Though it isn’t possible to do Jaynes justice in a short space, his most famous idea was that the ancient human mind was of two parts: it was “bicameral.” Inspired by research showing the brain is right-left specialized, Jaynes hypothesized that in the evolutionary past the left brain must have been completely separated from the right brain. The effect, according to Jaynes, would have been disquieting: language generated in the left brain would have been interpreted by the right brain as coming from outside or somewhere else. Ancient people, in other words, were functionally lobotomized and regularly experienced auditory hallucinations. These voices were called gods and this supposedly explains the origin of religion. For Jaynes, the bicameral mind lacked what he calls “consciousness.”

With this hypothesis in hand Jaynes began scouring the historical record looking for evidence of bicamerality. In the Iliad, an ancient oral poem finally written down around 800 BCE, Jaynes thinks he has found it:

[I]f you take the generally accepted oldest parts of the Iliad and ask, “Is there evidence of consciousness?” the answer, I think, is no. People are not sitting down and making decisions. No one is. No one is introspecting. No one is even reminiscing. It is a very different kind of world.

Then, who makes the decisions? Whenever a significant choice is to be made, a voice comes in telling people what to do. These voices are always and immediately obeyed. These voices are called gods. To me this is the origin of gods. I regard them as auditory hallucinations similar to, although not precisely the same as, the voices heard by Joan of Arc or William Blake. Or similar to the voices that modern schizophrenics hear. Verbal hallucinations are common today, but in early civilization I suggest that they were universal.

Jaynes must then explain the origin and evolution of the bicameral or “unconscious” mind, which he does here:

But why is there such a mentality as a bicameral mind? Let us go back to the beginning of civilization in several sites in the Near East around 9000 B.C. It is concomitant with the beginning of agriculture. The reason the bicameral mind may have existed at this particular time is because of the evolutionary pressures for a new kind of social control to move from small hunter-gatherer groupings to large agriculture based towns or cities. The bicameral mentality could do this since it enabled a large group to carry around with them the directions of the chief or king as verbal hallucinations, instead of the chieftain having to be present at all times.

I think that verbal hallucinations had evolved along with the evolution of language during the Neanderthal era as aids to attention and perseverance in tasks, but then became the way of ruling larger groups.

Setting aside for a moment the objection that modern humans are only minimally descended from Neanderthals and we don’t know whether they had language, Jaynes obviously believes that bicamerality is ancient and ancestral. All humans, in other words, descended from these hallucinating hunter-gatherers. Much later in time some of these hunter-gatherers (those in the Near East) developed agriculture and the “voices” were pressed into the service of social control. Even when the ruler-god isn’t present, people hear voices and attribute the commands of those voices to the ruler-god.

It’s all very tidy. The problem, however, is that the bicameral mind on which everything is built and depends eventually breaks down. The story that Jaynes tells about the breakdown is remarkable, indeed fascinating, but for my purposes the details are unimportant. All we need to know is that in complex agricultural societies, pressures and contradictions increase until the bicameral mind finally dissolves: it becomes unified or unicameral. This is the beginning, for Jaynes, of “consciousness.” It is the hallmark of fully modern minds which recognize the voice inside the head not as “god” but as “I.”

It is that this point that Jaynes’ story, still believed by many, runs into deep trouble: some groups of people never practiced agriculture, never lived in complex societies, and never experienced a breakdown of bicameralism. These people are of course hunter-gatherers, many of whom continued foraging until relatively recently and some of whom still do. These groups, descended directly from the hallucinating ancients, presumably retained bicameral minds and lacked “consciousness.”

If this were the case (it isn’t), our histories and ethnographies would be filled with fantastic and unbelievable tales about bicameral hunter-gatherers. They would have been strange beings incapable of recognizing that the voices inside their heads weren’t real. While this is the obvious implication of Jaynes’ theory, we needn’t take my word for it. Here is how recent “pre-literate tribal” people are described by the Jaynes Society:

They have limited inner mental life (and experience frequent auditory hallucinations) but they can be just as animated as non-human primates are. Bicameral people were non-conscious but intelligent, had basic language, and were probably more social than modern conscious people in the sense that they would have typically lived and worked surrounded by others. They would be able to express first tier (non-conscious) emotions such as fear, shame, and anger, but not second-tier (conscious) emotions such as anxiety, guilt, and hatred.

