37. What Is Real

I’d like to introduce a few philosophical concepts that might make it easier to understand some of the things I’ve been saying about consciousness and the mind, because there have been a few signs of confusion. I’ll read you a couple of emails that have come in. Here’s the first. In a number of sessions, Sam talks about phenomena as only occurring in consciousness. Of course, that is where the experience of these phenomena occur. They couldn’t occur anywhere else. But sometimes Sam appears to be saying that this is the only place where the phenomenon actually exists. I’m sure that’s not what he means, but it does sometimes sound like he’s saying that, and I think this could confuse or alienate some people. And then this person gives an example. In day 15, around four minutes in, Sam says, quote, rather than feel that consciousness is in your head or behind your face, notice that it is in fact the other way around. These sensations are appearing in the open space of consciousness. End quote. I understand what he is saying here. The feeling of having a head appears in consciousness. But it is also the case that consciousness is centered in the brain. And that is why we have the sensation of it being in the head. Sam appears to be saying that this is not the case. But of course, there seem to be very solid scientific reasons, in addition to experiential evidence, that that is precisely where consciousness is centered. In fact, it is the case both that consciousness is centered in the head and that the feeling of having a head appears in consciousness. This is an interesting paradox, but I don’t think Sam explains it well. Okay, well, thank you for that excellent feedback. It’s actually another questioner who has a similar point to make. And he or she writes, one conundrum for me is this. Consciousness cannot exist without the human mind slash brain. Yet consciousness, I think you would have me believe, actually exists on a higher level than the mind slash brain. If I have this right, how can consciousness transcend the mind at the same time it depends upon the mind for its own existence? So this is all very useful. And thank you for that feedback. And please keep it coming. A few points to make. Let’s talk about what is real. Okay, this is a metaphysical question. There are different frameworks on offer here. There are frameworks within which we can come to any scientific or philosophical picture of what’s going on in the universe and what actually exists. Now most people throughout history have been dualists, it seems certain. The word dualism should suggest to you that these people think there are two quantities worth considering. Most people would say that there’s matter, the physical stuff of the world, and there are minds. And it would appear that most people in most times and places have believed that minds are separable from matter, that the mind you experience yourself to have doesn’t really seem like something that’s being produced by physical processes, really. I don’t know how it would have to seem forward to seem that way, but there’s this intuition of separability between mind and body that most people feel. And of course religions explicitly teach that this is so. Your mind, according to many religions, is really a soul. It transcends the mechanics of the body and will ultimately survive its death. If you’re a Christian or a Muslim, this means you will go to either heaven or hell. If you’re a Hindu or a Buddhist, it means you’ll be reborn in some other condition. It’s true that it gets more complicated and even paradoxical than that in many schools of Hinduism and Buddhism, but the general picture is one where mind is separable from matter in most of those schools. Science has tended to be monistic. And monism means, it’s often pronounced monism, it means that there’s only one quantity that’s asserted to be real. So now most scientists are physicalists. Only the physical universe is real. And minds on this account are simply the result of the physics of things on some level. According to physicalist monism, often just called physicalism, minds are not another kind of stuff or another strata of reality. Minds, in our case, are what our brains are doing, as would be consciousness. Now there are other types of monism. You can flip physicalism around and assert that only mind is real and that the physical universe is a kind of illusion, or at least it’s just an appearance in a more fundamental condition which is mind or consciousness. Now traditionally in philosophy this view is often called idealism, which is relatively rare these days. It’s also a confusing term given what else we tend to mean by idealism. But this view has been asserted in both Eastern and Western philosophy. There’s also what has been called neutral monism, which is just a placeholder for a theory that no one really has. I believe this term was first used by Bertrand Russell. And the idea is that there’s probably just one thing or one base layer of reality, but it’s neither mental nor physical. The notion is that whatever it is, understanding it would explain why mind and matter appear so different to us and that we’re just not in a good position to even form concepts about what is neither mental nor physical. Again, this has probably never been anything more than a hand waving gesture in the face of our basic confusion. Now the approach I’m taking in the waking up course is very much in line with what I believe I know about the nature of reality, which is not enough to have an opinion on these metaphysical questions. So I am agnostic as to whether we live in a purely physical world where consciousness and mind are ultimately reducible to purely physical concepts or if some other metaphysical framework is possible. I’ve argued in several places, and I think at greatest length in my book, Waking Up, that conceptually it seems very difficult, if not impossible, to reduce consciousness to statements about purely physical unconscious processes. But the fact that I can’t understand how consciousness might be an emergent property of unconscious information processing, say, doesn’t mean that it isn’t one. So the fact that it can’t be conceived is no limitation on the way reality might be. So I am truly agnostic as to what the base layer of reality is and how we should think about it. And there’s nothing I say by way of instruction in the meditation sessions or in these lessons that should suggest otherwise. I’m purely talking about the character of experience and what can be discovered about experience by paying close attention. Now I’ve said in many places that consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion. Consciousness, whatever it is, whether it is physical or if we’re just appearing in a simulated universe on the hard drives of some alien supercomputers, we’re not in touch with the base layer of reality at all. Doesn’t strike me as especially likely, but however strange the universe might be and however confused we might be about it, consciousness is a fact that cannot be doubted. The fact that something seems to be happening and that seeming has qualitative character that we can notice in each moment that we notice anything, that is the fact of consciousness. And so in the practice of meditation, all we’re doing is paying closer and closer attention to the nature of consciousness and discovering its character. How is it that thoughts arise? Is there a thinker in addition to thoughts? All of these things can be examined without presupposing any knowledge about the status of consciousness in the physical world. So when I say that consciousness as a matter of experience, I often add that phrase as a matter of experience, is not in the head, rather your head is in consciousness. Any sign you would have that you have a head, whether it’s the sensation of having one, muscular tension in your face, or itching on your scalp, or the sight of your head in a mirror, all of these are appearances in consciousness. That’s simply a fact as a matter of experience again. This is not a metaphysical or ontological statement about consciousness being prior to the physical world. The first questioner makes a point which is not quite right, that consciousness is centered in the brain and that’s why we have the sensation that it’s in the head. Now that doesn’t strike me as plausible. The fact that your brain is in your head does not explain why your subjectivity seems to be in your head. The brain certainly could be elsewhere and we could have the same sensation. I think the fact that we feel that our subjectivity is centered in the head is the result of where our sense organs are placed. However, if your brain were where your liver was, but your eyes and your ears and your nose and your tongue were still in your head, I think very little would change. In any case, this is all to say that you really don’t have to form a position on how consciousness is emerging in this universe to understand the claims I’m making in this course because the claims are always just about the nature of experience. And there’s certainly nothing to take on faith. Everything I am advocating here is really an experiment to be performed in the laboratory of your own mind. So as doubts and questions arise, simply take any of the claims I’m making and see if you can test them by paying closer attention to experience in this moment.