what I mean by a “transphysical self or oversoul”. For it may be that there are sections of my writings in which I do not – as I have done elsewhere - fully explicate the fundamental relation I see between any dimension of ‘soul’ on the one hand and any dimension of ‘self’ (Atman) on the other. Yet this is an extremely basic and important relation in the context of The Awareness Principle – and one I  believe I explicate to some degree in Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World.  The analogy I use is the relation between a sheet of white paper and a circle or circles drawn on it. For me ‘soul’ is equivalent to the  white spaces –representing fields of awareness - both within and surrounding a given circle. A ‘self’ on the other hand, is comparable to any circle, set of circles (or circles within circles) drawn on the white background, with each ‘self’ or ‘circle’ not being a ‘thing in itself’ – an externally bounded entity – but rather a field boundary of awareness, one distinct  but at the same time inseparable  from both the field of awareness it bounds and the unbounded field of awareness surrounding it. Imagining any number of circles or circles within circles drawn on an (unbounded) white surface therefore, these are not actually separate or separable entities, identities or ‘selves’ at all – since they are all united with one another by virtue of each being inseparable from the common ‘soul space’ or field of awareness around them. Any entity, being, phenomenon or ‘self’ therefore, has essentially the character of being part of an unbounded field of awareness or ‘soul’. The world ‘soul’ (related to the German word for See or ‘Sea’ is therefore something I see as an oceanic or field dimension of awareness, in contrast to but inseparable from any being or self, i.e. any seemingly bounded or region of that awareness or soul field. I say ‘seemingly’ because, again, any apparently bounding figure such as a circle is itself at the same time  inseparable from the unbounded space or field surrounding around it – comparable to the white area on which a circle, or any bounded figure, might be drawn.  For this is just as much defined by the space around it as by the space it surrounds.

The supra-self, source self or Mahatman I referred to in my previous letter therefore, should not be identified with any notion of Atman as only some bounded or separate ‘self’. Rather it can and should be visualised as both a larger circle or ‘self’ embracing in its inner awareness field or ‘soul space’ (the white area it bounds) many smaller circles or sub-selves, and yet also seen as inseparable from a yet larger space or soul field of awareness surrounding it. So whilst there are indeed selves within selves within selves, like sets of circles within ever larger circles – there is no ultimate or infinite circle or ‘self’ that bounds them all. There cannot be, for any such circle would itself be inseparable from an unbounded space or field of awareness or soul around and surrounding it. This understanding and crucial distinction – between a space or field of awareness (‘soul’) and any bounded regions of it (‘self’) is all the more important because Eastern languages have no equivalent to the word ‘soul’ –and understood in this sense. Hence the relation between ‘self’ on the one hand and ‘soul’ on the other (awareness in its unbounded and field character) may instead be replaced by a stand in alternative – for example, by a relation between self and ‘no-self’, or between ‘form and emptiness’.  If I myself use the term ‘oversoul’ then, this is not the same as an ‘overself’. Instead ‘oversoul’ and ‘overself’ represent two distinct but inseparable aspects of the same consciousness – ‘oversoul’ being the larger field of awareness bounded and embraced by any ‘overself’ – albeit a field that may itself constitute one circle or sub-self within the larger soul or field of awareness of a yet larger overself. 

Yet as I have said, there is no ultimate ‘self’ – one bounding or surrounding an infinite field or awareness or ‘soul’. For such a self would itself, and in principle, be inseparable from the field of awareness surrounding it.

Summary:

Awareness or soul, in its universal and field character, being ultimately unbounded, cannot, in principle, have the character of any bounded soul or ‘self’, any such boundary being inseparable from the unbounded field of awareness around. And yet at the same time and for this very reason - as the Shiva Sutras indicate - awareness in this absolute, unbounded sense is therefore also the only possible true essence or nature of the ‘self’ or Atman - and that on all levels.

4.       EE/Qi Units

Re-reading my material on Seth’s concept of ‘Electro-Magnetic Units or  ‘EE’ units in The Qualia Revolution, it does indeed appear that I largely identify them with my own concept of Qualitative inergy or Qi units. This is partly because many aspects of my description of Qi units were inspired and drawn from Seth’s account of EE units – not least their possessing what he calls a central ‘emotional tone’. On the other hand, I still remain uncomfortable with the entire physical-scientific language of ‘electro-magnetism’ or indeed of ‘energy’ as such.  That is why, in my own account of Qi units, of what I call The Qualia Continuum (Qc), and indeed of Qualia Science as such,  I tend towards a metaphysical language of music (as in The New Spanda Karikas) rather than electro-magnetism - describing the Qc  for example, as a continuum of uniquely toned field-intensities of awareness and the source of infinite musical patterns of such intensities – along with their sensuous qualities or Qualia, which are understood precisely as tonal qualities comparable to those of musical or vocal tones. The whole chapter of The Qualia Revolution (entitled The Qualitative Physics of Awareness) dealing with EE/Qi units - whilst I   still read it in retrospect as the most sophisticated attempt I have made so far to bridge physical scientific concepts such as quantised energy with metaphysical ones based on my concept of qualia science - is thus still far from being as comprehensively explicated as it could be. This deficiency is implicitly pointed to in your letter and by your question:

“One example of the Seth material in the Qualia revolution is the concept of "EE units", or qualia inergy units as you describe it. Seth is quoted as describing them leaving objects, and then returning to them "in a motion so swift it would appear simultaneous". This implies that it is not in fact instantaneous, that there is velocity and time involved. Does this not mean that they are physical?”

For whilst both my account of Qi units and Seth’s account of EE units overlap, and whilst both present them as belonging to some intermediate or transitional realm between the  metaphysical and the physical - this still begs the yet deeper question of what constitutes ‘physicality’ as such and how the very meaning of the term ‘physical’ is or can be understood.  And when writing QR I had not yet deeply studied Martin Heidegger’s profound meditations on the nature of metaphysics and with it the different senses and uses of  the Greek word ‘physis’ (see pages 1-56 of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). A less demanding but no less radical work of a sort relating directly to concepts of length, distance, time, velocity, mass, momentum, acceleration etc. can be found in a book by Roger Jones entitled Physics as Metaphor. Here he argues – in a very similar way to Heidegger – that what today are accepted as objective physical-scientific accounts of the universe, are, if more closely examined, only consistent and capable of providing accurate means of predictive calculation by virtue of being inseparable from the very way in which the key quantitative measures (such as time or velocity) that form the basis of these calculations are defined in the first place.  So whilst there may be no doubt regarding the internal consistency of a theory defining specific, calculable relations between these measures, that is only because the measures themselves form an integral part of the theory. The fact that  “… the quantities and theories were invented together in such a way that they fit together…” does not, according to Jones, imply that the measures are ‘objective’, only that they are consistent with other measures.