This is stunning. It reads like a racist Victorian description of non-European subhumans, and if I didn’t just pull it from a website advocating Jaynes’ views, that’s what I would think it was.

Here is how we know Jaynes is wrong: there is no evidence that historically recent hunter-gatherers were or are biologically-neurologically different or that their minds were metaphorically bifurcated. Nothing in the ethnohistoric or ethnographic record suggests this and in fact the opposite is true. What we find in the record is that these people, despite their different histories and cultures, were (and are) just like us.

Reference:

Jaynes, Julian. (1986). Consciousness and The Voices of the Mind. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 27 (2), 128-148 DOI: 10.1037/h0080053

Until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to promises per se or their critical importance to the evolution of conscience. Nietzsche, not surprisingly, understood its importance and addressed the issue in Genealogy of Morals (II:1): “To breed an animal with the right to make promises — is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set for itself in the case of man?” 

In Making Sense of Nietzsche, Richard Schacht highlights the importance of this question — and its answer:

What engages his attention here is the fundamental issue of what the possibility of promising (and keeping one’s promises) presupposes, and the ramifications in human life in the establishment of this possibility. Its establishment, Nietzsche contends, required the development of a kind of memory going beyond the (basically animal) capacity to absorb and retain things experienced.

This immediately calls to mind chimpanzees. Many have observed they are always “in the present,” trapped as it were by memories that can only be cued by external events or environments. The ability to self-cue memories without such prompts — to cease being creatures of the moment — was a fundamental cognitive shift or what I would call a phase change involving consciousness. By this view, which makes considerable transcend-sense, promissory ability is the prerequisite for “moral” ability.

When we bring these western habits of thought to the concept of consciousness, our learned reflex is to dichotomize and contrast with its supposed opposite: unconsciousness. We are either conscious or unconscious. This is, however, a mistake. I was reminded of this while reading David Lewis-Williams’ Inside the Neolithic Mind — Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods:

Human beings are not either conscious or unconscious, as may be popularly supposed. Normal, everyday consciousness should rather be thought of as a spectrum. At one end is alert consciousness — the kind that we use to relate rationally to our environment and to solve the problems that it presents. A little further along the spectrum are more introverted states in which we solve problems by thought. Relax more and you are day-dreaming: mental images come and go at will, unfettered by the material world around you. Gradually, you slip into sleep and the hypnagogic state, possibly with vivid hallucinations. From there, you drift into normal dreaming, a world of changing forms and impossible circumstances.

Because fluctuating consciousness is a human universal, all societies must come to terms with it or make sense of it. Values are assigned to different parts of the spectrum. Lewis-Williams argues that religion is founded on these fluctuations and develops “out of the socially situated spectrum of consciousness.” It is a powerful argument and one that is at least partially confirmed by Native American dream traditions.

In “Dreams, Theory, and Culture: The Plains Vision Quest Paradigm,” Lee Irwin observes that dreaming is central to Native American traditions:

To understand the visionary world of Native American religions, it is necessary to overcome a rational bias that would reduce dreaming to an expression of the “irrational” or “epiphenomenal” mind. Because we all dream, it would seem superfluous to point out the continuity that exists between our dreaming and waking lives.

Yet it is a mark of modern consciousness that dreaming is strongly identified with the “pre-rational” mind and with a substratum of “primitive” instinct and emotion beneath the threshold of rational conceptualization. The dreaming basis of culture must engage our attention as something far more complex and subtle than a purely sensory and empirical waking model of consciousness permits.

In the Native American context, there is no separation between the world-as-dreamed and the world-as-lived. These are states integral to the unifying continuum of mythic description, narration, and enactment. In contemporary, non-indigenous culture, the distinction between waking and dreaming is largely a consequence of culturally reinforced rational theories of mind and has resulted in a bifurcated world view for most Euroamericans.

It seems fairly safe to say that dreaming played an important role if not central role in ancient religions. It surely is no accident that Australian Aborigines characterize the foundational elements of their supernaturalism as “Dreamtime.” It also seems fairly safe to say that as religions became more organized and systematic (following the Neolithic transition), dreaming is displaced by doctrine and belief as the source of the supernatural.

