Demystifying Reincarnation 11 – Consciousness – Intuitions that point beyond the brain

Thank you. Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! Welcome back to the Demystifying Reincarnation series.

Suppose there is something which is the fundamental reality, which is the reality that enables us to experience all other reality. And suppose we have a tool for explaining reality, a very powerful tool for explaining reality, but this tool has no explanation for the reality that underlies all of the reality. How would that situation be reconciled? The reality which underlies all of the reality is our consciousness.

It is because we are conscious that we are able to perceive things and understand whether they are real or unreal. And the most powerful tool we use for understanding reality today is, according to mainstream opinion, modern science. And modern science, despite its dazzling achievements, has very little understanding of consciousness.

It is science, one of the greatest mysteries. So, in the Scientific American, December 1995 issue, David J. Chalmers writes an essay, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience. Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious.

There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. So, now, what exactly is consciousness? Before we get into technicalities, let's look at it from an intuitive perspective. We all know that we are conscious, that's our intuition.

So an intuition also plays a vital role in science. This is acknowledged by an authority as great as Albert Einstein. He states, the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

This means that intuition is something which comes from above and rationality is something which we direct. So it's a sacred gift, it's something which intuition actually is what guides most scientific research and our rational mind is what goes along, what we make it, think this way, go this way, we direct it. So now let's look at our intuition and let's apply it to the issue of consciousness.

Now, we'll consider five intuitive meditations to understand consciousness. At a very simple level, consciousness refers to our sense of self-awareness and world awareness. There is an I-ness, there is an I, there is a self who is aware of oneself and things around oneself.

So that is at a basic level, consciousness. So now we could begin by asking, who is it that perceives? Now, is it the eyes that perceive? Say, I am looking at you. Is it the eyes that are perceiving? But the eyes are actually present even in the dead body.

Is it the ear that is hearing? The ear is also present in a dead body. And here the dead body can't see or hear. Then, is it the brain that perceives? But later we will discuss whether the brain is a source of consciousness, what is the problem with such theories.

But right now, we can again take the same logic that the brain is also present in a dead body and yet it is not able to perceive. Now, we may say that, oh, but in the eyes, in the brain, there are chemicals and the chemicals have to be functioning in a particular way. And when they are functioning in a perfect way, well-coordinated way, then that is when we are able to see.

But that raises the question, then is our sense of I-ness a product of certain chemicals, the presence of certain chemicals or the presence of the combination of certain chemicals? Now, we know that our body largely, the substance that is present most in the body is water. Now, so much water throughout our life, so much water comes into our body and so much water goes out of our body. Now, do we feel watery? Do we feel that I'm a watery person? No, we don't.

So, if we were asked, are we just a bag of chemicals? Our intuitive answer would be no. Yes, chemicals will be there in the body. You know, most life is made of organic chemicals.

It's carbon. Now, do we feel ourselves as carbony, as carbonaceous? No, we don't. If we consider the chemicals that comprise the body, there's sulfur, there's potassium, there is carbon dioxide, there is oxygen.

There are various such substances that are there. Are they what we are? Are they the essential stuff of our identity? Are they the source of our emotions, be they individually or combined? No, these are just essential chemicals and not just the, we'll discuss about the consciousness further, but those chemicals, those elements have certain properties which we don't identify with ourselves. And we have certain properties which we don't identify with those chemicals.

We have consciousness, emotions, which we don't identify with them. They have wateriness or carboniness, carbonousness, which is sulfurousness, whatever it is. We don't identify those with us.

So, they're distinct categories. And more importantly, let's consider the idea of value. That if we analyze all the chemicals in the body and we took their quantity and we summed their value of each chemical in that quantity, that would work out to be just a few hundred rupees or a few dozen dollars.

It's barely worth a one day's earning of an average person. So, what is going on over here? The chemicals really don't have much value, but we have immense value. So, where is that I-ness coming from? That question still remains.

