Abstracts

Culture, Consciousness and Non-Locality
Emilios Bouratinos

Ever since it was discovered that on a certain level of physical and mental reality things are non-local, it has been assumed that this state can be known irrespective of the way we objectify the world. We can apprehend non-local situations in the same way we apprehend local ones. All we need is careful observation and study of the non-local phenomena. We can do that in the same way we investigate other aspects of physical existence.

This conceptual equiponderence is here disputed. Yes, physical non-locality can be scientifically studied as an observable state. But on the level of mental operations, the proper understanding of non-locality requires also going beyond observables. It is an epistemological requirement.

Five years ago Ilya Prigogine told me: "You cannot approach non-linear reality through a linear mindset". By the same token, you cannot approach non-local mental operations through a localising mindset. Your very object of observation draws you into it. You describe to the extent you experience. You don't experience to the extent you describe. Words don't just transmit specific meaning for you. They become transparent to what they exclude.

So non-locality of mind may be an objective state. But it becomes accessible only to the extent that consciousness doesn't lock into what it perceives -- locally or non-locally, quantity-wise or quality-wise. We don't have here just a case of abolishing space and time or of extending mind beyond brain. We have a case of not locking into objectifications per se -- a case of consciousness zeroing in on things or states without limiting them or isolating them while so doing.

This may explain why the term non-locality, though recent, follows the etymological pattern of a class of root expressions in Sanskrit, Greek and Chinese, which place the negating prefix 'non' in front of a noun – like for instance in 'ahimsa', 'advaita', 'nirvana', 'aletheia', 'aphthonia' or 'wu-wei'. The common denominator of these expressions is that they suggest an absence of something, which requires the active participation of the unique listener or reader to become present. He isn't just given a ready-made term to digest. He is made aware that something very important is missing from the meaning of that term -- and shown how to find it in his own depths. A type of conceptualisation takes over which entails a much broader, profounder and qualitatively different semantic operation.

When what we encounter is conceived only through the senses, we localise our perception. When what we encounter is also apprehended through 'reality sensing' (my expression for 'remote sensing' or telepathy), we translocalise it. Of course, we still zero in on specific objects, states or relationships. But our senses are now informed from within by the activation of this reality-sensing mechanism. We perceive things in accordance with what is ontologically relevant to us. We are able to become aware not just of distant objects, states or relationships, but of the oneness underlying them.

This explains why for the last 4-5000 years non-local perception (and the type of profound insight it gives rise to) has depended so much on reducing the hold of the necessarily localised self, on which our literate civilisation is based. This also explains why in both shamanic practices and in the Greek mystery tradition shutting off the senses was the first step in the direction of initiation. This finally explains why non-local perception has been seen ever since as a spiritual practice and the people best able to practice it are meditators, ascetes and seers.

Non-local perception may be involved with non-local consciousness. However non-local consciousness is less a feature of the brain and more a state of mind. It depends not on what the brain is used for, but on how it is used. That is why serious meditational practices aim at loosening the hold of the localised self. The meditator now experiences directly non-local reality in all its fullness, fluidity and freedom. The experience of it not only doesn't diminish his ability to discern local manifestations. It improves such discernment -- by enabling him to see how the local manifestations interact both with others and with the whole in which they are all rooted.

Selfhood and Expanded Consciousness: A View from Anthropology
Roy Willis

The emergence of 'consciousness' from tabooed term to legitimate topic of social-scientific inquiry has thrown anthropology into an exciting state of ferment. The authority of supposedly 'objective' ethnography has been profoundly questioned. Formerly taken-for-granted concepts such as 'self' and 'spirit' are being reassessed and re-formulated through a novel readiness among some practitioners to adopt William James's astringent precept of 'radical empiricism' and submit our (typically) Western mindset to he terrors and ecstasies of unreserved participation in the experiences of the seemingly alien 'Other'.

This new kind of 'experiential' anthropology is drawing on a variety of intellectual sources, many outside the formal boundaries of the discipline, including the radical phenomenology of James, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty , and the research into 'altered states of consciousness' associated with Charles T. Tart and others. However, in accordance with its traditional role since the canonical studies of Malinowski, the prime contribution of anthropology continues to be an outcome of its commitment to first-hand field research.

Quantum Non-Locality and its Implications for Psychology
Do Aspects of Mind and the Self have Non-local Roots in the Quantum Vacuum?
Danah Zohar, Ian Marshall.