Reference:

Irwin, L. (1994). Dreams, Theory, and Culture: The Plains Vision Quest Paradigm American Indian Quarterly, 18 (2) DOI: 10.2307/1185248

When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence “I think,” I find a whole series of of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who thinks, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking — that I know what thinking is.

Nietzsche’s impertinent questions arose from his intuition that the mind, through operations unknown in the late 1800s, creates the illusion of a unified self.  Peering deeply into his own mind, Nietzsche correctly sensed that it was far from unified and the comfortable feeling of subjective solidity was fragile and easily shattered.  Those who looked too deeply into the mind abyss would soon find the abyss looking back at them, with devastating results.

Although Weisman’s argument in “Divided Minds, Specious Souls” is not new to neuroscientists, psychologists, or philosophers, I think most people would be surprised to learn how divided and fragile is our sense of unified self and experience.  The brain, in short, is comprised of many parts — not all of which work together in unison, and when certain parts are damaged (by stroke, trauma, or disease), the apparent unity is shattered:

There is a common idea: because the mind seems unified, it really is. Many go only a bit further and call that unified mind a “soul.” This step, from self to soul, is an ancient assumption which now forms a bedrock in many religions: a basis for life after death, for religious morality, and a little god within us, a support for a bigger God outside us.

For the believers in the soul, let’s call them soulists, the soul assumption appears to be only the smallest of steps from the existence of a unified mind. Yet the soul is a claim for which there isn’t any evidence. Today, there isn’t even evidence for that place soulists step off from, the unified mind. Neurology and neuroscience, working unseen over the past century, have eroded these ideas, the soul and the unified mind, down to nothing. Experiences certainly do feel unified, but to accept these feelings as reality is a mistake. Often, the way things feel has nothing to do with how they are.

Over the last few decades, most cognitive scientists and psychologists attuned to human evolution have accepted the idea that the brain is functionally divided and mind is modular.  One of the better statements of this position can be found in Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works.   While accepting that the brain-mind is divided and much cognition resides in subconsiousness, Merlin Donald elegantly explains — in A Mind So Rare — how a unified sense of self arises in the awake and usually stable mental platform we call “consciousness.”

There can be little doubt that modularity and consciousness is key to comprehending a mind which naturally generates supernatural concepts, including beliefs in souls or what is known as “commonsense dualism.”

Dennis’ article espouses a theory of consciousness that is being explored by a small number of researchers.  This theory is that consciousness exists at the intersection of the classical (visible/macroscopic) and quantum (invisible/microscopic) worlds, and is at least partially constituted by quantum processes.  The savant Stuart Kauffman goes further and argues that biological life is itself the product of this intersection.

While the scientific details of quantum consciousness theory are quite complex, Dennis does a nice job of explaining them in terms that can be understood by non-experts:

The human body is a constant flux of thousands of inter-reactions and processes connecting molecules, cells, organs and fluids throughout the brain, body and nervous system. Up until recently it was thought that all these countless interactions operated in a linear sequence, passing on information much like a runner passing the baton to the next runner.

However, the latest findings in quantum biology and biophysics have discovered that there is in fact a tremendous degree of coherence within all living systems. It has been found through extensive scientific investigation that a form of quantum coherence operates within living biological systems through what is known as biological excitations and biophoton emission.

What this means is that metabolic energy is stored as a form of electromechanical and electromagnetic excitations. It is these coherent excitations that are considered responsible for generating and maintaining long-range order via the transformation of energy and very weak electromagnetic signals.

After nearly 20 years of experimental research, Fritz-Albert Popp put forward the hypothesis that biophotons are emitted from a coherent electrodynamic field within the living system. What this effectively means is that each living cell is giving off, and resonating with, a biophoton field of coherent energy.

If each cell is emitting this field, then the whole living system is, in effect, a resonating field — a ubiquitous non-local field. And since it is by the means of biophotons that the living system communicates, then there is near instantaneous intercommunication throughout. And this, claims Popp, is the basis for coherent biological organization — referred to as quantum coherence.

Biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho has described how the living organism, including the human body, is “coherent beyond our wildest dreams” in that our bodies are constituted by a form of liquid crystal, which is an ideal transmitter of communication, resonance, and coherence. All living biological organisms continuously emit radiations of light that form a field of coherence and communication.

