Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 9 - July 2, 2022
In contrast with the prevailing production model of the brain/mind relation, as described above, these “rogue” data collectively support an alternative class of models which view the brain not as the generator of mind and consciousness but as an organ of adaptation to the everyday environment, selecting, focusing, channeling, and constraining the operations of a mind and consciousness inherently far greater in capacities and scope.
in the words of Francis Bacon (1620/1960), at the dawn of modern science, “[T]he world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding . . . but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact”
think of traditional religions in terms of the familiar parable of the blind men and the elephant, each in touch with aspects of a tremendous and objectively existent reality, but all suffering from characteristically human limitations of perspective and none in position to claim exclusive possession of the truth in its entirety.
The mystical traditions themselves, with their practical emphasis on personal liberation, tend to value experience over doctrine and theory.
We have no interest in fighting rearguard actions against entrenched psi-deniers and scientific fundamentalists and the like, important though such efforts undoubtedly are, and we are not apologetic about prospecting in the literature of mystical experience and mystically informed religious philosophies for clues about how best to advance our theoretical purposes.
Wolfgang Pauli in collaboration with psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, according to which the physical and mental aspects of the experienced world are complementary,
hyperdimensional or hyperspace theories as conceived by persons such as philosopher C. D. Broad, neuroscientist John Smythies, and others,
Greg Shaw, provides an introduction to the mystically informed metaphysics of Plotinus,
Ian Whicher, presents the dualistic Sāṃkhya–Yoga strand of the central Indian philosophical tradition,
Patañjali’s account of the siddhis or attainments (including psychic powers) in terms of the “knowledge by identity” which arises in deep meditative states,
Abhinavagupta and his nondual Kashmiri Śaivism, an experience-based metaphysics similar to that of Advaita Vedānta,
Charles Sanders Peirce to draw out the implications of his philosophical framework, with a view to providing explanations for targeted phenomena including postmortem survival.
“synechistic metaphysics”—what today would be called a panentheistic evolutionary philosophy—which envisions all existing things as part of one continuum.
Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics in light of the mystical philosophy of the modern Indian Tantric sage Sri Aurobindo,
We are essentially unanimous in thinking that expanded psychological models of the general sort advanced by Myers and James are scientifically viable and that many opportunities exist for their further empirical development.
tradition of German idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, et al.) with the common deliverances of the world’s great mystical traditions more generally (as represented within Vedāntic, Tantric and Kashmiri Śaivite, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Neoplatonic perspectives),
investigated over 2,500 such cases, many in great detail (see for example Kelly, 2013; Stevenson, 1975–1983, 1997, 2001; Tucker, 2005, 2013).
First and foremost is the possibility that rebirth may at least sometimes occur.
Most challenging of all to mainstream views is the large body of evidence directly suggesting that autobiographical, semantic, and procedural (skill) memories sometimes survive bodily death. If this is the case, memory in living persons presumably exists at least in part outside the brain and body as conventionally understood.
the unification of experience is not achieved anatomically. There are no privileged places or structures in the brain where everything comes together, either for the visual system itself or for the sensory systems altogether.
The neurophysiological global workspace, however, cannot be the whole story, because a large body of recent research on “near-death experiences” (NDEs) demonstrates that elaborate, vivid, and life-transforming conscious experience sometimes occurs under extreme physiological conditions—including conditions such as deep general anesthesia, cardiac arrest, and coma—that preclude normal workspace operation (Laureys & Tononi, 2009).
the more extreme transformations of consciousness associated with NDEs sometimes extend deep into the mystical realm, include veridical psi elements, and more commonly occur when the subjects are in fact physiologically closer to death (see IM, Chapter 6; Alexander, 2012; Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009; Owens, Cook [Kelly], & Stevenson, 1990; van Lommel, 2010, 2013).
It is a historical fact that mainstream psychology has always tended on the whole to try to solve its problems in minimalist fashion and with as little reference as possible to what all of us experience every day as central features of our conscious mental life.
The crucial point I want to make, especially to my fellow psychologists, is this: our a priori commitment to conventional physicalist accounts of the mind has rendered us systematically incapable of dealing adequately with the mind’s most central properties. We need to rethink that commitment.
All of the great unsolved mysteries of the mind—semantics, intentionality, volition, the self, and consciousness—seem to me inextricably interconnected, with consciousness somehow at the root of all.
consensus itself rests upon an outdated conception of nature, deriving from Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Laplace, that began its career by deliberately banishing conscious human minds from its purview!
when a soul is raised up in the light of God, everything below becomes visible to it and appears small. But heaven and earth have not shrunk. Rather, the mind has expanded in God, opened up by the divine light and lifted above the world.
Stage-by-stage removal of the obscuring karmas yields first the clairvoyant and clairaudient perceptions of bodily things, then the subtler telepathic knowledge of mental things, and finally unlimited knowledge, perception, bliss, and power.
Mystics can feel as though they have looked behind the veil of appearances and caught sight of the nature of self, world, consciousness, time, and even the meaning of it all.