Thus he writes that “The commonly accepted definition for velocity is used because it can be linked up in a deterministic way with corresponding definitions of acceleration and position in space” but goes on to suggests that even basic measures such as ‘velocity’, could have been defined in quite different terms.
“In other words, the position, velocity and acceleration of a moving body, which we take so much for granted today, were neither ordained for us nor discovered in nature. They were invented or adopted … so as to fit a concomitant scheme of causal laws.” He concludes that: “The things about science that make it useful to us and that make us appreciate it – predictability, objectivity, self-consistency, generality – do not exist in some external, independent reality. They are part of our experience and interpretation of the world, of our consciousness and values, of our game of meaning. I see Newton’s monumental achievement as a mental creation, a humanly conceived world system, incorporating self-consistency and causal order, which pleases the human mind and helps to allay our fears of a chaotic universe. His is as much a work of art as it is of science. To protest that Newton’s conception is supported by countless observations of the universe is no argument, for my point is that the conception or theory and observed quantities are created in parallel so as to corroborate each other (not necessarily without a struggle…).”  

Jones goes on his book – which I feel maybe of great interest to you - to question much later scientific conceptions than Newton’s in the same way. For his most basic assertion is one I thoroughly concur with and is very much in accord with Heidegger’s thinking on science too:

“It is an amazing fact about physics that none of its concepts are ever really defined. What we are given instead of a definition is a prescription for measurement.” “Telling me how to measure space may help me to navigate in it, but is does not tell me what space is.” (p16)

How does all this help answer your question? Only perhaps as a reminder of the importance of fundamentally distinguishing any self-consistent set of mutually defining scientific terms, definitions, measures and calculable relations – which is how what we now call ‘physics’ has for centuries constituted itself - with physis in the more original sense of the word: how the world reveals and unfolds itself to us subjectively or ‘phenomenologically’, i.e. in the absence of any objectifying theoretical concepts, constructs, calculations and their mutually defining quantities or measures. It is the task of philosophical thinking in particular to emphasise such distinctions and in this way also the fundamental difference between basic philosophical questioning on the one hand, and questioning limited to exploring possible inconsistencies in particular theoretical systems – not least those of physics and other theoretical ‘object domains’. For more on this see my essay on The Basic Differences between Scientific and Philosophical Questioning   

Here are just some quotations from Heidegger contained in it:

 “… in environmental experiencing there is no theoretical positing at all.”
For environmental experience itself neither makes presuppositions, nor does it let itself be labelled as a presupposition.
“This applies .. also and not least to theoretical posits such as those imposed by terms such as ‘psychical’ and ‘physical’ - and with them the entire, purely theoretical debate surrounding the nature of their relation.”
“I experience. I experience something in a lived way. When we simply give ourselves over to this experience we know nothing of a [‘psychic’ or ‘physical’] process passing before us. Neither anything psychic nor anything physical is given.” 
 “When I attempt to explain the environing world theoretically, it collapses upon itself. It does not signify an intensification of experience, or any superior knowledge of the environment…”
5.       Seth
“Do you use the Seth material as a reference for your metaphysics because you agree with it intellectually, or do you find that it agrees with your experiences with consciousness?”

In a way, both and neither. Firstly you should know that I was introduced to the Seth material by Michael Kosok, a professor of physics and mathematics with a Marxist leaning and whose articles, some published and others not, I have created a dedicated site for (see www.thenewdialectics.org ). I first came across his work in 1974 while studying philosophy and politics at Oxford.  My particular interest was in Marxist, Hegelian but also Taoist and Buddhist ‘dialectical logic’ (though at the same time I was also quite adept at so-called out of body and regularly took flights over Oxford quads!) When I happened on an article by Mike on ‘The Formalisation of Hegel’s Dialectical Logic’ I was so overwhelmed by its brilliance and genius that I arranged to visit him in the Winter of ’75. Though we spoke for 6 hours non-stop at our first meeting in the Port Authority bus station in New York city, when we got to his New Jersey apartment, almost the first thing he did was to point to a book called ‘Seth Speaks’ – telling me I just had to read it, and that in his view it was like reading an extraordinary other-worldly fusion of Nietzsche, Marx and Hegel  - accessibly and ‘humanly’ presented for the lay reader without any reference to the history of philosophy, but concealing an extraordinary depth of radical and even self-reflexive philosophical insights – albeit stemming from Seth’s own experience  both of many human lives and the trans-physical realm of consciousness he now inhabits. 

When I did start reading Seth Speaks, I couldn’t stop (though I never bothered with Robert Butts's annotations to each ‘Seth session’ and encourage others not to do do).  In terms of your question however, it was as if both all my philosophical and esoteric studies and thinking and all my own previous experiences (for example of lucid dream and out of body states) were not only echoed in it but contextualised within a vast and comprehensive account of the nature of reality, one which immediately struck me as true – not just intellectually but as intuitively. It was if not only all that I consciously knew of thought that I somehow suspected or knew on a wordless intuitive level was being tangibly recalled – as well as clearly and comprehensively laid out in a way that transcended anything I had read or learned before, even whilst implicitly incorporating it at a higher level. In other words, though I don’t think I would have necessarily felt the same way about this books of Seth’s without having ascended the ladder of my previous intellectual and experiential development, it took me beyond what I already consciously knew and recalled me to the inner knowing I had been seeking to recapture all along – enabling me to step off the ladder into entirely new dimensions of both thought and experience. For not only did the Seth books, of which there exist now several dozen and all which I have read (not to mention those by Jane Roberts herself) echo my inner knowing, but they also also seeded whole new dimensions of both thought and experiencing. These I I have effectively spent the rest of my life both exploring and articulating – not just in the language in which Seth presents them but also translating them into the terms of many different languages - whether of philosophy, phenomenology, Marxism, psychoanalysis or Kashmir Shaivism. Each new ‘translation’ of what I learned – experientially and intellectually – from the Seth material in turn seeded further experiential adventures and intellectual insights of my own. I now hope that by finding time to write an autobiographical  memoir of my metaphysical experiences and the insights that both seeded and were seeded by them – something is now on my agenda – what I have written here will become a lot clearer, and in its own way also answer your second question:  

“Did you come to the same metaphysical conclusions as the Seth material before or after reading it?”

For again, the answer is yes and no – and for the same reasons. Yes, because what I read in Seth was in resonance with some metaphysical conclusions (for example about the reality of life after death) I had already come to from very early experiences of lucid dreaming, out of body states – and also of my own “multipersonhood” and that of others ('multi-personhood' being another key Sethian concept). But the answer is also and definitely ‘no’, because reading Seth also decisively broadened and deepened my world picture, providing me with a vast wealth of entirely new metaphysical comprehensions and concepts such as the “spacious present” and the  simultaneous nature of all events and incarnations within it, the reality of a probabilistic field of parallel universes and selves - and including ‘counterpart’ selves living contemporaneously in this reality. It was such concepts that I then came to experience directly (N.B. Seth himself speaks in one book – The Seth Material - of what he calls ‘the conceptual sense’ – a capacity to directly and most vividly experience the realities behind particular metaphysical concepts, even the most seemingly abstract ones). 