We cannot simply accept these statements as true; biophotons apparently do exist, but measuring them and ascertaining their function has a long and controversial history.  Measuring quantum effects in the physical world is a science still in its infancy, though some remarkable tests are being conducted and advances made.

One thing is certain: biological metabolism involves chemical reactions that produce and reduce energy in all sorts of amazing ways.  These processes entail and are sensitive to various forces or fields, including electricity, radiation, magnetism, light, sound, gravity, temperature, and pressure.  Our understanding of these forces-fields and their relationship to human biology is quite limited, despite the many outlandish, unproven, untested, and authoritative claims made by the New Age faithful.

For a less credulous and more scientific view of quantum consciousness, the best work has been done by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose.  Hameroff has published numerous articles — all creative, some convincing, and a few compelling — which you can find on his website.  Like Stuart Kauffman, Hameroff’s training is in medicine and his work, while thoroughly grounded in science, is cutting edge.

So where does quantum consciousness, if it exists (and I think it probably does, given that our bodies consist of atoms and subatomic particles, all of which flow in the weird world of quantum waves), leave us?  This is how Dennis puts it:

[B]iophysicists have discovered that living organisms are permeated by quantum wave forms. In her 1998 book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, Mae-Wan Ho informs us that “the visible body just happens to be where the wave function of the organism is most dense. Invisible quantum waves are spreading out from each of us and permeating into all other organisms. At the same time, each of us has the waves of every other organism entangled within our own make-up.”

This incredible new discovery actually positions each living being within a non-local quantum field consisting of wave interferences (where bodies meet). Each person is thus not only in an emphatic relationship with each other but is also entangled with one another.

Neuroscience, quantum biology, and quantum physics are now beginning to converge to reveal that our bodies are not only biochemical systems but also sophisticated resonating quantum systems.

Assuming this to be true, it would mean that humans are subject to many more influences than those of which we are currently aware and can measure.  It would also mean that humans exist in a field matrix where everything is connected in one way or another; think of it as the Butterfly Effect writ large.

Dennis and Hameroff believe this to be the case, but take this idea one step further — they connect this field matrix to “universal consciousness,” which is the darling of spiritualists around the world.   Dennis puts it this way:  “These new discoveries show that a form of nonlocal connected consciousness has a physical-scientific basis. Further, it demonstrates that certain spiritual or transcendental states of collective Oneness have a valid basis within the new scientific paradigm.” And this is how Hameroff (1998) puts it in a peer reviewed article titled “Funda-Mentality” Is the Conscious Mind Subtly Linked to a Basic Level of the Universe?:

Perhaps panpsychists are in some way correct and components of mental processes are fundamental, like mass, spin or charge. Following the ancient Greek panpsychists, Spinoza (1677) saw some form of consciousness in all matter. Leibniz (1766) portrayed the universe as an infinite number of fundamental units (“monads”) each having a primitive psychological being. Whitehead (e.g. 1929) was a process philosopher who viewed reality as a collection of events occurring in a basic field of proto­conscious experience (“occasions of experience”). Abner Shimony observed that Whitehead’s occasions were comparable to quantum state reductions-actual events in physical reality.

It is possible, in other words, that we are connected to a field matrix and that individual consciousness participates in and contributes to this matrix.  There are some metaphysical traditions, particularly eastern ones, that have long made similar assertions and actively encourage adherents to engage with this field matrix, whatever it may be (we currently have only a hypothetical understanding of this proposed field).  This may also be what shamans are seeking when they deliberately induce altered states of consciousness to experience what David Lewis-Williams calls “absolute unitary being.”

Let us suppose, however, that two centuries from now we arrive at an understanding of these hypothetical concepts (i.e., quantum consciousness embedded within a universal field matrix), and that we can actually measure, test, and manipulate these things.  At this point, would we call this understanding “spiritual” or would it simply be yet another finding of science?

I would tend toward the latter characterization.  Why?  Not so long ago, all humans believed that weather was a spiritual or supernatural force.  Over time, we have come to understand how weather works and why it occurs.  Weather has therefore become a matter of science and is called meteorology — it is no longer a supernatural matter for spiritualists.  If and when we arrive at an understanding of quantum-universal consciousness, I do not think we will be calling it “spiritual.”

