In my clinical and professional work, I try to stimulate greater awareness and curiosity in spiritual matters in everybody I meet. However, I do it carefully, moving only as fast as a client allows. I have been successful in doing so with many patients, students, and colleagues, and even with professional organizations. The rise in public interest in the nature of consciousness has been slow, but it is clearly accelerating with rising interest in spirituality, and search for the tools of self-regulation.
In science, the exploration of human consciousness is what we call a hard problem, in part because of how difficult it is to define, measure, or attribute subjective experiences. There’s also an explanatory gap. On one hand we are generally able to explain physical properties of the universe that are governed by physical laws, but less able to explain mental properties. It’s challenging to bridge this space between physical laws and our feelings, awareness, and experiences.
This gap is evidenced in the questions we ask, such as: How does awareness, a feature of the mental world, arise from the brain, which is a physical structure? And in fact, does it? A millennia old question poses: what comes first, mind (consciousness) or matter (the brain)? How can subjective experience be explained by physics? Then, there are the questions about what any of this tells us about the world around us.
For instance, are cats and dogs conscious? Their owners would swear to it. How about insects, plants, or the rest of nature? We can find evidence that nature has intelligence, and around the world native tribes have traditions that involve communicating with nature spirits. But what does that tell us, exactly?
We can frame consciousness as the part of the evolution of the species on planet Earth. Or we can take a broader approach, looking at cosmic consciousness in the way that it presents in some of the world’s religions, as connecting humans to their divine origin and with the evolution of the soul. Taking the evolutionary perspective, if consciousness evolved as a result of natural selection, then we can assume that it must confer some evolutionary advantage. It is in our best interests to be conscious. But why? What benefits do consciousness confer? Some argue toward a more straight forward biological benefits, while others hold that there is at least some element that has to do with spirituality. After all, our brains are organized and wired in such a way that we derive tremendous benefit from experiences of awe (think: the effect of staring out at the night sky speckled with stars, connecting with the natural wonders like Grand Canyon or visiting Michaelangelo’s David). Many describe these experiences as transcendent, and inherently, spiritual. Experiencing a feeling of AWE is intimately connected with spirituality—of our sense of being larger than our physical body and daily awareness.
Spiritual and mystical experiences, whether natural or drug-induced, offer us a gateway—an opportunity to realize our infinite nature, and that who we are goes beyond just a physical body or brain. Consciousness occurs alongside the state of conscious awareness (which includes our unconscious, subconscious, and conscious). We may be only partially aware of events that are occurring and not consciously registering them, but they can still affect our behavior and how we function.
Ancient Philosophy and Consciousness
Ancient philosophical traditions speculated about the nature of consciousness, with world religions emphasizing the immortal Soul, which is present for the purpose of eventual Divine judgment (as in Christianity) or awaiting reincarnation (as in Hinduism and Buddhism). Aristotle developed a teleological framework of consciousness in which the Soul is linked to various levels of organization and goal-directedness. The “nurturing soul” is tasked with basic functions of self-care and self-maintenance, along with reproduction. All living things including plants and animals, according to Aristotle, have this level of soul. Then there is the “sensitive soul,” the function of which is perceiving and feeling. It is here that abstraction and representation take place. One thing can stand for or communicate something else, like symbols in abstract art. The next level is the “rational soul,” which Aristotle believed was specific to humans. It includes morality and values such as goodness, truth, and beauty.
Subsequently, philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (who famously declared “I think, therefore I am”) proposed that mind and body are two fundamentally different substances. There is mind, and there is matter, and the two can be looked at separately. By the dawn of the 20th Century, however, many people began to identify flaws in this dualistic approach, arguing instead for the fundamental inseparability of body and mind. Consciousness, or the ability to experience life subjectively, was not simply as a product of evolution, but also a process through which we organize our sense of Self. As an example, contemporary research on trauma or depression and the nervous system demonstrate some of the mechanisms through which mental states affect physical states and vice-versa (for example: depression can cause cancer, and cancer can cause depression).
Throughout ages, many scientists have attempted to document physical proof of the soul’s existence. In 1907, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, a physician, weighed people just before and immediate after their death to see if there was a discernible difference. He concluded (in research that has been heavily criticized) that the Soul weighs 21 grams.
In the realm of physics and mathematics, several theorists have proposed that classical physics is insufficient to explain consciousness. Attention has turned to quantum physics in an attempt to understand the ways in which a universal consciousness may be interdependent and interconnective, and can influence our perception of reality. British mathematician Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed a theory of quantum consciousness that describes how microtubules, which provide structure and shape to our cells and help to move chemicals from one cell to the next play a role in producing quantum vibrations. As with many of the theories of mind, it’s complex. It is outside the scope of this book to describe these theories in more detail, but this gives you a general sense of the varied directions that consciousness research has taken.
Then, there is the field of metacognition, which is essentially thinking about thinking. We can both monitor and control our cognition. Monitoring includes making judgments about our memories and knowledge, and not taking them at face value. For example, we can evaluate how strong and accurate we believe a certain memory is. Judgment involves prospective thinking about how we are going to do, and how we’ve done. Similarly, our ability to be aware of our own awareness is referred to as meta-awareness. For instance, we can observe our whether we’re able to maintain focus or if we struggle to pay attention. And given that consciousness is an internal state, we can also have a meta-consciousness. I am conscious of being conscious. That is the state of Observer or Witness state that is one step removed from being immediately involved and reactive to what is happening in the moment.
These are some attempts that scientists have made at defining and locating consciousness within (though in the case of universal consciousness, not exclusively within) the person. In any event, even if we don’t know, definitively, where consciousness arises from, we can still interact with it—with our perception of reality—intentionally and with the ability to influence our reality by monitoring and choosing our experience of reality.
Our Thoughts Can Form our Reality
Eastern spiritual practitioners and other philosophers and psychologists hold in some way that our thoughts form our reality. If we view the world as a cup that’s half-empty or half-full, it tends to be exactly that. Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic and even the view we take of our own health have shown to predict outcomes. For example, research shows that our view of the world, or at least our world, can indicate whether or not we will develop heart disease. So, if we want to change our reality, we need to change our perception of it—our mental framework.
Mindfulness practices including meditative mindfulness, as well as cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, are based on this principle, and have been helpful in literally changing people’s minds. These practices not only change our outlook, they adjust our emotional reactivity and emotional processing by affording us space and perspective to be more thoughtful and mature in how we assess what’s going on around and inside us. Even simple practices such as deep, measured breathing can slow our reactivity, giving us the opportunity to respond to stressful events in ways that are more balanced and circumspect. We can also use these techniques to expand our perception of the world beyond our own experiences. We can learn to see beyond our own ego so that we may be more aware of others’ needs and experiences. An expanded awareness of our Self and of others—a type of shift in consciousness—increases our relational capacity.
Mystical experiences, whether drug induced or spontaneous, all share similar features that fascinated multiple generations by opening their minds to other realities of transcendence of time and space, a sense of feeling of oneness, the state of Bliss and feeling of sacredness that takes us closer to God or Nature, provides us with a glimpse at the true nature of things and ourselves, that comes with the dissolution of personal identity. In most cases, such experiences are transient but with permanence of positive changes within the individual because of it, such as changes in attitude or behaviors.
Though these features are largely agreed upon, much debate remains about consciousness. One thing we can agree on, however, is that the relationship between death and consciousness unequivocal: we lose our consciousness when we die. Or is it?