But again, having received so much from the Seth material I then took it as my life mission to  translate and apply what I learned from it, metaphysically and experientially, into as many languages and to as many domains (for example those of science and religion, psychotherapy and medicine etc.) as possible. It was through doing so that I gradually  came to  clarify and refine my own original metaphysical  interpretation  of the philosophical essence of the Seth material (and of the work of Michael Kosok, Heidegger and others). It is this that I now call ‘The Awareness Principle’ – a principal that unites Michael Kosok’s own brilliant new ‘dialectic phenomenology’ (itself a unification of Marxism, field-phenomenology and the K-S notion of pure awareness) with metaphysical insights and experiences stemming not only from the Seth books but from my own inner equivalent of the ‘consciousness-being’ calling himself ‘Seth’ – which I came to experience and draw from. Yet even if there are differences in my metaphysics of awareness and the Seth books, I do not see these so much as ‘disagreements’  with Seth but more as a result of Seth seeking and needing - for his own purposes - to use languages familiar to his readers (for example the language of electro-magnetism).

“There are some things about the Seth material which I find hard to accept, like the discussions about ancient civilisations and technology, "pre-Atlantean" civilisations and so on. What are your thoughts on this aspect of the Seth material?”

On the most basic level, I find there is a lot of supporting evidence for early civilisations having had advanced technologies, for example stonemasonry of a precision and design impossible to achieve or even computate without  - or even  in some cases with – modern industrial equipment and algorithms, and/or requiring for example the elevation of 50 or even 150 ton stone blocks (all cut out to a perfect degree of smoothness and precision from rock faces) directly from quarries to the top of steep mountains. My understanding is that the technologies that Seth refers to however, were, whatever equipment they might have involved, also in part, if not in essence ‘psychic’ technologies of the sort he describes using such terms as “mental physics” and “dream-art science”, and that many of them specifically involved the use of what he terms “inner sound” (for example in shaping matter, levitating heavy stones and building the pyramids). It is and will be part of the long-term  of evolving a new subjective, field-phenomenological or ‘qualia’ science to:

  1. Subjectively or psychically research such ancient civilisations and their progenitors, albeit in a way that, unlike the claims of individual psychics, seers, clairvoyants or occult scientists can be inter-subjectively reproduced and verified using the methods outlined in The Qualia Revolution (a form of research I have already embarked on). 
  2. Seek ultimately to reinvent or recreate such ancient technologies - which I firmly believe were not of a sort based purely or mere measurements and ‘operational definitions’ of their basic terms, and therefore actually might help us to understand better the ‘secrets’ not just of ancient but of current technologies i.e. the true way they ‘operate’.
Finally, whilst on the one hand I can understand that some of Seth’s claims (and those of many others) may at first seem ‘exotic’ or hard to accept, on the other hand, since many types of evidence advanced for them can be assessed or weighed up in conventional scientific terms) I actually see these claims as potentially far easier to accept from a mainstream scientific point of view than a basic ‘Consciousness First’ view of reality of the sort offered by The Awareness Principle. For quite independently of any possible ‘evidence’, this principle philosophically undermines the most basic assumptions of modern science - which will never - in principle – be able to philosophically explain how consciousness could arise from an otherwise insentient reality or universe. Today what has been called ‘positive’ or ‘positivistic’ sciences claims to have vanquished the need for philosophical thinking, when in effect their theories are based precisely on philosophically unquestioned sup-positions, i.e. on simply positing the operational terms they employ and with them, the very measures or ‘operational definitions’ on which  ‘evidence’ and ‘proofs’ of their theories are based.  

What I therefore see as now needed is not just a new philosophy of science or a new scientific philosophy but a whole new generation of scientists  or scientific thinkers – thinkers who once again recognise philosophy itself as the highest and most primordial science - one which, in Heidegger’s terms, is essentially ‘pre-theoretical’ in both its source and essential nature.

Hi Peter 

In The Qualia Revolution and The Awareness Principle you discuss how the brain is an object of our awareness and that therefore you think it cannot be the source of awareness. But why can't the brain observe itself? Awareness observes itself, so can't that be the case for the brain? Under normal, natural circumstances the brain isn't an object of our awareness - we don't have any sensory apparatus to detect it directly, only through instrumentation can our senses detect in indirectly. And if the mind is what the brain is doing, and consciousness is the product of the brain, doesn't that mean we are always aware of our brain when we are thinking and conscious? We may not be aware of all of it, and we may not be able to see or touch it, but are we not aware of its functions and functioning, as our mind? It is the non-conscious aspects of our brain, like synapses and cells, which we are not aware of. 

And of course cases of brain injury have made us aware of how intimately our mind and consciousness is tied to our brain, and how closely our mental states and functions depend on the brain - particular areas of the brain that are damaged or destroyed completely, will damage or eliminate particular cognitive and mental functions. Open brain surgery on epileptics has allowed surgeons to experiment with the brain of the patient by pressing on certain nerves, and because the patient is awake during the procedure, they are able to report that their consciousness is effected tremendously. For example, pressing on a certain nerve might cause a patient to hear a song as vividly as if it were playing physically, or to relive a memory so vividly that their awareness of the operating theory disappears and it is as if they really are reliving that moment.
So I think that it is clear and undeniable that our minds and consciousness are caused and produced by our brains - but that doesn't mean consciousness is identical to our brains, since something does not have to be identical to what caused it. Or that awareness is reducible to material states, only caused and produced by them under certain circumstances. 


Dear Nick,

You write:
“In the qualia revolution and the awareness principle you discuss how the brain is an object of our awareness and that therefore you think it cannot be the source of awareness. But why can't the brain observe itself?”
First of all I think it important to be very careful with and to deeply question the whole language of the sciences and of the old subject-object dualism and not superimpose them on The Awareness Principle. So whilst I understand your question, at the same time I radically question its language. For within the framework of The Awareness Principle - or what I call Absolute Subjectivism - there is and can be no such thing as an ‘object’ of awareness. Nor is there any such thing as ‘matter’ in the way this word is understood today. As for what we perceive as ‘brain’, as I argue later, this too is not a material object but merely an subjectively experienced perception or ‘extero-ception’ of a complex structure of patterns of awareness.  
Perhaps it is important in this context to stress that my philosophy of science and of reality as such  is in some ways just  a re-articulation of the ‘immaterialist’ philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley, who already in the second of his Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous (written in the 18th century!!!) used the character of Philonous to quickly dispense with Hylas’s  suggestion that ‘mind’ is a product of the brain, arguing that this falls down (despite all apparent evidence to the contrary) because - like everything else - the brain too is just an ‘idea’ experienced subjectively - ‘in the mind’ – as Berkeley would put it. (Note: when Berkeley argues that all things are ‘ideas’ he his hearkening back to the root Greek sense of the word ‘idea’ – not just something intellectually conceived but anything sensually perceived). 