And if you consider further, again, going back to the chemicals point, you know, who is it that remains the same when the body keeps changing? Science has revealed to us that the body, if we were just our chemicals, if our sense of I-ness, if our consciousness were somehow a result of the chemical composition or the chemical coordination of the body, then actually the body is changing constantly. In fact, Pim Van Lommel, in the book Science of Near-Earth Experience, explains that our cells may be seen as our body's physical building blocks. Yet every day, some 50 billion cells in our body are broken down and regenerated.

This is equivalent of 500,000 cells per second. Every two weeks, all of the molecules and atoms in our body's cells are replaced. And yet we experience our body as a continuity.

How can we explain this experience of continuity of the ever-changing body? The question that Lommel raises is profound. The body changes, yet my sense of I-ness remains the same. What is the locus of that I-ness which remains unchanging amid the changing body? Could it be something beyond the body? Now, let's consider, continuing this chemical analysis, who is gone? When a person dies, we, in our languages, all languages, is passed away.

She's gone. Now, who is passed away? Who is gone? We normally identify a person with the body, but the body remains the same. And if we consider, say, the body's chemical composition, if t is equal to t0, is the time when a person dies.

And if we consider the body's composition at t0 minus delta t, a few moments before death, and then t0 plus delta t, a few moments after death, we would not find any significant difference in the body's chemical composition. It is not that there is some special chemical that is present in the body and that pops out of the body and the body dies at that time. You know, just before death and after death, the chemical composition, the mass, the weight of the body, they remain the same.

And yet there's something vital that has changed. And again, this is not just a matter of language, because we all feel that our loved one is no longer there. Although the body is there, we feel that the loved one is not there.

So who or what is it that has gone? And then let's consider a fifth meditation. Who is the owner of the body? It means that right now when we look at our body, if I look at my hand, I say, this is my finger. So if this is my finger, who is the I who exerts owners right over the finger? Now, you may say, is it the brain? But we say, my brain.

Is it the heart? But actually, in certain cases, in certain operations, the doctors can take out the heart, they can show, slightly they can take it out of the body. The heart is here. You know, if my hand were cut off and my hand were held over here in front of me, then if my palms were cut off or one finger were cut off, held in front of me, it would be my finger.

So my finger is no longer connected with me, but my finger is there, I am here. So this exercise of dismemberment could be done with practically all parts of the body and still the I would remain. And again, this is important to know that this is not semantic quibble, this is not semantics.

We are not just quibbling over words. We all feel ourselves as distinct beings who are owners of the body. So who is the I that is the owner of the body? That is a question that intuitively makes us feel that there is something more to us than our body, that we are more than our chemicals.

The unchanging I is different from the changing body. When we meet a relative after many months, many years, many years say, and we may say if a small boy has grown, hey, you have grown up so much. What do we mean? You has remained the same, but I have grown up.

Something is changing, but something is unchanging. We include that. So we understand that there is an unchanging locus to the changes that we see in people.

What is that unchanging locus? Now, moving forwards, this is after this intuitive analysis. Now let us go towards a little more scientific analysis. As the scientific opinion, at least the mainstream scientific opinion today is materialistic, that is, matter is the source of consciousness and especially the matter in the brain is a source of consciousness.

So, physicist Nick Herbert in Quantum Reality, in his book Quantum Reality Beyond the New Physics states that science biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness. We simply have no such theories at all.

About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head rather than the foot. So, it is something to do with the head rather than the foot. Today, a science mainstream approach is materialism.

That means the mainstream scientific community sees the whole of world, the whole nature as an interaction of material objects, say fundamental particles moving according to impersonal laws. That they hold apply all over the universe. And extending this paradigm to consciousness, they feel consciousness can also be explained in terms of material laws applied to the brain chemicals.

And yet, there are many eminent scientists, including Nobel laureates, who are questioning such materialistic explanation of consciousness. Among such scientists are the Nobel laureate neuroscientists such as John Eccles, Wilder Penfield and Charles Sherrington. They are urging, they are saying that a complete explanation of consciousness requires that we be open for non-material explanations.

And this was decades ago, this openness to non-material was exhibited by another Nobel laureate, Albert Zenz Georgi, who wrote in Biology Today, in my search for life, I ended up with atoms and electrons, which have no life at all. And somewhere along the line, life has run out through my fingers. So, in my old age, I am now retracing my steps.