Danah Zohar

There are three basic kinds of human intelligence, rational (IQ), emotional (EQ) and spiritual (SQ). each of these has a specific neural substrate in the brain. It is SQ, or spiritual intelligence, which is closest to our unique humanity and to questions of the non-locality of mind. SQ is our need for an access to meaning, purpose and value. It is our questioning and paradigm shifting intelligence. The neural substrate for SQ is coherent 40 Hz neural oscillations that reach across the whole brain. These 40 Hz oscillations integrate the brain's disparate expert systems, and are the neural basis for the unity of perception, the unity of consciousness, and the unity of the higher self. In themselves, the 40 Hz represent a kind of short-distance non-locality of mind. If they were further seen as excitations of an underlying quantum field, they would represent a very profound non-locality of mind linking us to the centre of the universe.

Ian Marshall

Is there a larger scale analogue of the brain ESP or a Group Mind? The coherent 40-Hz oscillations within the mammalian brain have an analogue in the coherently oscillating Higgs Field that permeates all space. The Higgs Field underlies all other particles, giving them their inertial mass.

If the coherent quantum field, too, had consciousness, individual minds would be its sub-personalities, which are almost separate at the present epoch. But non-local interaction between these separate sub-personalities is possible, even according to known laws of physics. This is a sort of non-locality which has not been discussed previously in a psychological context.

Models of the Self
David Fontana, Hertha Larive, Max Velmans

David Fontana – The Self as Experience

For Western psychology, the conventional self is not something innate or consistent, but an unstable notion fabricated out of the self-representations internalised as a consequence of interactions with the social and physical environment.  From the early years of life, consciousness identifies itself with these self-representations, generating in the process such things as self-concepts, personal histories, ideas about relationships, and concepts of reality and of the distinction between the self and the external world.  Throughout life it holds on to these self-representations in order to create a sense of personal identity (Latin 'identitas', sameness) and of continuity and security. 

Transpersonal psychology goes further however and poses the question whether or not there is anything beyond (over and above) this conventional self.   Mystical experiences, and the existence of altruism and of psychic experiences, together with the teachings of the founders of the world's great spiritual traditions, suggest that there is, and models such as that proposed by Wilber (e.g. Wilber 2000) indicate how we can conceptualise this transcendent reality, and draw evidence for its existence both from areas of modern science and from these spiritual traditions.   However, transpersonal psychology recognises that Wilber's model does not yet fully reconcile two seemingly mutually contradictory views of the nature of this transcendent self and of its integrity and spiritual destiny.  Does the transcendent self contain an enduring essence which might be termed a soul and which retains a measure of individuation when this destiny is fulfilled? Or does it realise itself as beyond individuation and in fact as the Unity from which it arises and which underlies all creation?

Theistic spiritual traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Dvaita Hinduism would answer yes to the first part of each of these questions  (referring for support to the transcendent mystical experience), and a qualified no to the second.  Non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and Advaita Hinduism would say no to the first part (referring for support to the imminent mystical experience), and yes to the second.  Both of these extreme positions invite criticisms.   If dualism is correct and the self possesses its own essence and retains individuation, thus remaining distinct from the ultimate reality it knows as God, then God remains forever separate from His/Her creation, and must necessarily remain forever incomplete.  Alternatively, if monism is correct and the self realises itself as ultimate Unity, as that which it has always been from beginningless time, then the process of individuation is rendered meaningless.  Why go through a human life and the deception of individuation when one's real nature is already complete and requires no augmentation?

These criticisms can be addressed with the help of theories arising from quantum physics (e.g. theories of the quantum self and of the quantum society), but for present purposes I wish to approach them not from theoretical physics but from the psychological perspective of felt experience, as it is at the level of felt experience that the devotees of these various traditions conduct their practice, and it is at this level that many thinkers within the great traditions have proposed ways of reconciling the conflicting views concerned.   Eckhart does so by reference to the Godhead, which is the ultimate ground of all being, and which emanates the plurality of individuated existence 'within itself while yet remaining unchanged'.  For Eckhart, God, the first of these emanations from the Godhead, can therefore be seen as separate from yet identical with the rest of emanation.  Eckhart's teachings have many conceptual similarities with Hindu philosophies which differentiate Brahman, the eternal, imperishable nondual Absolute, and Brahma the creator aspect of this Absolute.  Such similarities are also apparent with Buddhism, which although it avoids the concept of a creator  speaks of the 'trikaya', i.e. of the Dharmakaya which is transcendent reality and the unity of all things, the Sambhogakaya, which is the embodiment of this reality, and the Nirmanakaya, its appearance as the manifest world of form.  Certain affinities also exist with the Kabbalist philosophy of Ain Soph, the Absolute and Unknowable, and Kether, the first emanation from Ain Soph, and the various subsequent emanations which form the Sephiroth and the world of form. 