As I also explained in another letter, Berkeley avoids the danger of solipsism (thinking the world is all in ‘my’ mind) in a similar way to The Awareness Principle -  by recognising that mind (or in my terms, ‘awareness’) is not something belonging to individual ‘minds’ or ‘subjects’ – is not yours or mine – but is rather the essence of the divine. Berkeley therefore understands ‘God’ as a universal mind in the same way I understand God as a universal awareness - of which every apparent thing or ‘object’ is but an experienced expression. In this way Berkeley challenges John Locke’s philosophy (the basis of modern science) that all subjective experiencing is a ‘secondary’ expression of more primary, measurable, and purely quantitative dimensions of some sort of substance (Greek hyle) called ‘matter’. 

You will know very well from my writings that I understand awareness or subjectivity as having a field character. From this perspective all individualised consciousness is an individualisation of a universal field of awareness or subjectivity. Thus what we think of as ‘objects’ - including the human brain - are therefore are not actually ‘objects’ at all. Instead all so-called ‘objects’ - including the brain - are essentially but shapes, patterns and qualities of awareness as they are experienced by individualised consciousnesses within a larger field of subjectivity or awareness. 

At the same the same time, far from being ‘objective’ in the sense of being independent of a field of awareness or subjectivity, so-called ‘objects’, just like the individualised consciousnesses that experience them, are in essence nothing but expression or manifestation of fields of subjective awareness. In other words, what we think of and term ‘objects’ are, in all possible senses, not ‘objects’ at all – being essentially not objective but subjective in nature.

To sum up, ‘objects’ are essentially externally perceived shapes, patterns and qualities of awareness or subjectivity, both experienced within  – and giving expression to – individual, collective and universal fields of awareness or subjectivity.  

This is not just an ‘animistic’ view that all objects ‘possess’ consciousness in themselves – rather the position I take every so-called ‘object’ is a consciousness or subjectivity in its own right, being a unique field pattern of awareness - as perceived with the patterned field of awareness that we (falsely) think of as an objective, physical environment or world. 

So it is not quite true to say that I “think” that because the brain is “an object of awareness” it “cannot be the source of awareness”. 

My wording is very rigorous in avoiding any use of the term ‘object’ or phrases such as “object of awareness”. I do not simply believe or “think” but argue that awareness cannot, in principle. be reduced to the property or product of anything we are aware of – since the capacity to experience or be aware of already presupposes - a priori – the more primordial reality of awareness as such. This again is just a refinement and re-articulation of a principle already argued by Kant. 

You may however have been mislead by my use of the phrase ‘aware of’ – thinking that through this phrase I meant something like a subject aware of an object, where what is actually meant is anything experienced within a field of awareness, whether or not is is perceived and conceived AS some ‘thing’ or other – for example perceived AS what we call ‘the brain’ - or conceived AS an ‘object’.

“So I think that it is clear and undeniable that our minds and consciousness are caused and produced by our brains - but that doesn't mean consciousness is identical to our brains, since something does not have to be identical to what caused it. Or that awareness is reducible to material states, only caused and produced by them under certain circumstances.”

Of course this begs the unanswerable question that still besets today’s so-called ‘philosophy of mind’: namely of how insentient material ‘objects’ or ‘states’ can – in principle - give rise to something not only not “identical” with them but fundamentally distinct from them, namely sentience or awareness. For even according to conventional philosophical and scientific definitions, an ‘object’ only an object only by virtue of being an object for a subject of consciousness - and not a subject or consciousness in itself.

 No such unanswerable questions of the relation of matter and mind however, are raised by Berkeley’s or my understanding that there is no such ‘thing’ as ‘matter’ or ‘material objects’ in the first place but only expressions and experiences of ‘mind’ - in my terms, ‘awareness’in all its expressed and experienced patterns, shapes and qualities (‘qualia’).   

The argument you produce for the belief that “… it is clear and undeniable that our minds and consciousness are caused and produced by our brains…” was, as I say, already anticipated in the 18th century by Berkeley in the section of his Second Dialogue of Hylas and Philonous. Note by the way his deliberate choice of names: ‘Hylas’ (connoting the Greek concept of ‘matter’ as hyle) and ‘Philonous’ (hinting at a philosophy of ‘apprehension’ or ‘awareness’ - Greek nous). 

You do however refine Hylas’s argument by reference to the results of very modern forms of brain experimentation using open brain surgery - and I can understand why many people might find them persuasive.

Yet you may also recall the basic argument I offer in support of The Awareness Principle and also in refutation of the claim that “...it is clear and undeniable that our minds and consciousness are caused and produced by our brains”. 

Berkeley’s argument was that this is like claiming one ‘idea’ in the mind (that which we perceive as the brain) causes all others ideas or perceptions experienced in the mind. 

My argument is that it is like claiming that one thing we happen to experience in our dreams causes and produces dreaming as such, i.e. the entire field of our dreaming awareness and everything else we experience within it. 

As already mentioned however, the claims that the brain causes or produce consciousness also beg the question of what that which we perceive as ‘the brain’ essentially is – my answer being that it is nothing but an externally perceived manifestation of a highly sophisticated and dynamic ‘complex’ of field-patterns and networks of awareness. What appears as the complex neuronal structure of the brain therefore, far from causing or producing ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ is itself a manifestation of mind or consciousness – on that is itself necessarily perceived within a field of consciousness. 

What makes the arguments based on brain induced experiences or states of consciousness so seemingly persuasive is something they do not ever recognise. This is that  experiments like probing or pressing on certain nerves for example, occur within the consciousness and inter-subjective field of awareness of those participating in those experiments. 

To make my case against the ‘brain experimentation' argument more tangible – and at the same time even more radical - I would ask you to accompany me on a ‘thought experiment’ instead.
Imagine someone dreamt of a clinical operating theatre used for brain surgery or research, dreamt of all its hi-tech equipment, dreamt of the surgeons, nurses, technical assistants and patients - and dreamt too of an experiment of the sort you described being conducted (pressing on a particular nerve and then hearing the patient’s vivid experience of what happened). 

Upon recalling such a dream the dreamer would be in no doubt that all that went on and was experienced in the dream as an experiment in affecting consciousness through the brain itself arose and occurred within consciousness i.e. within a field of dreaming awareness.

What I am arguing is that the same is true of experiments of this sort conducted in the waking state, i.e. namely that all that occurs and is experienced in ‘actual’ experiments also does so within a field of awareness – albeit a somewhat different field, namely the more inter-subjectively stabilised  field of awareness and experiencing that we experience as ‘waking consciousness’ and the waking world.

Don’t get me wrong – of course on one level it is perfectly correct to say, as you write, that: 

“Open brain surgery on epileptics has allowed surgeons to experiment with the brain of the patient by pressing on certain nerves, and because the patient is awake during the procedure, they are able to report that their consciousness is effected tremendously.”

And that:

“For example, pressing on a certain nerve might cause a patient to hear a song as vividly as if it were playing physically, or to relive a memory so vividly that their awareness of the operating theory disappears and it’s as if they really are reliving that moment.”

And yet there is something still questionable in the use of the word ‘cause’. To understand what this is I ask you to accompany me on yet another ‘thought experiment’. 