So, what are the problems with the materialistic theory of consciousness? When eminent scientists are seeking its reconsideration, what is it that is prompting its reconsideration? There are many things, but let us consider three of them. We will discuss three questions. How can brain cells, which are themselves unconscious, produce consciousness? Second is, how do our brain cells, how do our memories stay intact, despite the constant regeneration of our brain cells? And how can consciousness change the structure of the brain as observed in neuroplasticity? The first is the most fundamental.

How can unconscious brain cells produce consciousness? Now, this problem has plagued modern science ever since its dawn, ever since science started attempting to explain all of reality, that consciousness remained a mystery. And this is acknowledged by English biologist T.H. Huxley, who, despite being a very aggressive advocate of evolution, despite being a materialist, he acknowledged that consciousness was a big problem. He said, how is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the jinn when Aladdin rubs his lamp.

So, he is basically saying this is mystical. If Aladdin rubs his lamp and a jinn appears, then there is actually no correlation between the two. This is done.

How is this happening? There is no scientific explanation for that idea. That may seem as fantastic, mythological event. But here, what is happening? We are saying that when certain nervous tissues are stimulated, when certain signals pass into the brain, at that time you feel conscious.

So, how are they? How does that happen? He said, it is profoundly mysterious. This Huxley statement of the 19th century and today we are in the 21st century and even now this problem remains. In fact, in 2005, Science magazine published a special 125th anniversary issue in which they listed 125 questions that science still has to answer.

And this reputed publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science AAS, it listed these 125 questions. The second most important question after the first question was, what is the universe made of? Because there is a whole dark matter and dark energy. It is a whole different concept.

But that is a big mystery. The second question was, after what is the universe made of was, what is the biological basis of consciousness? And of course, many scientists have suggested that the question itself needs to be rephrased to, is there a biological basis to consciousness? But let us move forward, even with the question as it is. Why is it such a big problem for scientists to explain what is the biological basis of consciousness? So, the science writer, Greg Miller, framed the problem in this way, how can a particular pattern of photons hitting the retina produce the experience of seeing, say, a rose? So, photons enter into the eyes, they hit the eye, they enter the eye, they hit the retina.

After that, certain signals are generated, which are basically nervous stimulations, which pass through the optic nerve to the brain, to the optical area of the brain. And then after that, this profound mystery, what happens? First of all, we could say there are, how does the image of a rose emerge in our consciousness? Where does the experience of seeing and feeling take place? Who is it that sees the rose? And who is it that feels the unique emotions associated with such an experience? So, if you consider the brain as a black hole, okay, the photons go inside the eyes from there through the optic nerve, some signals go to the brain. But after that, what happens after that? We see a rose, but is there a, how does that image of a rose emerge in a brain, emerge in our consciousness? The brain is simply made up of neurons, there are brain cells, there is axon, there is dendrites, and there are connections, synapses, and the dendrites is like a long, long thin cells with wire-like arcs going out, and when they connect, that is synapses.

So now, there is nothing like, which can correlate with the image of a rose coming up. And I think that you can correlate with who is going to see that image, who is going to feel the emotions of seeing that image. Where does all this happen? It is a profound mystery.

Now, of course, many materialist scientists try to say that somehow this happens in the brain. The sense of I-ness, the experience, the phenomena of consciousness, all this happens in the brain through the interaction of neurochemicals, chemicals in the brain. But then there are other researchers who have pointed out that the activities of brain cells and our conscious experience of emotions are two very distinct things.

Consider this, the statement in the Journal of Consciousness Studies by astrophysicist Piatt Hutt and philosophy professor Bas van Rassen, both from Princeton University. If I have ever seen an incompatible pair of concepts, it is a configuration of molecules and a conscious experience. Life emerging out of lots of molecules.

Consciousness emerging out of lots of nerve cells. Well, why not consider time as emerging out of clocks? Without clocks, no accurate time measurement and without a good clock. And a good clock provides excellent correlations with the flow of time.