Most share the same description: accelerated thought processes, peacefulness, joy, and encounters with mystical entities or deceased persons. NDEs have features associated with the phenomenon of dissociation — a psychiatric disorder in which a person’s identity becomes disconnected from bodily sensation. However, most people who report NDEs do not have a pathological mechanism contributing to the psychiatric condition.

It appears that these experiences may be triggered by high carbon dioxide levels in the brain, which in turn has marked effects on conscious functioning:

NDEs were more common in patients with higher levels of carbon dioxide on admission to the hospital. The connection with carbon dioxide suggests that NDEs might be associated with changes in the acid-base equilibrium of the brain. Previous studies have proved that changes in the brain’s equilibrium can trigger visions of bright lights and out-of-body experiences. Inhaled carbon dioxide has been studied as a psychotherapeutic agent and caused NDE-like experiences.

Gibson concludes by suggesting that NDEs may be manifestations of the supernatural:

Many believe that NDEs are proof that humans are more than just a collection of cells and neural processes and that humans have a soul or level of consciousness that is separate from the physical body. But, have the researchers in the current study debunked that theory in explaining NDEs with scientific details?

The studies that Gibson reports may not answer this question, but in a comprehensive survey of NDE studies titled “The Near Death Experience,” Glenn Roberts and John Owen observe that the specifics of NDEs often correspond to a person’s particular religious beliefs:

Schoerer (1985) presented two historical accounts of core NDEs in American Indians where the dominant imagery is of moccasins, snakes, eagles, bows, and arrows.  [Asian] Indians have NDEs in which they are characteristically sent back to live because of a seeming bureaucratic mistake having been made in the after-life, and many encounter Yamraj, the Hindu king of the dead, and the Yamdoots, his messengers.

In one large and systematic cross-cultural study of 442 Americans and 435 Asian Indians who had NDEs, 140 people reported seeing religious figures; “where these [figures] were specifically identified, they were always named according to a person’s religious beliefs; no Hindu reported seeing Jesus, and no Christian reported seeing a Hindu deity.”

A person’s previously held religious beliefs, in other words, pattern the nature of the NDE, a fact which prompted Roberts and Owen to observe:

This supports the view of many authors that, whereas the central features the NDE are universally present [due to pan-human biological and neural systems], the specific imagery and interpretation is determined by the cultural expectations and beliefs of the individual.

Thus, a Muslim who has a near death experience might see Muhammad; a Buddhist may see Siddhartha; a Christian might see Jesus or an angel; a Hindu may see Krishna or Vishnu; a Lakota might see Wakan Tanka, and so on.  This patterning strongly suggests that NDEs are a matter of consciousness and not metaphysics.

In his classic article “Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,” Robert Frykenberg (1993) notes that this category is recent and has a specific origin:  “Hinduism as a single religion, which with the coming Swami Narendrath Datta Vivekananda to the First World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, was gradually recognized and then elevated by liberally minded and eclectic Western clerics into the rank of a world religion.”  Frykenberg, along with many other scholars, contends that “Hinduism was constructed, invented, or imagined by British scholars and colonial administrators in the nineteenth century and did not exist, in any meaningful sense, before this date” (Lorenzen 1999:630).

This imperial construction lead to an understanding of Hinduism that remains with us today:

This codification of an “official” or establishment Hinduism as a conceptual framework is one of the most remarkable legacies of the [British imperial administration].  The idea that “Hinduism” was a single and ancient religion gradually spread and solidified, becoming dominant and pervasive.  In so doing, it created and perpetuated two accompanying myths.  Both of these myths were expedient, if not essential, to the continued political integration of India (under the Raj); and both are no less expedient for the same political ends today.

First, and above all else, was the belief that Hinduism is a benign, “inclusivistic,” and singular religion, epitomizing all that is eclectic, syncretistic, and tolerant in human behavior, doctrine, and ritual; second was the belief that Hinduism, as the religion of India, represents (and hence should command allegiance from) the majority of India’s (if not all of South Asia’s) peoples.