This time I ask you to imagine that in place of the scientific hi-tech operating theatre we have a sacred temple sanctum from the ancient past. Imagine too, that in place of the surgeons, scientific technology and equipment surrounding the patient we have temple priests or ‘initiates’, making strange undecipherable sounds and/or making use of symbolic artefacts of various sorts – spiritual ‘equipment’. Imagine also that in place of a patient we have someone about to be initiated into a vivid experience of certain memories (even of earlier lives) or of other realities entirely.  

Now imagine that the initiate-priests are no less successful than today’s brain scientists – able to induce not only similar but even more dramatic and powerful alterations of consciousness and yet by quite different means – through intents of consciousness that are at the same time symbolised and intensified by spiritual artefacts and ritualised initiatory acts – for example by the use of mantra of particular sorts, and not least through skill in manipulating their own consciousness and using it to directly affect the consciousness of others.  

An important question then arises. For if the same or even more dramatic ‘effects’ can (and in my view have been!)  ‘caused’ by such ritual, ‘spiritual’ acts and artefacts. i.e. through means that don’t involve or require pressing certain brain nerves, then in what sense can we limit ‘causality’ to the no less ritualised acts conducted in the modern day 'temples' or 'sanctums' of brain science – sanctums like operating theatres in which open-brain experiments are performed? 

Indeed in what sense can we speak of ‘causality’ at all  - rather than  of   concatenations of symbols,  ritual acts and artefacts  and their relation, as tools of consciousness, to dramatic alterations of consciousness. Such concatenations, whether in the form of ‘scientific’ or ‘spiritual’  operations, could just as well be experienced in a dream – or in an ancient temple - as in a clinical operating theatre. 

Do you see where I am leading with this ‘thought experiment’ – which is the radical suggestion that what goes on in brain experiments - and everything involved in them - has a no less ritualised and symbolic character than what went on in ancient temples. The big difference lies only in the nature of the rituals and their symbolism – and above all the different mental framework of language, thought, knowledge and beliefs that they express. 

One could compare this difference to different stagings and performances of the same opera or play – one being set in the ancient past, others in more recent times or more modern or contemporary settings.
The principal point however – following from The Awareness Principle – is that everything that occurs on the stage - or in the operating theatre or the ancient temple –  occurs within a larger field of consciousness and does not only ‘affect’ the consciousness of someone present within that field. The field itself is manifest as the  space of the theatrical or operatic stage, the space of the scientific operating theatre or the ‘sacred space’ of the ancient temple). 

I argue however, that in none of these spaces, stages or scenarios, whether ‘theatrical’, ‘scientific’ or ‘spiritual’, is any material act being performed or any so-called material ‘object’ involved. Instead. in all the spaces and scenarios I refer to, what is happening is simply that phenomena are coming to expression from, and being experienced within a field of awareness – in through its individualised portions, expressions and  embodiments, which constitute everything and everyone ‘on stage’.  

“Awareness observes itself, so can't that be the case for the brain?” Awareness, according to my philosophy, cannot directly ‘observe’ itself. However it can and does experience itself. It does so in, through and as all being and all ‘things’ – these being its individualised portions, expressions and phenomenal manifestations. Only certain of its individualised portions (human beings for example) have a focussed or ‘focal’ awareness capable of what we call ‘observing’. 

A stone or or brain essentially is an awareness too, but one with a different character - one not capable of “observing” or perceiving anything in the way human beings do - from the outside or ‘exteroceptively’ – which is the only way in which human being come to perceive and conceive or stone or brain as ‘a stone’ or as ‘a brain’ in the first place!) 

“For example, pressing on a certain nerve might cause a patient to hear a song as vividly as if it were playing physically, or to relive a memory so vividly that their awareness of the operating theory disappears and it’s as if they really are reliving that moment.” 

It is interesting that you should use the vivid hearing of a song as an example here. It made me think of music in general and of the rich depths of experience and awareness from and out of which the sounds and score of great symphony may emerge into the consciousness of a composer. The symphony may then be performed by an orchestra, recorded on CD and (like a play or opera or film) be broadcast on radio or TV or shown on a computer or cinema screen. 

And yet exactly as in the brain experiment, just a little bit of ‘pressure’ – but in this case pressure not on a nerve but on a TV remote or radio tuning button, or just a computer keyboard - may suddenly and miraculously result in the sounds of a song or symphony being vividly heard, or else vivid view of another place, country or even outer space being seen on a screen. Yet from this ‘miracle’ we can in no way conclude that radios, TV or computers create or compose music – or that are in any way the cause of the awareness within and out of which any song or symphony, opera, play or drama – indeed any phenomenon whatsoever - first emerges. 

No radio broadcast, TV channel or YouTube video of course can in any way create the consciousness out of which, for example, a Beethoven symphony first emerges. It can only offer, through audio-visual technology, a subjectively experienced performance of that symphony. Yet this technology too, whether in the form of a radio, TV or computer screen is, in also in my view nothing material in essence - but, like the brain, a material or object-like symbol of different patterns and networks of awareness. 

The understanding that what we perceive and conceive as material or physical ‘objects’ are, in general, just as much symbols as words are –– this too is part of the message of ‘The Awareness Principle’ and ‘The Qualia Revolution’. 

Then again, in the context of hearing think of Beethoven himself. For the sounds he heard inwardly, and that despite being deaf, were no less vivid and intense that anything that might conventionally be termed ‘physical’ sounds.  Indeed I myself have experienced new symphonic music of great and supposedly ‘dead’ composers in the dream state  – and that as powerfully, loudly and vividly as from any orchestra or electronic loudspeaker.

But let us return to language again. The Greek word phusis or physis from which we derive the modern terms ‘physics’ and ‘physical’ refers to that which spontaneously emerges, unfold and grows according to its own inner nature. The soil out of which it grows however is nous – awareness, just as the spontaneous order present in this process of emergence and unfoldment was named logos

Yet to speak of things as ‘material’ or ‘physical’ in the way that became common only in recent centuries runs directly contrary to the root meaning of both the terms ‘matter’ (which originally meant pure potentiality, the mother or mater of all things), and ‘physics’ – which derives from the Greek physis

Even in their own terms however, the current use of modern scientific terms such as ‘physics’ and ‘physical’ is something highly questionable.

For just as the science we call ‘chemistry’ is, as Martin Heidegger pointed out, not a set of chemicals, i.e. is nothing  chemical in itself a= nd yet makes claims about chemical ‘matter’. Similarly ‘physics’ as a science is not itself anything physical – and yet makes claims about the nature of ‘physical’ reality. 

What a profound paradox. 'Physics' is neither anything physical nor (as Heidegger also emphasised) the object of any possible physical experiment!  Instead is it is a  a set of mental constructs expressed in terms such as mass or energy –but none of which is ever actually defined except as the name for a quantitative measure of some sort (or in terms of its mathematical relation to other such measures). No physicist can say what mass or energy ‘is’ – but instead rely on these purely ‘operational definitions’. 