But time surely does not emerge out of a clock. This time and clock example is striking because we know well what the time is by the way the clock hands move. So, there is definitely a correlation.

But time is not emerging from the clock. Time exists independently and we come to know of time through the motions on the clock. But time itself, if somebody tried to reduce time to the hands of a clock and to the motion of the hands of a clock, person will be simplistic.

It will be reduction is done to the level of absurdity. Time is distinct. Similarly, consciousness itself is distinct from the body, from the brain.

Colin McGinn, a philosophy professor from the University of Miami, again states the problem. The brain processes held to constitute conscious experience consist of physical events that can exist in the absence of consciousness. Electricity in the brain correlates with mental activity, but electricity in your TV presumably does not.

So, how can electrical power be the essence of conscious experience? How can electrical processes be the essence of conscious experience? What is he saying over here? What is Colin saying over here? The important thing is that, okay, essentially what is happening in the brain is the flow of electrical signals and the electrical signals in a TV set, they are also going over there. There is neural, there is digital circuitry over there. There is electronic circuitry over there.

And here there is neural circuitry, but the flow essentially is the same electrical energy. So, if it does not produce consciousness here, why should it produce consciousness here? There is no reason for it to produce. Another researcher, neuroscientist Stephen Harnard, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in volume 4, number 4, April 1, 2000, he states that the problem is clear, hard and staring us informally in the face.

I have feelings. I have feelings. So, what does this mean? That actually sometimes we have computers or calculators or other devices which can do the same things, many of the things which we can do.

So, for example, we will discuss this more later, but suffice it to say that we are trying to do a complex calculation and we do it and a computer or a calculator does a complex calculation. Now, associated with the activity of doing the calculation, we experience joy. Yeah, I got the answer right.

And the computer does the same thing, the digital device does the same thing, but it does not experience any emotions. So, why do we have feelings? As far as the concept of how the digital circuitry works in a machine and how the neural circuitry works in the brain, there are remarkable conceptual similarities. So, in a sense, if the computer can calculate it without any feelings, our brain could also process without any feelings.

But we have feelings. So, just as feelings are not associated with digital circuitry, they are not associated with the neural circuitry and that means that the feelings come from somewhere else. They come from a non-material source.

What is that non-material source? That question is what is causing many researchers to open their minds to a non-materialist paradigm. In our next session, we will discuss further problems with the materialist explanation of consciousness, that is, how do our memories stay intact in spite of the constant regeneration of the brain cells? And also, how can people who have no brains still have consciousness? How can the brain change and still, how can consciousness change the brain cells, as happens in neuroplasticity? So, to summarize, in this session, we discussed the mystery of consciousness. Intuitively, we saw that reducing ourselves to our material bodies, it runs counterintuitive to our sense of consciousness.

Who is it that pursues? Are we just chemicals? The chemicals comprise cells in the body. Cells keep changing, still we remain the same. Nothing changes chemically immediately, before death and immediately after death, yet something substantial changes.

So, who is it that is gone? And when we are living, who is it that is the owner of the body? These intuitions point us towards our core, which seems to be something beyond the body. And then we discussed, getting into more scientific technicality, about what are the problems with materialist theories of consciousness. So, first problem is, which we discussed, how can unconscious brain cells produce consciousness? That is a problem which was there from the time of Huxley.

Even now, it is listed as the second among the 125 questions that science is yet to answer. And it states that, actually, when photons hit our eyes, at that time, where does the image of a rose come up? How does it come up? Who is it that sees? And who is it that experiences emotions based on seeing? And saying that this happens by a brain cell, somehow by the chemical processing of the brain cells, is like saying that the movement of the hands of a clock produces time. They are two just categorically different concepts.

This is the machine. The problem is that the same set of phenomena, electrical signals going through a TV doesn't produce consciousness. Why should electrical signals going through a brain produce consciousness? That a calculator can do the same things which we humans can do.

Calculator does not have feelings. We have feelings. The hard problem of consciousness, as it is called, is extremely hard.

And that is making people look towards, even top researchers, look towards non-materialist explanations for consciousness. We'll discuss this more in our next session.