Abstract. We show that mainstream neuroscience implies a number of axioms of Eastern philosophy on the illusion of separateness. We also explore a strong version of "All Is One" concept of Eastern philosophy and synchronization effects. We also talk about some of the ordinary life uses of these observations.
References: There was a series of conferences hosted by The Mind & Life Institute including dialogs between Buddhism and Neuro- and Congitive Sciences with participation of the Dalai Lama and a number of leading scientists. I cannot discover references relevant to the text below from the abstracts on the Web site, but the materials of these conferences obviously need to be studied further for possible connections.
In my Remark on the Alive World I explained the following. Assume the mainstream hypothesis of neuroscience that things that we perceive on conscious or subconscious levels are represented by neural processes in our brains. It is quite mainstream to think that if anything is alive and potentially capable of consciousness, it is the neural processes in human brains. Hence the models of the world which we create inside our brains indeed consist entirely of alive and potentially conscious things.
Here we show that the neuroscience viewpoint implies a number of Eastern philosophy axioms on the illusion of separateness. First of all, this concerns the illusion of separate self and separate "outside world". There is no group of neural processes representing "self" and there is no separate group of neural processes representing "outside world". Instead, "self" is the whole system of all active neural processes, and this system is the whole available world of perceptions, thoughts, etc. Hence, in our internal world, "self" and this "internal world" precisely coincide. There is, of course, some group of neural processes responsible for the creation of the illusion of separate self, but it is not clear, whether this particular group is especially interesting.
Another illusion of separateness is the illusion of separate non-interacting entities in the world. Of course, since these entities are represented by neural processes sharing the same neural substrate, they are very interdependent and influence each other's properties. For example, the perceived brightness of an object depends very much on the brightness of other objects, etc.
Of course, this does not imply that neuroscience or Eastern philosophy are correct, but it is a strong argument in their favor. It also emphasizes that Eastern philosophy is not abstract metaphysics, but is based on the empirical observations of the observable (i.e. subjective) world.
The last point is probably the most important one. The "All Is One" concept is usually understood as the concept obtained via mystical enlightment and which can only be grasped via mystical enlightment or merely believed in. Here we see that this concept was probably of empirical nature, and also that this empirical observation of the properties of inner world can actually be deduced from our current mainstream theory on the nature of this inner world.
Practically the feeling of unity between oneself and the world is important, in part because it helps us to treat our world, that is, to treat ourselves, with gentleness and care. This feeling is usually very elusive, as are many results of mystical enlightment or religious beliefs. Sometimes we feel enlightened and sometimes not, and when we do not feel enlightened, our connection to our mystical insights weakens greatly. Even more so, we tend to doubt (rightly), what we view as our religious beliefs.
I found that the recall of the model presented here does help to restore this feeling of unity to certain extent.
What I just presented is essentially a weak version of "All Is One" axiom --- namely that the person and his/her subjective world are the same. We usually believe that there are things going on, which are not immediately present in one's consciousness. This includes subjective experiences of other people, things happening in other places/moments of time, behavior of atoms and elementary particles, etc.
The strong version of "All Is One" principle states the persons identity not just with his current subjective world, but with the whole world, including things not immediately present in one's consciousness. Basically, while this principle does not state that all these things are neural processes in one's brain, it nevertheless assumes that all processes take place in the single substrate, and that the relationships of the persons with them is essentially the same as his/her relationships with his/her unconscious.
Essentially, this principle views the world as one giant generalized "neural system".
We try here to look at some implications of this strong principle. We will see that these implications make this principle quite attractive. I should remind that all scientific and philosophical theories are usually considered to be models, which describe what is really going on better or worse, and not considered to represent some "absolute truth". The implications presented below make the strong "All Is One" principle a sufficiently attractive model. At the same this strong principle does not follow from our contemporary knowledge.
Perhaps, the most important implication concerns those mysterious "synchronization effects", when people tend to synchronize to relatively similar psychological states, and people and the outside world tends to synchronize to our preconceptions of them. Under the strong "All Is One" principle this probably happens via direct resonances. For example, if I see something in the behavior of people or the outside world, this "something" is probably an objective aspect of the real thing. My perception of this aspect and this objective aspect itself tend to intensify each other via resonance, and, bingo(!), another person or my neighborhood or country really start shifting its behavior to become closer to my perception. Since these things also have the same effect on myself, quite a strong synchronization force takes place. Same goes for perception of our common reality.
Frequently two people or a larger group can achieve remarkable results in changing their collective internal state in the desired direction (or, sometimes, experience very strong collective undesired changes). This includes as examples collective sensitivity to bioenergy, effects of collective hypnosis, strong shared emotional states, strong focus on some subjects of thought and perception. We are talking about effects with larger magnitudes than could usually be achieved by single people. This is very difficult to explain satisfactorily by anything but strong resonance effects between their respective neural systems.
Regardless of the validity of the strong "All Is One" principle, synchronization forces are part of our observable reality. The strong "All Is One" principle merely allows to offer a simple model for them and also suggests that these synchronization forces are more powerful and all-pervasive, than some alternative models of those synchronization forces suggest. The ability of this model to explain not only interpersonal synchronization, but also apparent synchronization of the immediate neighborhood with our expectation, is remarkable. (Of course, this is not the only possible explanation; another would be that we are sufficiently sensitive to figure out what's really going on, and our expectations merely reflect our ability to predict, but not to make the external reality.)
This does not mean, of course, that the synchronization is inevitable, as one can work in various ways with these synchronization forces. This also does not mean that the positive or conflict-free synchronization with everybody or every aspect of the world is desirable. But the awareness of the existence of such synchronization forces can be an important tool helping to shape our behavior.
It is important to remember that we are not free to imagine the reality at our will. The reason is that we are not free to choose what we sincerely believe/suspect, etc. However, we can try to feel various aspects of the situation, and then we have some limited degree of freedom in the decision to focus more or less on some of those aspects.
In the situations when people can have explicit consensus about their goals, they can try to use resonance effects described in Section 2.2.1 to achieve the desires states.
The topic of reincarnation is frequently represented in Eastern philosophy. I do not have a firm opinion on the evidences of reincarnation. However, what I would like to do here is, presuming for the duration of this discourse the existence of reincarnation, to speculate what it should probably mean in the context of strong "All Is One" principle.
More specifically, our speculation will point out some possible parallels between a single human neural system and the hypothetical generalized "neural system", which is equal to the World under my version of strong "All Is One" principle.
One parallel is between the unresolved cognitive science problem of how to describe the difference between conscious and unconscious neural processing and the unresolved philosophical problem of what constitutes a person. My speculation is that the principles which would eventually allow us to distinguish between conscious and unconscious processing in the human neural system will likely to be very similar to the principles which would allow us to distinguish a person in the giant generalized "neural system". Note that I think it quite likely for unconscious neural processes to have their own consciousness, which is just different from the consciousness of the human in question.
In connection with this I speculate that when the problem of distinguishing between conscious and unconscious neural processing in the human brain is resolved, we are likely to find parallels between reincarnation and such phenomena as waking from a sleepless dream and recurrent resurfacing of neural processes which seemed forever buried in our unconscious.
For me at this point practical implications are mainly not so much in the area of human reincarnation, but in the recognition of the need to harmonize our relations with those more or less immortal entities, which exist or sleep in our unconscious and get reincarnated once in a while.
Also it would be promising to become more familiar with some of the entities in our unconscious and, perhaps, to learn to cooperate with them in the solutions of some of the problems we trying to address/research.
Mishka --- November 2000
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