Operational constructs and definitions however, lead precisely to operative experimentation upon natural phenomena which seek to force them to reveal their nature in order that it may then be exploited in some way. This technological use of physics (or chemistry or biology) is the very opposite of letting the nature of things spontaneously express and unfold itself (physis) in, from, through and to awareness (nous). More fundamentally still, it results in a purely operational, technological and instrumental understanding of truth and of reality as such. 

In contrast the basic thesis of The Awareness Principle is that waking reality, like dream reality, consists solely of fields of subjective “environmental experiencing”, these in turn giving expression to field patterns and qualities of awareness or subjectivity. 

In other words, there is no such ‘objective’ thing as ‘material’ or ‘physical’ objects or a ‘material’ or ‘physical’ universe or reality. Instead there is absolutely nothing that is not a shape or form of subjectivity or awareness itself – hence my use of the term ‘Absolute Subjectivism’ to name the essential philosophy of The Awareness Principle. 

What is important to remember however, is that however far-reaching, outrageously radical this claim may seem to be, it is far from ‘new’ except in my manner of newly (and hopefully more clearly and consistently) articulating it. Indeed for centuries, if not millennia this ‘radical’ view was the dominant one – long preceding the seemingly self-evident assumptions that modern science (itself only a few hundred years old) takes as truth. Thus even in medieval Christianity, nature was not understood as a set of material ‘objects’ but as a symbolic language – as the living word of God. And in those times the very word ‘subjective’ meant precisely that which is now understood by the word ‘objective’ – as that which alone which possesses independent and autonomous reality.   

Hi Peter

Thanks for the speedy response, you raise some very interesting and original insights with your thought experiments.
What do you make of the fact that we can't "go behind" the consciousness that our brain produces - in other words, our consciousness is being produced from moment to moment, scientists have measured about 50 conscious moments per second. And experimentation has revealed that the brain can make decisions before we do - in other words, the contents of our consciousness are already in the our brain before we become conscious of them. Our conscious brain states are non-conscious brain states before they are conscious brain states. Doesn't this make it difficult or impossible to prove and falsify that our neurons and other non-conscious levels of our body and matter are patterns of awareness?

"You will know very well from my writings that I understand awareness or subjectivity as having a
field character. From this perspective all individualised consciousness is an individualisation of a
universal field of awareness or subjectivity. "

This brings to mind the philosopher Evan Thompson's opinion on the ability to produce experience through
direct stimulation of the brain. He sees this as the ability to alter consciousness, rather then
produce it, and describes consciousness as a feild which can be altered through these and other
methods. But he is talking about the consciousness of an individual, rather then postulating
a meta awareness or subjectivity. Still, I think he's getting at much the same thing you are
when you talk about human consciousness being a patterned feild of awareness.

"Thus what we think of as ‘objects’ - including the human
brain - are therefore are not actually ‘objects’ at all. Instead all so-called ‘objects’ - including the
brain - are essentially but shapes, patterns and qualities of awareness as they are experienced by
individualised consciousnesses within a larger field of subjectivity or awareness."

But as I mentioned in the last email, the brain is also a subject - our subjective experiences are the brain, and
from the materialist perspective, because the brain is the only empirically verifiable basis of our subjectivity,
we cannot assume that consciousness is anything other then the brain. All of our experiences are correlated
with observable brain states, and by producing a brain state, we can produce any experience in the subject. So from
the materialist point of view the brain is the subject and the object, consciousness is a higher order brain state(s)
and a subjective biological process.

"This time I ask you to imagine that in place of the scientific hi-tech operating theatre we have a
sacred temple sanctum from the ancient past. Imagine too, that in place of the surgeons, scientific
technology and equipment surrounding the patient we have temple priests or ‘initiates’,
making strange undecipherable sounds and/or making use of symbolic artefacts of various sorts –
spiritual ‘equipment’. Imagine also that in place of a patient we have someone about to be initiated
into a vivid experience of certain memories (even of earlier lives) or of other realities entirely.
Now imagine that the initiate-priests are no less successful than today’s brain scientists – able to
induce not only similar but even more dramatic and powerful alterations of consciousness and yet by
quite different means – through intents of consciousness that are at the same time symbolised and
intensified by spiritual artefacts and ritualised initiatory acts – for example by the use of mantra of
particular sorts, and not least through skill in manipulating their own consciousness and using it to
directly affect the consciousness of others."

There is one crucial detail that makes an important difference between these two scenarios - in the case
of open brain surgery, the organ of perception itself is directly stimulated, whereas in the temple
scenario the organ of perception is being stimulated to produce altered states of consciousness
and vivid experiences, but not by directly acting on it. So in the operating theatre the actual
mechanism and process of human consciousness is directly perceived and interacted with.

"And yet exactly as in the brain experiment, just a little bit of ‘pressure’ – but in this case pressure not
on a nerve but on a TV remote or radio tuning button, or just a computer keyboard - may suddenly
and miraculously result in the sounds of a song or symphony being vividly heard, or else vivid view
of another place, country or even outer space being seen on a screen. Yet from this ‘miracle’ we can
in no way conclude that radios, TV or computers create or compose music – or that are in any way
the cause of the awareness within and out of which any song or symphony, opera, play or drama –
indeed any phenomenon whatsoever - first emerges.
No radio broadcast, TV channel or YouTube video can create the consciousness out of which
a Beethoven symphony first emerges. It can only offer us a subjectively experienced performance
of that symphony (for the computer or TV too is, essentially no material object but a material or
object-like symbol of different patterns and networks of awareness."
A piece of music comes from a musician and his instruments and reaches an audience - the medium could be direct like in a live performance or it could be recorded and broadcast electronically. It doesn't come from the medium, like a CD or television broadcast but it does come from the musician. But in the case of a being able to produce music for a patient by directly stimulating the brain, there is no musician or medium present, other then the brain. Not even the sensory medium of the ear. 
 
 
Dear Nick,
 
Our correspondence seems to be turning into an updated version of Berkeley’s fictional dialogues of Hylas and Philonous - albeit on a more refined and sophisticated level - and conducted between real-life persons or consciousnesses!!!
 
So as a real-life Philonous, let the dialogue with you - qua Hylas - continue.
 
First of all let me emphasise that I am not seeking to argue that there is no relationship at all between consciousness and the brain, but rather questioning the nature of this relationship – by (1) posing the deeper questions of what that we perceive of as a brain essentially is and (2) how both the relation of the brain to consciousness and the essential nature of both are conceived and languaged.  
 
In doing so I emphasise, like Berkeley, that the brain is, for us, first and foremost a phenomenon perceived within consciousness i.e. not a material thing but a subjective percept - like those perceived in our dreams, and that even experiments on it can and should be recognised as having this same essential character, i.e. that these experiments are events and actions perceived within a field of consciousness - like events and actions subjectively experienced in a dream. Yet the thought experiment of imagining that all the brain experiments you refer to were dreamt is not one you give a response to. As a result, your response to my second ‘thought experiment’ leaves the bigger question I sought to make tangible through the first thought experiment unaddressed.
 