Neuroscientific reductionists will put the commonalities down to biology and psychology shared by all human beings, not to shared deeper realities. However, if reductionists are unable to give an adequate account of the common features in terms of shared neuropsychology, then the appeal to unanimity becomes stronger.
the “extrovertive” (Stace, 1960) or “natural” (Zaehner, 1957) mystical type. In these, experience of the world is transformed by some combination of unity, reality, knowledge, heightened perception, self-transcendence, altered time-experience, luminosity, love, joy, and peace, to mention the more commonly reported features,
Unity with others can bring inclusive feelings of love and the realization that all beings are equal and joined in kinship (communal unity). It may even seem that love is integral to the deeper reality.
Souls are able to know that universe because in their depths they are the Intellect. When purified, they see themselves as Intellect and its “intelligible universe full of light” (Ennead IV.7.10; Armstrong, 1966–1988, Vol. 4, p. 383). Light as well as unity characterizes the higher knowing.
mystical unity with the light occurred at the end of several stages: (1) a state of darkness and peace; (2) out-of-body experience, with keener sight and hearing than usual, and ability to read the thoughts and feelings of bystanders; (3) upward flight; (4) a sea of light, love, and music, and the presence of a deceased relative; (5) a vast, loving light into which she was drawn and with which she became united.
James (1909/1986), in his final thoughts on psychical research, concluded that there is a “continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir” (p. 374).
The brain or nervous system is understood as the “filter” or the “organ of transmission”; what is filtered, transmitted, etc., are the mental forms of our conscious experience.
the “transcendental world.” Myers would call it the metetherial environment or World-Soul; Emerson, the Over-Soul; Aldous Huxley, Mind at Large; Carl du Prel, the Transcendental Ego, etc.
Summarizing the main points of James’s theory: The brain transmits—it does not produce—consciousness. Consciousness preexists the brain; it does not emerge from the brain. There is a transpersonal mind, i.e., a mind at large, a cosmic consciousness, James’s “mother-sea” of consciousness.
In the Phaedo (81a), Plato said that a meletē thanatou (“practice of death”) was the way to enlightenment; in short, methods of freeing the soul from bodily influence.
Herein lies the final answer to Materialism: it consists in showing in detail what was asserted at the outset, viz., that Materialism is a hysteron proteron, a putting of the cart before the horse, which may be rectified by just inverting the connexion between Matter and consciousness. Matter is not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it and confines its intensity within certain limits: material organization does not construct consciousness out of arrangements of atoms, but contracts its manifestation within the sphere which it permits. (p. 289)
Schopenhauer held that “the objective world is a mere phenomenon of the brain. For the order and conformity to law thereof which are based on space, time, and causality . . . are to some extent set aside in somnambulist clairvoyance” (p. 263).
the traditional methods, techniques, and disciplines of yoga, mysticism, shamanism, etc., are ways of interfering with the brain’s normal functions, thus attempting to force open the barriers that normally clog the flow of consciousness and block access to the subliminal mind.
According to his biographer Porphyry, Plotinus was ashamed of being in his body; he is said to have had at least four ascents to the One, but many ascents to Intellect (nous), as Plotinus himself reports.
Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and others created a scholarly dialogue between Neoplatonic philosophy, Kabbala, and Arabian, Egyptian, and Christian thought and imagination. The great assumption: the Supreme Reality dispensed its insights universally; philosophy was to blaze a dialectical trail to the unifying, harmonizing core of all the traditions.
There are various ways the model can be tried, tested, and used experimentally. One is the traditional way, using established spiritual practices like prayer, fasting, meditation, and so on, all widely employed to induce experiences associated with spiritual enlightenment and creative inspiration. Many of the techniques are designed to reduce resistance to the subliminal influx; they lower Fechner’s threshold, allowing what is present to present itself with minimal impediment.
Experiments are built around reducing sensori-somatic noise, with the key idea of deafferentation: cutting off sensory input by using techniques of meditation, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, progressive muscular relaxation, induced hypnagogia, and Ganzfeld (uniform sensory input).
The results obtained to date seem generally in line with the notion that lower levels of chronic “noise” or mental chatter go with better psi performance.
Large amounts of historical and cross-cultural testimony also affirm the psi-conduciveness of meditation in various forms, and modern experimental results supporting the existence of such a connection have gradually accumulated (Honorton, 1977; Kelly & Locke, 1981/2009; Radin, 2013).
the founders of quantum theory accepted the empiricist doctrine that science must be anchored in what we know. But everything we know resides in our experiences. The founders therefore backed away from the idea that the aim of science was to comprehend the reality that lies behind our experiences. They focused instead on the structure of these experiences themselves.
Schrödinger equation, which is the quantum analog of the classical equations of motion that generate the actual future. This creation of the future potentialities is called “Process 2” in von Neumann’s rigorous reformulation of the earlier original “Copenhagen” descriptions of quantum mechanics.