All four of these traditions teach that in meditation and spiritual practice the devotee can enjoy a subject-object relationship with the first emanation of the Absolute (God, Brahma, the Celestial Buddhas of the Sambhogakaya, Kether), thus retaining a sense of individuation within the self and a sense of the otherness of the Divine, but can (should) go behind this limited experience in order to realise its primal and eternal unity with - in fact identity with - the Absolute, a unity in which all sense of an individual self passes away.  However, such teachings still do not fully meet the objections of theistic religions, who insist upon eternal separation between the Absolute and its emanations.  These teachings raise the further problem that if the Absolute is the undifferentiated potential for all emanations, then concepts such as unity and individuality cease to have meaning within it (a good reason why Hinduism stresses that Brahman is that about which nothing can accurately be said, since every statement - including the present one - by definition serves to limit that which is limitless; Brahman is accessible only to personal experience).

The modified monism (Vishishtavaita-Vedanta or qualified nondualism) associated particularly with the 12th Century Hindu philosopher-saint Ramanuja provides a partial solution to these difficulties.  As expressed by Aurobindo, modified monism suggests that the self has a dual purpose, firstly to connect with the ground of its being, the deep essence which is pure open presence, and secondly to express this essence within the material world, i.e. to know itself in human form.  Thus the self is an intermediate principle between the individuated and the universal aspects of the Divine, between the realms of embodied personal experience and of formless being.  One of the arguments used by Ramanuja to justify this is that if the ground of our being contains consciousness (and from the experience of our own consciousness we must suppose that it does), then this, by very definition, implies it is conscious of something, and that the subject-object distinction is therefore an aspect of this ground.  Thus the individuated self is literally an integral part of the actual workings of the divine consciousness.   In Aurobindo's words, although ultimate reality may indeed be a single Unity, 'we see that for the purposes at least of this cyclic manifestation it expresses itself in ... soul forms', i.e. in individuated selves.

Modified monism accords with the teachings of Ramakrishna, who when asked about the relative merits of savii kalpa samadhi (the transcendent mystical experience in which the individual is aware of him or herself contemplating the Divine) and nirvii kalpa samadhi (the imminent mysitcal experience in which all sense of individual self is lost and union is attained with the Absolute), replied that both must be experienced.  One must be able, to paraphrase the words of one of his devotees, both to taste the sugar and become the sugar, to move between the experiences of individuation and of unity.   In terms of modified monism, the process of self-creation which takes place during human life has both meaning and purpose, and is associated with love, beauty, goodness and truth which have a reality that is irreconcilable with the impersonal abstractions of strict non-dualism. To reject this process as illusory is to mistake its nature.  Certainly it is dynamic rather than static, but its very dynamism is an expression of the Absolute from which it arises, and its movement towards purification and perfection forms an integral part of the very essence of being.

   Hertha Larive – Models of Self

This topic will include the evolution of consciousness through the centres of consciousness; the continuum of consciousness from the lower ego and instinctive nature to the super conscious ego and soul centred consciousness; the process of enlightenment and higher states of cognition/awareness. Part of this is theoretical and part is personal experience of altered states of consciousness.

The Sense of Self in Mystical Experience

This will include the experience of mystical unitive consciousness and the continuum of consciousness in altered states of awareness/consciousness. How this affected my ideals and understanding of the meaning and purpose of life and ways that I found techniques in super conscious moments to access knowledge in unitive and meditational/reflective states of being. Gnosis and telepathy and relevant factors involved. Sensitivity to vibrational frequences and the subjective perception of light as information will be discussed and consciousness as fields of information.

Max Velmans - Local consciousness, non-local mind?