You write that “..in the case of open brain surgery, the organ of perception itself is directly stimulated...” Yet by simply referring to the brain as an “organ of perception” you by-pass the question of this organ of perception being first and foremost a percept in itself.
 
You also write  that “in the operating theatre the actual mechanism and process of human consciousness is directly perceived and interacted with.”
 
The big question by-passed here is: perceived by whom or what? For if we follow the materialist line of argumentation which argues that brains ‘produce’ consciousness the only possible answer can be – perceived by other brains. In which case we can only conclude that all that exists are brains - and the question of what brains themselves essentially are is by-passed.
 
Indeed precisely by accepting the idea that the brain ‘produces’ consciousness, then it follows that brain experiments cannot - in principle –  prove this claim. Why? Because if the brain does ‘produce consciousness’ then nothing consciously observed or perceived by the brain and even in the course of these experiments (including the equipment, the particular percept call ‘the brain’, and even the verbal reports of the experimental subjects etc.) can be regarded as anything more than a perceptual ‘hallucination’ of the brain.
 
In other words, since the whole process of brain experimentation - and everything perceived or reported within it - can, from the materialist’s own perspective, be seen as nothing but a set of subjective percepts conjured up by a consciousness produced by the brain can, such experiments can prove nothing about the brain or consciousness - or indeed the nature of anything consciously perceived or experienced at all.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I am not seeking to imply that there is no relation between ‘consciousness’ and ‘the brain’. I am simply pointing to the reductio ad absurdum that follows from believing that the brain ‘produces’ consciousness i.e. that reality ultimately consists only of brains (and yet that itself only as they are perceived from the outside - by other brains).
 
The result is the sort of deification of the brain as we perceive it – together with a new God-image - those countless images or photographs of the brain to be found on the front cover of popular magazines or science journals which present brain science almost as a new religion.
 
In contrast, I understand what we externally perceive of as a brain not to ‘produce’ but to be a consciousness in its own right – as is what we perceive as a rock, stone, tree, fish or animal.
 
You seem to have noted this when, in referring to Evan Thomson, you quote from the part of my letter where I write:
 
"Thus what we think of as ‘objects’ - including the human brain - are therefore are not actually ‘objects’ at all. Instead all so-called ‘objects’ - including the brain - are essentially but shapes, patterns and qualities of awareness as they are experienced by individualised consciousnesses within a larger field of subjectivity or awareness."
 
For Berkeley ‘to be is to be perceived’ – nothing exists except subjective perceptions, in which case these perception cannot be used to account for or regarded as producing subjectivity or consciousness as such. Thus I differ from Berkeley in recognising that ‘to be’ is not just to ‘be perceived’ (esse est percipi) and argue instead or in addition that every percept is also an external perception or ‘exteroception’ of an independent consciousness or ‘subject’ in its own right - distinct from that of the perceiving consciousness.
 
In other words, I understand all percepts as ‘subjects’ or consciousnesses in their own right.
 
So yes, in this sense the brain is indeed, as you write “also a ‘subject’”. Yet whence the need for the word ‘also’ - given that you go on to write that “our subjective experiences are the brain, [my stress] and from the materialist perspective, because the brain is the only empirically verifiable basis of our subjectivity, we cannot assume that consciousness is anything other then the brain.”
 
I see no logic however, that leads from the recognition that in essence the brain is a subject (in my terms ‘a consciousness’) to the claim that “our subjective experiences are the brain” – rather I see a philosophical contradiction.
 
For how, from a ‘materialist’ perspective can we speak with any philosophical rigour of “our” subjective experiences - rather than those of the brain? For here the mere use of the little word ‘our’ implies the existence of an independent ‘subject’ in a traditional, idealist and non-materialistic sense – a Cartesian subject of consciousness independent of the brain, and one which possesses subjective consciousness and experiences (even those of the brain) as its ‘own’ private property.
 
In contrast, the absolutely revolutionary neo-Marxist and subjectivistic transformation of metaphysics that I put forward under the name of ‘The Awareness Principle’ challenges the long-standing and deep-seated assumption that consciousness is either the private property of independent ‘subjects’ of consciousness or the product of independent material ‘objects’ of consciousness, but argues instead that
 
1. everything is a consciousness in its own right (a unique field pattern of awareness that in turn shapes its external perception of other consciousnesses by virtue of also shaping a uniquely patterned field of awareness – a unique world’ or field of ‘environmental experiencing’).
 
2. all consciousnesses are individualised portions and expressions of a universal field consciousness – ‘pure awareness’ – a consciousness that is neither the product of a localisable object or the property of an abstract, transcendental or localised, punctiform-type ‘subject’. 
 
Yet even from my own perspective I do not deny that what we, as human beings, perceive as the human brain - being particularly complex in its structure - plays also a particularly significant role as an expression of that species of consciousness we call the human species.
 
On the other hand, I am not so old-fashioned in my scientific thinking as to deny that there are species of life and consciousness that function quite well without a brain, indeed even without neurons (trees for example).
 
This is where we must begin to address the highly questionable use of the term ‘materialism’ - recognising that physics itself has long since dispensed with old-fashioned ‘materialistic’ models of the atom – involving billiard-ball type elementary particles of a sort that imply there is any such thing as material ‘substance’.
 
In contrast, the far more modern science of biosemiotics owes its development to Uexkull’s recognition that different species of life are in effect, different species of consciousness – each perceiving their environment, each other – or even specific organs of their own or other species - in wholly different ways.
 
Then again, as argued in both The Science Delusion and The Qualia Revolution, modern science, from its very inception in both classical mechanics and the philosophy of John Locke, has always been, in principle, a form of idealism rather than materialism, since it takes its own abstract, purely mental and mathematical ideas, constructs and terms as more real than anything we ‘empirically’ experience. 
 
And  from the point of view of the more fundamental science that is called ‘physics’, any biological claim that “the brain is the only empirically verifiable basis of our subjectivity” falls down – because not even or not least physics cannot say what the brain - or anything else we subjectively experience or perceive - essentially is
 
More important even than this observation however, is what throughout most of human history would have been regarded as a wholly bizarre idea. This is the idea that subjective experiencing is in need of any form of causal explanation at all. That particular types of conscious subjective experiencing can be correlated with parts of the brain or pressure on particular nerves is not in question.
 
That consciousness as such i.e. the potential for many  different types of conscious experiencing (whatever their trigger) is in need of any sort of causal explanation is very much in question. Potentialities for experiencing are just that – potentialities latent in consciousness as such or ‘awareness’ and not anything caused. 
 
Here we come again to perhaps the biggest metaphysical issue of all.
 