The history (and current status) of hinduisms is of course far messier than this story suggests.  This, however, was the starting point for the importation of Hinduism to the West, where it underwent additional transformations — all designed specifically to appeal to Western sensibilities and make Hinduism more palatable for Western consumption.  These sensibilities are evident throughout Golderg’s article, in which he contends that Hinduism is akin to a science of consciousness and is a form of psychology.

What all this ignores — but is evident to any observer of “on the ground hinduisms” as practiced in India today — is that official or Westernized constructions of the many traditions that are flattened together as “Hinduism” captures little of the intensely theistic, ritualistic, and exclusivist aspects of Vedic beliefs.  Whatever Hinduism might be, it involves far more than yoga, meditation, consciousness, and energy — those selected aspects of the faith that can be packaged and sold to Westerners (for a profit, and as science friendly).

None of this is to suggest there is not a Hindu religious tradition that has ancient roots and which revolves around various and diverse texts, rituals, gods, and beliefs.  In “Who Invented Hinduism,” David Lorenzen (1999) makes a persuasive case for such a tradition and details its history.  It is to suggest, however, that what is conceived as “Hinduism” in the West differs significantly from beliefs (and practices) in the East, which have little in common with science.

Chopra’s piece begins with some surprising concessions:

What is the war about? Fact beat out faith long ago. When Darwin’s theory of evolution replaced Genesis to explain the appearance of human beings, which was in the middle of the 19th century, the trend away from faith was already old. The world had been remade as material, governed by natural laws, random in its effects, and immune to divine intervention. Not just science but thousands of unanswered prayers did their part to dethrone God.

Next, Chopra praises science for its willingness to ask foundational questions:

There should be renewed admiration for science’s attempts to answer the fundamental mysteries. These are well known by now:

• How did the universe come about?
• What caused life to emerge from a soup of inorganic chemicals?
• Can evolution explain all of human development?
• What are the basic forces in Nature?
• How does the brain produce intelligence?
• What place do human beings occupy in the cosmos?

Continuing with his scientific prelude, Chopra correctly observes that science “advances through data and experiments, but those in turn depend upon theory.  Theory is the flashlight that tells an experimenter where to look, and without it, he wanders at random.  His data don’t fit into a worldview.  I consider myself scientific at heart, and so I depend upon a theory as well.”

Incredible — it appears that Chopra the new age mystic has had a conversion experience, and has become Chopra the scientist, positivist, and empiricist.  Could it be so?

As Chopra admits, he too depends on a theory.  So without further ado, here is Chopra’s theory:

* We live in a universe that exhibits intelligence, self-regulation, and creativity.

* Consciousness preceded the brain. It created life and went on to create the brain itself.

* Consciousness is primary in the world; matter is secondary.

* Evolution is conscious and therefore creative. It isn’t random.

* At the source of creation one finds a field of pure awareness.

* Pure awareness is the source of every manifest quality in the universe.

Do Chopra’s premises constitute a “theory”?  Theories are built on collections of facts, which are verifiable observations that do not change depending on who is doing the observing.  To have a theory, in other words, you must have a corpus of facts that cohere around an explanation; that explanation is the theory.

F. Steiger explicates “theory” in this way:

[A] theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any theory must be based on a careful examination of the facts. A clear distinction needs to be made between facts (things which can be observed and/or measured) and theories (explanations which correlate and interpret the facts).

A fact is something that is supported by unmistakeable evidence [or replicated by others through experiment]. For example, the Grand Canyon cuts through layers of different kinds of rock, such as the Coconino sandstone, Hermit shale, and Redwall limestone. These rock layers often contain fossils that are found only in certain layers. Those are the facts.

Facts may be interpreted in different ways by different individuals, but that doesn’t change the facts themselves.

Theories may be good, bad, or indifferent. They may be well established by the factual evidence, or they may lack credibility.

With these distinctions in mind, how does Chopra’s “theory” fare?  Not well.  Let’s look at each premise.

1.  “We live in a universe that exhibits intelligence, self-regulation, and creativity.”  Intelligence does in fact exist in at least one place in the universe: animals and humans on earth are intelligent organisms.  This fact, however, does not lead to the much larger inference — for which we have no evidence — that the universe itself is intelligent.  We are not even sure what the universe is, so calling it intelligent requires a leap of faith.  As for self-regulation, there are aspects of the universe that have orderly and predictable qualities.  On earth, the same is true and there also is a creative aspect to the evolution of life.  So we can grant Chopra these last two points.