According to conventional cosmology, the entire mass of the Universe was initially compressed into an infinitesimally small space of massive density. Once this expanded (following the "Big Bang") it evolved, differentiating into stars and planets, and under conditions such as those on Earth, into many forms of life including sentient creatures like ourselves. Our normal conscious experiences of ourselves largely express this differentiation. We experience ourselves as separate, autonomous, physically embodied beings, each with a unique view of ourselves and the world in which we live. However, our individual being is composed of the "stuff" from which we emerged and remains embedded in and supported by a surrounding, non-experienced ground. Without a continuous body/environment interchange of energy and material there would be no organic life. And without the detailed workings of an embedding, preconscious mind there would be no conscious experience. What consequences does this have for the nature of the "self"? This depends partly on how we choose to think about it. If we define ourselves by the physical boundaries that appear in everyday experience we think of ourselves as separate, embodied and unique. If we attend to the way our bodies and conscious minds are embedded in a supporting non-experienced ground, it is easy to think of ourselves as conscious points of focus within a wider, non-experienced ground. Looked at this way, the true boundaries of the self are largely defined by the architecture of the non-experienced ground, and particularly by the architecture of the preconscious mind. This has both depth and complexity. As one taps into its depths, in what ways do these reflect the differentiation and separateness that we consciously experience - and in what ways might seemingly disparate aspects of this architecture interconnect? Only empirical investigation will tell.

The Sense of Self in Mystical Experience
Ravi Ravindra, Hertha Larive, Bruce Curtis

Ravi Ravindra - Need for Intermediate Self: Self-Consciousness in the Yoga Sutra

The ultimate aim of yoga in the Yoga Sutra, the most authoritative text of yoga, is not self-consciousness. It is, instead, Self-realisation (Atma anubhava). The difference between self-consciousness and Self-realisation is enormous and encompasses a great deal -not only in the theory of knowledge but also in the practice of spirituality. Self-consciousness presupposes a separation between the self which is being observed and the observing self. It is entirely possible and practical to speak in terms of higher levels of the self observing or being conscious of the lower levels. But to the extent yoga in theory and practice aims at the highest self, there is nothing higher that can observe it. Thus whatever we can be conscious of is not the Self."

Bruce Curtis - The Mind as Field of Light within a Field of Light

Attempts exhaustively to characterise consciousness in terms of quantum states within the brain, even within the microtubules, have failed to provide a solid foundation upon a materialistic basis alone. The irreducible quantum of human experience, the unitive experience of consciousness as "I am," cannot be explained by emergence or epiphenomenalism. While science is well on its way to characterizing the physical component or process by-product of brain activity, we would do well to re-visit wisdom traditions both east and west to examine other funds of human exploration to shed light on this long-standing mystery.

The profound philosophical implications of Godel's theorem impel us to break through the epistemic limits (self-imposed) of empirical science. In order to arrive at a more complete understanding of our own consciousness we need to examine it from the perspective of a higher or more expanded awareness, and this is the inheritance we have received from the cumulative experience of our spiritual traditions. Similarly, with respect to any claims regarding the Divine, one must approach these areas with great care, realizing that all valid truth claims must be made in concert with the Divine Spirit. St. Paul articulated this epistemological principle elegantly: "For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of man that is in him? So, too, no one has come to know the things of God, except the spirit of God. Now we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been kindly given us by God." 1Cor.2:11-12.

This principle implies a deeper dimension of knowing, a greater Mind from which we may transcend what Buddhist teaching refers to as conventional or relative truth, in favour of ultimate or absolute truth. To this end we may find the Buddhist notion of Trikaya useful, as well as the Judeo-Christian tripartite topology of human being as body, soul, and spirit. Any effort to encapsulate mind within the body, i.e. modern mechanistic models which reduce consciousness to a matter-energy construct, neglect the corpus of experience pertaining to Nephesh and Neshamah (i.e. soul and spirit). Comprehensive understanding of each level would seem to require a broader platform of inquiry to examine the reality at each level.

In this brief inquiry, we shall look at the body-mind complex as localized within the mind rather than vice versa. Our model will thus help illuminate the multi-dimensional human nature as one of nested fields of light and eternal Light. Non-locality, in this view, becomes a phenomenon not merely of human consciousness participating in the non-local nature of reality, but of participation in a greater Mind-Field that is co-extensive with creation. On this basis, we may perhaps make greater sense of the more expanded mind reality St. Paul refers to at the end of that passage to the Corinthians. "For 'who has come to know the mind of God that he may instruct him?' But we do have the mind of Christ." (2:16). This greater collective reality of mind of the Logos, or of the Buddha-nature, calls us to participate in its omnipresent, all-knowing dynamic, and by virtue of our residing in it as field of light within Field of Light, impels us to open up the linkages that make this a more conscious, living experience.