For since we cannot ‘empirically’ know of anything at all – even the brain or the results of brain experiments – ‘outside’ of conscious experiencing, then consciousness as such must be taken as the ultimate, beginningless and foundational reality behind all things, i.e. not something in need of explanations but that which alone can, without contradiction (or even any need for complex theoretical positions) explain everything else
 
The reason why we need a metaphysical revolution that recognises this truth – and with it the fundamentally subjective nature of all knowledge, truth and reality – is that without it we may soon end up in a situation where, for example, if a patient goes to a doctor and complains of experiencing  an acute pain, not only will a cause of that pain be sought (rather than its meaning for the patient) but the patient’s very experience of pain will be regarded as questionable unless it can be ‘empirically’ verified in a way that has nothing to do with their subjective experience - for example by measurement of the electrical strength of signals in certain nerves.
 
I have had personal experience of this pathological clinical-scientific  mindset – a neurologist wanting to put me through a whole series of tests using EEG machines to ‘prove’ whether or not I went through periods of REM sleep – correlated by neurologists themselves with dreaming. When I reported my own subjective experience of dreaming regularly every night this counted for absolutely nothing – since it literally could not be ‘counted’ i.e. measured in some purely quantitative way.
 
If correlative measurements or images (like those from brain scans) come to be seen as the only true confirmation or evidence of any form of subjective experience whatsoever humanity will have effectively erased its own subjectivity. 
 
Hence the Galilean and Lockean dogma that what is real is only what is measurable is not only the most false but the most dangerous and inhumane idea that human beings have ever come up with – now leading in all areas of social life, from economics to medicine and education - to a situation where human subjective experience and skills count for nothing unless they can be counted and measured numerically.  
 
I am sure you too would not like to see a situation developing in which the patient who reported a vivid subjective experience of hearing music during the brain experiment you mentioned would not actually be believed  - except on the condition that a numerical measurement ‘correlating’ to experiences of this sort could be established through a brain scan or EEG.
 
Yet this is precisely where today’s global technological mind-set is leading us – not towards an explanation of qualitative, subjective experience and how it can be influenced through the brain but to something much more sinister - its complete and total invalidation outside of any numerical measurements or ‘correlates’.
 
When pressed, brain scientists will readily admit that correlations between different types of subjective experience and the human brain do not imply a causal relation. All I am really adding is that the potential for subjective experiences such as hearing music is not something that even direct manipulation of the brain can be said to ‘cause’, even if, like going to a concert or putting on a CD, it releases that potential.
 
An answer to your very first question:
 
“... experimentation has revealed that the brain can make decisions before we do - in other words, the contents of our consciousness are already in the our brain before we become conscious of them. Our conscious brain states are non-conscious brain states before they are conscious brain states. Doesn't this make it difficult or impossible to prove and falsify that our neurons and other non-conscious levels of our body and matter are patterns of awareness?”
 
On the contrary, such experimentation is ‘evidence’ for the fundamental distinction – central to The Awareness Principle – between conscious experiencing on the one hand and awareness on the other. It is not that “brain can make decisions before we do” – rather than these decisions emerge into conscious experience from a broader field of awareness – and do so precisely according to the inner patterning of that field. 
 
Here again however, ideas have consequences. Thus the very idea that it is brains rather than beings who think, feel, experience, make decisions etc. is in essence a scientific self-extermination of the human being as such.
 
That is why Martin Heidegger addressed himself to the most important question of all – the nature of ‘being’ and ‘beings’ as such and of human being or existence (Da-sein) in particular.
 
These are not questions that any form of science or any type of scientific experimentation can address – since they all take their starting point from an awareness of being and of beings – whether in the form of the being of the scientists themselves or the existence or being of percepts such as the human brain.
 
Science therefore starts out from a denial of the most basic question of all - ‘the question of being’ - simply taking it as given that a world of things or beings exists, and never questioning what it means for anything to ‘be’ in the first place - let alone why there is or was anything at all rather than nothing (and that includes both God and a hypothetical ‘Big Bang’).
 
Questions of being are simply outside the scope of the sciences. All we can say with certainty regarding them is that no questions at all can be posed by you, me or any human being without a primordial awareness of being and an awareness too of all the things and ideas we experience, think about or debate.
 
Yet since it simply presupposes both the consciousness of the scientist and the existence or being or universe of objective things that just are (‘beings’) no science can actually prove that any consciousness or being - even you, dear Nicholas - even exists or ‘is’.
 
This leaves us with the following questions which I urge you to think hard upon – by which I mean let them sink in slowly, for they are metaphysical and philosophical questions of a sort which no form of ‘objective’ science dares ask or is capable of answering in its own terms. 
 
- How can any form of objective science - even brain science - claim to explain the ‘cause’ of consciousness when no form of ‘objective’ science can – in principle - ever ‘prove’ the very existence of consciousness or of any type of subjectively experiencing or ‘conscious’ being??????
- Put the other way round, if ‘objective’ science cannot – in principle – ‘prove’ even the existence of consciousness, conscious beings or subjective experiencing how can it possibly claim to explain them?????? 
 
Only an awareness of being and an awareness of conscious subjective experiencing ‘proves’ that you yourself ‘are’ - or that you yourself are a conscious, subjectively experiencing being.
 
In other words, the very existence of subjectivity, consciousness and conscious beings can only be ‘empirically’ verified subjectively – from within and out of subjectivity or awareness.
 
This is the immediate, subjectively verifiable starting point of the metaphysical revolution that I call ‘The Awareness Principle’ – itself the basis for a whole new range of subjective sciences – sciences that, whilst they can indeed embrace the results of the ‘objective sciences’, at the same time will also radically  alter and deepen our understanding of these results - and the use to which they are put.
 
Subjective science has no need to explain consciousness at all, since it does not merely presuppose it but rather acknowledges it – in principle – as (1) the most primordial empirical ‘fact’ of all
and (2) therefore also the precondition for perceiving and conceptualising, positing or theorising about, experiencing or even experimenting on anything at all - including what we perceive as ‘the brain’.
 
Finally, allow me to re-state an old argument by analogy. To claim that the brain ‘produces’ consciousness is analogous to claiming that the chemical ink marks printed as ‘words’ on the pages of a book ‘produce’ the meaning of those words and that book - when in reality those ink marks (or pixels on a screen) can only be perceived as words or as having meaning in the first place by the consciousness of a reader dwelling within the same invisible and immaterial universe of meaning – and consciousness - from which all writing, language and literature emerges – not to mention the many, innately meaningful languages of sensoring experiencing as such – as recognised in both art, poetry and the new science of biosemiotics that grew out of Uexkull’s work.
 
I leave the last words to Martin Heidegger:
 
“When it is claimed that brain research is a scientific foundation for our understanding of human beings, the claim implies that the true and real relationship of one human being to another is an interaction of brain processes, and that in brain research itself, nothing else is happening but that one brain is in some way ‘informing’ another.  Then, for example, the statue of a god in the Akropolis museum, viewed during the term break, that is to say outside the research work, is in reality and truth nothing but the meeting of a brain process in the observer with the product of a brain process, the statue exhibited. Reassuring us, during the holidays, that this is not what is really implied, means living with a certain double or triple accounting that clearly doesn’t rest easily with the much vaunted rigour of science.”
 
Peter







No comments:

Post a Comment