2.  “Consciousness preceded the brain. It created life and went on to create the brain itself.”  This assertion is rank speculation for which there is not a scintilla of evidence.  The only consciousness for which we have any evidence — indeed, the very idea of consciousness — comes from brains.  Brains, in other words, produce consciousness.  You therefore cannot have consciousness before brains.

3.  “Consciousness is primary in the world; matter is secondary.”  Chopra would not be conscious, or aware of consciousness, if he did not eat every day and shelter himself from the elements.  He also would not be conscious or aware if he was not living matter.  Given these facts, I cannot see how Chopra’s physical matter is not primary.  His matter is the foundation from which his consciousness arises.  This particular assertion is nothing more than a value judgment, steeped in mysticism.

4.  “Evolution is conscious and therefore creative. It isn’t random.”  Evolution is not a thing or a force — it is a description of a process.  That process is change.  It cannot, therefore, be conscious.  The change that evolution describes can, however, be creative.  Life on earth demonstrates that fact.  There is a limited sense in which evolutionary change is not random — there are genomic constraints on the kinds of organisms that can result from mutations.

5.  “At the source of creation one finds a field of pure awareness.”  We have no evidence or data regarding the “source of creation,” so any assertions regarding that source are pure speculation.  The same can be said of a “field of pure awareness.”  No one has ever identified such a field or awareness.  Such a field of awareness exists only in the minds of people who have brains that enable such thoughts.

6.  “Pure awareness is the source of every manifest quality in the universe.”  What?  This is an assertion of faith; it is pure speculation.

What I find most interesting here is that Chopra obviously feels the need to couch his consciousness/awareness arguments in the language of science; he uses scientific terms to legitimate his beliefs.  Chopra feels no need, however, to go any further and actually apply the precepts and principles of science to his non-theory.

Chopra’s premises — and therefore his “theory” — cannot be observed, measured, quantified, or verified by others.  What Chopra calls a “theory” does not explain any facts or cause any facts to cohere.  His theory does not generate any hypotheses or predictions.  His theory is not testable.  There are no facts for his theory.  If there were, surely someone would conduct experiments, the results of which could be replicated by others.

Where does this leave Chopra and his acolytes?  With a fuzzy faith which speculates that consciousness and awareness are the sources of the universe and life — the Godhead in other words.  This sounds much like spirituality and religion — terms which Chopra says he wants to avoid.  Chopra has not experienced any kind of conversion and his non-theory lacks credibility.

With these things in mind, Pam Belluck’s recent article in the New York Times — “Hallucinations in Hospital Pose Risk to Elderly” — offers some additional insight and research possibilities.  These are not simply drug induced hallucinations that afflict the frail of mind:

No one who knows Justin Kaplan would ever have expected this. A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian with a razor intellect, Mr. Kaplan, 84, became profoundly delirious while hospitalized for pneumonia last year. For hours in the hospital, he said, he imagined despotic aliens, and he struck a nurse and threatened to kill his wife and daughter.

“Thousands of tiny little creatures,” he said, “some on horseback, waving arms, carrying weapons like some grand Renaissance battle,” were trying to turn people “into zombies.” Their leader was a woman “with no mouth but a very precisely cut hole in her throat.”

Attacking the group’s “television production studio,” Mr. Kaplan fell from his hospital bed, cutting himself and “sliding across the floor on my own blood,” he said. The hospital called security because “a nurse was trying to restrain me and I repaid her with a kick.”

Mr. Kaplan’s hallucinations lifted as doctors treated his pneumonia. But hospitals say many patients are experiencing such inexplicable disorienting episodes. Doctors call it “hospital delirium,” and are increasingly trying to prevent or treat it.

Mr. Kaplan’s hallucinations sound awful, but have a familiar feel to them.  Shamans, prophets, and mystics throughout history report similar experiences.  It would be interesting to know how many of the elderly who experience hospital delirium interpret those experiences in spiritual or religious terms.