The Implications of Parapsychology for the Nature of Self.
Bob Morris

Parapsychology in Koestler's will was defined as: The scientific study of the capacity attributed to certain individuals to interact with their environments through means beyond those presently accepted by science. In the past few years considerable empirical evidence has emerged for the existence of such genuinely new means of interaction between organisms and environments, physical as well as social. This evidence encompasses both the ideas of ESP and PK and is regarded by many as supporting more enriched, transpersonal/transcendent views of the nature of self. At the same time we have learned that we can easily deceive ourselves in all innocence as well as be deceived deliberately by others; this means that not all extraordinary claims and experiences can be accepted at face value. This in turn has implications for some models of self such as those that develop within psychopathology, including the self with extraordinary powers, the self as focus of powerful transcendent others, the self as focus of conspirators and so on. Thus we need to consider both positive and negative aspects, to bear in mind the writings of Charles Tart, Gardner Murphy and others about the fear of psi as well as its promise. Some of us naturally take an optimistic view of psychic functioning and its implications for our self development as well as the integration of self with physical and social environment. Others are more troubled and are concerned about fragmentation of self and the permeability of personal boundaries. We need to bear both in mind in our discussions; the lay public clearly does.

Although we have strong evidence for psi effects, we have little solid evidence regarding how to interpret those effects, e.g. how it works. There may be many different kinds of psi, each with its own implications, or psi effects may represent a basic underlying unity. Future research may lead us towards various interpretations of the nature of self, depending on which models it tends to support. This can be seen in terms of several groups of models, which we can discuss, such as:

1. Detection of meaning (real psi) vs. imposition of meaning (pseudopsi) models.
2. Psi source (PK) vs. psi receiver (ESP) models.
3. Psi is rare vs. psi is ubiquitous models.
4. Biophysical vs. nonphysical models.
5. Realtime vs. transtemporal models.

These kinds of models (and others that we will have encountered by the time this session takes place) are not mutually exclusive and all may have some validity. In this session, depending on what has already transpired, we can discuss various models and how they relate to the findings of parapsychology, as well as what kinds of research most need to be done in the future to help us better understand the implications of parapsychology for the nature of self. I will avoid the formal presentation of any data but will try to have some resources available that can be consulted informally if appropriate to specific points under discussion.

Empathy and the Extended Mind in Rupert Sheldrake's Work
David Lorimer

In his two most recent books, Rupert Sheldrake has developed his idea of the 'extended mind' and has applied it to the sense of being stared at and to cases of ESP in animals. He gives illustrations of cases of an empathic connection between animals and their owners which parallels cases that I have collected myself of so-called telesomatic phenomena. Here a person seems to feel at a distance a sensation being experienced by an emotionally close person. Rupert accounts for this with his theory of 'morphic fields', explaining that a bond, once made, can be 'stretched' so that the two people (or animals) are in contact such that events occurring in one are registered in the consciousness of the other. Further more esoteric instances of this can be found in the life of the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno) where he was able to sense events happening to some of his followers and even, on occasion, intervene to good effect. Does Rupert's theory provide an adequate theoretical structure to account for such data, or do we need a more developed hypothesis? In any event, it seems that a field theory of consciousness extending beyond the brain is a minimum theoretical requirement. How in turn is consciousness related to the structure of the self?

The Implications of Heart Transplants: Self and Memory
Alan Watkins

The data demonstrating that the hormonal system produces one of the most powerful suppressors of the immune system and the immune system produces virtually all the major hormones synthesised by the pituitary has called into question the role of each system in maintaining a physiological steady state. Similar data indicating that leukocytes can modulate pain perception and data demonstrating that the heart produces hormones have collapsed and data demonstrating that the heart produces have collapsed the myth that all bodily systems have a clearly delineated independent function.

The additional demonstration that the gut and the heart have their own brains capable of independent information processing and sensation have ushered in a new more sophisticated model of human function. The immune system for example has been described as a "6th sense", capable of sensing non-cognitive information. The immune system's ability to discriminate, learn, remember and communicate non-cognitive information suggests it has intelligence. Similarly the heart and the gut could be described as having their own intelligence. For example, recent evidence has indicated that the heart can store memories and these can be transferred during transplantation and subsequently accessed by the recipient of the heart.

The heart has also been shown to play a powerful role in influencing cognitive function. In fact it has been suggested that the heart may play a central role in co-ordinating and balancing the entire human system in addition to enabling access to greater levels of intuitive awareness and insight. This expanded role of the heart in enhancing quality of life and facilitating greater levels of consciousness offers one of the most exciting frontiers for science in the 21st century.