When Lewis-Williams confines himself to explaining the origins of supernatural thinking, his primary contention is that such thinking arises from the fluctuations of consciousness.  It is a human universal linked to neurological states.  Because consciousness is central to his argument, I thought it would be helpful to preface my review (which will appear over the next few days), with a short discussion of consciousness.

There are those who argue, with some force, that we really do not know much about consciousness and cannot say much about it.  In his famous essay “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” (1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel makes just such a case.  There are those (including myself), however, who think that Nagel is a bit too pessimistic and contend we can say something substantive about consciousness.  For those who prefer a book length treatment, I recommend Merlin Donald’s A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness.  Donald makes a persuasive case for understanding consciousness and treating it seriously (unlike evolutionary psychologists who relegate consciousness to mere background).

The Conscious Brain

In many respects, the human brain is most remarkable for its conscious properties.  Precisely what consciousness is defies easy description or explanation.  For humans, it is often associated with attention, focus, and awareness.  Francis Crick likens consciousness to a searchlight that deals with current tasks and conditions.   Purposive intentionality, goal states, future planning, and voluntary decision-making are all aspects of consciousness.  Given our Homo-centric view of the world, many assume that consciousness is a uniquely human attribute.  This view is mistaken.  While humans possess a type of consciousness that is different, there is no reason to think that other animals are not conscious.  Consciousness, in other words, exists along a phylogenetic continuum.

Whether consciousness itself is a direct product of selection or is an emergent feature of neural evolution remains a mystery.  We know, however, that mobile organisms face special challenges as they operate in multi-dimensional environments.  Sensory inputs must be coordinated with motor outputs in a stable arena of action.  For smaller, slower, and less complex organisms, this coordination does not even require a brain, let alone something akin to consciousness.  For these organisms, widely distributed basal ganglia are sufficient.  For larger, faster, and more complex organisms, a brain – and some form of consciousness – appears to be necessary.  If this is the case, it is not unreasonable to suggest that reptiles are minimally conscious and that mammals are moderately conscious.  Conscious organisms are aware of the immediate environment, and depending on sensory feedback, are able to adjust behaviors.  In this sense, consciousness is a form of error correction and action modulation, and its adaptive utility is obvious.  The ability to react rapidly to constantly and rapidly changing environments is critical to survival.

Many researchers refer to “primary consciousness,” which is most often noted in mammals and birds, and “higher order consciousness,” which is typically associated with humans (and may be minimally present in some apes, elephants, and cetaceans).  Primary consciousness revolves around a remembered present and involves episodic memory.  Its activation requires an external or environmental stimulus.  Higher order consciousness entails introspection and involves both short and long term memory.  It is self-cueing and does not require external or environmental activation, though this often occurs.  Higher order consciousness also entails causation and subjectivity, which is an awareness of self associated with agency.  For most humans, this aspect of consciousness is self-evident and usually manifests as a stable identity.  For other species, its presence may be indicated by self-recognition in mirror tests.  Chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins all appear to recognize themselves when presented with mirrors.

Given the central role that consciousness plays in our waking lives, it is not surprising that many researchers locate it in a central part of the brain: the thalamocortical system.  The thalamus is medially situated to integrate sensory inputs and motor outputs.  It appears to be a kind of switching center, with massive numbers of reciprocal relay cells engaged in recursive and parallel signaling.  Gerald Edelman calls these relay signals “re-entrant interactions” that take place in the thalamocortical “dynamic core.”  Significantly, brain wave activity in this core fluctuates in accordance with attention.  Because the thalamus is centrally situated, it mediates between subcortical and neocortical processes.  Its location, therefore, probably serves as an integrating area for the normally stable platform we call “consciousness.”

When we sleep, we are not conscious.  This does not mean, however, that being awake ensures “full” consciousness.  While awake, we can experience major fluctuations in consciousness, ranging from reverie (day-dreaming) to delusion.  The latter can be caused by pyschotropic drugs or pathology (e.g., schizophrenia).  Meditation can result in altered states of consciousness, as can fasting, other forms of deprivation, and physical activities or exertions.  There are many ways to induce such fluctuations.

Lewis-Williams argues that these fluctuations (“altered states of consciousness”) give rise to the supernatural thinking on which all religions are built.  I will be evaluating his claim — and others in his book — in the next few posts.